HomeAdvisor Competitors: Alternatives for Home Services Lead Generation

For home service companies just starting out, generating organic leads via their own website is a slow process, so online marketplaces like Angi Leads — formerly HomeAdvisor — can help generate leads (for a fee). 

However, because of the nature of many online marketplaces, some contractors complain about these leads and say they often don’t turn into actual jobs. This is either because the customer was just starting their project planning, or the same lead was shared with several other top competitors, who closed a deal with the customer first. As a result, many contractors look for HomeAdvisor competitors.

At ServiceTitan, we’ve made it our mission to help professional home service companies and home improvement professionals grow their businesses, increase job leads, and make the most out of every marketing dollar they spend. With that in mind, this article will cover:

• The Pros and Cons of HomeAdvisor for Contractors and Homeowners

  • What is HomeAdvisor?

  • How does it work?

  • How much does it cost?

• A list of HomeAdvisor Competitors and How They Compare

Finally, we’ll give an overview of features we’ve built into ServiceTitan to help home services businesses with their marketing and lead generation, including Google ads, email marketing, and more. Specifically, we’ll share:

• How ServiceTitan measures your marketing efforts 

• How ServiceTitan makes call booking, scheduling and appointment management systematic

• How ServiceTitan manages and tracks email marketing campaigns

The Pros and Cons of Angi Leads (formerly HomeAdvisor) for Contractors and Homeowners

What is HomeAdvisor?

HomeAdvisor, now known as Angi Leads following a merger and rebrand, is an online home service directory that lets homeowners search for HVAC techs, electricians, plumbers, landscapers, and other contractors to hire. 

Sites such as HomeAdvisor help homeowners match a particular job with available contractors operating near them, for no fee.

Homeowners can check reviews and recommendations provided by other users for each contractor listed and request quotes for the home improvement projects they want to do.

How does HomeAdvisor work?

HomeAdvisor’s free cost-estimating tool breaks down costs for any type of home renovation project, based on real amounts others paid for similar projects in the area. The website collects details of the project from the homeowner and generates a list of best-match local contractors based on availability, service type, and location preferences.

HomeAdvisor then sends that single job lead to multiple contractors, and charges each of them for that lead — regardless of whether they secure the job or not. The cost per lead ranges from $15 to $50, and is even as high as $80 to $100 per lead in some markets.

For the homeowner, HomeAdvisor appears to be free, easy, and convenient. They can find local service providers quickly, schedule appointments online, and eliminate the hassle of trying to get pro referrals, compare multiple estimates, or check each company’s references. Angi Leads says it vets contractors through license verification and criminal background checks.

How much does HomeAdvisor cost?

For homeowners, HomeAdvisor is a ‘free’ digital marketplace — meaning they don’t pay a direct fee for the service. However, HomeAdvisor sells homeowners’ contact information as a potential lead to multiple contractors, who immediately blow up their phone or email inbox with offers to do the job.

For home service professionals and businesses who sign up to receive leads from HomeAdvisor, the cost of doing business often outweighs the benefits. To get listed on HomeAdvisor, contractors pay an annual fee of roughly $350. Then comes the high cost tied to leads, which may result in thousands of dollars wasted each year on jobs that don’t pan out.

List of HomeAdvisor Competitors Offering Lead Services for Contractors

HomeAdvisor competitors in the online home improvement marketplace include Houzz, Thumbtack, Porch, and Google Local Services, among others.

Each of these top competitors offer their own advantages and disadvantages for the consumer and bidding contractors. Here are some of the pros and cons of each:

Houzz

• Pros for consumers: Free to browse contractors’ profiles and large catalog of photos; create and share idea boards; buy products from the site.

• Pros for contractors: Free to create company profiles with several photos and reviews; buy ads to boost profile on search results.

• Cons for consumers: Reports of poor customer service to return or exchange purchased items; negative reviews may be screened (not posted).

• Cons for contractors: Reports of poor customer service; buying ads doesn’t guarantee jobs.

Thumbtack

• Pros for consumers: Free to use; post your own project and choose which contractors’ bid to respond to.

• Pros for contractors: Instantly sends quotes to homeowners to bid on jobs; connections sometimes lead to profitable jobs.

• Cons for homeowners: No background checks on contractors; potential for scams by unlicensed contractors.

• Cons for contractors: Pay for communications, not leads; prices keep increasing; mostly handyman type jobs. 

Read our in-depth article for more details on how Thumbtack compares to its competitors.

Porch

• Pros for consumers: Free to use; can post projects, budget, and timeline.

• Pros for contractors: Choose which projects to pursue; pay to receive leads from local Lowes stores.

• Cons for consumers: No guarantee of quality work; no guarantee of background check.

• Cons for contractors: Difficult to cancel subscription; reports of poor customer service.

Google Local Services

• Pros for consumers: Easy to search online to find contractors nearby; read reliable Google reviews.

• Pros for contractors: Pay only for legitimate phone calls or leads; no need to buy ads; connect with consumers online at the time they are doing a Google search for your service.

• Cons for consumers: May be difficult to maneuver if not internet-savvy.

• Cons for contractors: Must have strong reviews on Google Local Listings; can’t buy ads to boost rankings.

ServiceTitan integrates with Google Local Services. Contractors on ServiceTitan can receive instant bookings from potential customers searching for a solution (which is one step further than a lead). 

Although these HomeAdvisor competitors all try to help homeowners simplify the process of finding a home service company, there’s no guarantee of quality work. While other sites similar to HomeAdvisor allow contractors to pick and choose which leads to pursue, none seem to offer contractors the option to only pay for leads that turn into actual jobs.

ServiceTitan: How We Help You Book More Jobs than HomeAdvisor Alternatives

ServiceTitan’s software helps home service companies (HVAC, plumbers, electricians, and more) run their businesses — from marketing, to business operations, reporting, and payroll.

In terms of marketing, whether you get your leads from HomeAdvisor or one of the alternatives listed above, ServiceTitan helps your company:

• Measure your marketing: You can measure whether HomeAdvisor (or one of its competitors) is working or not, and do more of what is working and less of what’s not.

• Make call booking systematic: Get your customer service reps (CSRs) to convert more calls into booked jobs regardless of where the lead comes from.

• Schedule and manage appointments: Select the right techs for each job and send out reminders and notifications to get as few “no-shows” as possible.

• Drive more business from existing customers with email marketing: Get more business and referrals from past customers. Often your existing customer base is your best source of new business.

• Stand out among customers with direct mail postcards: Target specific audience lists with automated postcard and flyer campaigns.

Measure Your Marketing

The key challenge with HomeAdvisor powered by Angi (formerly Angie’s List), Google Ads, or any other marketing channel is that you invest money every month but you don’t have a way of measuring how well each channel is working. 

Calls come in, but where did the lead come from? Was it from one of the lead generation services, or a direct customer referral?

It’s a huge advantage for your business to understand which of your marketing activities is producing the best results — so you can focus on investing in what works and doing less of what doesn’t. This keeps you ahead of competitors using services like HomeAdvisor, who are spending money on leads that don’t convert into real appointments.

At ServiceTitan, we help home services companies track which incoming calls actually make money for their business via ServiceTitan’s Marketing Scorecard, which ranks all your marketing campaigns by revenue, so at a glance you can see which are bringing you the biggest return. You can even analyze the metrics to find out the types of job each ad is producing, so you can keep spending your advertising dollars in the right way. 

When you create a new campaign using ServiceTitan, you can easily assign a unique phone number to each advertisement to track exactly which ad brought in a specific job. This feature lets you track ROI in real-time, so you can make important business decisions on the fly.

In addition, ServiceTitan helps you measure Google Ads’ performance with Marketing Pro. Contractors can integrate their Google Ads and Google Analytics account with ServiceTitan, and then set up Dynamic Call Tracking to automate attribution — making measuring digital advertising a breeze, and most importantly, helping them uncover wasted ad spend.

Set Up a System for Call Booking, Scheduling, and Dispatching

ServiceTitan makes sure your leads turn into actual jobs with call booking, scheduling, and dispatching solutions that help contractors deliver an amazing customer experience while increasing conversions.

Call Booking

Regardless of how your leads contact you, a key component to making your marketing work is converting leads to booked jobs. Even a 10% improvement here helps improve all of your marketing channels, so it’s very powerful. 

The best way to do this is to make sure customer service reps (CSRs) are following the correct process, asking the right questions, and being highly professional every time. Haphazard call answering and a muddy CSR process kills conversions.

Our call booking software helps your CSRs provide a polished customer experience from the moment they pick up a call. It shows them who is calling before they even answer the phone and gives them a chance to greet customers by name, setting the entire call up as a friendly and open conversation.

Additionally, our software prompts CSRs to ask the right questions using a step-by-step process of drop down menus to ensure they get all the information your techs will need before they arrive at the appointment. There’s also a specific place to record property information, such as age and size of the property, for example, giving techs even more vital information about what they’ll find when they arrive for the job.

Scheduling

ServiceTitan’s scheduling and customer experience software sends out automatic alerts and notifications to customers. These include:

• Appointment reminders

• Alert that the tech is on their way

• Requests for a Google review after the job is finished

Dispatching

ServiceTitan’s dispatch software gives dispatchers all the information they need to send the right tech to the right job. They can easily see who is free for the next job, what their specific skills are, and send the best pro available to each appointment. 

This snapshot of who is available and who is still busy on a previous job reduces scheduling mix-ups and delays and the number of calls that need to be made to your team out in the field.

Email Marketing

As you complete home service jobs in your area, you build a list of past customers. Those customers almost always require repeat visits, for ongoing maintenance, for example. Those customers also have friends who will need home services. By sending out regular emails to your customer list, you can remain top-of-mind to get this potential repeat business, which is much cheaper than generating new leads on HomeAdvisor. 

ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro is specifically designed to make it easy for home service companies to run email marketing campaigns, targeting a specific profile among your existing customers.

Want to focus on homeowners who have not responded to the estimate you sent them? ServiceTitan makes it easy for business owners to filter the customer base for exactly those people so you can send out an email blast including a phone number to call you back. This simple move often nudges cold leads into action and generates new business. 

Another example would be emailing all past HVAC customers for whom you’ve installed A/C to remind them that they should get A/C maintenance since temperatures are picking up. This kind of targeting lets you send specific email marketing campaigns to the customers who are most likely to respond, increasing effectiveness. 

We give you dozens of templates for email marketing campaigns, allowing you to simply add your own information and send to a targeted audience of previous customers to generate more opportunities.

ServiceTitan also lets you monitor the ROI of each email marketing campaign:

Direct Mail

ServiceTitan’s MarketingPro software allows you to completely automate your direct mail campaigns. You can send out a single postcard (or thousands) for one flat rate per item. All you have to do is:

1. Select your targeted audience from your customer lists: Create audience lists based on your customer data and prospects. Do you know which customers have out-of-date equipment that may need replacing? Send them a postcard reminding them of your equipment replacement programs.

2. Upload your chosen postcard design. 

3. Print and send.

You can monitor the ROI of every postcard you send to potential customers, so you can keep an eye on how much revenue your direct mail campaigns are bringing in. 

Want to find out how ServiceTitan can help you make the most of the leads you generate, whatever the channel they come from? Book a demo now to find out more.