What Checkatrade costs a tradesman, and what you actually get

The short version

• Nobody can give you one number, and anyone who prints one is guessing. Checkatrade prices by trade and by area, so the figure you are quoted is not the figure the plasterer two streets over is quoted.
• The cost that matters is not the monthly fee. It is the fee divided by the jobs you actually win, and that depends on how many other members already cover your postcode.
• Ask what the renewal price is before you sign, not just the first-year price.
• You are renting position, not building anything. Stop paying and you are invisible the same afternoon.
• It can genuinely be worth it while you are starting out. It gets harder to justify the better known you get.

I sell websites to trade businesses, so you should know up front that is the bias. I would rather you knew than have me pretend I am neutral about this.

With that said, I am not going to tell you Checkatrade is a con. For some trades in some areas it works, and I have watched it fill a diary. What I will do is explain how the pricing actually works, because most of what is written about it is either scraped guesswork or written by somebody with a referral link.

So what does Checkatrade cost?

It depends on your trade and your postcode, and that is the honest answer rather than a dodge.

I am deliberately not printing a monthly figure here. Directory pricing changes, it varies by trade, it varies by how many members already cover your area, and any specific number I put on this page would be wrong for most people reading it and out of date within months. Half the pages ranking for this question do exactly that, which is why the numbers on them disagree with each other.

What I can tell you is what moves the price.

Your trade. A trade where jobs are worth thousands costs more to be listed in than one where jobs are worth a couple of hundred. The directory knows what a lead is worth to you.

Your area. Dense, competitive postcodes cost more. If four electricians already cover your patch, you are bidding for attention against them.

How many categories you want. Listing under more trades costs more, and it is where a lot of members quietly overspend, paying for categories that never sent them a single job.

What you sign up to. Introductory rates and renewal rates are not always the same number. This is the single thing I would make sure of before signing.

The number that actually matters

Not the monthly fee. The cost per won job.

Work it out like this. Take what you pay in a year. Divide it by the number of jobs you actually won through them in that year, won, not enquired. That figure is what the directory costs you, and it is usually a long way from the headline.

Two electricians paying identical fees can land in completely different places. One is in a thin area, gets ten enquiries a month and converts four. The other is in a crowded town, gets six enquiries that were sent to three other members at the same time, and converts one.

Same price. Wildly different value. Which is why asking a mate what he pays tells you almost nothing about what it will do for you.

What you are actually buying

A position in somebody else’s directory, for as long as you keep paying.

That is not a criticism. It is just what the product is, and it is worth being clear-eyed about.

You are not building an asset, you are renting attention. On the day you stop paying, the enquiries stop that afternoon, and you have nothing left over from the years of fees.

Compare that with ranking on Google under your own name. That takes months to get going, which is precisely why directories keep winning. They work on Tuesday and SEO works in March. But it gets cheaper over time rather than dearer, and nobody can switch it off but you.

The honest position is that these are not really competitors. A directory is a tap you turn on while you build something. The mistake is turning the tap on and never building anything, and then paying the fee for nine years.

Questions to ask before you sign

Six things, and I would get the answers in writing.

1. What is the renewal price, not the first-year price?
2. How many members already cover my postcode in my trade? If they will not say, that is itself an answer.
3. Is the fee fixed, or does it change with how many leads I get?
4. Is a lead exclusive to me, or sent to several members at once?
5. What is the minimum term, and how do I cancel? Get the notice period specifically.
6. What happens to my reviews if I leave? They usually stay with the directory. That is years of proof you cannot take with you, and it is the part people regret.

That last one is worth dwelling on. Reviews collected on your own Google Business Profile belong to your business and follow you forever. Reviews collected on a directory belong to the directory.

When it is worth it, and when it stops being

Worth it: you are new, you have no website worth the name, no reviews and no reputation locally, and you need work this month rather than next spring. A directory buys you time you do not otherwise have.

Stops being worth it: you have a steady stream of repeat and referral work, a couple of hundred reviews of your own, and you are still paying for enquiries you would probably have got anyway. At that point a lot of the fee is buying you jobs that would have found you.

The trap in between is that it never feels like the right month to stop, because stopping means a visible drop in enquiries and the thing that replaces it takes a season to build. So people pay for years past the point where it made sense.

The way out is not to cancel and hope. It is to start building the thing that replaces it while you are still paying, and turn the tap off once the other thing is running.

What I would do instead, eventually

Own the ranking rather than rent the position. Practically that means a website that ranks for the work you actually want, a Google Business Profile set up properly, and reviews on that profile rather than somebody else’s.

The reviews part is the bit most trades skip, and it is the fastest-moving. Most of your customers were happy and none of them were ever asked, because at the time there was nothing to ask with. Going back through your past customers and asking is the single quickest way to look established.

That is the argument, and you can do all of it yourself. If you would rather not, that is what I do. One price, no contract, and I will tell you on a call if your trade does not have the searches to make it worth it.

If you are weighing the directories against each other rather than against doing your own thing, I have written that comparison separately: Checkatrade alternatives, and whether it is worth it.