Top 3 contractor referral platforms for business leads and great customer experience

Most modern clients hit the online world to find professionals they need to help them with their household chores and other projects/tasks/repair. Barely anyone spends hours to look through newspaper ads to find a babysitter, an emergency plumber, a local auto repair shop, a trustworthy housekeeper or a reliable remodeling contractor. People use mobile apps or contractor referral websites, which conduct all the search for them. Clients love the online hiring experience not just due to the time-saving purposes, but also for the ability to check the reviews, compare rates and find the best pro operating in their local area and ready to take on the job right away. Those services are rather popular among professionals as well, as they get an opportunity to receive real-time job offers and connect with more customers. But which contractor referral platforms are the best ones to use? These are top 3 ones functioning in the U.S.

Top 3 contractor referral websites for great customer service and job offers

Thumbtack Prosr Was launched in 2009 as an online platform providing customers with an easy way to connect with workers qualified to execute their daily tasks, and specialists with a convenient tool to reach out to a wider range of customers and receive more orders. The process of hiring is quite simple - the customer submits a job offer specifying it to the type of required services and his location, that task gets sent to the group of local workers whose field of expertise meets the customer's needs, the pros get a chance to respond to that request by sending a quote, and the one who offers the best quote and wins the customer's trust gets hired. Thumbtack is quite popular due to the number of cities registered providers operate in, the number of services they deliver, as well as scam-protection system the website's team has developed. Cons I found Thumbtack a bit too complicated to navigate. Another con that's quite substantial for professionals who're only starting out on the website is that providers may send quotes only using Thumbtack credits, and each of those cost $1.67. Professionals might need more than one credit to send a quote, and they may end up spending credits without getting hired due to the provider choosing mechanism available for clients (see above). Even on the 'How it works' page the website's team mentions that, on average, it takes up 10 tries to get hired for the first time. No refund info for the credits spent in vain, so I guess credits providers spend on quoting the clients they do not end up being hired by aren't refundable. HireRush Prosr HireRush is a relatively new contractor referral website, covering more than 4,000 cities and 1,300 skills. The platform is designed to submit job offers from clients looking for reliable providers able to execute their household projects, offer automotive services, carry out construction activities, help with housekeeping and deep cleaning chores, assist in teaching, child and pet care areas and perform a number of other tasks. As users leave requests with job details and their contact info, HireRush distributes notifications to qualified providers. Those may pay a small fee to obtain access to the customer's info, talk to him about the project the client is willing to hire the pro for and eventually get hired. If the pro, who's paid for contact info, doesn't get hired, he may request a refund, which is rather important. Providers willing to reach greater exposure to potential clients, move up on profile listings, get free leads, and receive more tasks and unique job offers may upgrade their profile plansr Consr It's not as popular as Thumbtack, and even though leads are a lot cheaper and basic profile plan is free, premium and pro plans might be pricey for some vendors. Home Advisor Prosr The good old fish in the pond. One of the most well-known reliable contractor referral websites. Home Advisor receives hundreds of requests every single day, offering registered professionals a lot of job opportunities. Customers looking for trusted home improvement, maintenance and repair service providers are used to relying on Home Advisor as on a safe, easy-to-use platform with numerous reviews on professionals. Such features as provider verification, localizing job offers, comparing up to 4 quotes from interested providers, creating idea boards and looking through true cost guides make Home Advisor worthy of user loyalty as well. Consr When it comes to service providers, they may often find competition on Home Advisor too tight. Besides, even though the website includes a wide range of services, they're all limited to home improvement and maintenance, which makes this platform not as client-friendly as the other two.