When you search for a handyman in Warwickshire, most of what comes back is a directory: Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Rated People, Bark and the rest. They are useful. They are also a business, and the way they make their money changes the quotes you get from the trades listed on them. Nobody on those sites will tell you that, so here it is.
How do trade directories make their money?
They charge the tradesperson, not you. There are two models. The first is a membership: a monthly or annual fee to have a profile on the site, with the price rising for a bigger or better placed profile. The second is pay per lead: the trade pays a fee every time your enquiry is passed to them, whether or not they win the job, and several trades are usually sent the same enquiry. Some sites combine the two.
The figures are not published on the front page, but they are not secret either. One trade marketing firm writing in April 2026 put a basic Checkatrade membership at around £60 a month, said £100 to £150 a month was common for an upgraded profile, and put lead fees at £5 to £15 for small jobs and £20 to £40 for larger ones. Its worked example was a plumber spending about £400 a month and winning four or five jobs from it, which is roughly £4,800 a year before a single job is done. Treat those as reported figures rather than a price list, but the shape is right: it is a real cost, paid every month, in the hope of work.
Does that cost end up in my quote?
Yes, because there is nowhere else for it to go. A tradesperson paying a few hundred pounds a month to be found has to earn that back across the jobs they win, so it sits inside every quote as a share of overhead, the same as the van and the insurance. The difference is that you are not paying for the work, or for the van that brought the work to your door. You are paying for the introduction.
It shapes quotes in a second way, which is less obvious. On a pay per lead site, three or four trades have each paid to receive your enquiry, and only one of them gets the job. The other two or three have paid for nothing. That pushes some trades towards quoting fast and low to win the lead back, and pushes others towards quoting high to cover all the leads they lost. Either way the number you receive owes something to the directory’s model, not only to your job.
Are directories a bad way to find a tradesperson?
No, and it would be dishonest to say so. A directory profile with a long run of recent, detailed reviews is a real signal, and the checks the bigger sites run on identity and insurance are worth having. We also know that when people ask an AI tool for a handyman near them, the answer is very often read straight off a directory listing, so a good profile there does real work for a trade. If you use one, use it well: read the most recent reviews rather than the star rating, look for photographs of finished jobs rather than stock images, and notice whether the trade replies to reviews, including the poor ones.
What a directory cannot tell you is whether the trade will visit before quoting, what is and is not in the price, or how they handle the things that go wrong. Those are the things that decide whether a job goes well, and you find them out from the trade, not the listing.
Why do new businesses on directories sometimes disappoint?
Because the barrier to being listed is a fee, not a track record. A directory profile can be set up in an afternoon by a business that started last month, and the early reviews on any profile are the easiest to collect. That is not a criticism of new businesses, everyone starts somewhere. It is a reason to read the profile for what it actually shows: how many jobs, how recent, how specific, and whether the reviewer describes the same kind of work you need.
Where does Mendwell stand?
We are not currently paying for a directory listing, and our reviews live on our Google listing where anyone can read them and where we cannot edit them. That may change, because being on one of the main directories is one of the better ways to be found, and if we join one we will say so on this page. What will not change is that we publish our prices here on our own site, so you can see what a job costs before you speak to anyone. As an example, a solid core internal door supplied and fitted into your existing frame is around £205 to £225 all in, and the full breakdown is in our cost guide.
Our prices are set by the job, not by what we spent that month on being found. If a quote from us is higher than one from a directory, it is because of what is in it: a visit first, a fixed price in writing, three hinges on a heavy door, the room protected and cleaned. It is never because of an introduction fee.
What should I ask any tradesperson, directory or not?
Ask whether they visit before they quote, whether the price is fixed once it is in writing, and what is not included. Waste removal is a good test: it is never included in a Mendwell price unless it is a line on the quote, and a quote that does not mention it at all is usually a quote that will grow. Ask to see the insurance certificate. Ask what happens if something is not right afterwards. A trade that answers those four questions plainly is worth having, wherever you found them.
Who this is not for
If you want the cheapest possible number for a small job and are happy to take a chance on who turns up, a lead site will give you three quotes by tomorrow and one of them will be cheap. That is a fair way to buy some kinds of work. It is not how we work, and we would rather say so than pretend.
Want a proper price?
We visit before we quote. The visit takes about half an hour, and you get a fixed price in writing afterwards, with everything that is and is not included written down. We are based in Nuneaton and work across Warwickshire. If you are outside the towns you see us mention, ask anyway.
Book a visit at mendwell.co.uk/book.
Prices reviewed September 2026.
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