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"hipages Alternative: Stop Paying for Shared Tradie Leads"

A job comes through on your phone. Hot water system, Bentleigh, wants it sorted this week. You pay to unlock it, ring the customer within ten minutes, and find out two other plumbers have already called.

You can win jobs like that. Plenty of tradies do. But you're paying to get into a three-way race, and you pay whether you win it or not.

This piece isn't a hit job on hipages. For some businesses, at some stages, a lead platform makes sense. It's about working out what those leads really cost you, and building the thing that sends you customers who only ring you.

How the lead platform model works

The basic deal on hipages, from the tradie's side:

• You pay a monthly subscription.
• The subscription gives you credits.
• You spend credits to unlock a job and get the customer's contact details.
• The same job goes to up to three businesses.

Three is better than some platforms, where a job can go out to a crowd. It's still three. The customer posted the job to get quotes, so they're expecting to compare you on price.

The contract terms matter too. In May 2023 the ACCC announced that hipages had admitted its conduct was likely misleading. From October 2018 to January 2022 it didn't properly tell subscribers about terms that automatically renewed contracts for 12 months and charged a fee for cancelling early. At the time, initial terms ran six to 12 months and fees ranged from $25 to $999 a month. hipages gave the ACCC a court-enforceable undertaking to disclose those terms clearly and to sort out outstanding complaints.

Terms may have changed since then. The lesson still applies to any lead platform: before you sign, read the renewal and cancellation clauses. Put the renewal date in your phone calendar the day you sign up.

Work out what a won job actually costs you

Most tradies know what they spend on hipages each month. Fewer know what they spend per job they actually win. That's the number that matters.

Grab last quarter's invoices and your job list. You need three numbers:

1. Total spend over three months: subscriptions, top-ups, boosters, everything.

2. Leads unlocked in that time.

3. Jobs won from those leads. Count jobs where the customer paid, not quotes sent.

Then:

• Cost per lead = total spend ÷ leads unlocked
• Win rate = jobs won ÷ leads unlocked
• Cost per won job = total spend ÷ jobs won

Here's how it plays out with made-up round numbers. These aren't hipages prices, just an example to show the arithmetic. Say you spent $900 over three months, unlocked 30 leads and won 6 jobs. Each lead cost $30. Your win rate was one in five. Every job you won cost you $150 before you'd picked up a tool.

Now put that $150 next to the profit on a typical job, not the invoice total. On a $4,000 bathroom reno, it might be fine. On a $220 tap repair, you're working for close to nothing.

There's also a cost the invoice doesn't show: time. Ringing every lead fast, quoting jobs you lose, driving to Werribee to measure up for someone who picks the cheapest of three. If you lose four quotes for every one you win, those hours are part of the price.

Do the sums with your own numbers. If they look good, keep going. If they don't, read on.

The real problem: you're renting, not owning

A lead platform is rent. The day you stop paying, the phone goes quiet. Nothing you spent builds up.

What you want alongside it, or eventually instead of it, is something you own: a presence that sends customers straight to you, with nobody else on the line.

For a Melbourne tradie, that mostly means one place.

Google Maps is the lead source you don't pay per call

When someone in Glen Iris has water coming through the ceiling, they don't usually post a job and wait for three quotes. They search "emergency plumber near me", look at the map with three businesses on it, and ring one.

That call is yours alone. The customer chose you. Nobody else got their number. And Google doesn't charge you for the call.

Google says local rankings are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Its help pages also say you can't pay for a better local ranking. That's the opposite of the lead platform model. Instead of buying each job, you're building a profile that earns the calls.

It's not instant, and nobody can promise you a spot on the map. Anyone who does is guessing. But the work stacks up. A review you earn this month is still working for you next year. A credit you spent this month is gone.

What to do instead, in order

You don't have to quit hipages tomorrow. Run both, and shift the weight across as the free calls pick up.

1. Fix your Google Business Profile this week

This is the single biggest lever, and it's free. Get these right:

• Primary category. "Plumber", "Electrician", "Air conditioning contractor". Not something vague like "Contractor".
• Services. List each job you want more of, in the words customers search: "hot water system replacement", "blocked drain", "split system install".
• Service areas. The suburbs you actually want to drive to.
• Description. Plain English. What you do, where, and whether you do after-hours.
• Photos. Real jobs, your ute, your team. Not stock images.

The 20-minute Google Business Profile fix goes through every field.

2. Turn every finished job into a review

On a lead platform, reviews mostly help you inside that platform. On Google, they help you everywhere a customer looks you up, including the map.

The method that works for busy tradies: send a text the same day the job finishes, with your Google review link in it. One line, no essay. "Thanks for having us today. If you were happy with the job, a quick Google review would really help: [link]."

Don't offer discounts or anything else for reviews. Google's rules ban it. Just ask every time, and make it take thirty seconds.

A happy hipages customer is still your customer. Once the job's done, send them the same text. A review from a job you paid a lead fee for keeps working on Google long after the lead fee is spent.

3. Make your details match everywhere

Google checks your business name, address and phone number against directories like Yellow Pages, True Local, Hotfrog and Bing Places. If an old mobile number is still sitting on a listing from 2019, it chips away at how sure Google is that you're the real deal.

Search your business name and your phone number. Fix whatever's wrong, biggest sites first. This is one of the most common reasons solid operators vanish from the map. The five usual culprits are written up for plumbers but apply to any trade.

4. Give your website a page for each job and each area

If someone searches "switchboard upgrade Pascoe Vale", Google needs something that says you do switchboard upgrades and you work in Pascoe Vale.

One page per main service, and one page for each of your best five or six suburbs. Each one written properly: the kind of houses you see there, jobs you've done nearby, how fast you can get there. Not the same paragraph with the suburb swapped.

5. Track where every call comes from

Ask every new customer, "How'd you find us?" Write it down. After three months you'll know what Google is sending you for free, and you can decide what the lead platform is still worth.

When a lead platform still makes sense

To be fair to the model, there are times it earns its keep:

• You're brand new. No reviews, no profile history. Paid leads keep you busy while you build the rest.
• You're filling a quiet patch. A few extra jobs in a slow month can be worth a higher cost per job.
• You've done the maths and it works. If your cost per won job is comfortably below your profit per job, keep the tap on.

Just know which of those you're in. Paying for leads out of habit, without knowing the cost per won job, is how a lot of tradies end up spending a few thousand a year to compete on price with two strangers.

Where AI assistants come into it

More customers now skip the search box and ask ChatGPT or Gemini, "Who's a good electrician in Moorabbin?" The assistant looks around the web and names a few businesses.

It draws on much the same signals as Google: a complete profile, matching listings, reviews, and a website that says plainly what you do and where. The work in this article helps there too. A lead platform listing on its own doesn't do much for you in that answer, because the customer gets sent to the platform rather than to you.

Nobody can guarantee an AI assistant will name you. You can make sure it has a clear, consistent picture of your business to work from. There's more on how customers are splitting their searches in where Melbourne customers find tradies now.

See what customers find when they look you up

Before you change anything, find out where you stand. How do you show up on Google? Do ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini name you when someone asks for your trade in your area?

Our free visibility check tests exactly that, and sends you a plain read on the gaps. No sales call attached.

Run the free visibility check. It costs nothing, which is less than one lead.

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