Are lead-generation sites worth it for Northern Ireland tradespeople?

The two pricing models you are really choosing between

Almost every platform that puts work in front of tradespeople uses one of two pricing models - or a blend of both. Understanding which one you are signing up to is the single most important thing, because it changes the maths completely.

Pay-per-lead. You pay each time you want to contact a customer or respond to a job - often by buying “credits” up front and spending them per enquiry. Bark is the best-known example of this model in the UK and Northern Ireland; MyBuilder and Rated People have historically used credit or per-lead charging too. The appeal is that there is usually no big up-front commitment. The catch is that you pay whether or not you win the job, and the same lead is frequently sold to several tradespeople at once. Read the deep dives on each platform for what they actually cost in 2026.

Membership / subscription. You pay a recurring fee - monthly or annual - to appear in a directory and receive enquiries. Checkatrade is the best-known membership model; the fee has historically been reported in the hundreds to low thousands of pounds per year depending on your trade, your area and the package. The appeal is predictable cost and no charge per enquiry. The catch is you are paying the same fee in a quiet month as a busy one, and you are committing before you know what the platform will actually deliver. Read the Checkatrade deep dive for what changed in the 2025 price reset.

Prices on all of these platforms change regularly and vary by trade and region, so always check the current figures directly with each provider rather than taking any quoted number - including the ranges above - as gospel. What does not change is the underlying model, and that is what you should be evaluating. For broader consumer-facing guidance on choosing a trader, nidirect (the official government website for NI citizens) publishes a short reference at nidirect: finding a builder or trader.

What a lead actually costs once you factor in your win rate

The headline price of a lead is not the number that matters. The number that matters is what you pay for every job you actually win. Here is the simple sum every trade should run before paying for a pay-per-lead platform.

Say a lead costs you £20, and you win one job for every five leads you respond to - a 20% conversion rate, which is realistic on a platform where the lead is shared with competitors. That means you have spent £100 in lead fees for every job you land, before you have bought a single fixing or driven a single mile. If your win rate drops to one in eight - common when you are slower to respond than the other trades who got the same lead - that is £160 per won job.

For a £4,000 bathroom that is noise. For a £180 call-out it can wipe out your margin entirely. The trades who lose money on lead platforms are almost always the ones chasing small jobs, because the lead fee is a fixed cost that does not scale down with the job value.

• Work out your honest win rate - not the one the sales rep quotes you, the one you actually achieve after a month of responding.
• Divide your total lead spend by the number of jobs you won, not the number of leads you bought. That is your true cost per job.
• Compare that to the profit on a typical job. If lead fees eat more than a few percent of your margin on the jobs you chase, the model is working against you.

The shared-lead problem

On most pay-per-lead platforms, a customer enquiry is not sold to you alone - it is sold to several tradespeople, who then race to respond. That is great for the customer and great for the platform, which gets paid multiple times for one job. It is less great for you: you are paying to enter a bidding war, and the customer often goes quiet after collecting three or four quotes, leaving everyone who paid for the lead out of pocket.

It also trains customers to treat trades as interchangeable and to shop purely on price, which is the opposite of how you build a business on reputation and repeat work. None of this makes lead platforms worthless - but it is the reality you are buying into, and it should shape how much you are willing to pay per lead.

Where lead-generation sites genuinely earn their fee

It would be dishonest to claim these platforms never work. They do, for the right trade in the right situation. They are worth considering when:

• You are brand new and have no reputation, reviews or word of mouth yet - paid leads can prime the pump while you build those things.
• You have genuine spare capacity and would rather pay for marginal work than have idle days.
• You are fast on the phone and quick to quote - speed is the single biggest driver of win rate on shared-lead platforms.
• You work in a high-value trade where one won job comfortably covers many lead fees.
• You treat the platform as a top-up channel, not your only source of work - the trades who get burned are the ones who become dependent on it.

The mistake is treating a lead platform as a substitute for your own presence online. The leads stop the day you stop paying. Anything you build yourself - a Google Business Profile, real reviews, a directory listing that ranks - keeps working for you whether you are paying that month or not. Government-endorsed schemes like TrustMark can also add a layer of independent credibility that homeowners recognise.

Questions to ask before you pay for any lead platform

• Is this per-lead or a fixed membership? If per-lead, how many other trades is each lead sold to?
• Can I see the actual volume of jobs in my trade and my area in the last 30 days - not a national average?
• Do I pay for a lead even if the customer never replies, or if the job has already been filled?
• Is there a minimum contract or notice period, or can I stop any time?
• What is the refund policy on a lead that turns out to be fake, duplicated or out of my area?
• What does the listing look like to a customer - and do I control it, or does the platform?

If you cannot get a straight answer on lead exclusivity and refunds, that tells you most of what you need to know.

How a flat-fee directory compares

The alternative to paying per lead is a simple flat fee to be listed and found - with no charge tied to any individual job. That is the model NI Trades runs on. You pay one predictable monthly fee, and what you pay does not change whether you get one enquiry that month or ten. There is no credit balance to top up and no bidding war to buy into.

The trade-off is honest: a flat-fee model rewards trades who are willing to keep a profile up to date and respond when a job lands, rather than handing you a firehose of pre-qualified leads on day one. For most established trades that is the better deal, because the cost is fixed, the margin stays yours, and the listing keeps working in the background.

How NI Trades works - honestly

NI Trades is a Northern Ireland-only directory and introduction service. We are newer and smaller than the UK-wide names, and we are still building up the trade list and the homeowner audience - so we are not going to pretend you will be buried in leads from day one. What we can tell you plainly is how the model works:

• A flat monthly fee - Listed is £30/month and Featured is £55/month. There is no charge per lead, ever.
• When a homeowner posts a job, a maximum of three tradespeople are shown it - you are never one of a dozen all chasing the same customer.
• Customers see your profile only when you express interest in their specific job, so your details are not scraped or spammed.
• Everything you build with us - your profile, your reviews, your photos - keeps working whether it is a busy month or a quiet one.

We would rather be straight about where we are than oversell it. If you want a predictable cost, a profile that is genuinely yours, and a platform built specifically for Northern Ireland, it is worth getting set up early - before the homeowner side ramps up - so your profile is built and reviewed when the work starts landing.

Pricing, packages and lead policies on third-party platforms named in this article change frequently and vary by trade and region. Always confirm current terms directly with each provider. Figures are included only to illustrate how the pricing models work.