You have three real options for getting found: hire a marketing agency, buy software and run it yourself, or work with us. Here’s the honest comparison, including the parts that don’t favor us.
Option 1: Hire a vertical marketing agency
The credible names in home-services marketing (real teams, real results) typically run $2,500 to $10,000+ per month, and the biggest run far higher. Most require 6-, 12-, even 24-month contracts. Several build your site on their proprietary platform, which means leaving costs you the site.
They’re good at what they do. If you’re a $3M+ operation with an office manager and a marketing budget to match, they’re probably the right call, and we’ll tell you so.
The catch: below that size, you’re not the client they’re built for. Small retainers at big agencies get junior staff and template work.
Option 2: Buy software and run it yourself
Check-in apps, review platforms, profile managers: $50 to $300 a month, and the good ones genuinely work if they get used. That’s the catch, and it’s a big one:
- The work lands on you and your crew. Check-ins after every job, review requests, profile posts. Between real jobs, that routine dies within a month. We’ve watched it happen.
- The output is thinner than it looks. A check-in tool gives you a caption, or a block of content, on a page that already exists. That’s not a page that ranks; it’s a footnote on one.
- Even the tool companies know this. Most now sell “agency-supported” tiers where a partner runs the tool for you. Which tells you what the honest price of operated software really is.
Option 3: Peakside
$599 to $2,199 a month. Month to month, no contract, and you own everything we build.
We’re built for the gap between the other two: crews too busy to spend evenings running software, too small to be anything but a rounding error at a $5,000-a-month agency. You send a photo. We do the work. It runs from anywhere, including without anyone in the room.
One business per trade, per metro. When your seat’s taken, it’s taken. We don’t build this for your competitor across town.
Side by side
| Comparison | Vertical agency | DIY software | Peakside |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $2,500–$10,000+ | $50–$300 + your crew’s hours | $599–$2,199 |
| Contract | 6–24 months common | None | None. Month to month. |
| Who does the work | Their team (junior staff at small retainers) | You and your techs | We do. You send a photo. |
| What a finished job becomes | Usually nothing | A caption or content block on an existing page | Its own ProofPage, own URL, plus a pin, a Google post, and a Facebook post |
| Google profile, reviews, listings | Sometimes | Separate tools | Run for you, every plan |
| Phone coverage | Rarely included | Not included | 24/7 answering included (Autopilot) |
| If you leave, you keep | Often not the site or platform | Your data | Everything: site, pages, profiles, logins in 48 hours |
| Built for | $2M+ operations | Owners with spare time | Crews in between |
“What about DataPins?”
It’s the best tool in the software column, and worth understanding. A DataPins pin is a block of content (photo, caption, mini-map, schema) appended to an existing service page or city page on your site. Sixty or seventy pins can stack on one page. Your crew creates each one in the app: photo, service type, city. It’s real, it’s indexed, and it works when your crew keeps pinning.
Three differences. A ProofPage is its own page with its own URL, not a block on someone else’s. You send a photo and we do the rest, so nothing depends on your crew’s habits. And we post to your Google Business Profile, run your profile and reviews and listings, and, on Autopilot, answer your phone.
DataPins is a tool for a crew that will pin every job. Peakside is for owners who won’t, and want it done.
“What about the rank boosters?”
Some map-ranking services move rankings fast by simulating customer engagement: clicks, direction requests, profile interactions. It often works for a while, and the before-and-after screenshots look great. Two things they don’t advertise: it runs against Google’s rules on fake engagement, so the profile carries suspension risk, and the gains decay the moment the simulation stops. Nothing is built. We don’t do it, and nothing we build depends on it.
“But the ads in my feed say I only pay per lead”
You’ve seen them: exclusive roofing leads for $50, pay-per-lead HVAC calls, “book 30 jobs or you don’t pay.” Here’s our honest take, because some of it is legitimate:
Google Local Services Ads are good. Keep them. Paying for a valid call with the Google Guaranteed badge is a fine supplement to any pipeline, including ours. We’ll never tell you to turn them off.
Shared-lead platforms are a treadmill. The same lead sold to several contractors means you’re in a price war before you’ve said hello. And every dollar you spend builds their brand, not yours.
And here’s the thing none of them will say: every lead you buy is rent. The day you stop paying, the phone stops ringing, and you own nothing. Every ProofPage we publish, every pin on your map, every review answered is equity, an asset that keeps pulling customers after the work that built it is paid for. Lead buying and asset building aren’t enemies. But only one of them compounds.
The Publish Guarantee.
Every plan has a published deliverables list. If a month’s deliverables don’t publish, that month is free. We can’t promise where Google ranks you. Nobody honestly can. We can promise the work ships, and we put it in writing.
The Ownership Promise.
Your domain. Your website. Your pages. Your profiles. Cancel anytime and keep all of it, with logins handed over within 48 hours. Every dollar you spend here builds an asset you own, not one you rent.
See your own jobs on your own map before you spend a dollar with anyone, including us.