Local SEO vs MyBuilder, Checkatrade and Rated People for Plumbers
The platforms deliver real leads, at a price, shared with your competitors, on an asset you'll never own. Here is the honest comparison, the true cost per job, and the transition that keeps the diary full.
The platforms are lead marketplaces: fees or per-lead charges (structures vary, check current terms) buy enquiries that are shared with competing trades and priced by the platform. They are genuinely good for fast starts and gap-filling. But count the real cost per won job, lead fee times leads-per-win, plus price-war margin, against SEO's exclusive enquiries at a falling marginal cost, and note where the value lands: platform years build the platform; SEO years build you, rankings, reviews and pages you keep. The move: run both during transition, point every review at your own profile, and shift the weight as the owned pipeline proves itself.
How the platforms work, what they are genuinely good for, and the real cost per job
Credit the platforms honestly first, because most plumbers reading this already use one. MyBuilder, Checkatrade and Rated People are lead marketplaces: broadly, plumbers pay through membership fees or per-lead and per-shortlist charges, structures that vary by platform and change over time, so check the current terms, and receive enquiries the platform captured through its own advertising and search rankings. The customer posts a job or browses profiles, several trades respond, one wins. The platforms are genuinely good at two things: speed, a new firm gets enquiries in week one, long before any website could rank, and gap-filling, quiet patches in an established diary, instant presence in a new area. A sensible strategy uses both. The comparison begins when you count past the sticker price. A platform lead is typically shared with several competing trades, so the real cost per won job is the lead fee multiplied by the leads needed to win one, plus the quieter cost, the margin surrendered when jobs are won on price against the same lead list, quoting against three others who received the identical notification. An SEO enquiry arrives differently: exclusive, from a customer who found your boiler page or your profile and chose to call you, often pre-sold by the reviews before dialling. The retainer is a real monthly cost, ours is £350 all in, but it buys every enquiry the rankings produce that month, at a marginal cost that falls as the rankings strengthen, the compounding described throughout the complete guide. Run both numbers over a year with your own figures; the direction is usually decisive.
The platform lead
Shared with competitors, priced by the platform, won on price: real enquiries on someone else's asset.
The search enquiry
Exclusive, pre-sold by your reviews, at a marginal cost that falls as rankings strengthen.
Shift the weight
Both during transition, every review to your own profile, platform spend scaled as the owned pipeline proves.
Renting versus owning, and the switch that never empties the diary
The heart of the comparison is not any flaw in the platforms; it is where the value accumulates. Every year on a platform builds the platform: your fees fund its advertising, your reviews strengthen its domain, your profile deepens its coverage of your patch, and if you ever leave, all of it stays behind, the reviews unportable, the presence gone with the subscription. Every year of local SEO builds you: rankings that persist, a review base on your own Google profile that no exit forfeits, job pages and the town coverage from the multi-area playbook that keep producing after the work that built them. Both cost money; only one compounds in your name. The transition, then, is a weight-shift rather than a jump, because the diary must stay full throughout. Keep the platform presence while the owned rankings build through their first months. Point everything you control at the asset you own: every satisfied customer, from whatever source, directed to review your own Google profile; your website, not your platform profile, on the van, the cards and the invoices; and your brand searches landing on your site, since a customer recommended to you by name should never end up on a platform page choosing between you and three competitors. Watch the share of work arriving from your own rankings grow in the monthly reporting, scale the platform spend down as the owned pipeline proves itself, and keep whatever membership still genuinely pays its way. The endpoint is not ideology; it is choice: a firm whose own presence fills the diary, using the platforms tactically when useful and needing them never, which is a very different negotiating position from needing them always, and it is the position every pound of the retainer is buying.
Stop renting the phone.
Start owning the rankings.
We build the owned pipeline, profile, job pages, town coverage and reviews, while your platform presence keeps the diary full, and the monthly report shows the weight shifting.
Everything included in your plan:
One clear retainer. No setup fee.