By Luis Johnson, founder of Lunere Digital. Published
Shared lead services sell one homeowner to several contractors, and the serious ones print that in their own help centres. Networx says a single Pay Per Lead goes to up to four contractors in total. Angi says requests go to three to four members. You're not buying a customer. You're buying a place in a queue, and the queue is the product.
The alternative isn't a cleverer lead. It's to stop paying at the contact stage. If you pay for a booked qualified inspection instead, the sharing question disappears, because a calendar slot can't be sold twice.
The short version
- Networx help center: a single Pay Per Lead goes to up to four contractors in total, sent in real time by text and email.
- Angi pro site: requests and contact details go immediately to three to four members.
- Bark publishes a credit system where several professionals can pay to contact the same customer, and credits expire three months after purchase.
- Shared pricing is usually cheaper per lead and more expensive per booked job, and nobody publishes the second number for you.
- An exclusive tier exists at most of these vendors, and it's the only honest way to use them if your job values are high.
The published proof, vendor by vendor
I'd rather hand you the quotes than the opinion, so here they're. Each of these is from a page the vendor runs and keeps current.
Networx, as the plain example of a shared lead plan, in their own words
Read off their own page. Terms change, so confirm anything you are about to rely on.
- How shared is shared
- The help center says a single Pay Per Lead will go to up to four contractors in total, and that leads are sent in real time by text message and email.
- What it costs
- A separate help article puts Pay Per Lead at $10 to $100 plus a lead, and the Exclusive Leads plan at $15 to $120 plus a lead, varying by category and coverage area.
- How you pay
- Both plans run on a prepaid credit system. The help center worked example is a concrete lead at $58, so ten of them is a $580 prepaid budget.
- Contract
- Networx help center says it offers its lead generation services with no set up fees and no contracts.
- Exclusive tier
- On the exclusive plan it says leads are sent to you and no one else, and that it tries to call the homeowner during business hours and transfer the call to you.
- Changing your mind
- It says you can change your budget or billing cycle at any time from the account dashboard.
Four shops, one crack, one afternoon
Here's the shape of it on the ground. A woman in a 1970s ranch sees a stair-step crack above her garage door. She fills in one form. Four phones ring within the hour, hers included, and by dinner she has four voicemails and a headache. She picks whoever called first and sounded calmest, and the other three have paid for the privilege of being hung up on.
That's not a scam. It's an auction, and it's priced like one. The trouble is that the auction happens before anybody knows whether she owns the house, whether her husband decides, or whether she is six months from having the money. You're bidding blind on all three.
| Shared lead plan | Per booked inspection | |
|---|---|---|
| How many shops get it | Up to four, per Networx's own help center | One |
| Headline cost | Low per lead | Higher per unit, lower per estimator visit when the show rate holds |
| What triggers the charge | The contact arriving | A slot the homeowner picked |
| Who screens the homeowner | You, on the phone | A form, before the calendar loads |
| Speed pressure | Everything, because first caller usually wins | Handled: a text at 60 seconds, a call at five minutes if he hasn't booked himself |
| Money back | Varies by vendor and is rarely for a cold lead | No-show or unqualified comes off when reported inside 72 hours |
When a shared plan is the right call
When Shared lead services generally is the better buy
- Your average job is small. At a few hundred dollars a ticket, a $25 shared lead with a one in four hit rate is still fine arithmetic.
- You've dead capacity right now. A crew sitting in the yard makes a cheap coin flip worth taking, because the alternative is zero.
- You answer in seconds, reliably. Shops with a dedicated phone person consistently do better on shared plans than shops where the owner answers from a crawl space.
- You want to learn a new market cheaply. Shared volume tells you what people are asking for before you commit real ad spend to it.
- You can pay as you go. Prepaid budgets with no contract, which Networx states on its own help pages, make it easy to stop after one bad month.
- You're filling a gap between seasons and you need anything at all on the board for four weeks.
None of that holds for an $8,000 piering job where your estimator drives 40 minutes each way. At that job value the cost of a wasted visit dwarfs the lead fee, and the question stops being what a lead costs and becomes what an empty afternoon costs.
How do I prove my leads are shared?
Read the vendor's own help center, not the sales page. Networx states up to four contractors per lead. Angi states three to four members. If the help center says nothing, ask your rep in writing and keep the reply.
Is an exclusive tier worth the premium?
When your job values are in the thousands, usually yes. Networx prices exclusive at $15 to $120 plus against $10 to $100 plus shared, which is a small premium against a four-way split.
Do shared leads ever get refunded?
Sometimes, and the rules differ a lot. Thumbtack publishes a refund policy and a Fair Shot refund for when a customer replies to no pro inside 72 hours. Most vendors won't refund a lead that simply went cold.
If you want to see the same month priced per visit instead of per lead, book the call.
Book My Strategy CallSources
- A single Networx Pay Per Lead goes to up to four contractors in total. Networx Help Center, Pay Per Lead.
- Networx exclusive leads are sent to one contractor, both plans run on prepaid credit, and the worked example is a $58 concrete lead. Networx Help Center, Exclusive Leads.
- Angi sends requests and contact details to three to four members. Angi Leads Pro, About Us.
Read next
- Shared vs Exclusive Leads for Foundation RepairShared vs exclusive leads for foundation repair, by how many shops call the same homeowner, what each really costs you per signed job, and which one to buy.
- Foundation Repair Lead Generation Companies, RankedEleven places a US foundation repair contractor can buy work from today, ranked by what one signed job costs. Last, with sources.
- How These Comparisons Are ResearchedWhere the numbers on the comparison pages come from, how vendors are picked and ranked, how often it's rechecked, and the conflict of interest in all of it.