Most agency blog posts about directories go one of two ways: either directories are a scam and you should cancel today, or they’re never mentioned because the agency wants to sell you SEO instead. Neither is honest. Spend any time in trade forums and Facebook groups and the real picture is more useful than either: directories genuinely help fill gaps when work is quiet — and the businesses that get hurt are the ones who never build anything else alongside them.
The renewal jump that catches people out
The complaint that comes up again and again isn’t the headline monthly fee — it’s what happens at renewal. One tradesperson’s experience, shared publicly, was paying £756 for the first year and then being quoted £2,160 to renew — nearly triple, with a new customer offered a lower rate than a returning one. People call this the “loyalty penalty,” and it’s a fair name for it: the platform has your reviews and your history, and that becomes leverage at renewal time rather than a reward for sticking around. Others describe flat monthly fees — £180, £390 — as money that stopped earning its keep once the initial burst of enquiries settled down.
None of that means the platform is worthless. It means the real question isn’t “does Checkatrade work” — it’s “how many jobs does this membership need to produce before it’s paid for itself, and what happens to my visibility the day I stop paying?” If the answer to the second half is “it disappears,” that’s the actual cost, not the monthly fee.
The maths that doesn’t show up in the sales pitch
MyBuilder and similar platforms are usually upfront that winning your first job typically takes several shortlists — often somewhere between four and eight — before you land one. Shortlist fees vary, but people have reported spending in the region of £140 to eventually win a £350 job, after losing the majority of the leads along the way to no-shows or customers who went quiet. That’s not a scam, exactly — it’s just a cost of customer acquisition that only becomes visible once you add it up, rather than looking at any single lead in isolation.
Bark works differently again — credits bought per lead, commonly a handful of pounds each — but the recurring theme in what people say about it is lead quality, not price: leads that go nowhere, enquiries that were never that serious, having to respond fast to have any real chance. A cheap-looking lead isn’t cheap if you need ten of them to win one job.
Where directories genuinely earn their keep
This is the part most agencies skip because it doesn’t sell SEO: directories are a legitimately good tool for short-term demand. If the diary’s quiet this month, paying for visibility right now beats waiting three months for organic search to build up. Businesses that use directories this way — a tap you can turn on when you need volume — tend to have a much better relationship with them than businesses that lean on them as their only source of leads indefinitely.
The problem isn’t using a directory. It’s not having anything else running alongside it, so that a renewal-fee jump or an algorithm change can knock out most of your enquiries overnight.
The honest comparison
A website with proper local SEO takes longer to start working — realistically a few months before it’s contributing consistently — but once it’s ranking, there’s no per-lead cost, the enquiry came to you directly rather than you competing against however many other tradespeople were shortlisted on the same job, and you keep the asset if you ever stop paying anyone. The trade-off is real too: nobody can guarantee a ranking, and the upfront months take patience a directory doesn’t require.
Most trade businesses we talk to do best running both at once, at least at first — a directory for the gaps, a website and Google Business Profile building organic visibility in the background. Once the website’s doing real work, a lot of businesses scale the directory spend down rather than cutting it off entirely.
What to actually check before you renew
Work out your real cost per job, not cost per lead — a lead that doesn’t convert still cost you something. Look at how much of your work now comes from repeat customers and referrals who never touch the platform. And be honest about whether you have any way for a customer to find and book you if the platform disappeared tomorrow. If the answer’s no, that’s the thing to fix first, directory or no directory.
The bottom line
Directories aren’t the enemy, and you don’t need to feel had for using one. Over-reliance on any single channel is the actual risk — whether that channel is a directory, one referral source, or, honestly, SEO on its own with nothing else backing it up. If you’re a landscaper weighing directories against the alternatives, How to Get More Landscaping Leads covers the full channel mix, cost ranges, and the one most guides skip entirely.
If you want help figuring out the right balance for your business specifically, get in touch.
