Is a website actually worth it for a tradesman?

Most of the trades who ask me this are already busy. They get work off Checkatrade, off the van, off a mate who passes jobs on. So the question underneath is fair enough: what am I paying for that I am not already getting?

Here is the honest answer, including the bit where a website is a waste of money.

When a website is a waste of money

Start here, because plenty of trades have been sold one and got nothing.

A five-page site with a stock photo of a boiler, your phone number, and nothing else does not bring you work. Nobody searches for your business name unless they already know it, and if they already know it they are ringing you anyway. That site is a business card with hosting.

If somebody quotes you for a website and cannot tell you which searches it is meant to show up for, they are selling you a business card.

What you are actually renting

Checkatrade's own page says there is no joining fee and their most basic plan "starts from £30 + VAT per month", and that the monthly cost will vary by trade and area. Whatever your number is, look at what it buys.

You are renting a position on somebody else's website. You do not set the price, you do not own the profile, and you are stood next to your competitors on the same page. When they raise the fee, your options are pay it or lose the work. When they change how the listings rank, you find out afterwards.

That is not an argument against directories. Plenty of our clients use them and they work. It is an argument about what you own.

Run your own numbers on that. Most trades who have been paying a directory for four or five years have spent more than a proper site would have cost them, and they have nothing at the end of it.

What the website actually does, in order

Not "have an online presence". Three specific jobs.

1. It makes the map work. Ofcom's Online Nation report, December 2025, lists Google Maps as one of the three most used smartphone apps among UK adults, alongside WhatsApp and Facebook. That is where local work gets decided. Your Google Business Profile is free, and it is the single highest-return thing you own. But Google cross-checks your profile against a real website. Thin site, thin profile.

2. It catches the searches nobody else has bothered with. Ofcom put Google Search at 82% of UK adults and 3 billion UK searches a month. A slice of those are somebody in your town typing exactly what you do. Those pages, one per job and town you actually cover, are the part that compounds. They cost you once and keep working.

3. It is what the machines read. When somebody asks ChatGPT or reads a Google AI summary for a local trade, the model builds its answer from your site, your profile, directories and reviews. If there is nothing there, or the details disagree with each other, you are not in the answer. And you never find out, because there is no missed call to look at.

The bit that decides it

A website only pays if the enquiries land somewhere and get answered.

We have seen sites do nothing for a year, then start producing, purely because the follow-up got sorted. Seven in ten people who ring and get voicemail leave no message at all. If that is what happens to the calls your website generates, the website is not the problem.

So the order is: profile, site, tracking, then follow-up. Doing the site on its own is how people end up saying websites do not work.

So, is it worth it?

If you want more of the same work you already get and you are happy paying a monthly fee forever, a directory is a reasonable answer and you do not need me.

If you want work that arrives without a per-lead fee, in the towns you choose, on something you own and can sell with the business, then yes, and the sooner the better, because the pages take months to mature.

The version that is not worth it is the one where you buy the site and stop.

What this article does not claim

• The Checkatrade figure is their own published floor, "from £30 + VAT per month", and they say it varies. Higher tier prices circulate on review sites but are not published by Checkatrade, so they are not in here.

• I have not put a price on a website, because ours vary and I am not going to pretend there is a market rate.

• The Ofcom figures are UK adults across all activity, not people looking for a tradesperson. Nobody publishes that number.

• "Most trades who have been paying for four or five years have spent more than a site would cost" is a comparison you should run yourself in the calculator, using your own fee. It is arithmetic, not a study.

Sources

1. Checkatrade, "Does Checkatrade cost money?", page last updated 19 December 2024.

2. Ofcom, Online Nation 2025, published 10 December 2025.

3. Moneypenny, Small Business Call Report, published 21 November 2016, page updated 27 January 2020, for the voicemail figure.