Looking for a Checkatrade alternative?

The short answer

Choose Checkatrade if you have few or no reviews of your own, you want instant brand credibility from a name homeowners already know, and you're comfortable building your business on someone else's platform.

Choose Inboundry if you want your own website, your own brand, your own reviews, and ongoing marketing that fills your diary, without paying for leads on top.

If you're not sure which one fits, keep reading. We've tried to be fair.

Checkatrade vs Inboundry: side-by-side comparison

Figures correct as of May 2026. Re-verify before any sales conversation.

Who Checkatrade is built for

Checkatrade has been around since 1998. They were one of the first big UK platforms that helped homeowners find vetted tradespeople, and most people have heard of them. They run TV adverts. Their brand is genuinely well known. If a homeowner is searching for a plumber and isn't sure who to trust, Checkatrade is one of the first places they look.

Their model is straightforward: you pay a monthly membership fee, they vet your business, and you get a profile on Checkatrade.com where homeowners can find you, read your reviews, and contact you.

What Checkatrade does well

• Brand recognition. A homeowner who finds you on Checkatrade trusts the platform before they trust you. That's worth real money if you're starting out.
• Verified reviews. Reviews on Checkatrade are checked, which means homeowners take them seriously. Their review system is one of the strongest in the directory market.
• Vetting and guarantees. They check your business credentials before you join, and they offer a guarantee on jobs up to a certain value (terms apply), which gives nervous homeowners peace of mind.
• You don't have to think about marketing. You pay, you show up in search results, the leads come in. For tradespeople who hate the idea of doing their own marketing, this is a real benefit.
• No website needed. Your Checkatrade profile is your online presence. If you don't have a website and don't want to build one, that's a real shortcut.
• Marketing materials. They give you van vinyls, branded materials, and a logo you can use to signal trust.
• Member discounts. Tool and insurance discounts through their buying club, which can offset some of the membership cost if you use them.

What Checkatrade might not be right for

Every product has trade-offs, and these are the ones worth knowing about before you sign up.

• You don't own anything. Your reviews, your profile, and your search rankings all live on Checkatrade.com. If you stop paying, it all disappears. Years of building reviews and reputation, gone the day you stop using Checkatrade.
• Memberships are 12 months minimum. You can't cancel month-to-month. If it isn't working, you're committed for the full year.
• Renewal prices can change. Several documented cases exist of tradespeople reporting significant increases at renewal. Worth knowing and researching before you commit.
• You're competing on price. Homeowners often request quotes from three to five tradespeople on the platform. The cheapest often wins, even when they shouldn't.
• The basic plan does almost nothing. The £36/month entry-level plan (VAT included) only shows you to homeowners who already know your business name and search for it directly. It doesn't generate new leads from people looking for a plumber or electrician in their area. For real lead generation you need a higher tier, typically around £84/month including VAT, with the most popular lead-generating plans running up to £144/month.

Who Inboundry is built for

Inboundry is a done-for-you website service for UK tradespeople running small businesses, whether that's plumbers, heating engineers, electricians, builders, roofers, or any other trade. Instead of you renting a profile on someone else's platform, we build you your own website, on your own domain, in your own brand. We then run the marketing that brings the work to your phone.

Here's the part that surprises most people: we don't charge you up front. We build the site for your business first, before we ever speak to you. You get to have a proper look at it, decide whether you like it, and only then do you commit and pay. No deposit, no contract, no sitting through a sales pitch before you've seen anything. And if there are bits you'd like changed once you've seen it, we make those changes. The site needs to be right for you, not just built and handed over.

What Inboundry does well

• It's all yours, even though we look after it. We host your site and look after your domain on your behalf so you don't have to think about any of the technical stuff. The moment you ever want to leave us, for any reason, we transfer the domain to you, hand over the content, and we'll make moving wherever you'd like to go as easy as possible. No strings attached, no exit fees, no awkward goodbyes.
• Your reviews go where customers actually look. Google is the first place most people check when they're searching for a tradesperson. We set every Inboundry site up to point happy customers to your own Google Business Profile, and on the Growth plan we automate the request after every job. Your reviews stack up where future customers will see them, on a profile that belongs to your business, not on a directory most homeowners only visit when they're shopping around.
• Built for tradespeople. Every site is built for UK trades. The pages, the language, the service descriptions, the FAQs are all written for the work you actually do.
• One-off £297 to get a website live. No 12-month contract on the basic site, no recurring fees if you don't want them.
• What you see is what you pay. Every price on our site includes VAT. £297 is £297. £79 is £79. No surprise uplift when the invoice arrives.
• Monthly plans cancel with 30 days' notice. If it isn't working for you, you're not stuck. No hard feelings, we'll help you move on.
• No pay-per-lead. Every call that comes through your website is yours. We don't take a cut and we don't sell you leads on top of the fee.
• Ongoing marketing on the Growth plan. Two SEO blog posts a month, automated review requests, Google Business Profile management, missed-call text-back, monthly reports. The lot is included.

Where Inboundry might not be the right fit

This section matters. If any of these describe you, Inboundry might not be your best move, and I'd rather you know that now.

• If you're looking for a quick fix and short-term work, Checkatrade is the better solution. We build long-term business assets. That takes a few months to start paying back, because Google needs time to learn to trust a new website. Checkatrade can put leads in front of you within days. If you need work this month, not in three months, start with them.
• If you genuinely hate the idea of having your own brand, if you don't want to think about reviews, content, or being the face of your business, Checkatrade's "we do the brand, you do the work" model fits better.
• If you're already busy through word of mouth and don't need more work, you don't need either of us. Save your money.
• If you only do very low-value, high-volume jobs (£50 callouts and small repairs), the maths on a website-plus-marketing investment is harder to justify. Directory leads or local Facebook groups may serve you better.

Year 1 cost compared

Here's what 12 months actually costs you, by the typical buyer scenario.

The Inboundry Growth plan at £1,245 sits right inside the Checkatrade lead-generating range, and includes a full website, ongoing SEO, blog content, review automation, Google Business Profile management, and missed-call text-back. Checkatrade at the same money gives you leads, but no website, no SEO equity, and no asset to show for the spend at the end of the year.

After 12 months, if you stop paying Checkatrade, you have nothing. If you stop paying Inboundry monthly fees, you've got three options: stay on our Renewal plan at £15/month or £120/year and we keep everything running for you, take the whole site somewhere else and host it yourself, or have us help you move it wherever you'd like. Whichever you pick, the website, the domain, and the content are yours.

Real-world scenarios

These are the three patterns I see most often when I talk to tradespeople.

Scenario 1: Mike, a Gas Safe engineer who's been trading for three years and has a steady stream of word-of-mouth work.

Mike has happy customers but no website. Inboundry is the better fit. He already has the reputation, he just needs somewhere for it to live online. Within three to six months of going live, the SEO equity in his own site starts compounding. His existing customers leave reviews on his own Google profile, not on someone else's directory. He's building a business asset that grows in value over time.

Scenario 2: Sam, a newly qualified electrician who passed his certification last month and is looking for first paying customers.

Sam should probably start with Checkatrade. He has nothing to put on a website yet, no reviews, no portfolio, no testimonials. Checkatrade's brand recognition gives him credibility he hasn't earned yet, and the first six months on the platform will help him collect the reviews and case studies that a website would later showcase. After 12 months, when he has 20 to 30 reviews and a portfolio of jobs, that's the point to think about owning his own brand.

Scenario 3: Dave, a builder doing well, wants to dominate his local area, considering both.

Dave should think about Inboundry Always On, which is everything in our Growth plan plus an AI receptionist that answers every call. £149/month gets him a website, ongoing SEO, an AI receptionist that answers calls 24/7, automated review requests, and quarterly strategy calls. Buying the same set of capabilities as separate services would cost £300 to £500/month. Checkatrade would give Dave more inbound leads in the short term, but they'd be Checkatrade's leads, not his. For someone playing a long game, owning the brand wins.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use both Inboundry and Checkatrade?

Yes, and quite a few tradespeople do. You can have your own website built by us and a Checkatrade membership running alongside. The Checkatrade profile sends some leads, your website builds your own brand and Google presence over time. The downside is you're paying two bills. Most people end up dropping one or the other within 12 to 18 months once they see where their work is actually coming from.

What happens to my reviews if I leave Checkatrade?

Your reviews stay on the Checkatrade platform. You can't take them with you. This is the single biggest argument for collecting reviews on Google instead, on your own Google Business Profile. Google is where most homeowners go to check a tradesperson before they call, and your profile there is yours. With Inboundry Growth, we automate the review request after every job so reviews build up on Google where customers actually look.

Will Inboundry get me on the first page of Google?

Honestly: maybe, eventually, depending on your area and trade. SEO is a long game. We do everything right (technical setup, content, local citations, ongoing optimisation), but no one can guarantee a Google ranking, and any agency that says otherwise is lying. What we can guarantee is that your website is set up correctly, that we're publishing two blog posts a month, that we're managing your Google Business Profile, and that we're tracking the results so you can see what's working. Most clients see meaningful local ranking improvements within four to six months.

Is Checkatrade worth it for my trade specifically?

It depends on your trade and your local area. Checkatrade does well in some regions and trades, and poorly in others. The platform's strongest performance tends to be in commuter towns and suburbs where homeowners actively search the platform, and in trades where homeowners shop around (plumbers, electricians, roofers, builders). In tight-knit towns where word of mouth dominates, the membership often doesn't pay back. Ask three to five tradespeople in your specific postcode and trade before signing up.

How long does Inboundry take to set up compared to Checkatrade?

We get a website live within seven days of you saying yes, often quicker. Checkatrade can get you live on their platform within 24 hours of passing their vetting checks. They're faster on day one. We like to think we're better for year one than they are by year two.

What if I'm already on Checkatrade and want to switch?

Don't switch overnight. The sensible approach: get your own website live (our Launchpad at £297), let it run alongside your Checkatrade membership for three to six months, watch where your work is actually coming from, then make the call at your Checkatrade renewal. We've helped a number of tradespeople do exactly this. Most end up dropping Checkatrade at renewal, but not all, and that's fine.

Our honest take

Both Checkatrade and Inboundry can help your business. They're different products solving different problems, and the right one depends on where you are.

If you're brand new with no reviews and no online presence, Checkatrade's brand recognition can shortcut your first six months. It works. It's just not a long-term answer, because everything you build there belongs to them.

If you've been trading for a year or more, you already have happy customers, and you want a business that grows in value over time, owning your own website is almost always the better long-term move. It's an asset. Checkatrade is rent.

We built Inboundry because too many tradespeople we spoke to had either spent years paying Checkatrade fees with nothing to show, or had been quoted £2,000 to £3,000 by a local web agency and then waited three months for a generic website. £297 to get your own properly built site live in a week, with no contract, no annual lock-in, and the freedom to take everything with you whenever you like, felt like the answer.

If that fits where you are, we'd love to show you the demo we've already built for your business. If Checkatrade is the right answer for you right now, we mean it: go with Checkatrade. Better to know now than to waste anyone's time.

Will Founder, Inboundry

The whole article in 60 seconds

If you only read this far, here's the gist:

• Both services can work. They're solving different problems.
• Checkatrade rents you leads. You pay a monthly fee, you appear in their directory, you get enquiries through their platform. When you stop paying, it all goes.
• Inboundry builds you a website you can take anywhere. £297 to get it live, optional £79/month for ongoing marketing, optional £15/month after that to keep it running. You can leave whenever you like and we'll help you move.
• Year 1 costs are similar. Inboundry Growth is £1,245. A typical Checkatrade lead-generating plan is £1,008 to £1,728.
• The difference shows up in year three. Three years of Inboundry leaves you with a business asset growing in value. Three years of Checkatrade leaves you with nothing if you stop paying.
• Pick Checkatrade if you need work this month, you have no reviews yet, you want zero marketing decisions to make.
• Pick Inboundry if you want your own brand, your own reviews on Google, ongoing marketing without paying per lead, and the freedom to walk away with everything whenever you choose.