The cheapest lead is the one already calling you
Daan van den Bergh
The cheapest lead a plumber gets is the customer who found you on their own and is already ringing your number. Lead platforms such as Trustoo and Homedeal charge you per job request, and Trustoo tells the customer they can get quotes from up to four companies. A call from someone who found you without a platform carries no platform fee. Miss it, though, and most callers sent to voicemail leave no message: Invoca, which sells a tool for chasing missed calls, puts the share who do at under 3%.
So before you buy another batch of leads, count the customers who found you on their own and got your voicemail.
What does a lead from a platform cost a plumber?
A fee per request, and neither Trustoo nor Homedeal prints the amount on its page for businesses. Trustoo's pricing page says you pay "een vast laag bedrag per ontvangen aanvraag", a fixed low amount for every request you receive, and its FAQ adds that the price per request differs by trade and can be found in your account. Homedeal has you pay only for the requests you choose to unlock, and says the price differs per request.
Werkspot's Dutch Wikipedia entry says, in an undated criticism paragraph that cites no source, that responding to a job costs tradespeople money. The same entry says Werkspot dropped its subscription for them in 2018.
The fee on the invoice is the smaller number. What a lead really costs you is the fee divided by the share of leads you win. If you pay for ten requests and win two, each of those jobs carried five fees. That is your cost per job won. Hold every other way of finding work against it.
How many plumbers quote on the same platform lead?
Up to four companies on Trustoo, going by its own homepage, which promises the customer free quotes from that many. Say four of you quote and the work spreads evenly over time: each firm wins one request in four, and on average every job it wins has paid for four requests, or more once some requests end in no job at all.
Some of the example requests on Trustoo's page for businesses carry an "Exclusieve aanvraag" label, which the page does not define. Speed counts as well: Homedeal advises contacting the customer within 24 hours of receiving the request.
On Trustoo you pay for each request you receive. Its FAQ describes one refund case: if you have phoned and emailed several times without reaching the customer, you can file a claim, and the request is refunded if Trustoo cannot reach them either. The FAQ describes no refund for a customer who answers and then books someone else.
What does your own inbound call cost?
No platform fee, as long as they found your number without a platform: on your van, say, or from a past customer. A call that comes through a platform profile can be different. Trustoo's page for businesses invites you to show your number on your Trustoo profile "voor telefonische aanvragen", for phone requests, and gives no separate price for one.
That changes the moment you don't pick up. Invoca's data, published in May 2024, says fewer than 3% of callers pushed to voicemail leave a message. Invoca sells a tool for following up missed sales calls and gives no sample or method for the figure, so read it as a vendor's number. Moneypenny, which sells a phone answering service, reported a far milder figure in 2016: 69% of callers answered by voicemail hung up without leaving a message. Both vendors put the callers who leave nothing in the majority. Ringing back later is weak too, if they don't recognise your number. In Hiya's 2026 State of the Call, a survey Censuswide ran for Hiya among more than 12,000 consumers in the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany and Spain, only 14% said their default when an unrecognised number rings is to answer straight away, and 41% let it ring to see whether the caller leaves a voicemail.
And the calls you miss are worth having. In ServiceTitan's data from more than 3,000 US and Canadian trade businesses that use its software, plumbing had the highest average call booking rate of the trades it reported in June 2022, at 43%. ServiceTitan explains a booking rate of 42% as turning "just more than 4 of 10 calls into jobs and revenue". It is North American and four years old. Treat it as a yardstick: on that rate, plumbing shops in its data booked roughly two calls in five, on average.
On Trustoo you pay for a request up to four companies may quote on. A customer who found you themselves cost nothing to receive, and most callers sent to voicemail leave no message.
Platform lead vs your own missed call, side by side
| A platform lead | A customer who found you themselves | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay to receive it | A fee per request (Trustoo), or per request you unlock (Homedeal) | No platform fee |
| Who else is quoting | Trustoo offers the customer quotes from up to four companies | Whoever else they choose to ring |
| If you are slow | Homedeal advises contact within 24 hours | Most callers sent to voicemail leave no message (Invoca, Moneypenny) |
| If you can't reach them | If you phoned and emailed several times, you can file a claim, and Trustoo refunds the request if it cannot reach them either | You ring back, and if they don't recognise your number, 14% of the consumers Hiya surveyed say their default is to answer such a call straight away |
My reading of that table: missing your own call is the worst of both columns. You lose a customer who had rung you, and to win that work back you may end up buying a lead and quoting against the firms that answered.
When is buying leads still worth it?
When your phone is quiet. Answering better creates no demand: a platform like Trustoo sells you requests from new customers, and if the diary has gaps and the phone hardly rings, that reach is what you are paying for.
The order matters once the phone does ring. A plumber who misses calls and then buys leads to fill the week is paying a platform for customers while the free ones go to voicemail. Fix the leak first, then decide how much reach you still need to buy.
Work out your own numbers first
Take last month's platform invoice and divide it by the jobs you actually won from it. That is your cost per job won. Then open your phone's call log for the same month and count the missed calls you never got back - how many calls plumbers miss walks through doing that properly, and why callers won't leave a voicemail explains the gap you will see between missed calls and messages.
If the missed calls outnumber the jobs the platform won you, start with answering. You can divert only the calls you don't answer, and SwiftGuard picks up after your own phone has rung out, about 20 seconds on most networks; forward every call and it answers within two rings. It hears the problem, takes the details that matter and books the slot in your calendar. The plans start at €69 a month ex VAT, billed monthly.