The Problem

It's not that you can't usually get the number of a local tradesman when you need it (although, somethimes you can't!). It's usually possible to go through friends and family to get a fairly random list of electricians, plumbers, plasterers, builders or gardeners. But, when you finally get around to phoning your newly compiled list of plasterers, you quickly realise that the three plasterers that you sourced are either busy following a new career path, have moved to foreign shores or are booked up for the next three months. So, back to the drawing board.

The Old Answer

"I know, I'll go online and use one of those tradesmen websites, there's loads of them". Yes, there are loads of them, but they all suffer from the same achilles heal, which is that they require tradesmen to pay monthly fees to be included. Only a tiny subset of potentially suitable tradesmen will be on those websites.

The New Answer

And then there was TradeHook! On TradeHook it's free for tradesmen to sign up. In fact, we add tradesmen to the directory ourselves - we want to have the most complete directory of tradesmen, by a country mile. When you use TradeHook, you are contacting more tradesmen than any other platform. This gives you a much better chance of finding the right tradesman for you - with the right skills, in the right location, at the right price.

Why Charge for Posting a Job?

"You're charging for posting a job?" Yes, we thought about following the crowd and charging the tradesmen for using the service instead, but that creates bigger problems. Tradesmen don't want to pay subscriptions for a service which they will only use from time to time. An online marketplace will only ever be one source of work for quality tradesmen. They get work from friends and family, from word of mouth, from referrals, and from their own website or social media pages. For these tradesmen, it doesn't make sense to pay monthly fees to be listed on an online marketplace, so people posting jobs miss out on a huge percentage of tradesmen who might otherwise be interested. By making the service free for tradesmen, we remove any barrier for tradesmen to sign up, therefore maximising the value of the offering.

Also tradesmen have tired of websites which allow jobs to be posted for free, as job posters are often just testing the market, and have no intention of proceeding with the job posted. We believe that people who are serious about getting work done will be willing to pay a nominal fee to access the most complete directory of tradesmen. If you want any old tradesman, post a job somewhere else for free. If you want the right tradesman, post your job on TradeHook, and use the ratings and tools provided to find the right tradesman for you!