Checkatrade, MyBuilder or your own website: what a trade keeps from each

This post is for a plumber, electrician, heating engineer, builder or decorator who pays for leads from Checkatrade, MyBuilder or Bark and wonders whether a website of their own would earn its keep. It covers what each directory charges as published on 9 November 2026, what you get and what stays behind when you leave, what a website earns over time, and the twelve-month sums with your own figures. We build Orbit Commerce, a platform trades use for that website, so weigh the Orbit parts accordingly. Every price and term was read on the company’s own pages on 9 November 2026.

How do Checkatrade, MyBuilder and Bark work, and what do they cost?

The three work on different models. Checkatrade is a membership directory: a monthly fee, its checks and a listing with the tick. MyBuilder is a job board: homeowners post jobs and you pay when one shortlists you. Bark is a credits marketplace for every kind of service: you spend credits to contact a customer. All three work for many trades.

The table’s sources were read on 9 November 2026. On Checkatrade’s pricing page you pick your trade, your postcode areas and the leads you want a year, and customers book through your profile, call or request a quote. MyBuilder’s tradesperson terms, updated 26 February 2024, say the fee is non-refundable and set by the likely size, value and location of the job, with no guarantee you will get to quote. On Bark’s pricing and how it works pages, the cost follows the service, the job’s value and local supply and demand, and your first pack’s credits are returned if you win nothing. Checkatrade’s pricing page does not mention VAT, but its offer terms refer to “the membership price excluding VAT”, so budget for VAT on top.

What happened to Rated People?

Rated People’s own site says it is now part of Checkatrade Group. In an article dated 17 September 2026 it says “Rated People memberships ended before the brand and website changed hands” and that members “need to sign up with Checkatrade” to keep getting jobs, from £30 a month.

What do you get from a directory, and what stays with it?

You get three things that matter most in your first years: demand you did not create, a profile under a name homeowners already trust, and a place for reviews. What stays with the directory is in its terms; MyBuilder’s are public as a PDF, so they are the clearest example.

• The customer. The homeowner is MyBuilder’s customer first. You get their details when they shortlist you (clause 10.1), you pay win or lose (10.2 and 10.3), and you must not swap details off the platform, “including directing a Customer to your own website”, to avoid the fee (10.4).
• The ranking. MyBuilder sets it by relevance, distance, customer feedback and how fast you respond, with a random boost for newcomers; no fee changes it (6.1 and 6.2). Checkatrade’s Growth plan includes a ranking credit. The rules are the directory’s to change, on 15 days’ notice in MyBuilder’s case (18.1).
• The reviews. MyBuilder feedback is content on its platform; you may respond, and it may remove feedback it believes is fake (11). You grant it a perpetual licence over what you upload (7.4), and when your account ends you remove its logo and any reference to your membership within 28 days (7.2). Checkatrade’s reviews, verified by SMS, email or phone call, sit on your Checkatrade profile; what happens to that profile when a membership ends is in the member terms linked from its join page, so read them first.

None of that is a complaint. The directory built the audience, so the audience, the ranking and the review pages are its. The question is what you build alongside that is yours.

What does your own website earn over time?

A directory gives you the same thing for each fee. A website costs about the same each month and gives more each year, because four things compound.

1. Direct bookings with no fee per job. A boiler service, an EICR or an extra socket has the same scope in most houses, so it can carry a fixed price and a Book button, and costs the plan and the card rate, nothing per lead. Our post on fixed-price jobs for plumbers, electricians and heating engineers covers which jobs qualify and the consumer rules behind a booked job.
2. A Google Business Profile that points at you. Google says “creating a Business Profile and listing your business on Google is free” and you can “add or claim your business at no charge” (Google Business Profile, help page, read 9 November 2026). It puts you on Maps and Search, lets you respond to reviews and post updates, and links to your website; without a site, the people who find it have only a phone number to try.
3. Reviews you can show anywhere. Google reviews belong to your listing, not a membership. Customers must be signed into a Google Account to leave one, you can ask with a Google link or QR code, and offering anything in return is “strictly prohibited” (Google’s review help, read 9 November 2026). They can sit on your own pages, beside reviews of your jobs collected on your site.
4. The customer record and the repeat job. Every booking creates a customer with an order history. A landlord’s gas safety check comes round every year, and next year’s booking costs nothing per lead. The directory does not know when the last job was; your records do.

Directory or your own website: the side-by-side

Should a trade use a directory and its own website?

For most, yes, and most do for a while. The directory brings people who have never heard of you, which a new firm cannot do for itself. The website catches the people who heard your name from a neighbour and typed it into Google, lets them book without a phone call, and keeps their details for the next job.

Keep the two apart. MyBuilder’s terms forbid steering a customer to your website to avoid the shortlist fee, so a job found on MyBuilder goes through its shortlist, and you pay the fee. When you leave a directory its logo and tick come off your pages (MyBuilder gives 28 days). So build trust on your site from things that are yours: registration numbers as text with a link to the register, your Google reviews, photos of finished work and a plain price list. Then review at the renewal (Checkatrade fixed plans run 12 months; MyBuilder and Bark are per lead): set the jobs you can trace to each directory against its invoices, the website’s bookings against its plan, and keep whatever paid for itself.

How do you make the website pay?

1. Sell the small fixed jobs as bookings. On Orbit a job is a product with the Service type. It has a length, places per slot (one engineer, one place), notice in hours, a gap in minutes for the drive, and an optional cancellation fee as a percentage with your policy in plain words. Tiers (one socket or two) are variants with their own prices and the same length; a longer job is a separate service. The customer picks a date and time, pays the full price at checkout and gets a confirmation email with a calendar file; from My Bookings they reschedule, cancel with the refund shown first, or download the calendar file. You see it all on the Bookings calendar, can block time, and mark each job complete or no-show. The calendar file puts the job in the customer’s calendar with its own reminder. The booking comes to the firm, so you send whichever engineer is free, and a free quote comes in as an enquiry through the form in the next step.
2. A quote form for the rest. Bathrooms, rewires and new boilers need a look first. The built-in contact form takes the enquiry; the Form Builder plugin adds custom fields, photo uploads, notifications and moderation. Once the price is agreed, build the order by hand, save it as a draft and send a payment link that works for seven days, or email a payment-due invoice. A deposit agreed by hand is its own draft order with a custom line; the balance is a second order.
3. A rough price while they wait. The Calculator Builder plugin has a free plan and paid plans. Its installation or service quote template turns a few answers into an estimate, and on the plugin’s paid plan the visitor can email themselves the breakdown, which lands in the calculator’s inbox for your reply. The firm quote still follows the survey.
4. Your Google rating on the page. The Google Reviews add-on connects your Google Business Profile listing by business name and town, with nothing to authorise, and shows your rating and up to five reviews as Google returns them, as a badge, a carousel or a grid, refreshed nightly. The free Product Reviews plugin collects reviews of each job, every one pending until you approve it (reviews page); our post on product reviews after the UK fake reviews ban covers what you may ask for and show.
5. Local search basics, then measure. Each job page has a search title and description you write, the sitemap updates itself and product pages carry structured data. Name the towns you cover in plain words, and put the website address on your Google Business Profile. Orbit’s attribution report credits each paid order to the channel the shopper first arrived from, in pounds, with no ad account (tracking page): the number to set against the directory invoices at renewal. The Live Chat add-on, which has a free plan and paid plans, adds a chat button on every page with an inbox and opening hours (live chat page).

What does a year cost? The twelve-month sheet with your own figures

Only the published prices are filled in. The rest comes from your invoices and your job book.

Here is a worked example for the website row, from the published rate alone. Ten £95 jobs a month paid online with UK personal cards on Solo cost £2.15 each in card fees: £21.50 a month, £258 a year. With the plan, the year is £558 on monthly billing or £483 billed yearly, against £11,400 of jobs: 4.9% or 4.2% all in. The plan and the card fees come to £46.50 a month, less than half of one £95 job. The directory rows count leads whether or not you won; the website row counts only jobs you did.

Where Orbit fits

Orbit Commerce is a UK hosted shop platform with service bookings on every plan, from £25 a month on Solo (£19 a month billed yearly, ex VAT), with a 14-day free trial and no card; Team at £85 a month has ten staff accounts. Every plan includes the page builder, a blog on your own domain, the search basics above, customer emails in your branding, analytics that count the confirmed and completed bookings for each service, and hosting on AWS in London with SSL and two-factor sign-in.

A booking is paid like any order at one published card rate per plan, nothing added on top and no fee per booking: 2% + 25p for UK personal Visa and Mastercard on Solo (bookings, pricing, payments). Google Reviews is an add-on priced on its listing in the plugin store; Form Builder, Live Chat and the Calculator Builder each have a free plan and paid plans; Product Reviews is free. Start from a services theme in the theme store and change its colours, fonts and logo in the dashboard, and read our guide to selling services online for bookings of every kind.

Read next: quote forms and price calculators for a trade website, live chat for a one-person shop and taking phone orders and deposits with a payment link.

Questions people ask about Checkatrade, MyBuilder and your own website

How much does Checkatrade cost a tradesperson in 2026?

Its pricing page, read on 9 November 2026, lists a free profile, Approved at £30 a month and Growth from £59 a month, with fixed plan memberships running 12 months. Its offer terms refer to the membership price excluding VAT, so budget for VAT on top. Growth adds direct booking from your profile and Checkatrade Pay at fees of 1.29% to 1.79%.

How much does MyBuilder charge per lead?

It publishes no price list. Its tradesperson terms, read on 9 November 2026, say a non-refundable shortlist fee, excluding VAT, is shown on each lead and charged every time a customer shortlists you. It is set by the likely size, value and location of the job and invoiced at least weekly to your card. Your own invoices are the only reliable average.

Is Rated People still running for tradespeople?

Rated People’s own site says it is now part of Checkatrade Group and that its memberships ended before the brand and website changed hands, in an article dated 17 September 2026. To keep getting jobs from it, tradespeople sign up with Checkatrade, from £30 a month.

Should a tradesperson have a website as well as Checkatrade?

For most trades, yes, and most run both for a while. The directory brings people who have never heard of you; the website catches the ones who search your name after a recommendation, lets them book a fixed-price job and keeps their details for the next one. Review the directory at each renewal against the jobs you can trace to it.

Can customers book and pay a plumber or electrician on their own website?

Yes, for jobs with a fixed scope. On Orbit a job is a service product with a length, places per slot and a notice period; the customer picks a date and time, pays the full price at checkout and gets a confirmation email with a calendar file. Work that needs a look first goes through a quote form, with a payment link once the price is agreed.

Do I own the reviews on Checkatrade or MyBuilder?

They live on the directory’s pages under its terms. MyBuilder’s terms treat feedback as content on its platform, give it a perpetual licence over what you upload and require you to remove its logo within 28 days of leaving; Checkatrade’s member terms govern its profiles. Reviews on your Google Business Profile stay with your business, and reviews collected on your own website are yours to show.

Put one fixed-price job online and book it yourself from your phone before you decide anything about the directories. Orbit’s 14-day free trial, no card required, is long enough to set up the price list and take a real booking.