Why we do not charge per-lead fees

The pitch you have heard a hundred times

A platform offers to send you "warm leads" for $20–$120 a pop, and only charges if a customer actually books. It sounds like the perfect business model — you only pay for results — until you do the math.

A $90 lead-fee on a $400 service call is 22.5% off the top, before payroll, before parts, before fuel, before insurance. Stack two of those a day and the lead-fee line item starts to rival the truck payment.

The deeper problem: who owns the customer

Per-lead fees are not just expensive. They quietly rearrange the economics of your business. They turn the platform into the customer's vendor, and they turn you into a subcontractor.

The platform sells the lead to you, the next vendor over, and the one after that. Whoever calls back the fastest wins. Whoever discounts the steepest wins. The platform keeps the customer's phone number, their address, their service history, and their next replacement cycle. You keep the bill for the gas to drive out there.

Six years in, that customer is still buying their HVAC repairs through the platform — and you have spent six years paying lead fees on the same household.

What we charge instead

Joblinkers charges a flat monthly subscription. Starter is $49. Pro is $149. Business is $249. That is the bill. There is no per-tech multiplier on the lower tiers and no per-lead anything on any of them.

Every job booked through your AI receptionist, your website, your Reserve with Google integration, or your direct line is your customer. Their record sits in your CRM. Their next call routes to you by default. Their renewal lives on your calendar.

Why the math works for us

A few reasons:

1. We are betting on retention, not extraction. A platform that charges per-lead has to keep churning leads — yours and your competitors. A platform that charges a flat fee has to make you successful enough to renew. Those are very different incentives.
2. AI made the unit economics work. A human answering service charges between $1.50 and $3.50 per minute. The AI receptionist runs at a fraction of that, even at full margin. We can include it in the subscription instead of separating it into an "add-on" upsell.
3. The integrations are real, not gated. Stripe, QuickBooks, Xero, Twilio, SendGrid, Google Calendar, Zapier — all included on every paid plan. We do not have a separate "Connector Pack" SKU.

What "no per-lead fees" looks like in practice

• Every call your AI books goes straight into your CRM.
• Your repeat customers go back to your number, not the platform's pool.
• The price you see on the pricing page is the price you pay.

Two caveats worth being honest about

We do not subsidise external ad spend. If you want to run Google Local Services Ads through your account, you pay Google directly — we do not mark it up, and we do not silently take a cut. Same with Stripe processing fees.

We also charge premium rates for outbound voice minutes above your plan's included pool, because Twilio charges us for them. We pass that through at cost on Business, and we are transparent about the per-minute rate on every invoice.

That is it. Flat monthly. No per-lead. Your customer, your call.

See the pricing tiers or try it free for 7 days — no card needed.