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BetterSuite is built for teams who see on-demand as a business — not a feature.
If you charge providers for the chance to win a job, charge per offer rather than per lead, and refund every offer the customer turns down. A home service marketplace revenue model draws on four common fees: a commission on each job, a monthly subscription, a fee per lead and a fee per offer. In our home services software, providers spend credits to send offers and get them back when they lose, and you take a commission on completed jobs. Since 18 October 2026, only the provider the customer hires sees their address.
Every marketplace revenue model decides who pays, when they pay and what the provider can judge before paying. Most marketplaces combine two or more of these fees.
| Model | Who pays | When they pay | What the provider can judge first | What goes wrong |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commission | The hired provider | When the job is paid | The job and its price | Providers have a reason to take repeat customers off the platform |
| Subscription | Every listed provider | Every month | Nothing about the work to come | Providers who win little work stop paying |
| Pay-per-lead | Every provider sent the lead | When the lead arrives | Only the preferences they set | Providers pay for jobs they lose |
| Pay-to-respond, per offer | Every provider who sends an offer | When they send it | The request itself | Losing providers pay, and if you refund them, losing offers earn you nothing |
The Thumbtack business model shows how marketplaces mix these. Its guide for new pros describes three charges. Leads are customers who reached out to the pro, and the pro pays for them automatically. Opportunities are charged only if the pro reaches out and the customer responds. On Preset jobs, Thumbtack "takes a percentage of the customer's payment" instead.
Angi's annual report for 2025 lists lead fees, advertising, memberships and pre-priced services.
Under pay-per-lead, a provider pays when the lead arrives, before they know whether they will win the job. Angi's annual report describes its lead revenue as fees paid by pros "regardless of whether the Pro ultimately provides the requested service". Every provider who receives a lead pays for a job only one of them can do.
Lead quality is the provider's risk as well. In April 2023 the US Federal Trade Commission finalised an order against HomeAdvisor, one of Angi's brands. The complaint alleged "false, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims about the quality and source of the leads" HomeAdvisor sold to providers.
Pay-to-respond moves the charge to a decision the provider makes. Bark's help centre for customers puts it plainly: "Professionals pay to respond to your request." The provider reads the request first and pays only if they send an offer. Thumbtack refunds a lead when the customer replies to no pro within 72 hours.
Refund every offer the customer turns down, and the providers who lose pay nothing. That gives up revenue a pay-per-lead marketplace keeps. We accept the trade because a provider who is not charged for lost jobs has one less reason to stop sending offers.
Whichever home service marketplace revenue model you choose, the customer's privacy depends on when each provider learns their name and address. Release those details in steps, each tied to a commitment, and keep the address for the provider the customer hires.
A professional who pays to respond on Bark receives the customer's name, phone number and email address. A customer can receive up to five responses, so up to five providers hold those details and at most one gets the job.
Angi and Thumbtack have moved the other way. Angi's first-quarter 2025 results report that on nearly all of its US experiences, homeowners are now "connected only with available Pros that they select". Most Thumbtack leads come with a Thumbtack number for calls and texts, which Thumbtack says keeps "everyone's personal info safe".
On 18 October 2026 we removed the option to charge providers for a customer's address. Providers already spent credits to send an offer; now that is all credits buy, and only the hired provider sees the address. Paying to see an address makes a provider pay before they know whether the job is worth an offer. It also lets an address reach providers the customer never chose.
Providers buy credits in packages you define, inside the provider app. Here is how a request moves through BetterService:
Providers never receive the customer's phone number or email. However many providers respond, each sees only a first name and an initial.
A provider who stays in the running pays only if they are hired. The credit is a fee on being hired, collected when the offer is sent. Because credits sit in every open offer, a provider's balance also limits how many offers they can have open at once. On top of it, you take a commission on each completed job; on cash jobs, it is charged to the provider's account.
The right mix depends on how a trade prices its work and how often the same customer comes back. Because the offer cost and the commission are set per service, one marketplace can charge cleaning and repairs differently. At launch, while you have few providers, an offer cost of zero lets them respond freely and you earn from commission.
If your cleaners sell fixed-price visits that customers rebook, run cleaning as a commission-based marketplace: set its offer cost to zero and take a share of each completed visit. Keep the share modest, because a customer who books the same cleaner every fortnight has every reason to arrange the next visit directly. Restaurants weigh the same trade-off with delivery-app commissions.
If repairs are quoted after the provider understands the problem, customers compare offers and most offers lose. Per-offer credits with refunds fit that. Providers pick the jobs worth an offer and pay nothing for the ones they lose; you add a commission once the job is done.
If home care means one carer visiting the same household for months, customers choose on trust more than price. A commission on each visit follows that relationship better than a fee per offer. The address of someone who needs care at home should reach one provider, so holding it back until hire matters most here.
No single home service marketplace revenue model is the most profitable. Pay-per-lead can earn the most from each request, because every provider who receives the lead pays. It also charges providers for jobs they lose, which gives them a reason to leave. For quoted work, we would rather keep providers sending offers: charge per offer, refund the offers that lose and take a commission on completed jobs. For fixed-price work that recurs, a commission alone is simpler.
Pros pay per lead when a customer contacts them, and pay for an Opportunity only if the customer replies. On Preset jobs, Thumbtack takes a percentage of the customer's payment instead. It refunds a lead when the customer replies to no pro within 72 hours, if the pro responded within four business hours and kept first contact on Thumbtack.
Many do: Angi earns from lead fees and memberships, and Thumbtack charges per lead. The harder question is whether they keep paying. A subscription asks providers to trust that work will come, and a lead fee asks them to pay before they know whether they will win. We think a fee per offer they choose to send, returned when they lose, is easier to justify.
It can be. The revenue model sets your share of each job and decides whether providers keep paying it. Profit then depends on volume: enough requests that providers stay, and enough providers that customers get offers quickly.
Open the BetterService demo to see a request from both sides: the provider's lead board without the address, and the customer choosing between offers.
