What’s the real cost of buying leads from a platform?
The fee is the visible part. The hidden part: every lead you buy teaches the customer to go back to the platform, not to you; you're bidding against your own competitors for the same person; and when you stop paying, it all stops. Owning the channel costs more up front and less every year after. Most businesses your size already spend more renting.
Lead platforms work. That’s why they’re expensive, and why the expense is worth examining honestly.
What you pay
A per-lead fee, or a subscription, often both. For trades and rentals in Ontario, a single lead commonly runs from tens of dollars to well over a hundred, paid whether or not it converts, and sometimes paid by three of you for the same person. Add it up over a year per branch and compare it with the cost of a site built to be found. For most multi-location businesses the platform spend is already higher.
What you don’t own
The customer’s first contact was with the platform. Next time they need you, they go back to the platform, and you pay again. Your reviews live on their site. Your name is one of three in a list the platform controls. Stop paying and tomorrow you have nothing: no rankings, no profile strength, no pages.
What owning looks like
A site where each branch is found for its own area. Reviews on your profiles. A name people search for directly because they’ve seen it in a result or an assistant’s answer. Every enquiry arriving without a fee attached, forever. The cost is front-loaded (a build, then a monthly amount for care and growth) and then it keeps paying: a site that brings fifteen extra enquiries a month to one branch does the same next year without another cheque.
Not either/or
Many businesses keep a platform for the overflow or for a new territory while the owned channel grows. The question is which one is the foundation. If the platform is the foundation, you’re a tenant.
How to compare honestly
Pull twelve months of platform spend per branch. Pull the number of jobs it produced. Then look at what a branch found on its own produces (one of mine went from 13 to 28 enquiries a month) and the fixed cost of getting there. The arithmetic usually settles it.
How I estimate: a free audit to see where you stand now, back within three working days. Then a quick chat, then a fixed quote.