A direct comparison

MyBuilder Alternative — Stop Paying Per Lead in 2026

MyBuilder runs on credits. You spend credits to send a quote, you lose the credits whether you win or not, and on most jobs three or more trades are bidding against you. The arithmetic doesn't favour the trade — it favours MyBuilder. We're a MyBuilder alternative built by a UK trade who left MyBuilder in 2023 after realising he was spending £600 a month in credits to win £1,400 a month of work. Flat £599 a month gets you the same revenue from your own booking page, with no per-lead fees and the customer in your database forever. Read the math.

  • No per-lead fees
  • No bidding against four others
  • Own your customer list
  • Migration in 48 hours
MyBuilder alternative — OptitechAutomation comparison
The pay-per-lead trap explained

Three trades chase, one wins, MyBuilder banks three fees.

Here's how MyBuilder really works, and why every MyBuilder alternative landing page on the internet leads with this exact math. A homeowner posts a job. Three to five trades each spend credits to send a quote. The homeowner picks one — or none. If three trades each spend £15 of credits and only one wins, MyBuilder has banked £45 against a single job; the winning trade now has an effective cost-of-acquisition of £15-£45 depending on how you count it, and the two losing trades have a 100% wastage. Run that across a year and you start to see why per-lead marketplaces never compound for the trade. They compound for the marketplace.

How MyBuilder credits work

Credits cost real money. Each quote-send burns credits. Credits are non-refundable. Bigger jobs cost more credits. Categories with thinner trade pools cost more credits. The pricing is opaque by design.

Why winning bids loses money

Even when you win, the price is pressured down by the bids you're competing against. A £600 boiler service becomes a £450 boiler service because the trade two miles over quoted £450. The marketplace structurally compresses your margin.

Repeat-customer math

A real annual service customer is worth £600 a year to you for ten years. £6,000 lifetime value. If MyBuilder takes £15 in credits to land each annual cycle, you're paying 2.5% of revenue to the marketplace forever — but only if MyBuilder is the route the customer rebooks via. The fix: get them on your booking page, off MyBuilder, and the £15 evaporates.

Migration in 48 hours

MyBuilder doesn't export your customer list. We rebuild from your Xero contacts and past invoices. Booking page live in 48 hours. SMS to every past customer with the new direct link. Most repeat customers move over within 30 days.

Cristian's MyBuilder exit

A trade mate ran the math at the end of 2022. He'd paid MyBuilder £6,847 in credits over 18 months. Of those, £4,200 in credits had resulted in zero work — total wastage. He left in January 2023. Eighteen months later his revenue is up 22%, his customer database is in his own Xero, and his MyBuilder bill is £0.

What "owning your bookings" means

The customer books on your page, not theirs.

Owning your bookings is simple in principle and life-changing in practice. The customer types your business name into Google, lands on your booking page (on your domain), picks a slot, pays a deposit, gets an SMS confirmation. No marketplace branding, no competing bids, no credits, no per-lead. Their data lives in your database, exportable in one click, forever. Next time they need you, they book direct — no credit charge from anyone. This is what every MyBuilder alternative talks about; we just actually built it.

MyBuilder alternative — cost breakdown chart
MyBuilder vs OptitechAutomation

Two different products. One compounds.

MyBuilder

Per-lead credit purchase. Up to 5 trades bid per job. Customer relationship belongs to MyBuilder. Margin compressed by bidding war.

OptitechAutomation

Flat £599/mo. No per-lead. Your booking page on your domain. Customer database yours. Margins protected.

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Flat monthly, no surprises

£599/mo, GBP, predictable. Plan the year against it. No "we ran out of credits this week" moments.

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Repeat customers compound

The annual-service customer rebooks on your page next year. No credit fee. £600 of revenue, your full margin.

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No bidding war

Customer picks you, books you, deposit paid. No three competing quotes. Your price is your price.

First week off MyBuilder

What actually happens. Honest.

Honest answer: the first week off MyBuilder is quieter than the week before. If you were spending £40-£60 a day in credits to keep the pipeline full, removing that line item creates a temporary inbound gap. That's not the platform — that's the market. The fix any practical MyBuilder alternative recommends is to replace the credit budget with one-time investment in your Google Business Profile, the SMS to every past customer announcing your new booking page, and ten minutes a week posting on your trade's local Facebook group. Most trades who follow that pattern land net-positive on revenue within 60 days, with their entire MyBuilder credit spend redirected to actual customer-acquisition work that compounds.

A note from the founder

I'm Cristian, in Torbay, Devon. I built this because I watched a Torquay trade burn £6,800 of MyBuilder credits in eighteen months.

Of that, £4,200 in credits had resulted in zero work — pure wastage where someone else won the bid. He'd been treating it as a marketing cost. When I ran the math with him, it was actually a 61% wastage rate on his marketing budget. He cancelled MyBuilder January 2023, we built him a direct booking page that weekend, and we replaced the credit budget with his own Google Business Profile, a "we've moved" SMS to every past customer, and a referral discount. Eighteen months later his revenue is up 22%, his margin is up because there's no bidding war, and his MyBuilder bill is £0. That's the kind of compounding only the trade gets to keep when the marketplace is out of the loop.

If you're sick of buying credits, book the 20-minute call. We'll run your numbers honestly. If MyBuilder is genuinely the cheaper option for your trade, I'll tell you. Talk soon.

Book the 20-minute call
Torbay, Devon · UK hours · No sales script
One last thing

Twenty minutes. Run the math.

Tell us your monthly MyBuilder credit spend. We'll work out what the same money would do on a direct booking platform. If the math doesn't favour you, I'll tell you on the call.

Torbay, Devon · UK hours · One operator, end-to-end