I had a sparky (one man owner operator) over to do some work this morning and sought some scuttlebutt on HiPages.

He said he had been on it but left the platform because it was too expensive. This also mirrrored the experience that other tradies he knows have had.

There are a lot of other platforms out there (plus FB community pages where we found him, etc) and none are as expensive as HiPages.

The way he sees it is that it's free for customers, so tradies end up paying premium prices to fund the expensive ads on the block.

Hard to argue but on the plus side tradies should get the biggest funnel from HiPAges as they have the biggest brand awareness - especially from block watchers, etc, (I assume their SEO is sector leading too).

His attitude is that there's a lot of work on there but for $40 just to quote (against max 2 other quotes) it feels like a rip off unless you can't find work. Also, you;ve got to be quick when a job comes in to quote on it because they go quickly.

If this is how a lot of other tradies see it, HiPages will be the place for the worst / least referred tradies (notwithstanding their internal rating system).

Disc: Not held.