Most tradies who come to us have tried hipages. Some are still on it. The question is never "is hipages bad" — it's "what does a job cost me there, and what would it cost me the other way?" This article does that maths honestly, using hipages' own published plans and the real cost-per-enquiry figures from the Google Ads accounts we run.

How hipages charges

hipages sells monthly memberships, not leads. As at 2026 the four plans are Starter ($139), Advanced ($249), Premium ($449) and Platinum ($649) a month plus GST, and each plan comes with a monthly bucket of credits — 155, 310, 595 and 850 respectively. Every lead you accept costs credits, and the credit price of a lead varies by trade, location and demand. hipages doesn't publish a fixed rate; members report individual leads costing anywhere from 42 to 120 credits, which on the Starter plan means a handful of leads a month before the bucket is empty.

Two other terms matter. First, every lead is sent to up to three businesses, so you are quoting against two other tradies on the same job, every time. Second, the initial contract is six months and then auto-renews for twelve; cancelling mid-term can trigger the remaining fees. The average Australian member spent about $2,381 a year on the platform in hipages' FY25 figures.

The number that matters: cost per booked job

Cost per lead is the wrong number to compare, because a shared lead and an exclusive lead are not the same product. Work it through for a plumber on the Advanced plan:

  • Spend: $249 + GST ≈ $274 a month.
  • Leads: 310 credits at, say, 60 credits each ≈ 5 leads a month.
  • Cost per lead: about $55.
  • Win rate on a three-way shared lead: if you're competitive, roughly one in three. Many tradies report worse, because the customer often goes with whoever answers first or quotes lowest.
  • Cost per booked job: $274 ÷ (5 × ⅓) ≈ $165 — plus the time spent quoting the four you didn't win.

Now the same plumber running their own Google Search campaign. Across every Google Ads account we manage — $507K of spend since 2020 — the average cost per tracked enquiry is $14.70. Trades vary: our glazier account runs at $8.54, concreters at $12–$37, roof replacement at $47–$60 because the jobs are five figures. Take a deliberately conservative $40 per enquiry for a plumber, and an enquiry that came from someone searching "emergency plumber near me" and calling you directly — not a form sent to three businesses — converts far better than one in three. At one in two, cost per booked job is $80, and the ad account, the landing page and the reviews it generates are yours.

What you keep when you stop paying

This is the part the per-lead comparison hides. Stop paying hipages and the leads stop the same day; two years on the platform leaves you with two years of invoices. Two years of your own marketing leaves you with a website that ranks, a Google Business Profile full of reviews, an ad account with two years of conversion data that makes every following month cheaper, and a customer list. The marketplace owns the customer and you rent access; with your own marketing, the customer found you.

It also changes who you compete with. On hipages, you compete with two other tradies who received the identical lead at the same moment. On Google, you compete with whoever else is advertising — but the customer chose to click your ad, on your business name, and landed on a page about their exact job.

When hipages does make sense

We're not going to pretend it never works. If you're brand new, have no website and no reviews, and need any work at all this week, a marketplace is the fastest way to get a phone to ring. It's also fine as a top-up in a quiet season if you treat it as a variable cost and go in with your eyes open about the shared-lead maths. Where it goes wrong is when it becomes the foundation — when a business that turns over $600K a year is still paying to quote against two strangers for every job.

How to make the switch without a gap

Don't cancel hipages the day your Google Ads go live. Run both for one to two months: the campaign needs a few weeks of data before it's efficient, and you need to see enquiries arriving before you lean on it. Track everything — call-tracking number on the site, form submissions tagged by source — so the comparison is real numbers, not a feeling. When the cost per booked job from your own marketing is clearly lower for two consecutive months, let the hipages term run out. Watch the auto-renewal date; that's the one that catches people.

If you want the numbers for your trade and area rather than a plumber example, the lead value calculator works out what a lead is worth to you, and the results page shows the real cost per enquiry in every account we run.

Sources

Third-party prices and terms were checked on 17 September 2026 and can change — check the platform's own page before deciding. Our own figures come from the accounts on the results page.