Sometimes, and the answer turns almost entirely on two numbers you already have: what you pay per enquiry, and what share of them you actually close.
Do the sum on your own figures
Fee per won job is the fee per enquiry divided by your close rate. At £25 an enquiry and a one-in-five close, that is £125 in fees for every job you win. At a one-in-ten close it is £250. Neither of those numbers is unusual on a shared enquiry, where three or four installers are ringing the same homeowner.
Now count the trips. A one-in-five close rate means five conversations, and usually several site visits, for one paid job. The four that went nowhere still cost you fuel, a Saturday, and a quote you wrote for free. For most installers that is the larger cost by some distance, and it never appears on an invoice.
There is a calculator on each trade page that runs this with your own numbers. We have not put a figure of our own in it.
When buying enquiries genuinely makes sense
- You need volume next week. Nothing you build on your own site produces enquiries by Friday. A portal can.
- You have no website worth sending anyone to. Converting traffic you do not have is not a strategy.
- You are testing a new trade or a new area and want to know whether demand exists before committing.
- Your margins are wide enough to absorb it. On a £9,000 heat pump, £125 in fees is noise. On a £1,200 chargepoint it is not.
When it stops making sense
- You are still paying the same fee three years later with nothing accumulated. Rent buys you this month and nothing else.
- Your close rate is falling because the same names are going to more installers.
- You already have traffic that is leaving. If people find your site and go, you are paying twice: once for the visitors you lose, and again for names from a portal.
- You are competing on price and do not know why. A homeowner holding four quotes by lunchtime is running an auction.
The middle answer most installers end up at
Keep buying while you build. Put a checker on your own site so the traffic you already pay for stops leaking, point some of your own advertising at it, and let the bought volume taper as your own enquiries grow. That is less dramatic than quitting portals in a huff, and it is what actually works, because the owned channel takes months to reach the volume the rented one gives you on day one.
The thing worth being clear-eyed about is which one you are building. Every pound spent with a portal buys one month of enquiries. The same pound spent on your own site buys an asset that is still there next year.
Read next
What a lead portal actually does with your enquiry explains the mechanism in full. How it works covers what putting a checker on your own site involves, and what it costs.
Grant figures on this page were checked against gov.uk on 22 September 2026 and are indicative — the binding figure is the one from the official application. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will fix it.