Three in four contractor websites cannot be texted

Read this before you quote the number

This is the finding in the study with no outside corroboration. We looked for a published figure on contractor texting adoption and there is not one, so unlike the pricing finding there is no independent survey to check us against.

It is also the number we have got wrong twice. Earlier versions of this page said 91 percent and then 83, and both were our own defects: first a pattern that could not see the word "texts", then a reader that ignored the web chat widgets that exist precisely so a customer can text a contractor. Each correction moved it down.

What it rests on now: 52 unit assertions in both directions, eighteen flagged sites re-read by hand with eighteen confirmed, a browser-agent comparison that changed nothing, and a repeat run that disagreed on one finding in a thousand. That is the best we can do without a survey, and it is not the same as a survey.

The trades differ more than we first thought

Sixteen points between HVAC and roofing, and the reason is visible in the markup rather than in the copy. HVAC businesses are the heaviest users of the field service platforms whose web chat doubles as a texting line, so a third of them can be texted without ever writing the word "text" on the page.

Roofers are the hardest to reach this way, which sits oddly beside their being the best trade at saying the estimate is free. They have thought hard about the offer and not at all about the channel.

What the research says about how people want to reach a business

• Text has overtaken the phone, narrowly. Asked which channels they use to contact a business "always or most of the time", 46 percent of consumers named text against 43 percent for phone. Widen it to include "sometimes" and text reaches 81 percent. EZ Texting, 2026 Consumer Texting Behavior Report, in the report's own brackets. An earlier version of this page said "90 percent of consumers prefer a text message to a phone call" and credited the same report. That figure is not in it, and 90 percent is the report's number for EMAIL. Corrected 2026-09-25 after an outside reviewer read the source we had cited. A figure of 89 percent who "wish they could text a home service professional" was removed at the same time: it could not be traced to the research it was attributed to.
• 78 percent of customers hire the first company that responds. Homeowners contact an average of 3.4 companies for the same job, so being first is most of the contest. Consistent across published speed-to-lead analyses from Scorpion, Convoso and LeadWinner.
• Up to 85 percent of people who reach voicemail never call back. A missed call is usually not a delayed call, it is a lost one. Recurs across 2026 missed-call roundups including Phone2 and SkipCalls.

The missed call number, honestly

You will see "62 percent of calls to home service businesses go unanswered" quoted everywhere. We are not going to lean on it, because the best primary data we could find disagrees. CallRail, which actually tracks the calls, put the business-hours miss rate at 14 percent in its January 2025 analysis.

The gap is probably after hours, when 35 to 45 percent of HVAC and plumbing call volume arrives and nobody is picking up at all. Blend those and you reach the larger figure, but as a statistic about your working day, 14 percent is the one to trust.

We point this out against our own interest. The bigger number would make this page look stronger.

What the gap is worth, using the conservative number

As an illustration, take a contractor getting 20 calls in a week, missing 14 percent during working hours, at the low end of a residential service ticket. These are sample figures chosen to show the shape of the loss, not a measurement of any business.

That is working hours only. It does not count the evening calls, and it does not count the people who never rang because they did not want to.

For example, Cornerstone Advertising and Built on Tenth each advertise ticket benchmarks of roughly $400 to $600 for a residential plumbing call and $340 to $500 for HVAC repair. The sum above uses the bottom of that range on purpose.

The objection that is actually about the phone in your pocket

When we have put this in front of contractors, the first answer is almost never "customers do not want to text". It is this:

"I am not putting my personal mobile number on my website."

That is a completely reasonable position, and it is the real reason a lot of these sites have no texting option. A trade number on a website gets scraped, resold and dialled by every lead-generation company in the country, and once it is out there it is out there. Nobody wants their own handset ringing at eleven at night for the rest of their career.

It is worth separating the two things, because they get decided as one:

• Whether customers can text you is about how much work you get.
• Which number they text is about your evenings.

You can answer the first one yes without answering the second with your own mobile. A business texting line belongs to the business, not to your handset. It is the same reason your home address is not on the van.

The objection that is real, and which nobody warns you about

Adding a texting option works. That is the problem with it.

The messages arrive, and they arrive at the hours that made you not want to do this: on a ladder, under a sink, at nine on a Saturday. A text that sits unanswered for two days is worse than no texting option at all, because the customer knows it was delivered. Silence after a phone call is ambiguous. Silence after a text is an answer.

So the honest order is the same as with publishing prices: work out what you can answer, then open the channel. Either you can reply inside an hour during the day, or something has to reply for you. Opening a channel you cannot staff just moves the way you lose the job.

Questions people ask

Do customers really want to text a contractor?

On the strictest measure, yes, narrowly. 46% of consumers say they contact a business by text "always or most of the time" against 43% for phone, and 81% text a business at least sometimes. What our study adds is the supply side: 76 percent of the 2,000 contractor homepages we read offered no way to do it at all.

What counts as a texting option?

A way to send a message from a phone that arrives as a text. A tap-to-text link, a published SMS number, or a web chat widget that routes to texting all counted. A contact form did not, and neither did an email address, because both ask the customer to compose something and wait, which is the behaviour texting exists to avoid.

Which trade is easiest to text?

HVAC, by a distance. A third of HVAC businesses can be texted, against one in six roofers. Most of that difference is the field service platforms, whose web chat doubles as a texting line.

Do I have to give out my personal mobile number?

No, and this is the most common reason contractors skip texting entirely. A business texting line is separate from your handset, so the number on your website is not the number your family calls.

Is it worth adding if I cannot answer quickly?

Only if something answers for you. An unanswered text reads as being ignored in a way a missed call does not, because the sender can see it arrived. Solve the answering before you open the channel.