Roofers say the estimate is free. Plumbers do not.

The full spread

Forty nine points between the top and the bottom. Something specific is going on, and it is not that roofers are better at marketing.

Why roofing learned this and plumbing did not

We can measure the gap. We cannot measure the cause, so what follows is a reading rather than a finding, and it matters which is which.

The likeliest explanation is the simplest. For a roofer the estimate really is free. For a plumber it often is not.

A roof is won on the ladder

Roof work runs into five figures, frequently through an insurance claim, and the inspection is how the job is won. An hour up a ladder is a sensible cost to carry against ten thousand dollars of work. The free inspection is not a slogan bolted onto roofing, it is roofing's actual sales process, and the websites are describing it.

A plumbing visit often is the job

Much plumbing is emergency work on a small ticket. He arrives, diagnoses, and usually fixes it in the same hour. A great many plumbers charge a call-out or diagnostic fee precisely because the trip is the expensive part.

For those businesses, "free estimate" is not a missing phrase. It would be a false one.

Which makes the obvious advice wrong

If a customer cannot tell from your website whether phoning will cost them money, they have to assume it might. Some assume wrong and call anyway. Some do not call.

There are two honest ways out, and they work equally well:

• If it is free, say so. Three words, next to the phone number, not buried on an inner page. It is the cheapest fix on the whole list, and 67 percent of plumbing sites have not made it.
• If it is not free, say what it costs. A sample sentence, with your own number where ours is: "Diagnostic call is $89, comes off the job if you go ahead" answers the question completely. That is not a deterrent, it is a filter, and the people it puts off were going to argue about that fee on the doorstep instead.

The only losing move is the one two thirds of plumbers are making: leaving a stranger to guess whether a phone call is about to cost them a hundred dollars.

One caveat, and it is bigger here than elsewhere

This study reads homepages. For the pricing finding that barely matters, because a price is almost never one click away either. For this finding it matters more.

We followed a contact or estimate link from the homepages of 26 flagged sites, and 12 percent of them did say the estimate was free, on the inner page. So the honest reading of the headline is that 46 percent do not say it where a visitor lands, and roughly four in ten do not say it anywhere we could find.

That does not change the advice. The moment a customer is deciding whether to dial is the moment they are on the homepage.

What the wording is worth

There is no A/B test we are aware of that isolates "free estimate" on contractor websites, so we are not going to invent one. What is documented is the effect of telling a visitor precisely what happens next.

One published case study measured a 47 percent improvement from replacing "Contact Us" with a button that said what the click actually did. Another found "free quote" held attention more reliably than the variants it was tested against.

The active ingredient in both is not the word free. It is the removal of doubt. "Contact Us" asks her to volunteer for an unknown process. "Free estimate, usually back the same day" tells her what she is agreeing to.

Sources: WiseVU call-to-action A/B testing case study; Aspiration Marketing's published CTA results. Neither is contractor-specific.

Questions people ask

Should a plumber advertise free estimates?

Only if they are free. Plenty of plumbers charge a diagnostic fee because the trip is the real cost, and advertising against that starts the relationship with a correction on the doorstep. State the fee and whether it comes off the job.

Why do so many roofers offer free inspections?

Because the job is big enough to carry the cost of the visit, and the inspection is how the work is won, often alongside an insurance claim. 82 percent of the roofing sites we read said so, the highest of any trade by thirty seven points.

Does saying "free estimate" bring in more work?

We did not measure that and will not claim it. What is documented is that specific wording beats vague wording substantially, with one case study reporting 47 percent over a generic "Contact Us". The ingredient seems to be certainty, not the word free.

Where should it go?

Beside the thing you want her to do. A note about cost three clicks away on a terms page never reaches the person deciding whether to dial, which is the only moment the question is being asked.