Trade Portal or Your Own Website: Which Wins More Jobs?

Let's be upfront: a trade lead portal — in Germany these are known as Handwerkerportale, platforms that sell customer inquiries to tradespeople — will get you your first inquiry fast. But every single one costs money, is usually sold to several businesses at once, and is gone again tomorrow. Your own website takes more effort at the start, but afterwards it belongs to you — and it delivers inquiries for years without a referral fee on any of them. If you want a steady flow of good jobs in Munich, your own website is the better bet. The portal is, at best, a stopgap.

Why the gap is especially wide in the Munich market, and what the numbers actually look like, is laid out below.

How Trade Portals Make Their Money

Almost all lead platforms work on the same principle: a customer describes their project, the portal passes the inquiry on — and you pay for it. Either per contact you unlock, or through a monthly subscription with a lead quota. The decisive catch is rarely printed in large type on the homepage:

The same inquiry usually goes to several businesses. You are not paying for a job — you are paying for permission to compete for it against three, four or five rivals.
The competition immediately becomes a price war. When five businesses buy the same inquiry, the cheapest one often wins — which is exactly how the jobs with decent margins disappear.
The visibility belongs to the portal, not to you. It is the platform that ranks on Google, not your business. Cancel the subscription and your findability drops to zero overnight.

The model is not inherently shady. It is simply one where you permanently pay rent for something you will never own.

Why Munich Is a Particularly Expensive Portal Market

The local angle here is not decoration. Munich is one of the densest trades markets in Germany, and that drives portal prices up:

Many businesses compete for the same city inquiries. In a metropolitan area, far more companies bid on each inquiry than in the countryside. And it is not just Munich firms: tradespeople from Dachau, Fürstenfeldbruck, Freising, Erding and the Starnberg district all want a share of the lucrative city jobs and buy the same Munich leads. More bidders per inquiry means higher contact prices and a harsher price war for you. (How businesses from the surrounding area get found organically in the city instead is covered in based outside Munich, customers from the city.)

Purchasing power is high — but only if you reach the customer directly. Munich customers are willing to pay properly for clean work. On a portal, however, they first see five quotes side by side and compare. Through your own website, the inquiry lands exclusively with you — without that instant price comparison.

Margins are tight enough as it is. With Munich-level wages, rents and vehicle costs, every euro counts. Money that flows into lead fees and a forced price war is money missing at the end of your calculation.

The Sample Calculation: One Year of Portal vs. One Year of Your Own Website

Let's run it with cautious example figures — these are deliberately illustrative numbers, not official statistics. Your real values depend on your trade and job sizes.

Portal scenario: you unlock around 20 inquiries a month. Depending on the trade and job value, a contact costs a mid to high double-digit euro amount. Let's assume 25 euros per contact:

20 contacts × 25 euros = roughly 500 euros a month, so about 6,000 euros a year.
Because you share almost every lead with several businesses, only a fraction turns into actual jobs.
Next year you pay all over again — the 6,000 euros are gone, and no lasting asset has been created.

Own-website scenario: you invest once in a proper site with local search engine optimisation, plus modest running costs for hosting and maintenance. From then on:

Every inquiry that comes in through organic Google search costs you no referral fee — the effective price per lead trends towards zero with every additional inquiry.
Every lead is exclusive. No price shoot-out with four other businesses that bought the same inquiry.
The website is an asset that belongs to you and keeps working in year two and year three, instead of being paid for again every year.

The tipping point arrives faster than most people expect: once your own site delivers inquiries consistently, it undercuts the recurring annual portal costs by a wide margin — and delivers better leads on top, because they are exclusive. What a website of your own realistically costs is covered in detail in having a website built in Munich.

What Your Own Website Can Do That a Portal Never Will

Beyond the pure cost calculation, there are arguments a portal simply cannot match:

Trust and brand. References, real photos of your work, reviews, clearly described services — customers choose a business they can size up, not the fifth name on a quote list.
You control the message. You showcase exactly the trades, districts and job types you want — instead of taking whatever the portal passes along.
Local findability for Munich and its districts. Someone searching for "electrician Schwabing" or "painter Munich East" has a concrete need. With your own location and service pages, you are the one who shows up. How to build that cleanly without duplicate content is explained in 75 location pages for Munich and the surrounding area.

When a Portal Still Makes Sense

In all honesty: there are situations where a portal is worth it. In the start-up phase, when you have no visibility of your own yet. To fill a short-term gap in your order book. Or as an additional channel while your own website ramps up — because local search engine optimisation takes a few weeks to months before it carries its weight.

The mistake is not using a portal. The mistake is relying only on it, permanently, and never building a foundation of your own. The sensible sequence is: portal as a kick-starter, your own website as the long-term solution — and scale the portal back as soon as your own site delivers.

This Works in Practice

That a well-optimised website of your own keeps local service businesses supplied with real inquiries is not an empty promise. A commercial cleaning company serving Munich and the Dachau area earned Google rich results and genuine customer inquiries within a short time, using a website built from location-times-service subpages. And a decluttering and house clearance business covers Munich and the entire surrounding region with more than 75 individual location pages — a site that wins jobs predictably instead of buying them one by one.

This transfers to any trade. The mechanism is the same: serve local search, receive exclusive inquiries, pay no referral fee.

The Bottom Line

Trade portal or your own website is not an either-or question for eternity — it is a question of sequence. Portals buy you time, but they cost money continuously and deliver shared leads. Your own website is the one-off investment that brings you exclusive inquiries, belongs to you, and gets cheaper year after year. In the expensive Munich market, that difference is especially large.

To see what visible, job-winning websites for local businesses look like, browse the showroom — real projects and demos you can click through. If you are thinking about building your own findability, that is the best starting point for a no-obligation conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are inquiries from trade portals exclusive?

In most cases, no. The same inquiry is typically sold to several businesses, which then compete for the same customer. Inquiries through your own website, by contrast, reach only you — with no direct price comparison against the competition.

How long until a website of my own brings in inquiries in Munich?

A portal delivers the first inquiry immediately — for a fee. A website of your own with local optimisation usually needs a few weeks to months before it carries weight in Google search for Munich and its districts — but then it delivers recurring inquiries with no per-lead fee. That is why the transition phase is the best time to run both in parallel.

Can I combine a portal with my own website?

Yes, and that is often the best approach. Use a portal to secure short-term workload while you build your own website in parallel. Once the site reliably delivers inquiries, scale back the expensive portal channel.

Is a website of my own worth it for a small one-person business?

Especially then. A small business feels every lead fee and every forced discount more keenly. A website of your own with clearly described services and local findability offsets that disadvantage — without requiring a big marketing budget.

Can a small business outrank the big portals on Google?

For broad search terms, the portals often rank at the top. For specific local searches — trade plus district, such as "plumber Sendling" — local businesses with their own location and service pages have very good chances, because they serve exactly that local need. More on when a better website beats paid clicks in Google advertising in Munich.