What you actually get for $79/mo vs $149/mo tradie websites

There’s a real spread in what AU tradies pay for a website + ongoing service. The cheap end is $79 a month. Managed lead-gen starts around $150 and goes up from there once ads are involved.

A lot of tradies see the $79 number, sign up, and find out 6 months in that the leads aren’t coming. Then they switch to a $200+ service and the leads start coming. They paid for both. They wasted the first 6 months.

This post breaks down what’s actually in each tier so you can pick once and stick.

What “$79 a month” usually buys

The $79/mo packages from companies like The Free Tradie Website Crew, Onboard, and busi.au all bundle the same core things. We’re not picking on them; they’re honest about what they sell. The bundle is:

• A website on their template. Pre-built, you fill in the content. 5–6 pages. Mobile-friendly.
• Hosting + SSL. Your site stays online with HTTPS.
• A domain. Usually something like yourbusiness.com.au.
• An email forwarder. Mail to info@yourbusiness.com.au lands in your existing inbox.
• Some content updates if you ask. Usually 1–2 changes a month included.

That’s it. That’s the $79 product.

What you do NOT get for $79

This is where tradies get caught out. The $79 tier doesn’t include:

• Google Ads management. They don’t run ads for you. If you want leads from paid search, you pay extra (usually $200–500/mo) or DIY.
• Google Business Profile management. Your GBP is your responsibility. They don’t post, they don’t reply to reviews, they don’t add photos.
• Local SEO. Citations, schema markup, suburb landing pages: none of this is in the package. Your site exists, but nobody’s making sure it ranks.
• Lead capture beyond a basic form. No tracked phone numbers, no AI auto-responder, no SMS confirmations. Just an HTML form posting to your inbox.
• Performance reporting. You don’t get a monthly summary of what’s working. You’re flying blind.
• Any accountability for leads. They’re selling a website, not lead-generation. If the site doesn’t bring you leads, that’s not their problem. They delivered the website.

The $79 product is a website with hosting. Calling it “lead generation” is the misleading part.

What a managed $149 a month buys (Rigup as the example)

Our base plan is $149/mo. Here’s what’s in it:

• The full website + hosting + domain + email forwarding (the $79 baseline).
• Google Business Profile management. Posts twice a month, photo updates, review monitoring with replies, Q&A maintenance.
• Local SEO. Citation building, schema markup on every relevant entity, suburb-specific landing pages, ongoing query monitoring.
• Monthly content (4 posts). AI-drafted, human-reviewed, published on your blog. Targets long-tail searches like “how much does it cost to upgrade a switchboard in [suburb]”.
• Lead capture stack. Form submissions, tracked phone number that forwards to your mobile, tracked SMS number, AI auto-responder that replies in under 60 seconds.
• Review automation. Post-job SMS asking your customer for a Google review. Automatic. You don’t have to ask.
• Monthly performance report. One page in plain English. Calls, form fills, GBP impressions, top searches, what’s working, what’s next.

And if you want ads: $299 a month

When word-of-mouth and organic aren’t filling the diary, you add Google Ads. That’s the $299/mo plan: everything above plus your campaign built, tuned weekly and mined for wasted spend.

Ad spend is separate and paid direct to Google in your own account, from $300/mo. Start without ads and add them whenever you’re ready.

Honest comparison: which is right for you?

Pick $79 if:

• You already get plenty of leads from word-of-mouth and just need a website to validate to customers that you’re a real business.
• You’re confident running your own Google Business Profile, posting to it regularly, replying to reviews.
• You’re either confident running Google Ads yourself, or don’t want to do paid lead-gen at all.
• You can wait 12+ months for organic SEO to compound from a basic site.
• Lead volume isn’t your bottleneck.

Pick managed lead-gen if:

• Lead volume IS your bottleneck: feast and famine, can’t predict next month.
• You don’t want to think about marketing. You want to be on the tools.
• You want measurable accountability: every lead tracked and reported to you, not “trust us, it’ll work”.
• You’d rather pay for a system that’s actually managed than pay $79 a month and hope.

The maths only works if the extra leads pay for the extra fee. For most tradies, one extra job a month covers the $70 difference many times over.

What to NOT do

The expensive mistake: pay for $79 thinking it’s lead generation, then pay for the real thing a year later when you realise it’s not. You’ve spent $1,500 on the $79 service over 18 months and got no marketing engine to show for it. That money would’ve bought you the better part of a year of managed lead-gen running properly.

If lead-gen is the actual problem, buy lead-gen. If a digital business card is the actual problem, buy a digital business card. Don’t buy the wrong thing because the price tag is friendlier.

How to decide in 3 questions

1. “How many leads do I get per month right now?” If under 8, leads are your bottleneck.
2. “Do I have time to manage my own Google profile, run my own ads, and reply to every enquiry within an hour?” If no, you need someone doing it.
3. “Do I want to put money behind ads as well?” If yes, the $299 plan adds managed Google Ads. If no, $149 still gets you the website, the Google profile, the follow-up and the reviews working for you.

3 yeses → managed lead-gen. 0 yeses → cheap site, do the rest yourself, see how it goes.

The honest answer for most tradies who can answer “yes” to those 3 is: managed lead-gen pays for itself. But only if you actually need it.

Rigup is the managed option above, from $149/mo. Get started, see exactly what’s included, or book a 15-minute call to walk through your specific patch and decide if it’s a fit. We’ll tell you honestly if it’s not.