Are Yelp, Thumbtack, and Angi Worth It for Small Service Businesses?

The honest answer to the question — “Are Yelp, Thumbtack, Angi, and HomeAdvisor worth it for small service businesses?” — is: it depends.

We know that’s not what you were hoping to hear. But it’s the truth.

How much money these platforms make

If you look at how much money these companies generate, Yelp brought in $1.46 billion in 2025 — a record year for them. Angi generated $1.2 billion in 2024. Thumbtack is privately held so there’s no official number, but estimates put them in the hundreds of millions.

They do help businesses — they wouldn’t be generating that kind of revenue if they didn’t. But that kind of money also raises a fair question: are these platforms really trying to help you grow, or are they making money off your desire to grow?

If you have the budget to spend $300 a month on advertising and you’re bringing in a couple thousand dollars from jobs that come through the platform, the cost is justified and everybody’s happy. But if you’re a small business spending that same $300 and still can’t close because you don’t have the reputation that bigger companies have, then it might not be worth it.

It’s subjective. So let’s talk about what you should actually consider when using these platforms, so you can decide for yourself.

What happened when our founder used Yelp

Our founder and his brothers used to operate a small painting business. They started when our founder was around 20 years old. Like most people just getting started, they were working with very little capital — there was no budget for a $35 monthly profile setup plus a separate invoicing system when they were already investing in paintbrushes, ladders, spray painters, and all the other tools the job required.

They signed up for Yelp and turned on the messaging feature. They’d get messages from users asking them to come visit a property — and some of those turned out to be empty houses with no one home. While there are legitimate situations where a homeowner might not be present, you learn quickly that you should always have someone there to meet you. Nothing ever happened, thankfully, but it’s the kind of thing you have to be careful with.

Beyond the scam messages, they never got contacted by legitimate users either. The business was always buried in search results — even searching the company by name, you’d see paid advertisements and established businesses first. The actual listing was nearly impossible to find.

They kept the profile because being listed on a recognized platform still carries some credibility. But getting found? That required spending real money on advertising.

Budget shouldn’t keep you out of the game

Like we mentioned, not everybody has $50, $100, $300, or $500 a month to spend on advertising alone. You’re already paying for a business phone, vehicle insurance, liability insurance, workers’ compensation, a website, and all the other things that come with starting a business. Advertising is just one more expense on top of everything else.

Some people might argue, “Well, if you don’t have the money, then don’t start a business.” But that’s a fundamentally wrong thing to say. Anybody should be able to compete. That’s what makes the service industry great — that’s what keeps people humble. Because if you’re a big company and you’re not doing right by your customers, somebody is going to come along and do it better than you. You’re going to lose business because you chose not to take care of people the way you should have. Competition is what makes the whole thing work, and budget shouldn’t be the thing that keeps good people out of the game.

The review problem on Yelp

Here’s something else worth knowing about Yelp before you decide whether it’s right for you.

One thing that is for sure — if you get reviews on Yelp, there’s a real chance they’ll hide them, especially if you’re not paying for advertising. And this isn’t something our founder heard somewhere. He lived it.

The painting business got reviews, and Yelp hid them. Then a salesperson from Yelp called him trying to sell an advertising promotion. His response? “Why would I advertise with you guys? You already hid my reviews.”

The salesperson explained that they have a system that automatically hides reviews to evaluate whether they’re fake or not, and that once the system clears them, they get released back into the pool. He asked how long that process takes. The answer was vague — something like, “A couple of months.”

Funny thing is, those reviews had been hidden for well over a year at that point. So take that for what it’s worth.

Is Yelp the perfect platform? No. Was it worth it for a small painting business on a tight budget? In our founder’s experience, it wasn’t. But if you want to give it a try and you have some budget, go for it — it might work for you.

That said, if you’re looking for an alternative that doesn’t hide your reviews or bury your profile behind paid ads, that’s exactly why we built Honisto. We’re still growing — we don’t have the massive search traffic that Yelp has yet — but that changes as more businesses join and more customers start searching through us. We talk more about how it works further down in this post.

A note on what we’ve shared: Everything above is based on our founder’s real experience. We’re not here to tear Yelp down — it just didn’t work for them. That doesn’t mean it can’t work for other businesses.

How Angi and Thumbtack work

HomeAdvisor used to be its own company. It got bought by Angi, so now they’re essentially the same thing — or at least closely related.

Angi and Thumbtack work a little differently than Yelp. You can pay for advertising to get more visibility, but the primary model is lead-based. When somebody is looking for a plumber, a painter, a cleaner — the platform sends that lead to you. You pay for it, and then you have to be fast. You need to respond quickly so you can book an inspection or give them a quote before another contractor beats you to it.

The problem is that those leads aren’t exclusive — at least from what we understand. The same lead might go to multiple other service providers at the same time. So you’re paying money just to get the opportunity, and then you still have to win the job. If you close it, great. If you don’t, you spent that money and got nothing back. It’s basically a bidding war.

Now, the good news is that the money you spend on leads should be a tax deduction — but talk to your accountant or tax attorney on that, don’t take our word for it. The reality though is that you’re spending money to maybe get work. And if you have the budget for that and you’re closing enough jobs to make it make sense, then it can work. But if you’re on a tight budget and you’re not closing most of what comes in, it adds up fast and you might not see a return on it.

Do these platforms actually work?

These companies make hundreds of millions of dollars — some of them well past the billion-dollar mark. They wouldn’t be making that kind of money if it didn’t work for somebody. So yes, the platforms work. But they don’t work for everybody.

If you spend any time in community forums, Facebook groups, or online discussions where real business owners talk about their experience, you’ll see a lot of people saying these platforms just aren’t working for them anymore. And it’s not just newcomers — even people who used to see good results are saying things aren’t running as smoothly as they once did.

The only way to really know is to try it for yourself. Give it a shot, see if you’re willing to advertise, and track whether what you’re spending is actually coming back to you. The numbers will tell you everything you need to know.

There’s a better way to get found

If you’re not in a position to spend hundreds of dollars a month on advertising — or you just don’t want to — that’s exactly why we built Honisto. We took a completely different approach.

We created tools that small businesses actually need: invoicing, appointment reminders, review links to send your customers so they can leave a review on Google or on Honisto, contractor payment tracking, and online menus for restaurants and food businesses. With every subscription, you also get a directory listing.

That directory listing is how we help you get discovered. When you send an invoice through Honisto, your client sees our brand on it — it’s subtle, but it gets people familiar with who we are. The more businesses that join, the more customers start coming to search. It builds on itself.

And here’s the big difference: there’s no advertising on our directory. Nobody is paying to show up first. It’s city-based search — if someone is looking for a service you offer in your area and you have good standing, you’re going to show up. And if your profile is new and doesn’t have a lot of views yet, we boost it to help you get some exposure.

We built this because these problems exist in the industry and nobody was solving them the way we felt they should be solved. We’re glad it’s finally out there, and we’re excited to keep building on it.