The Resistance Against the Home-Services Roll-Up

Private equity is quietly buying your neighborhood plumber, electrician, and HVAC tech — keeping the sign on the truck, routing the phone to a regional call center, and pricing to meet fund return targets. We built AllBetter to be the direct alternative: real local pros, escrow-protected payments, zero lead fees.

27K+Independent Pros Signed Up
$0Lead Fees. Ever.
100%Escrow-Protected
100%Bootstrapped. No PE. No VC.

The System Isn’t Broken. It’s Being Institutionalized.

Two separate industries now extract value from your home-services decisions. Both are publicly documented. Neither shows up on the phone.

Private equity is consolidating local trades

Neighborly Brands — acquired by KKR in 2021 1 — is the world’s largest home-services franchisor. It owns Mr. Rooter, Mr. Electric, Mr. Handyman, Molly Maid, Aire Serv, Precision Door, Window Genie, and more.

Roto-Rooter — wholly owned by Chemed Corporation (NYSE: CHE) — spent $20.6 million acquiring franchise territories in San Francisco and Fort Worth on March 31, 2026 alone. 2

ARS/Rescue Rooter has been owned by Charlesbank Capital Partners since 2020. 3

The playbook: buy local shops, keep the brand on the truck, route the phone to a regional hub, raise pricing to meet fund return targets. Published as standard PE strategy. 4

Lead-selling platforms tax both sides

Angi Inc. — formed in 2017 by IAC’s merger of Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor, publicly traded as part of IAC (NASDAQ: IAC). 5

The business model: sell the same homeowner’s contact info to multiple contractors. Charge each contractor $15–50 per lead regardless of outcome. The homeowner gets 5–15 calls; one pro wins; the other 4–14 paid for nothing.

Contractors call it “rent” — paying to see a job that’s already been sold to four other people.

Direct match, escrow, no middleman

90% of US home services is still independent — real local shops not yet rolled up. We built the operating system for the 90%.

Homeowners post once. Up to 3 verified independent pros respond. Funds are held in escrow — released only when the work is approved.

Zero lead fees. Contractors pay a small service fee only when a project closes. No “rent” to see work. No data resale. No fund returns to extract.

Half-finished projects. Inflated quotes. Disappearing local pros.

We said: there has to be a different way.

One question tells you if your “local” contractor is actually local.

Try it on any call. It takes 10 seconds. It will tell you more than any review score.

Ask: “Can I speak to the local shop manager by name, right now?”

✓ Independent Pro
“Sure, one sec — that’s Jose, let me get him.”

⚠ Call-Center Front
“We’ll have someone call you back.” / “Let me transfer you to dispatch.”

✗ National Roll-Up
Cannot produce a local manager name. You’re in a regional hub routing queue.

Share this question. It’s free consumer protection.

Three Apps. One Connected Ecosystem. Zero Middlemen.

Most platforms fragment the industry — one app to find work, another to manage it, another to get paid. We closed the entire loop so independent pros don't have to stitch together five subscriptions to run one job.

AllBetter HomeFix

Homeowners post projects. Independent pros submit bids. Every payment runs through escrow — funds secured the moment the homeowner hires you, released only when the work is approved.

AllBetter JobPro

Contractors find real work without paying to see it. No lead fees. No "rent" to enter the auction. You bid your price, the homeowner picks, payment escrows the moment you're hired.

AllBetter Field

Manage your entire service business — quotes, scheduling, dispatch, CRM, invoicing, payments. $29/month vs. the $500/month "PE-Enterprise Tax." Built for independent pros who don't want to sell out to a roll-up.

Contractors win clients. Keep clients. Own the relationship. No one else is invited.

Escrow Isn’t a Feature. It’s a Settlement Mechanism.

Every project on AllBetter runs through escrow. The homeowner’s money is protected before work starts. The contractor’s payment is guaranteed before they pick up a tool. That’s not an add-on — that’s the product.

For Homeowners

Funds are held securely before work starts. Payment is released only when you approve the completed work. If the pro disappears mid-project, your money doesn’t.

For Contractors

Payment is guaranteed before you pick up a single tool. No more chasing invoices. No more “the check is in the mail.” The money is already there, waiting on approval.

This is what “no middleman” actually means.

How We Compare

$15–50 per lead

No lead fees

$500/mo PE-Enterprise Tax

$29/month

Platform lock-in

You own the customer

Training required

Works immediately

Built for enterprises

Built for trucks

No free tools

5 free AI tools

We’re not here to tax contractors. We’re here to help the 90% that isn’t owned by a fund.

Built for the 90% Who Still Work From Trucks.

90% of contractors don’t have corporate offices. They run the business from the cab of a truck. That’s who we built for — not the 10% acquired by a fund.

A truck between projects

A project site between calls

Home after a 12-hour day

ServiceTitan was built for boardrooms.AllBetter was built for reality.

Mobile-first. No training manual. Setup in 5 minutes. If you can use your phone, you can run your business on AllBetter — without giving up your independence to a roll-up.

Compare 3 Verified Independent Pros — In About 60 Seconds.

Post your project free. We’ll match you with real local pros who pay $0 in lead fees, so the savings stay in your pocket. No spam, no call-center routing, no PE pricing model.

100% escrow-protected. No credit card required. Works on phone, tablet, or desktop.

27,000 Independent Contractors Joined Because the Math Works.

27K+

Independent pro signups across the U.S.

100%

Escrow-backed payments on every project

$29

/mo Field App vs. the $500 “PE-Enterprise Tax”

$0

Lead fees. Ever. Pros only pay on closed projects.

100%

Bootstrapped. No PE. No VC return hurdles.

Built by someone who’s seen the systems that extract.

I hold a Master’s in Computer Science and spent two decades across Fortune 100 technology roles and commercial real estate. I’ve watched how systems get engineered — at scale — to extract value from the people inside them.

When I started looking at home services, I saw the exact pattern I’d seen in finance, real estate, and tech rollouts: buy the local unit, keep the brand, centralize operations, price to the fund’s required return. The names on the trucks look local. The settlements don’t.

AllBetter isn’t a pivot from something else. It’s what I’d build if I wanted to make sure the engineering went the other way — designed to keep value local, keep relationships direct, and keep the homeowner and the pro on the same side of the table.

A Category That Shouldn’t Need to Exist: Independent Home Services.

If the industry weren’t being rolled up, we wouldn’t have to name it. But it is — so we did. Independent Home Services is the operating layer for the 90% of trades that aren’t owned by a fund.

Escrow by Default

No trust needed. Math replaces handshakes. Homeowner funds protected; contractor payment guaranteed. Every project. Every time.

The AllBetter Independent Pro Badge

Certification you’re dealing with a real human — not a CRM algorithm or a regional call-center. Displayed on trucks, estimates, and profiles. Earned, not bought.

The Independence Index

Lookup tool: type any home-services brand name, see whether it’s PE-owned, publicly traded, franchise-with-PE-money, or genuinely local. Sourced from SEC filings and press releases. Coming soon — alongside the live AllBetter Fairness Score for grading any quote you receive on the road.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I tell if my “local” contractor is actually owned by private equity?

Three fast checks. One: use the Human Test above — ask to speak to the local shop manager by name, right now. If they can’t produce a name, you’re likely on a regional call-center routing queue. Two: check the parent company. PE ownership is public record — look for SEC filings, BusinessWire press releases, or the PE firm’s portfolio page. Three: use AllBetter’s Independence Index (launching soon) to look up any brand against our verified registry.

What’s the difference between AllBetter and Angi, Thumbtack, or HomeAdvisor?

Lead-gen platforms sell the same homeowner’s contact info to multiple contractors and charge each one $15–50 per lead — whether the pro wins the job or not. Contractors pay “rent” just to see a job that’s already been sold to 4 other people. AllBetter charges $0 for leads. Pros pay only a small service fee when a job actually closes.

Is AllBetter venture-backed or owned by private equity?

No. AllBetter is 100% bootstrapped. No VC. No PE. No return hurdles to extract from homeowners or contractors. The system doesn’t need 20%+ YoY growth to survive, so we don’t need to engineer it out of your invoice.

What is the AllBetter Independent Pro badge?

It’s a verification that the pro on your job is an independent — not a roll-up franchisee, not a call-center dispatcher, not a regional unit of a national brand. Pros earn the badge through verification and display it on their trucks, estimates, and profiles.