One vendor quotes a pool company a couple hundred a month, the next quotes five figures for a build, and both describe the work in the same words. This tool gives you a band to hold those quotes against. Run it twice, because the weekly route and the construction side are not the same money.
Run the free tool ↓Three taps: the work you want done, the market your route runs in, and whether that route is one truck, several, or a second yard entirely. Nothing is submitted, stored, or gated behind an email, and the band moves while you tap.
Prefer a full page? Open the What Should You Pay? tool here.
Here is what each of the three taps is actually asking a pool company.
Two things it cannot see. Whether the money is aimed at a route that bills every month or at construction jobs that close over a season, which are two businesses wearing one name. And what month it is, which north of the freeze line decides everything. How the band is put together is written out on the generic What Should You Pay tool.
Nothing here grades your company, and it never looks at your site. It hands back a band, and a band is only useful beside a real number: put the proposal you were sent next to it.
A number inside or near the band, with scope attached, is the healthy case, and scope here is countable. Ask which pages get written: full service, chemical only, green recovery, repair, commercial, and openings and closings if your season has a start date and an end date. Ask whether the quote form is built to qualify a pool, or whether it collects a name and a number like every other form in your market.
A number far below the band is rarely a bargain. It usually buys a site that is finished the day it launches, which is a problem when you have four offers to explain.
Under the result sits a red flag list that does not move with your answers. Two of those flags decide more for a pool company than the price does. One is ownership: if the vendor holds the domain, the site, or the listing, the route you built the site to fill walks out with them. The Google Business Profile audit for pool companies covers the listing side. The other is a promised top spot, which nobody is in a position to promise, and a vendor who promises it in April has already told you how the September report will read.
Two inventions, written to show the shape of the output rather than to price anybody. Neither one is a client and neither result is a quote.
Say a three truck weekly service company working one mid-size city decides the site is holding the route back. Its three taps: solo or small local, one mid-size city, a new website. Back comes $5,000 to $12,500 one-time, on a line labeled custom website. At the floor of that band you get something fast with an intake form that asks about the pool itself. The ceiling is where you land once the weekly route, chemical only, green recovery and equipment repair are each carrying their own page.
Imagine a builder who keeps a service route running behind the construction side, several crews, a major metro. It taps growing with multiple staff, then major metro, then asks for the whole package. Two lines come back. To build: $7,500 to $19,500. To run search and AI search: $5,500 to $13,100 a month. Nearly the whole distance between this and the first example came from the market question. What the tool cannot know is that it is looking at two companies wearing one name, one closing a single large job across a season of site visits, the other holding accounts that stay on the truck for years.
Neither run says what the money produces. Nothing honest could.
The band means nothing until you can see what the money turns into. In this trade most of it is writing, and the least exciting writing earns the most.
The longer version, including where pool companies give away margin, is on our pool service marketing page.
Our published numbers, so you can hold this page to the standard it asks of everyone else. Custom website builds run $3,500 to $12,000+ one-time. Ongoing SEO or local SEO runs $1,500 to $3,500 a month for most businesses, and $3,500 to $7,500 a month in competitive metros or multi-location work. An intake form that can size a pool before you drive out is a custom tool: calculators start at $600, most workhorse tools run $1,500 to $4,000, Tool Care is $75/month per tool. Month to month, and you own the site, the content, and the accounts.
We publish no fee for Google Ads management. The industry bills it as a flat monthly fee or a percentage of ad spend, and a percentage pays the agency most in the weeks a heat wave already has your phone ringing. We quote flat after a free consult. For the detail behind the two big numbers, read what a website costs and what SEO costs, and if your year turns on an opening calendar, how long SEO takes is the one that changes when you start. Orlando based, working with local service businesses nationwide since 2008.
Run it twice. Construction and service are two businesses sharing a name: a build is a one-time sale decided over months of photographs and site visits, while a route account bills every month for years. If most of your revenue is construction, expect to sit high inside the band: a build gallery, a page for each pool type you actually pour, and a plain account of what the months between deposit and first swim look like add up to a serious writing project.
No. Multi-location means a second yard working a second metro, with its own listing, its own reviews, and its own reporting. Six towns on one route is one business with service area pages, and those should follow route density rather than every town you could drive to. Tap solo or growing, whichever matches your crew count.
Earlier than that. This work compounds on a delay, so whatever a homeowner reads in June was being written back when the covers were still on, and building through the dead stretch costs you nothing in booked work. North of the freeze line the opening calendar fills long before anybody wants to swim, and by the time your phone rings in April the choosing is already done. Ads are the exception: they switch on in days.
A cheap plan is not a smaller version of the real thing, it is a different product. It usually means automated reports and no new pages, and when you have four offers to explain, new pages are the whole job. If money is tight, put it into the site and the profile first, then add ongoing work once the route can carry it.
Your call, and this page does not price lead fees. Worth naming what the money buys, though. A shared lead costs the same whether it turns into a single green recovery you never hear about again or an account that rides the truck for years, and nobody can tell you which one it is at the moment the card is charged. A page you own is still working the week you pause everything else.
Yes. The arithmetic runs on your own device as you tap, nothing you select is submitted or stored, and there is no email wall. It is one of more than 50 free tools published at kellywm.com/tools. Turning a band into a real number takes a short conversation about page count and scope. Call or text (407) 694-2055.
What Should You Pay?: full tool page and methodology · Marketing for pool service and construction companies · AI Visibility Checker for Pool Companies · Website Report Card for Pool Companies · Google Business Profile Audit for Pool Companies · Review Response Writer for Pool Companies · All free tools
Send us the quote sitting on your desk and we will name which of your four offers it actually covers, and which one it quietly leaves off. Or start with a free concept mockup of your homepage, yours to keep either way.
Book a free consultation → Or call/text directly: (407) 694-2055Tell us a little about the business and we will come back with an honest read: what we would fix first, what it costs, and whether you need us at all. Prefer to see work before you talk numbers? Get a free homepage mockup, built for your business, yours to keep either way.
Brandon reads every one of these himself. You will hear back shortly with an honest read on what we would do first, what it costs, and whether it is worth it for you.