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Pay per lead means you are billed every time a homeowner submits a form, whether or not that person ever answers the phone. Pay per appointment means the appointment fee is billed when a qualified homeowner is booked on your calendar. For epoxy and polyaspartic contractors, the choice comes down to one question: who does the calling, qualifying, and booking that turns a lead into an estimate?
How pay per lead works
You agree a price per lead, the provider sends leads, and you are invoiced per lead. Prices run roughly $30 to $120 for shared marketplace leads and $15 to $45 for exclusive Meta leads, per the ranges in our garage floor coating lead cost guide.
The model is simple and it is a perfectly good deal under one specific condition: your shop can call every lead inside a minute and follow up five times over three days. Our benchmarks show roughly 90% of homeowners answer at that speed and 60 to 70% of leads turn into booked estimates. Call from the jobsite four hours later and both numbers fall through the floor.
What you own under pay per lead: the phone, the follow-up, the calendar, the no-shows, and the cost of every lead that was never going to book. Between 30 and 40% of leads will not become an estimate no matter how well you work them, and you pay for those at full price.
Where it breaks for coating contractors: you are on a garage floor with a grinder running. Leads arriving between 9am and 4pm are exactly the ones you cannot answer, and they are also the majority of them. This is the single most common reason coating contractors conclude that "Meta leads do not work," when the real issue is documented in why floor coating ads stop working.
How pay per appointment works
You agree a price per booked estimate. The provider runs the campaigns, calls every lead, qualifies the homeowner, and books a time onto your calendar. You are invoiced the appointment fee when an estimate is booked.
Appointly prices this as $125 to $175 per booked estimate, set per client, invoiced separately from ad spend, which you fund at cost with no markup. Before booking, every homeowner is qualified on intent: the project goal, the look and material they want, and a real timeline. What decides whether you pay comes after the estimate. After every estimate you grade the appointment in the Appointly app. Grade it a C and tell us what was wrong, such as an unqualified homeowner or a service you do not offer, and you do not pay for it: the fee is credited automatically to your next appointment. A no-show is credited automatically to your next appointment.
What you own under pay per appointment: showing up on time and closing the job. That is the whole list.
Where it breaks: if you cannot run the estimates. A provider booking 25 appointments into a calendar that can absorb 12 is doing you harm, not good. Volume should be set to your crew's real capacity, which is the exercise in how many floor coating jobs one crew can do.
Side by side
| Pay per lead | Pay per appointment | |
|---|---|---|
| Billed when | A form is submitted | A qualified estimate is confirmed |
| Typical price | $15 to $45 exclusive, $30 to $120 shared | $125 to $175 per booked estimate, plus ad spend you fund at cost |
| Who calls the homeowner | You | The provider |
| Fee for leads that never book | The full lead price | No appointment fee |
| Speed to lead depends on | Your availability | The provider's team |
| No-show risk | Yours | A credit toward your next appointment, if the provider offers it |
| Best fit | Shops with a dedicated setter | Owner-operators in the field all day |
The per-unit prices are not comparable and quoting them against each other is how contractors talk themselves into the wrong model. A lead is a phone number. An appointment is a confirmed estimate with the calling, the follow-up, and the scheduling already done. If you want them on the same axis, convert both to cost per qualified estimate, which is the calculation in cost per qualified estimate.
Why this decision hits epoxy contractors differently
Three things about coating work change the math compared to a lower-ticket trade.
Ticket values are high. A garage floor runs $3,500 to $8,000 depending on system and size. When expected revenue per booked estimate sits north of $1,200, the per-unit price matters far less than one extra floor a month. What actually moves your year is how many qualified estimates you get in front of, and whether they show.
The install window is unforgiving. Most coating crews install during the exact hours homeowners submit forms. There is no version of this where the owner grinding a floor also answers inside 60 seconds. Either you employ somebody to do it or you buy the outcome. Our in-house setter comparison puts real numbers on that choice.
Seasonality swings hard in cold markets. Under pay per lead, a slow February still bills you for every lead that goes nowhere. Under pay per appointment, a slow month means fewer booked estimates and fewer appointment fees, which matters when you are pacing the season the way our winter marketing plan describes.
Four questions to ask before signing either one
Is this exclusive, and at the lead level or the market level?
A lead sold only to you still leaves you bidding against a competitor the same provider runs campaigns for. Ask how many coating contractors they work with in your market and get the answer in writing. The distinction is unpacked in exclusive vs shared floor coating leads.
What exactly qualifies as billable?
Under pay per lead, is a wrong number billable? Under pay per appointment, does an appointment count if the homeowner rents? Write the definition down before money moves.
What is the credit policy?
No-shows happen in this trade no matter how well a provider confirms. Ask what is credited and under what conditions. At Appointly, a no-show is credited automatically to your next appointment, and any appointment you grade a C in the Appointly app (with a note on what was wrong) is not paid for, because you should not pay for an estimate you could not run.
Who owns the Meta ad account?
Providers differ here. Appointly runs campaigns from our own Meta ad account and Business Manager, so you never set one up, hand over logins, or manage a campaign, and you own everything we build for you. Other providers build inside your account. Neither is wrong, but you should know which one you are agreeing to, and what happens to the campaigns if you part ways.
So which one should you pick?
Pick pay per lead if you employ someone whose actual job is the phone, they cover evenings and Saturdays, and you want the lowest possible unit cost in exchange for working every lead yourself.
Pick pay per appointment if your crew is in the field all day, your ticket values are high enough that a confirmed estimate is worth more than a cheap phone number, and you would rather buy a number of estimates you can plan a month around. Most single-crew and two-crew coating companies belong here, because the cheaper model quietly assumes an employee they do not have.
If you already have that person and they are good, pay per lead will beat pay per appointment on unit cost. Be honest about whether you actually have them, or whether the phone is being answered from a jobsite three hours late.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between pay per lead and pay per appointment?
Pay per lead bills you every time a homeowner submits a form, whether or not they answer the phone or ever book. Pay per appointment bills its fee when a qualified homeowner is booked on your calendar, so there is no appointment fee for leads that never book.
Is pay per appointment more expensive than pay per lead?
Per unit, yes. A booked estimate costs more than the $15 to $45 an exclusive lead runs. On a like-for-like basis the gap narrows sharply, because only 60 to 70% of well-worked leads become estimates and somebody has to be paid to do that calling, following up, and scheduling.
Which model is better for an epoxy garage floor contractor?
Pay per appointment suits most epoxy contractors, because coating crews install during the same hours homeowners submit forms and cannot answer inside a minute. Pay per lead is the better deal for shops that already employ a dedicated appointment setter covering evenings and weekends.
Do I need my own Meta ad account to work with Appointly Solutions?
No. We run the campaigns from our own Meta ad account and Business Manager. You never create an account, share logins, or manage a campaign. You own everything we build for you: the campaigns, the creative, the audiences, and every homeowner record. If you leave, it is still yours.
Want to see which model fits your shop?
Book a strategy call. We will look at who answers your phone today, what your crew can install, and tell you honestly whether pay per appointment beats what you are already running.
About the author
Patrick Mietka
Cofounder, Appointly Solutions
Patrick runs the Meta ad campaigns and the numbers behind every Appointly client. He has managed lead generation and appointment booking for floor coating and home service contractors across the US, and writes about what actually turns ad spend into booked estimates.
More about the Appointly team