Marketplaces and directories are useful, and we are not about to pretend otherwise. But a dog groomer who only exists inside one app is one policy change away from a quiet week, and pays a slice of every job for the privilege of being found.
Renting a profile is not the same as owning an address
Inside an app you fill in the fields you are given. Your services look like everyone else's services because the layout is the same for all of you, and the ranking that decides who gets seen is not something you can appeal.
On your own domain you decide what goes first. A plumber can put emergency call-outs at the top; a groomer can lead with breed-specific pricing. The page is arranged around how your customers actually choose.
Your domain, your email, your data
You register the domain or bring the one you already have. We recognise most domain providers and show you exactly which DNS records to add, line by line, so pointing it here takes minutes rather than an evening.
Your email address on that domain stays with your existing provider and keeps working. Your customer list, bookings and enquiries stay exportable. Nothing here is designed to be difficult to leave, because a site you cannot leave is not really yours.
Nobody takes a commission on a customer who already knows you
The regular who books you every six weeks did not need finding again. When that booking arrives through a platform, the fee is charged anyway, on work you had already earned.
On your own site the same booking costs the same as all the others: nothing beyond the subscription. A cleaning firm with forty regulars notices this within a month. Two extra jobs a month covers the whole plan, and the regulars are pure gain.
Owning it should not mean running a server
Owning your site does not mean becoming your own IT department. Managed hosting is part of every plan: servers, monitoring and updates are ours, and you install nothing. The HTTPS certificate is issued and renewed automatically, so the padlock never lapses.
Backups are taken nightly, and every night the restore is tested, so we know the copies can actually be read back. Security patching is our work, not a task on your list. You get the ownership without the maintenance that usually comes attached.
When a listing is still worth keeping
Keep the directory profile. Being in two places is better than one, and for a new business a marketplace can be the fastest way to a first booking. We would rather say that than pretend a website replaces every source of work.
What changes is where the repeat trade goes. Put your own address on the van, the invoice and the receipt, and returning customers stop travelling through a middleman. The listing becomes one channel among several instead of the only door.