Porch.com

Porch.com is a Seattle-based company that helps homeowners find contractors to tackle interior, exterior and landscape projects. The service is available across the US, and more than 3 million home professionals have signed up to appear on Porch.com since the company’s founding in 2013. Porch has partnerships with Lowe’s and the Better Business Bureau to help consumers find experienced professionals with BBB ratings.

What sets Porch apart from other home-services platforms is the way it uses data. In addition to seeing finished project photos and finding pros who’ve done projects in your neighborhood, you can create what amounts to a portfolio for your own home that includes a record of your home improvement projects—a handy thing to have when it’s time to sell your home.

Here’s our review of Porch.com. We’d love to hear from you! Share your opinion by writing a review.

Pros:

Porch provides lots of information on its member contractors to help you make a decision about who to contact. When I searched for landscape contractors in my area, I found that each profile listed the average price of the typical home each contractor works on, along with how many years they’ve been in business, customers’ reviews, and costs for completed projects in the contractor’s portfolio. I think the price-range data is a useful tool to avoid mismatches between contractors and homeowners whose budget is much higher or much lower than their typical customers’.

Porch.com is Better Business Bureau-accredited and has a BBB rating of A as of December 2015.

Cons:

If Porch’s popularity with contractors has a downside, it’s overwhelming options. My search for landscape contractors returned more than 1,400 results. Narrowing the search to landscape architects brought the number of contractors down to 121, still a large number. On the plus side, I was able to refine that result to a more manageable half-dozen options by using the top-of-page tools to look for BBB-rated contractors within 25 miles of my home.

Fine print:

Porch does not endorse or guarantee the work done by professionals you find on its platform. If there’s a problem, users are encouraged to leave a review describing the situation on Porch.com. Porch does not guarantee the credentials of the contractors using its service, except in selected cities where the Porch Guarantee pilot program verifies selected contractors.

Cost:

Porch.com is free for homeowners to use.

Best for…

Homeowners who want to ensure a good fit between the contractor and the home project they have in mind; adult children who want to help their parents maintain their homes.