The SoloDesks business profile · Free plan · No builder
A free website for tradespeople, without building a website.
It is called a business profile. One page, at your own link, with your trade, the towns you cover, your prices, photos of your work, your registration numbers and reviews from customers who were actually invoiced. You fill it in from a form, in one sitting. There is nothing to design, nothing to host and nothing to renew.
What it is for: when somebody gets your name from a neighbour, they look you up before they ring. This is what they find. If there is nothing to find, they ring the next name instead.
Works on any phone browser. The link is yours the moment you switch it on.
Here is one, finished
Most software shows you an empty product and asks you to imagine it full. This is a business profile with everything switched on: the trade facts, the service area, the price list, the credentials, the work photos, the reviews and the quote form. Every box on it is a box you get.
The business on it is invented, and the page says so across the top so that nobody can mistake it for a real firm. Nothing else about it is pretend: it is the same page, rendered by the same code, as the one you would have.
Yours will not look like this on the first day, and it would be a poor advert for the thing if we pretended otherwise. The trade facts, the service area, the prices and the photos are one sitting in Settings. The reviews are not: they arrive one at a time, from customers you have invoiced through here, so the page you send in month three is a far better one than the page you send in week one. That is the price of reviews nobody can write for themselves.
Open the example business profile
What you fill in
All of it is a form in Settings, on your phone, in one sitting. There is no page to lay out, no template to choose and nothing to preview until it looks right. This is the whole list.
Who you are and where you work
Business name, trade, the area and the towns you cover, your hours, your callout charge and any guarantee you give. These are the fields a customer scans first, and the ones the page cannot go into Google without.
A headline and an About, in your own words
The only part nobody can write for you, and the part that stops the page reading like every other page in your trade. A few honest sentences is enough.
The questions people ring up and ask
Do you charge to come out. How soon could you start. Who actually turns up. Answer up to six of them in your own words, off a list of suggestions or your own. Free, and it is the part of the page nobody else can copy.
Your services
3 of them on the free plan, names only. Pro lists as many as you like with your prices next to them.
Registration numbers
Gas Safe, NICEIC, TrustMark, Companies House, your insurance. Each one prints with a link to the register it came from, so it is checkable rather than typed.
Photos of your work
Up to 30, on either plan. Job photos you have already taken inside the app can be opted into the gallery instead of being uploaded a second time.
Reviews, which fill themselves in
This is the one box you do not fill. They arrive from the link on a customer's invoice after the job, one at a time, for as long as you keep invoicing through here.
Leave any of it blank and the page simply does not show that part. Nothing is compulsory except the name.
What it does that a website does not
A website you build is a brochure you wrote about yourself. Every word on it is a claim, and a customer knows it. Four things on this page are not claims.
Reviews nobody can wave away
A review can only be left through the link on a customer's own invoice. That means you cannot write one, and neither can anybody who has never had a job off you. It is the difference between five stars and five stars a customer can see the source of.
Registration numbers that go somewhere
Your Gas Safe, TrustMark or Companies House number is printed with a link straight to the register it came from. A customer checks it in one tap instead of taking your word for it, which is the single fastest way to stop looking like a risk.
A quote request that does not get lost
The form at the bottom of the page drops the enquiry into your Leads list inside the app, next to the quote you are about to write from it. Not another email address you check on a Sunday.
A link built to be sent
A QR code for the van, the paperwork and the back of a card, and a share card that fills out properly when the link is pasted into WhatsApp instead of turning up as a bare address nobody taps.
The two halves, and why neither replaces the other
Getting found and being believed are two different jobs, and one free thing does each of them. Most solo trades set up the first and never work out why the calls do not come.
The map
A Google Business Profile
Free, and the first thing to set up. It puts you in the map results that sit above the ordinary links, so somebody searching for a trade near where they live finds you at all. If you have not claimed one, that is a better use of the next hour than anything else on this page.
The page
Your SoloDesks business profile
Also free. A map pin gives somebody a name and a distance. It does not show them the work you finished last month, your registration numbers with a link to the register they came from, what you charge, or reviews from customers who were actually invoiced. This is what they read once they have found you.
They feed each other. The listing gets you seen. The page turns being seen into a phone call. Your listing has a website field sitting empty in it, and putting your profile link in that box joins the two up: from then on somebody who finds you on the map lands somewhere that answers their questions instead of nowhere. Handles at solodesks.com/pro/ are first come, first served, so take your business name while it is there.
Which to set up first, and in what orderWhere to put the link once you have it
A profile nobody has been sent is a page nobody reads. Three places, in the order they are worth doing.
The website field of your Google listing
The one that matters most, because it is the only place on this list that catches somebody who does not have your number yet. That box is empty on most one-person listings.
Everywhere your number already goes
Your text signature, quote and invoice emails, a local Facebook group, the side of the van, the back of a card. The QR code in Settings is the version for anything printed.
In the reply to “have you got a website?”
You have now, and it has your registration numbers and your reviews on it, which the website they were picturing would not have had for months.
Getting it to show up in Google
Your page is a real page at a real address, about a trade in a place, which is exactly the shape of what a customer types. But we do not put a half empty one into the search index. A pile of nearly identical stub pages is bad for the person searching and it drags down everybody else's page on here too, so a profile stays out of our sitemap until there is something on it worth finding.
The bar is not a secret and it is entirely in your hands:
- Your trade and the area you cover. Both, not one.
- Something written in your own words: an About section of 120 characters or more, or a headline of at least 60.
- Something to look at: 3 services listed, 3 photos of your work, or 1 review. Any one of the three.
Settings tells you which of those you are still missing, so it is a checklist rather than a guessing game. Miss the bar and you lose nothing you had: the page still exists, the link still works and the QR code still works. It just is not put forward to be indexed.
The part other people will not tell you. Clearing the bar makes the page eligible. It does not make it rank. Where Google puts a page is Google's decision, and anybody selling you a position is selling you something they do not control. What we can promise is that the page is real, quick, and readable by the things doing the ranking.
What free covers, and where it stops
The trust half of the page is free, all of it. What you pay for is the shop window: your prices in public, your colour on the button, and our name off the bottom.
| Free | Pro, £12/mo | |
|---|---|---|
| Your own link and QR code | Yes | Yes |
| Trade, area, towns, hours, callout, guarantee | Yes | Yes |
| Registration numbers, linked to the register | Yes | Yes |
| Verified reviews from your invoices | Yes | Yes |
| Questions customers ask, answered by you | Yes | Yes |
| Quote requests into your Leads list | Yes | Yes |
| Photos of your work | Up to 30 | Up to 30 |
| Services listed | 3, names only | Unlimited, with your prices |
| Facebook, Instagram and website links | No | Yes |
| Your own brand colour on the call button | No | Yes |
| The "SoloDesks" line at the bottom | Shown | Removed |
The profile comes with the rest of the app, which is where the page gets its reviews from in the first place. What the free plan covers everywhere else, and full pricing.
Do you still need a proper website?
Sometimes, genuinely. If you sell products, run a team of six, or you want to write about jobs for years to pull in search traffic of your own, build a website. Nothing here replaces that.
What most one-person trades actually need is somewhere to send a customer who already has the number and wants to know you are real before they let you through the front door. That is one page, and building a whole site to hold it costs money and a fortnight of evenings. Worse, on the day it goes live it has no reviews on it at all, and the reviews are the only part a customer reads properly.
Nobody can tell you how many trades have one
Two official surveys have counted, and they disagree. DSIT puts sole traders with a website at 76% in 2025 to 2026, which leaves 24% without one. ONS put businesses with fewer than ten employees at 41.1% back in 2019. That is 42.9 points between two arms of the state, and neither has addressed the other.
We read both out of the sources ourselves and published the working, including the explanation we wanted to make and could not stand up. Neither survey can tell you the figure for the trades specifically, which is the number we are measuring next.
Read the research- Do You Need a Website as a Tradesperson?
Probably not, and rarely first. What a customer checks before they call, setting up a Google Business Profile, and whether the paid directories are worth it.
Questions people actually ask
Is the business profile actually free?
Yes. Every account gets one on the free plan, with no card and no trial clock. The paid plan (£12 a month) adds your prices, your brand colour, social links and removes the SoloDesks line at the bottom.
Do I need to buy a domain name?
No. Your page lives at solodesks.com/pro/ followed by a handle you pick, usually your business name. There is nothing to buy and nothing to forget to renew. It is a page you send rather than a replacement for a site with your own name on the front, so if you already have a domain, keep it and point people here for the reviews and the quote form.
Do I still need a Google Business Profile?
Yes, and set that up first if you have not got one. It is free and it does the finding: the map results people get for a trade near where they live are built from listings, not from pages. Your business profile does the deciding, which is what somebody does after they have found you. Paste your profile link into the website field of your listing and the two work as one thing.
Is my handle reserved for me?
Handles at solodesks.com/pro/ are first come, first served, and taking yours costs nothing. A few are kept back for the example page and for parts of the site, and you will be told at the point you pick one rather than after you have printed it on a van.
Can I have the business profile without being in Google?
Yes, and they are two separate switches. Making it public gives you a link that works for anybody you send it to. Going into the search index is a second thing, with a bar to clear, and plenty of people only ever want the first.
Where do the reviews come from?
The link on a customer's own invoice, after the job. That is the only way one can be left, which is what makes them worth reading. You cannot add them yourself and neither can anyone who has not been invoiced by you.
Can I put my own domain name on it?
No, and there is no way to point one at it. If having your own name in the address bar is what you are really after, that is a fair reason to build a proper site and this is the wrong thing for you. Most people send this link in a text message or print it as a QR code, where nobody reads the address at all.
What happens to my page if I stop paying?
It stays up and nothing is deleted. It falls back to what the free plan shows: the first three service names with the prices hidden, no social links, the standard colour on the call button and our name back at the bottom. Everything you typed is still there, so if you start paying again the prices and the colour come back as they were.
I have got a Facebook page already. Is this any different?
Yes, and they are not rivals. A Facebook page is good at being found and poor at answering the question a customer is actually asking, which is whether you are real and registered. There is nowhere on it for a Gas Safe number linked to the register, a callout rate or a guarantee, and a recommendation on it can be left by anybody, including people who have never had a job off you. Keep the page. Send this link to the ones who are deciding.
What do I need to hand before I start?
Your trade, the towns you cover, your hours, what you charge to come out and any registration numbers. Photos of finished work help a lot and can be added from your phone whenever you like. It is all form fields, so filling in half of it and coming back later costs you nothing.
I already pay for Checkatrade. Is this instead of that?
They do a different job. A directory sells you leads and keeps the reviews on its own site. This is a page you own, at a link you control, with reviews tied to your invoices. It does not find you customers. Plenty of people run both.
Can I take it down?
One switch in Settings, and the page is gone. Nothing else in your account changes and none of your quotes, invoices or clients are touched.
Have a look at one before you decide.
Nothing to install, no card, and you can switch the page off again in one tap if you hate it.