HelpSorted is a South-East Queensland trade directory. Not a lead-broker. Not a bidding platform. Not a referral racket. A list of tradies, organised by suburb and category, with real reviews and a private contact path that goes to the one business you picked.
Lead-broker sites take a customer’s job request and broadcast it to 3 or 4 tradies at once. Everyone pays for the lead. First to call wins the job, the rest pay for nothing. That cost gets baked into the quote you receive. You pay the broker tax even when you didn’t know there was a broker.
Tradies pay either nothing (free tier) or a flat monthly subscription ($54 to $299) for the convenience features. Either way the price is fixed regardless of how many enquiries come through. The tradie doesn’t need to mark up the job to cover broker costs, because there are no broker costs. You get a quote that’s the actual price of the work.
Who’s behind it
Founder, HelpSorted
I built HelpSorted after watching too many Australian tradies and service businesses pay $25 to $100 per lead to platforms that owned the relationship and tightened the screws every renewal. I wanted a directory where the tradie owned their listing, customers reached them through a private contact path (callback request on the free tier, masked SMS on the paid tiers), and nobody bid for placement. That’s HelpSorted.
A directory. One page per tradie. Real reviews. ABN verified against the Australian Business Register. Free for customers forever. Free listing for the tradie too, with optional paid tiers ($54 to $299/mo) for the convenience features. No per-lead fees on any tier.
Starting in South-East Queensland because it’s where I live and where I can answer the phone if something breaks. I also run Bantam, the wider SaaS portfolio HelpSorted sits inside (TapText, LoyalText, RewardLoop, ShiftReady). Not VC-funded. Not racing to exit. Built to work in ten years.
Email me directly: hello@helpsorted.com.au. Same business day reply.
Five things HelpSorted will never do. If we ever break one, we’ve stopped being HelpSorted. These are the lines.
Tradies pay a flat monthly listing fee. That covers every enquiry that comes through their page. We don’t sell your call. We don’t auction it. We don’t charge the tradie per click, per quote, or per booking.
Tradies can reply publicly to any review. They can’t take one down. Not by paying us. Not by appealing it. The only reviews removed are ones that break our policy (defamation, off-topic, fake), and the decision is logged.
Your enquiry goes to the one business you picked, never broadcast, never resold, never handed to advertisers. Inbound messages auto-delete after 90 days. Customers on paid-tier listings get a masked SMS number so the business never sees their real phone unless they share it.
Tradies on paid tiers can cancel from a button in their dashboard. No 12-month lock-in. No exit fee. No phone call to a retention team. Your listing reverts to the free tier and you stay searchable.
The only way HelpSorted stays HelpSorted is if it stays independent. We won’t take a buyout from a lead-broker, a marketing aggregator, or any platform whose business model is selling your call. If that ever becomes the only path, we close the doors instead. The pledges are the product.
How the directory is run
Listings are seeded from the Australian Business Register. Every claimed listing has its ABN checked in real time. Active plus matching name = the Verified ABN badge appears. Inactive or mismatched = manual review within 24 hours.
Real customers only. Most reviews come from people who contacted the provider through HelpSorted and carry a Verified customer badge. We don’t pay for reviews, write them ourselves, or remove honest negative reviews at a provider’s request.
A listing is removed when the business closes or loses its ABN, the business asks us to remove it, a complaint survives our review, or the business consistently fails to reply to customer enquiries.
Try the provider first. If that fails, email hello@helpsorted.com.au and we’ll mediate where we can. Trade-specific complaints escalate to the relevant licensing body (QBCC in QLD, Service NSW, VBA in VIC). Full paths on the Disputes page.
Higher-tier subscribers get top placement in their suburb plus category, with a Featured badge that’s always visible. Full ranking disclosure at /paid-placement-disclosure. Nothing buried.
The mate who figured it out
first.
What HelpSorted is built to be · for both sides of the enquiry
Looking for a tradie? Looking to list yours?
Homeowners: free, forever. Tradies: free listing too, with optional tiers $54 to $299/mo for convenience features. Cancel any time, no per-lead surprises.
