CompaniesCenter · Product & Monetization Direction · August 2026

Find customers. Manage them. Grow the business.

One platform, three levels of value. Free brings the customers, Pro runs the business every day, Store grows it. Simple to understand, hard to leave.

Structure Free · Pro · Store Free Marketplace Pro Business tools (recurring) Store Dev + Marketing services

Jobber gives a business tools but no customers. A directory gives customers but no tools. CompaniesCenter is the only one that gives both, and the customers flow straight into the tools. The provider's pipeline starts full.

That sentence is the whole strategy. Every ops competitor (Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan) sells software to a business that still has to go find its own customers. Every directory (Yelp, Thumbtack) sends leads but leaves the business to run its jobs in a mess of texts, notes, and paperwork. We are the only one that does both, so a marketplace lead lands as a job card, becomes an estimate, becomes a payable invoice, becomes a verified review that wins the next lead. No competitor can copy that loop without first building a marketplace.

So the model is three tiers a provider understands in one breath: Free to get discovered, Pro to run the business, Store to grow it. Do not overload it. Build the tiers deep, not the feature list wide.

01 — The ecosystem

Three tiers, one platform, three revenue engines

Each tier feeds the next. Free fills the marketplace, which fills Pro's pipeline, which qualifies the businesses ready to buy Store services. One funnel, three ways to earn.

Free

$0

Get discovered

  • Business profile + services
  • Service area, map, search
  • Photos & content, cover image
  • Ratings & reviews
  • Messaging with customers

Engine: attracts users

Pro

$— / mo

Run the business, every day

  • Estimates & quotes → PDF
  • Payable invoices
  • Appointments & calendar
  • Client CRM
  • Job pipeline
  • Review requests

Engine: recurring revenue

Store

Quoted

Build & grow the business

  • Website / app / ecommerce dev
  • Web Keep, Web Care plans
  • Marketing (via partner)
  • We own billing + the client
  • Partner executes the work

Engine: high-value services

Pro pricing is left open here on purpose. Set it against what one won job is worth to a provider in the launch city, then test. No number is a commitment.

02 — Free

The marketplace, and it's already built

Free is not a trial. It is genuinely useful on day one, because a useful free tier is what fills the marketplace both sides need. Nearly all of it already ships in the app today.

✓

Shipped today

Business profiles, service listings, service area, map + search, photo galleries with a cover image, ratings and reviews, in-app messaging, follow and save. A business can get discovered and connect with customers without paying a cent, exactly as it should be.

No business is forced to pay to be part of CompaniesCenter. Free earns its keep by building the two-sided liquidity that makes Pro worth paying for.

03 — Pro

Six tools that run the business day to day

Pro is not "pay to rank higher." It is software a provider opens every morning. That is a far stickier reason to subscribe than visibility, and it is the direction to commit to. Six tools, no more, for v1.

Estimates & quotes

Seeded

Customer, services, quantities, prices, tax, discounts, expiry. Export a branded PDF, share it, track Pending / Accepted / Declined, and convert an accepted estimate straight into an invoice.

Invoices

Build first

Logo, business + customer info, line items, tax, total, due date. PDF, shareable, statuses Paid / Unpaid / Overdue. And a "Pay now" link, because we already wired Stripe + Paystack.

Appointments & calendar

Seeded

Organize estimates, jobs, site visits, follow-ups. Customer, address, date, time, service, notes. The booking engine already in the backend is this tool's foundation.

Client CRM

Auto-filled

Name, contact, address, notes, past jobs, estimates, invoices, upcoming appointments. It builds itself: every customer who messages or books a provider becomes a contact automatically.

Job pipeline

The wedge

Lead → Estimate Sent → Approved → Scheduled → In Progress → Completed → Paid. And the "Lead" column starts full, fed by marketplace tasks, proposals, bookings, and first messages.

Review requests

Built, stronger

Job Completed → Request Review. Ours only unlocks from a real completed job via the ServiceCompletion certificate, so reviews can't be faked. A trust moat, not just a nudge.

The loop that is the product

Marketplace leadstarts the pipeline
→
Estimate
→
Invoicepay now
→
Job done
→
Verified reviewwins next lead

↺ stronger profile → more leads → the loop runs again

Do not build all six at once. Build the loop first (pipeline + estimate → payable invoice → completion → verified review). Pipeline and CRM are just views over that loop; calendar already exists via booking.

04 — The unfair advantage

Five ways our platform beats a standalone ops tool

A colleague sketched the Free / Pro / Store spine. These five are where what we have already built makes that spine something Jobber and Housecall structurally cannot match.

The pipeline starts full

Only we can

Every ops tool's "New Lead" is a manual entry box. Ours auto-populates from marketplace activity, a task, a proposal, a booking, a first chat. A tool without a marketplace cannot do this.

Payable invoices, compliance-clean

Rails wired

Stripe + Paystack are already in. An invoice with "Pay now" is a real-world service payment, which Apple and Google exempt from in-app billing. The one payment flow we can run in-app.

Verified reviews

Built

Reviews unlock only from a completed job via the ServiceCompletion certificate. The Job → Review cycle becomes ungameable, and an honest reputation graph is the hardest thing to copy.

CRM that fills itself

Marketplace-fed

Providers never build the database. Marketplace contacts flow in with job history attached, so the customer record exists before the provider lifts a finger.

Store runs on our admin console

Back-office built

Tickets, disputes, notes, audit, RBAC roles, already shipped, are exactly the project-management backbone the Store's Dev + Marketing delivery needs. The partner hand-off is a ticket + assignment flow.

Kill ads and the client paywall

Decision

The colleague's model has neither, and he's right. Provider Pro SaaS is bigger and stickier than ads or a client membership. Keep the client side free, keep AdMob dormant.

05 — Store

Build and grow, with CompaniesCenter in control

Store is separate from Pro and the line is clean: Pro helps a business run; Store helps it grow. Two divisions to start, and we keep the customer relationship in both.

Development

In-house

Websites, apps, ecommerce, landing pages, integrations, maintenance, support, plus the existing Web Keep ($39/mo or $299/yr) and Web Care Core ($199/mo). We own scope, pricing, billing, delivery, and the technical assets.

Marketing

Partner-fulfilled

Customer → CompaniesCenter → buys the service → we assign the account → partner executes. We keep billing, pricing, plans, admin access, quality, and escalations. The partner does the work, never owns the client.

◆

Why control matters

Keeping billing and the customer relationship means we can swap or reduce the marketing partner later, or bring marketing fully in-house, without changing anything the customer sees. The Store is a services business, so sequence it after Pro has real traction, and run its delivery on the admin console we already have.

06 — Payments & store billing

How each dollar is collected, compliantly

One rule governs everything: Apple and Google require their in-app billing for digital purchases made inside the app, and forbid it for real-world goods and services. Split every money line by that test.

Money line Who buys Where Rail
Pro subscription Business (provider) Web checkout Stripe (US) / Paystack (NGN)
Invoice "Pay now" A provider's customer Real-world job Exempt — your processor
Store services Business (provider) Web / invoiced Your processor
Featured / boosts (if used) Provider, in-app iOS / Android Apple IAP + Play Billing

United States

Stripe

Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link, subscriptions, and Stripe Connect for payouts if a job ever settles on-platform. Second option: Braintree/PayPal for PayPal + Venmo.

Africa (NGN)

Paystack

Cards, bank, USSD for Nigeria. Fallback Flutterwave. Powers Pro subscriptions + in-region invoice payments.

Nothing is bypassed today: the standalone web upgrade page and hosted checkout are already wired and store-safe, since the app never links to them. Confirm live App Store / Play rules before launch. Not legal advice.

07 — What we already have

Most of the spine is standing

This is not a cold start. Free is done, Pro is roughly a third seeded, and the Store's back-office plumbing exists. The real net-new build is a short list.

Tier Already built Net-new to build
Free Profiles, services, map/search, gallery, cover image, reviews, chat, follow, saved Nothing. Ship as-is.
Pro Booking (calendar), verified reviews (review request), tasks/proposals (leads), billing rails Estimates, Invoices, CRM, Pipeline
Store Admin console: tickets, disputes, notes, audit, RBAC (the delivery backbone) The sales + partner-assignment motion

08 — Build order

Ship the loop, then widen

Sequence by what compounds. The core loop first, because each stage makes the next one useful. Reframe the provider app as a business dashboard while doing it, which fixes the UX at the same time.

FirstThe loop
  • Invoices (payable, PDF) + Estimates → Invoice conversion.
  • Job pipeline board, with the Lead column auto-fed from marketplace activity.
  • Wire completion → verified review request into the pipeline's last stage.
NextThe views
  • Client CRM as a view over contacts + their jobs/estimates/invoices, auto-populated.
  • Calendar surfaced from the existing booking engine.
  • Provider app reshaped into a Business dashboard (Home = today + pipeline), not a profile with a menu.
ThenStore
  • Store catalogue + purchase → assign → partner executes flow on the admin console.
  • Fold in the existing Web Keep / Web Care recurring products.

The direction

Not another business directory. A place a provider thinks of as: "CompaniesCenter helps me find customers, manage them, run my jobs, and grow my business."

Free attracts. Pro creates recurring revenue and a daily habit. Store creates higher-value revenue when a business is ready to grow. Three engines, one ecosystem, and a loop underneath that no ops tool without a marketplace can copy. Build the loop first, keep the tiers legible, and let the marketplace keep the pipeline full.

Illustrative pricing throughout is for shaping the model, not a commitment, and never presented to users as fact. Store service prices reflect existing Web Keep / Web Care offers.