The directory built for the towns big platforms forgot.

Mission

There are roughly 19,500 incorporated places in the United States. About 13,700 of them have populations between 500 and 60,000 — the towns where most Americans actually live. National platforms like Angi, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor, Bark, and Yelp were built for big metros and pay-per-lead economics. They don't work well in towns where there's one good plumber, two good electricians, and a community that already knows their names.

Our mission is simple: make the trusted local service businesses in small-town America easy to find — without selling phone numbers, charging per click, or putting an app between a neighbor and a tradesperson. Free for residents to search. Free for businesses to be listed. Flat-rate Premium ($49/month) and an optional one-time $995 website package for the small share of pros who want extras.

Who we are

Great Local Pros is owned and operated by Pithe Digital Group LLC, a limited liability company registered in the state of Oregon. We are an independent small business — not venture-funded, not owned by a holding company, not subject to outside investor pressure to maximize per-customer revenue. That independence is the reason we can credibly commit to a flat-rate model. A company that has taken $700 million in venture capital (Thumbtack) or that trades publicly (Angi, NASDAQ: ANGI) is structurally compelled to grow extraction-per-user. We are not.

You can reach our team at info@greatlocalpros.com. A real human reads every email. We typically reply within one business day. Mailing entity: Pithe Digital Group LLC, registered in Oregon. For takedown requests, include the business name plus city and state — we honor takedowns within 48 hours, no questions asked.

How businesses get listed: our standards

We don't list just anyone. A business has to apply and meet our 8 listing standards before it goes live: a real local business, an active license where the state requires one, liability insurance for work on homes, and a phone that gets answered within 1 business day. Every pro also agrees to give written quotes, ask for fair deposits and show up when they say.

How we check: we look up the license and business records on official state websites, ask for proof of insurance when the trade needs it, and call or text the business. We put the license number and the date we checked on the pro's page, and we re-check at least once a year or whenever someone reports a problem. If a business stops meeting our standards, we remove it.

Older listings marked "Not verified"

Before we set these standards, we added basic info (name, phone and website) for some businesses in a few pilot towns, using public sources like the business's own website, directories and state filings. Those listings are labeled Not verified. We never publish street addresses on them, because many trades work from home. Owners can claim the listing and get checked for free, or ask us to remove it. We handle both within 48 hours.

Editorial standards

Great Local Pros is a directory, not a journalism property, but we hold the content we publish to a documented standard. This is what that standard looks like in practice:

• No paid placement of listings. Free and Premium listings on each city page are organized by trade, then by listing tier and recency. Position is not for sale.
• No fake or paid reviews — full stop. The Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR Part 465 rule, which took effect in 2024, bans fake reviews, paid reviews, and review suppression. We comply. We will publish zero reviews until we have real verified ones from real customers, even though this hurts our short-term traffic and conversion.
• No paid press, no "reputation management." We do not accept payment to remove negative reviews, to suppress unfavorable mentions, or to feature a business higher than its peers.
• Every listing is labeled. Businesses we checked show what we checked and when. A few older listings from public sources are marked Not verified.
• Plain-language corrections policy. If we publish something inaccurate, email info@greatlocalpros.com with the URL and the correction. We correct or remove within 48 hours, and we note the change publicly when the correction is material.
• Conflict-of-interest disclosure. Pithe Digital Group LLC has no ownership stake in any listed business and accepts no commissions, referral fees, or kickbacks from listed businesses. Our only revenue from businesses is the $49/month Premium subscription and the $995 website package — both publicly priced, neither tied to a specific listing's editorial treatment.

Privacy practices, in plain English

We do not run a behavioral advertising network. No Google Ads pixel, no Meta pixel, no third-party retargeting tags, no cross-site tracking. We do not sell, rent, or share visitor data with advertisers or data brokers. Our pages are simple static HTML. When you tap a phone number, your phone dials it directly, and we never see, store, or proxy your number. Full details, including your rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act and the EU General Data Protection Regulation, are in our Privacy Policy.

How we make money

Two revenue lines, both public:

• Premium listings — $49 per month, flat. Each Premium listing gets featured placement in its category/town, up to 8 photos, a 500-character description, a direct-to-business lead form, customer review collection, and full schema markup for richer search results. Only one Premium slot per category per town. Cancel any time from email, no contract, no exit fee.
• Done-for-you website package — $995 one-time. A single-page professional website for a small local service business, including copywriting, photo selection, mobile-responsive design, and basic on-page SEO. Optional $29/month hosting; optional $15/year domain. Optional $149/year annual update plan.

We do not charge per lead, per click, per call, or per inquiry — ever. Our cost to serve an individual visitor is essentially zero (simple static pages), so we don't need to extract value from each one. The business model works at any scale because the infrastructure scales for free.

What we are not

• Not a contractor. We don't do the work, and we don't employ, train or manage the pros we list.
• Not part of your deal. Any quote, contract or payment is between you and the business. We don't take or hold money for jobs.
• Not a guarantee. We check businesses before we list them, but a license or insurance policy can lapse after we check. Always look up the license yourself and get a written quote before work starts.
• Not a lead-gen platform. We don't route your job to several businesses. You pick who to call.
• Not a review aggregator. We don't import reviews from Google, Yelp or anywhere else.

The full legal version is in our Terms of Use.

Why this design, why now

Pay-per-lead platforms have drawn years of complaints from both contractors and homeowners. In 2025, a group of service pros filed a proposed class action claiming Thumbtack charged them for low-quality or fake leads (Turbin v. Thumbtack, N.D. Cal.). Houzz faces a 2025 proposed class action over yearly auto-renewals (M.D. Fla.). These are claims, not court rulings, but they show the frustration we are built to fix.

In other words: the old model — extract money from contractors per lead, ignore towns under 60,000, sell the customer's phone number to whoever pays most — is collapsing. Great Local Pros is what happens when you start from scratch with the opposite assumptions: serve small towns first, charge a flat rate, never sell a phone number, and let the directory itself be the value proposition rather than a wrapper around an auction.

Reach out

Questions, corrections, partnership inquiries, press, or just to say hi: info@greatlocalpros.com. We answer our own email. See also our Contact page, How it works, and List your business pages.

Page last reviewed: 2026-05-26 · Editorial standards version 1.0 · Operated by Pithe Digital Group LLC (Oregon)