The Angi alternative: own your leads.
Forge Built AI is the Angi alternative for contractors tired of paying per lead for leads that get sold to their competitors too. Angi rents you leads. Forge builds you a lead engine you own, your ads, your funnel, your data, in six weeks for one flat price. The leads are yours only. Backed by a $50,000 revenue guarantee and built by an operator who runs a $3M HVAC shop.
Angi rents you leads. It does not build you any.
Angi sells you leads one at a time, and the same lead often goes to several contractors at once. You are renting access to demand you never own.
Every lead you buy may have been sold to three other shops, so you are racing them to the phone. The pipeline is not yours. Stop paying and it stops. We build you a lead engine you own: your ads, your funnel, your data, so the leads are yours and nobody else's.
Own the whole system.
Forge builds you a custom back office in six weeks. You own the code, the data, and the integrations. Built to your shop, not a template you bend yourself to fit.
You own it
All the code and all the data are yours. Modify it yourself, hire any developer, or export everything and leave. No license expires. No monthly dependency on us.
Built to your shop
We build around how you actually run jobs. Lead intake, dispatch, follow up, upsell, reporting. Need something the platform does not offer? We build it in instead of waiting on a vendor roadmap.
One flat price
$25,000 for the build. Optional $3,000 a month if you want us handling updates and support, and you can cancel anytime. No forced upgrades, no surprise price hikes.
Rent versus own.
Angi charges per lead and pricing swings by trade and market. This is approximate 2026, not a quote.
| Forge Built | Angi | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost model | One flat build, then the leads are yours | Pay per lead, often resold to several contractors (approx 2026) |
| You own the pipeline | Yes | No, you rent each lead |
| Shared with competitors | No, your leads only | Often, the same lead sells to several shops |
| Leaving later | The engine and data are yours | The leads and pipeline are never yours |
Optional maintenance with Forge is $3,000 a month and you can cancel anytime, so your long term cost is your call, not a locked contract.
When Angi still helps.
Fair is accurate, so here is the honest line.
Early on, when you have no pipeline of your own, buying a few leads from Angi can fill a slow week. It is a rental, not an asset. The move is to build owned lead gen so you stop paying per lead, stop sharing them with competitors, and keep the pipeline.
One shop. One year. Real numbers.
This is one anonymized build, a roughly $3M per year HVAC shop, measured year over year from 2025 to 2026. One shop's results, not an industry average.
Jobs: 159 to 283
Up 78 percent in a year. Same market. The difference was owned data, faster follow up, and a system built to how they run.
Customers: 168 to 256
Up 52 percent. When you can see and track every customer, you stop letting them fall through the cracks.
$26 cost per lead
Their best performing ad creative hit $26 per lead, at a 4.12 percent click through rate, roughly twice a typical contractor rate. This is one creative in one market, not a benchmark for every shop.
A 7x tracking fix
Their Meta pixel was undercounting real conversions by seven times. Because they owned the system, we caught it and fixed it the same day, instead of filing a ticket and waiting.
$50,000, or we keep working.
Within 12 months of your system going live, we guarantee it generates at least $50,000 in new revenue. If it does not, we keep working at no charge or refund the difference. It is a floor, not a ceiling, and there is no other timeline attached beyond that 12 month window.
Angi, answered.
Is Angi worth it?
For filling a slow week when you have no pipeline, it can be. The problem is you pay per lead forever, the same lead often goes to competitors too, and you never own the pipeline. Owned lead gen fixes all three.
How is Forge different from Angi?
We do not sell you leads. We build you a lead engine you own: ads, funnel, tracking, and follow up, so the leads are yours only and you stop paying per contact.
Do my Angi leads really get sold to other contractors?
On shared lead marketplaces, the same lead commonly goes to several pros at once. That is the model. When you own your lead gen, the lead is yours alone.
What does building my own lead gen cost?
The Forge build is $25,000 flat, delivered in six weeks, and you own it. One shop we built for hit $26 per lead on their best creative, in their market, at a 4.12 percent click through rate.
Will I still need to buy leads after?
The point is to stop. You own the engine, so the leads come to you instead of you renting them. Backed by the $50,000 revenue guarantee.