FixQuotes vs Checkatrade for landlords

Checkatrade is the best-known trade directory in the UK. Tradespeople pay to be listed, Checkatrade runs vetting checks (identity, insurance and relevant qualifications), and homeowners search the directory by trade and area, read reviews, and contact the trades they like directly.

Its biggest strengths are scale and reviews. There are tens of thousands of listed members and a deep, long-running base of public customer feedback, which is genuinely useful when you want to judge a specific local trade on their track record before you call them.

If you enjoy being hands-on — reading reviews, picking the firms you like the look of, and managing the back-and-forth — a directory model suits you well.

FixQuotes is not a directory. You don't search and pick — you describe the job once (or forward your tenant's message), and we do the sourcing. We write the job up properly, dispatch it to vetted local trades for that job type, and return their quotes to you side by side.

Because every trade quotes against the same brief, the prices come back comparable: same assumed scope, same access notes, with inclusions, exclusions, call-out fees and VAT laid out the same way. That's the part a directory leaves to you.

It's also built specifically for rented property. The brief flags the compliance angle automatically — Gas Safe for gas work, Part P for fixed electrical, EICR and CP12 timing — so the quotes you get back already account for what a landlord legally needs.

If you already have time to do the legwork and want to choose the firm yourself based on their reviews, Checkatrade's directory is hard to beat — it has the volume of members and the depth of feedback to support that.

It's also the better fit if you want to build a direct, ongoing relationship with one specific local trade across many jobs, rather than re-comparing quotes each time.

FixQuotes makes more sense when your time is the constraint: you manage several properties, you don't want to chase four trades for one leak, and you want the quotes to arrive already comparable so the decision is quick.

It's also the stronger option for compliance-driven jobs — EICRs, gas safety certificates, post-Awaab damp work — where the brief needs to specify the right qualification and scope, and where getting quotes you can genuinely put side by side matters most. Whichever route you take, the legal checks are the same: gas engineers must appear on the Gas Safe Register, and fixed electrical work sits under Part P of the Building Regulations.