Before Affly opened to the public, a small group of UK businesses were invited to test it. Real businesses. Real budgets. Real leads going through to real phones. The brief was simple: keep using whatever you're using now - Bark, Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Google Ads, agency-managed campaigns - and run Affly alongside it for 60 days. Then tell us, honestly, what you saw.
This is that story. Six of the businesses that took part agreed to share what happened, in their own words. They run roofs, install boilers, fit new front teeth, take on personal injury cases, lay driveways, and sell windows. Different industries, different price points, different problems. But the pattern they describe is almost identical.
Some names and identifying details have been adjusted at the request of the businesses involved, but every figure quoted came directly from their dashboards.
Why we ran a closed trial first
Most lead platforms launch by selling to as many businesses as possible from day one. We didn't want to do that. Lead generation is too important to most UK SMEs - it pays the wages, it keeps the diary full - for the first version of Affly to be anything other than properly tested.
So we picked 34 businesses, across the categories where shared leads cause the most pain: trades, home improvement, professional services, dental, and legal. Each one was already actively spending on leads elsewhere. We didn't ask them to switch. We just asked them to add Affly into their mix and tell us, on the record, whether the difference was real.
What follows is what came back.
1. Pete - Roofing contractor, Greater Manchester
Pete had been on Bark and Checkatrade for years. The leads were cheap on paper but the same enquiry was always being sold to four or five other roofers in the area, so he was usually the third or fourth call the prospect was receiving.
2. Sarah - Independent dental practice, Leeds
Sarah's practice had been running Google Ads with an agency for two years. They worked - but she was paying close to £90 per cosmetic enquiry and even more for implant leads, with no real visibility into what was being filtered out before it hit her inbox.
3. Martin - Boiler & heating installer, Birmingham
Martin had been buying Checkatrade leads for £5 a pop for years and accepted that he'd be one of four installers contacting the same homeowner each time. Conversion sat at around 1 in 12. He nearly didn't bother with the trial.
4. A personal injury firm, Manchester
A mid-sized personal injury firm running paid case acquisition through two agencies. Their cost per signed case file had crept past £450 over the previous twelve months and they were starting to run out of channels to test.
5. Gary - Driveway & patio specialist, Glasgow
Gary was getting most of his leads from Yell and MyBuilder - cheap, but more than half were either out of his service area or so price-led they were never going to book. He estimated he was wasting two hours a day on tyre-kicker calls.
6. A window installation business, Bristol
A 12-fitter window installer running an in-house sales team off bought lead lists. The data was getting tired, contact rates had dropped under 30%, and the team was burning out chasing numbers that didn't connect.
What every trial business agreed on
We expected the verticals to behave differently. Roofing is not dental. A boiler swap is not a personal injury case. But once we lined up the trial reports side by side, the same five things came up in nearly every conversation:
- The phone gets answered. When a lead has verified their own number with a one-time code seconds before it lands in your dashboard, they answer. That alone removes the single biggest source of wasted time in shared-lead lead gen.
- You're not the fourth call. Trial businesses kept describing the same feeling: "the prospect actually wanted to talk to me." That's exclusivity working as designed - one lead, one business, no race.
- Criteria filtering removes the rubbish. Set your radius, your service type, your minimum job size, and the platform respects it. No more arguing about postcodes that aren't yours or jobs you'd never quote on.
- The numbers stop being a black box. Every lead, every cost, every status update visible in one place. Several trial businesses said this was the first time they could actually tell their accountant what they'd spent per booked job.
- Time saved is the silent ROI. Almost everyone mentioned it. Less quoting against four other firms. Less chasing dead phone numbers. More time in front of customers who'd actually verified they wanted to talk.
The headline finding from the trial: across 34 businesses, 1,200+ leads, and six different verticals, the businesses that ran Affly alongside their existing channels saw conversion lift in every single case. Not one trial business reported a worse result than their previous lead source. The smallest gain was 1.6x. The biggest was 4.1x.
Why Affly produced these results
The trial wasn't magic. The mechanics behind it are deliberately boring - and that's the point.
Every lead is exclusive. Affly sends each enquiry to one business only. There is no version of the platform where five roofers, four installers, or three solicitors get the same name. That single design choice eliminates the entire shared-lead arms race that tools like Bark, Checkatrade, MyBuilder, and Yell are built around. We covered the wider model in detail in our guide on exclusive leads vs shared leads.
Every lead is OTP-verified. Before a lead is delivered, the prospect confirms their phone number using a one-time code. Bots can't do that. Form-fillers using fake numbers can't do that. The result is a contact rate that sits between 70% and 90% across the trial - roughly double what most businesses were used to.
Every lead matches your criteria. Service type, location radius, budget band - you set the rules, and leads outside those rules don't enter your dashboard. No more paying for £200 jobs when you only quote on £2,000+ jobs.
You only pay for delivered leads. No monthly retainer. No subscription. No "minimum spend." If we don't deliver leads that match your criteria, you don't pay. That's the whole pricing model. You can read the full breakdown in what is pay per lead.
Affiliates run the traffic. Affly is a marketplace. Vetted UK affiliates run the campaigns and earn 80% of the cost-per-lead on every approved lead they generate. That alignment means traffic quality is permanently in their interest as well as yours - nobody on the affiliate side benefits from sending you a fake number.
How the trial led to where we are now
The trial closed in early 2026. Every business in it was offered the option to continue post-launch with the same rates they'd been on during the closed phase. Most did. Several have since materially increased their lead caps as their pipelines have grown.
What's now public is the same platform those businesses tested - nothing was changed for the public launch other than opening the doors. The verification flow, the exclusivity model, the dashboard, the dispute system, the criteria controls: all of it is the version that produced the results above.
If you're reading this because you've been quietly fed up with shared leads, lazy agencies, or cold-list dialling, the most useful thing we can tell you is what every trial business eventually told us: don't switch overnight. Run it alongside what you're already doing for 30 to 60 days. Compare the cost per booked job. Then decide.
Frequently asked questions
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