Google Ads vs hipages for Electricians: Which Gets You Cheaper Jobs?

In our worked example, a booked job costs about the same either way at the start: about $240 to $300 in hipages leads or $200 to $320 in Google Ads clicks. Google Ads gets cheaper per job once your website, call tracking and negative keywords are set up. Every lead there is yours alone. hipages is cheaper to start, with plans from under $69 a month and no website needed. I run Google Ads for tradies, so I have a side here. I’ve kept the maths plain so you can check it against your own numbers.

Google Ads vs hipages for electricians: side by side

Here is how the two compare on the things that change what you pay per job. The cost per booked job rows use the worked example further down.

What Google Ads clicks cost for electricians

These are average cost-per-click and monthly search figures for Australia from Google’s keyword data, pulled through DataForSEO in November 2026. Your suburb and your competitors will move them up or down.

• “electrician near me”: 40,500 searches a month, $23.56 average click
• “emergency electrician near me”: 1,300 searches a month, $41.35 average click
• “after hours electrician”: 390 searches a month, $37.90 average click
• “switchboard upgrade”: 880 searches a month, $21.30 average click
• “ev charger installation”: 2,900 searches a month, $15.38 average click
• “solar battery installation”: 2,400 searches a month, $24.89 average click

Emergency and after-hours searches cost the most because the person needs someone now and often wants the first sparky who answers. That is also why they suit Google Ads. Someone with no power at 9pm will often ring straight away rather than post a job and wait for quotes.

What a booked job costs: a worked example

This is an example, not a client result. Swap in your own numbers.

hipages

Say a lead costs $60. Not every lead hires anyone, and you’re up against up to two others, so tradies tell us they win about one in four or five. That puts $240 to $300 of lead credits on each job you book. Across the $30 to $90 range from our own hipages review, that’s about $120 to $450 a job.

Those figures are per job. hipages’ own average subscriber pays about $206 a month (about $2,475 over the year to June 2026), so a heavy user spends far more than average.

Google Ads

Say your average click costs $20. If 1 in 8 clicks rings or fills in your form, each lead costs $160. Say you book 1 in 2, since no one else got the lead. That is $320 a job. Get your site good enough that 1 in 5 clicks calls you, and it drops to $100 a lead and $200 a job.

On hipages, the price per job is mostly set for you. On Google Ads, a better website, tighter keywords and fast call-backs keep pushing it down. If you hire someone to run it, add their fee. Our Google Ads cost guide breaks down spend and fees in more detail.

Job value changes the answer

Lead cost only matters next to what the job is worth. As an example, if a switchboard upgrade earns you $2,000, a $300 lead cost is fine either way. If a job is a $250 power point, the same lead cost is more than the whole job. Before you pick a channel, write down your average job value for each type of work you want more of.

When hipages is the better choice

• You have no website yet. Google Ads sends people to a page. Without one that takes calls, you pay for clicks that go nowhere.
• You have no time to manage ads. hipages needs you to quote and reply. It doesn’t need you to check search terms every week.
• Your budget is tiny. A small plan gets you some leads. Under about $500 a month, Google Ads struggles to collect enough clicks to learn what works.
• You’re new in town. A few hipages jobs can get you your first local reviews while you build your own channel.

When Google Ads is the better choice

• You want emergency and after-hours work. Those callers often want someone now, so showing up first matters.
• You want bigger jobs. Switchboard upgrades, EV chargers and battery installs are searched for by name, so you can bid on exactly the work you want.
• You’re tired of quoting against two other sparkies. In our experience, a lead that came only to you closes more often, with less haggling on price.
• You want to keep the customer. They found your business name, saved your number and can ring you direct next time.

Some electricians run both for a while: hipages to keep the diary full and Google Ads building underneath. Once ads are booking jobs at a cost you’re happy with, the hipages plan becomes optional.

What you need before Google Ads works

If you tried Google Ads and it didn’t work, check whether one of these was missing.

• A website with click-to-call. People often search for a sparky on their phone. Your number needs to be a big tap-to-call button at the top of every page.
• Call tracking. If you can’t see which calls came from ads, you can’t tell a good keyword from a bad one.
• Negative keywords. “Electrician” also gets searched by people looking for apprenticeships, wages and DIY help. Block those searches or you pay for them.
• Ads split by job type. Emergency, switchboard, EV charger and battery work each get their own ads and their own page, so the person sees exactly what they searched for.

We set all of this up for every Google Ads client. You can see how on our Google Ads for electricians page. If you’re also weighing up SEO, our SEO vs Google Ads for tradies guide covers when each one makes sense.

If you’d rather hand it over

Dossis Digital runs Google Ads for electricians from $275 a week on our Growth plan. Your ad spend goes to Google at cost, with no markup from us. We bill weekly and there is no lock-in contract.

On Growth and Domination, we guarantee it. If month six doesn’t bring you more enquiries than your average month before we started, you get every weekly fee back plus $1,000. Our pricing page has the full details.

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