Buying Appointments

Canvassing vs Buying Appointments: The Real Economics

Quick answer

Running your own door-to-door canvassing crew costs roughly $10 to $20 an hour per canvasser plus a $20 to $30 bonus per set appointment and 1% or more of the closed job, before you count hiring, training, and turnover. Buying exclusive booked appointments trades that payroll structure for a flat per-unit price, currently $175 to $200 at The Lead Giants and $75 to $150 plus a $2,000 setup at Minyona, so the real comparison is a canvassing payroll against a per-appointment invoice, not sticker price alone.

By VA Horizon Team · July 20, 2026 · 8 min read

What a Canvassing Crew Actually Costs

Live pay-structure threads among canvassing managers on ContractorTalk describe a fairly consistent formula: an hourly base of $10 to $20 per canvasser, a per-appointment bonus of $20 to $30 on top of that, and 1% or more of the gross sale once a set appointment turns into a signed job. That is the payroll line. It is not the whole cost.

Before a canvasser earns a single bonus, you have paid for the hiring funnel that got them there. A commonly recommended hiring process runs five stages and ends in a live field ride-along, because a candidate who cannot survive a real door-knock roleplay will not survive the truck. Add the canvassing software most crews run on, route-planning and storm-data tools like SPOTIO, SalesRabbit, or Knockbase's HailTrace feed, and the real cost of a crew is base pay plus bonuses plus a hiring pipeline plus software, weeks before the first appointment gets set.

What Buying Appointments Actually Costs

The appointment-buying side of the market has two publicly priced vendors worth comparing directly. The Lead Giants runs tiered pricing: $200 per appointment at entry volume, $190 at mid volume, $175 at high volume, backed by a 24-hour no-show replacement guarantee. Minyona charges $75 to $150 per booked appointment with a one-time $2,000 setup fee and no monthly retainer. VA Horizon's model is a $300 one-time setup, then $199 flat per exclusive, double-confirmed appointment, with no-shows never billed.

RoofNuts, which sells done-for-you canvassing teams rather than bought appointments, advertises appointment rates of 8% to 15% against what it calls a 2% to 3% industry average for unmanaged canvassing crews. That is RoofNuts' own marketing claim, not an independently audited figure, so treat it as directional rather than a guarantee, whichever model you are comparing it against.

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The Break-Even Math

Take a single canvasser earning $15 an hour on a 40-hour week: that is $600 in base pay before a single bonus is paid, before management time, before software costs. If that canvasser sets 6 appointments in the week, the $600 in base pay alone works out to $100 per set appointment before bonuses, turnover risk, or a slow week are factored in.

Compare that to a flat per-appointment invoice. At $199 per appointment, 6 appointments cost $1,194, which looks higher on paper than $600 in base pay, until you count the bonus (6 appointments times $20 to $30 is another $120 to $180), the ramp weeks where a new canvasser sets far fewer than 6, and the weeks where turnover leaves the territory uncovered entirely. The invoice model has no ramp weeks and no uncovered territory.

Where Canvassing Still Wins

This is not a case for abandoning canvassing outright. Door-to-door speed within 24 to 48 hours of a hail or wind event is a real competitive edge that a booked-appointment vendor cannot always match instantly, and a physical crew builds door count and brand presence in a neighborhood in a way a phone call cannot. Several storm-market operators run both models at once: a canvassing crew for immediate post-storm coverage, supplemented by bought appointments to keep the calendar full between events or while a new territory ramps up.

The Actual Decision

Canvassing makes sense when you can hire, train, and retain a crew that consistently converts, or when you already have one running and the marginal cost of another door is close to zero. Buying appointments makes sense when you want a predictable per-unit cost without payroll and turnover risk attached to it, or when you need to supplement an existing crew during a market launch, a slow season, or a hiring gap. Most operators in a storm market end up running some version of both, not choosing one permanently.

Sources

The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.

FAQ

How much does it cost to run a roofing canvassing crew?

Live pay-structure discussions among canvassing managers put it at $10 to $20 an hour base pay per canvasser, plus a $20 to $30 bonus per set appointment and 1% or more of the closed job, before you add hiring, training, and canvassing software costs.

Is buying roofing appointments cheaper than canvassing?

It depends on your ramp time and turnover. A single canvasser at $15 an hour setting 6 appointments a week costs about $100 per appointment in base pay alone before bonuses, but that number assumes no ramp weeks and no turnover gaps. A flat $199 per appointment has no ramp weeks or coverage gaps built in, so the real comparison depends on how consistently your own crew performs.

What appointment rate does RoofNuts claim for its canvassing crews?

RoofNuts advertises 8% to 15% appointment rates versus what it calls a 2% to 3% industry average for unmanaged canvassing. That figure comes from RoofNuts' own marketing, not an independent audit, so treat it as directional.

Can I run canvassing and bought appointments at the same time?

Yes, and several storm-market operators do exactly that: a canvassing crew for immediate post-storm door coverage, with bought appointments filling the calendar between events or while a new territory or hire ramps up.

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