Deck quote widget showing a 320 square foot composite deck 42 inches above grade with railing and four stairs, estimated at $21,600 to $25,400

The gap between “pressure-treated” and “composite” is the whole conversation

A deck builder’s desk holds more drawing than building. There is a plan to finish for the permit, a lumber and composite order to place, inspections to fit between the footings and the framing, deposits to chase, and two jobs that both want the same week. Then the phone goes, from somebody standing on her back step who wants to know roughly what a composite deck would run before she asks anybody out to measure.

What a 16×20 deck costs depends on four decisions the homeowner has not made yet. If your website says “contact us for a free estimate,” she has to make those decisions on the phone with a stranger. Plenty of people would rather just close the tab.

NapkinPrice™ walks her through the four decisions and puts one honest range on the screen at the end of them. She learns composite costs more before you have to say it. You get a lead who already knows her own budget.

  • A material pick-one with your own PT / cedar / composite amounts behind it
  • Demo of the old deck priced as its own question, not a surprise
  • Separate services for new build, rebuild, and repair or restain
  • A photo prompt so she knows to send pictures of the back of the house

Six variables carry a deck bid

You know these cold. The point is that the homeowner answers them at 10pm instead of on a phone call you never got to take.

Square footage

She types the deck’s area in square feet, or picks a preset size like 12×16 or 16×20 that carries your price for that size, if she has not measured. Everything else is a modifier on this base.

Decking material

Pressure-treated pine, western red cedar, or capped composite. On the demo cedar adds 35% and composite 70% across the whole job, railing and stairs included, so it is question two and not a phone call.

Height above grade

Four steps on the demo, from under 30 inches, which its label marks as needing no guardrail, to over 8 feet for a walk-out: nothing, +8%, +18% and +32%. Taller posts and more concrete are what those percentages pay for.

Railing type & linear feet

Feet of railing at $40 on the demo, then the style as a percentage of the whole job: wood pickets at the rate, black aluminum +12%, composite posts with aluminum balusters +15%, cable +20%. The style's help text tells her that aluminum and cable adjust the whole job, without a figure, and the one on the feet asks for the perimeter minus the wall the deck attaches to.

Stairs & risers

Stringers, treads, sometimes a landing and a second handrail. The demo charges $240 a riser, so the form asks her to count risers, not “a few steps.”

Demo of the existing deck

Tearing out the old deck, the dumpster and the disposal are one yes or no, $1,250 on the demo. Quoted as its own line, nobody feels ambushed by it later.

Also worth adding if you run them: permit handling, footing count for frost depth, under-deck drainage, built-in benches or planters, and a lighting package. Each one is a yes/no with your own price behind it.

The same deck, three materials

One 16×20 build, 42 inches up, 56 feet of railing, four risers, old deck torn out. Watch what the material choice does.

Decking What she sees Railing What you say on the call
Pressure-treated pine$11,400 – $13,200Wood picketCheapest in, needs a restain every 2–3 years
Western red cedar$15,800 – $18,600Wood picketLooks better, still wood, still gets sealed
Capped composite$21,600 – $25,400Black aluminumDouble the ticket, and she never sands it again

Illustrative figures using an example rate card — not Tailgate Office™ pricing and not a market survey. You set every rate in the dashboard, and lumber moves, so you change them when your supplier does.

The example deck builder we keep has a website of its own, with NapkinPrice quoting live on it from the real engine. It is not our page, and the rates there are that builder’s, not the table’s above.

Try the live demo site
Illustration of missed-call text-back as it will work once texting is switched on: the business’s reply to a missed call, and the customer answering with the job details The rules behind that reply, drawn in the order they run: on a logged missed call, three stages. One, is there already a message to this number from the past hour — if there is it stops there, one reply per number per hour, and nothing is composed. Two, which of your five messages: vacation switched on gives the vacation message, one of six US holidays the holiday message, a day your hours mark closed (Saturday and Sunday, unless you give them hours) the weekends and closed days message, and otherwise that day’s own opening hours decide between the business and the after-hours message; they are tested in that order on your own clock, the first match wins, and a message you left blank falls back to your business one. Three, may it go at all — three gates, in order: not opted out, which is permanent and nothing overrides it; not on your own suppression list; and not in quiet hours judged where the caller is rather than where you are, 8am to 9pm in every zone their area code touches. Then one of two things. The reply is written and goes on her thread, and because the key is her number a later quote from her lands on that same thread. Or a rule stops it, and the reason goes on her thread in plain words: quiet hours where she is, she has opted out for good, her number is suppressed, a rule we could not check, or another compliance rule. Every rule above is built and running today, and you wrote the five messages yourself.

Homeowners collect bids on a deck. Be the one who gets back to her.

She is in no hurry for the deck, but she is in a hurry for an answer. On a deck, the contractor who gets back to the homeowner while she is still excited about the project is the one who feels real.

What a missed deck lead is worth Typical figure
Typical new deck build$4,000 – $10,500 (HomeAdvisor, June 2026)
Typical deck repair$700 – $2,600 (HomeAdvisor, June 2026)
Spring inquiries that never get called backThe ones you take at 4pm on a Friday
Callers sent to voicemail who leave a messageUnder 3% (Invoca, 2024)
One recovered new deck build pays for20–52 months of the bundle

CallMitt™ holds the reply that goes out once texting is switched on: “Sorry we missed you — this is Miller Decks. What are you looking to build?” You write it once, with separate versions for after hours and weekends, and quiet hours and opt-outs are checked before anything is queued. Being straight about it: no SMS gateway is live on our side yet, so today you log the missed call by hand and the reply is composed and kept for you to read. Nothing goes out to her yet, and a reply held for more than an hour never will, so that caller hears from you on the phone. Once texting is on and she replies, it stitches into the same thread as her quote — and that thread is the bid you already won.

The deck builder’s year, honestly

A spring rush, a summer of building, and a winter that is quiet on site and busy on paper.

Spring decides the summer

The calls that fill your building season come in while you are already on a build, which is exactly when you are least able to pick up.

Long consideration, short patience

Homeowners think about a deck for months, then decide in a week. If you are not reachable during that week you were never really in the running.

Budget mismatch eats your days

Two hours of driving and measuring for someone who wanted composite at pressure-treated money. A quote widget sorts that out before you burn the afternoon.

Winter is for booking

The demo builder takes 8% off new-build quotes from 1 December to 28 February, read on its own calendar, so a homeowner pricing a deck in January sees the winter number, at 11pm if that is when she looks.

Finding a carpenter who can cut stairs

Deck work is real carpentry. Anybody can screw down boards; laying out a stringer, flashing a ledger, and setting posts plumb is a different hire — and that person already has a job.

CrewFunnel™ makes applying five questions instead of a résumé. “Text CREW to your texting number” goes on the yard sign at every build you finish, which is where the good carpenters actually see it. Years framing, own tools, can you lay out stairs, truck, start date — knockouts drop the ones who fail a hard requirement, and the rest come back scored.

Where that stands today: text-to-apply waits on your texting number, so he answers on your screening page rather than by text. Same questions, same knockouts, same scoring, same pool. The keyword on the sign takes over when your carrier registration clears.

See how CrewFunnel works
Text-to-apply hiring flow showing an applicant texting CREW to a business’s texting number and answering screening questions about years on a crew, license and start date The applicant one-pager in the owner’s dashboard, on any trade — the detail behind an interview that is already booked. The card carries the applicant’s name, a status of interview, the role and the job keyword, and the date they applied, beside the fit score the dashboard shows in its orange tile, 8.4 out of 10 here. A strip under the header records the interview against one of the owner’s own open slots, with the calendar invite ready to download. Then every answer is listed in three columns — question, answer, and what it scored. Years in the trade, answered six, carries weight four and scores sixty per cent, because a number answer is measured against a ten-point ceiling. A driver’s license question and a start-date question carry weight three each and score full marks on Yes. The age question and the free-text question show a dash. Three notes explain the scoring rather than leaving the dash to be guessed at: a dash means the weight is zero, and only weighted questions move the number; knockout and weight are separate settings, one ending the conversation and the other moving the score; and a text answer earns full marks whatever it says, so graded scoring has to come from a yes/no or a number question. Underneath sit the decisions the dashboard still offers once an interview is booked: re-book to another of the owner’s own open slots, keep the applicant in the talent pool, or pass. The screening also lands on the owner’s inbox thread for that phone number, beside everything else from it. The questions, the weights and the knockouts are the owner’s own; the set drawn here is only an example
Illustration of a review request, drawn as a text from an example plumbing business: a phone showing a short message asking the customer to share her experience, with a link to the business’s Google review page, beside a card that reads Write a review. Review requests are not switched on for new accounts yet. Once they are, the request goes by email, and a text goes as well where the customer ticked the box on the quote form or visit booking agreeing to a review-request text, once texting is switched on for the account The HurraBell log for the same example business, drawn as it appears in the owner’s dashboard: every finished job with what went out and what happened next. One customer was asked by text and by email and opened the link, so no reminder was needed. One had not agreed to texts, so the request went by email only and the one email reminder followed. One job was skipped, and the log shows the reason and who skipped it. Once review requests are switched on, every finished job is either asked or skipped with a reason

The review gets written the first evening she sits out on it, or not at all

The last board is screwed down, the stair treads are on, and the first warm evening she carries two chairs out and sits on it. That is the evening she would write you a review, while she is still sending pictures of it to her sister and the neighbors are leaning over the fence. A month later it is just the deck. The outfit with sixty reviews is not sixty times better than you; somebody there asks every customer, while the deck is still new.

HurraBell™ does the asking. Once review requests are switched on, you mark the job done — from the inbox, from your phone, or from your job software through Zapier — and the customer gets one request in your words, with your own Google review link, after a delay you pick: an hour, unless you change it. Three days later, one email reminder, unless the link has been opened or the customer has since texted you, messaged you from your website or had a call logged on her thread.

Review requests aren’t switched on for new accounts yet. When they are, the request goes by email once your Google review link is saved on the HurraBell page and your mailing address on the Account page. A text goes as well where the customer ticked the box on your quote form or visit booking agreeing to a review-request text, and only once your carrier registration clears, the same wait as every text on this site; until then it is email only.

  • Once requests are on, every finished job is asked — skipping one needs a logged reason, because asking only the happy ones is review gating
  • Nothing offered for a review, and wording that steers is refused when you save it
  • A log of every request and every open, with a CSV export — and every skip with its reason
  • Part of the Tailgate Office Bundle — Podium’s entry plan (Core) is listed at $399 a month on a 12-month term (Podium pricing page, checked October 2026)
See how HurraBell works

Cheaper than the lumber for one set of stairs

The Tailgate Office Bundle

$199 PER MONTH · ALL FOUR TOOLS AND THE OFFICE

Instant quotes on your website, missed-call text-back and text-to-apply hiring (texts go out once texting is switched on), and, once switched on, a review request after every job, plus customers, jobs, estimates and invoices in one place. 30 days free, no credit card, no setup fee, cancel from the dashboard.

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Only need one of the tools? After the trial you can keep just that one at its own price; the office stays with the Bundle.

Deck builder questions

No. Your rates live in the dashboard as per-square-foot and per-linear-foot numbers. Change your per-square-foot rate, or the composite percentage, once and every quote from that minute forward uses it. Nobody touches your website.

They only see a range, and only after answering six questions about their own yard and leaving a real phone number. You can also widen the range band, set a minimum job size, or group your ZIP codes into travel zones and mark the ones you do not serve "outside my area" so the widget declines instead of quoting.

Ask it as a yes or no with your own fee. The demo asks whether you should pull the permit and schedule the inspections, and yes adds $425; or say in your disclaimer that the permit is passed through at cost. Ask the height above grade either way: it is a price question in its own right, since it decides guardrail, post length and concrete.

Then quote the ordinary builds and send the rest to you unpriced. On the demo a new build whose midpoint passes $40,000 gets no number, and repairs, reboards and restains go to a site-visit service that never shows one. Either way you still get her answers and her phone number.

It asks. On the demo a yes adds no dollars of its own but raises the job's minimum to $12,000, and the help text tells her why: doubled joists, a third beam and extra footings. A 12 by 16 pressure-treated deck, low to the ground with two risers, comes back $6,500 to $7,020 without the tub and $12,000 to $12,960 with it.

If you give the service a season, yes. The demo's new builds carry 8% off from 1 December to 28 February, applied on the day she asks. On the demo's own rates, which are not the table's, a 16 by 20 composite deck 42 inches up, with 56 feet of black aluminum railing, four risers and the old deck torn out, is $23,441 to $27,517 in November and $21,565 to $25,316 in January.

The help text tells her each step down is one riser, and to enter 0 for no stairs. At $240 a riser on the demo, a guess that is one or two out moves her range by $240 or $480 before the percentages, and you count them properly at the visit.

No, and it does not want to. NapkinPrice sits in front of them. Each lead goes into your shared inbox and the CSV export, and queues an HMAC-signed webhook, delivered within about two minutes, that Zapier or Make can carry to Jobber, Housecall Pro or a sheet. Native push to those by name is on the roadmap, and the integrations page says which is which. QuoteIQ’s instant-quote tool (InstaQuote) starts on its Elite plan at $299.99 a month (QuoteIQ pricing page, myquoteiq.com/pricing, checked October 2026). Here the instant quote is part of the Bundle and your CRM stays where it is.

About 30 minutes for the widget script tag, an hour or so to write your questions and load your rate card, five minutes to set your text-back messages and business hours, a minute, once review requests are switched on for your account, to paste your Google review link on the HurraBell page and your mailing address on the Account page. No onboarding call, no setup fee, cancel from the dashboard.

Also build fence or do exterior painting? Both have trade pages of their own; for anything else a deck company does, ask us.

Give her the first number, get the build.

Free for 30 days, no credit card, no setup fee, cancel from the dashboard.

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