Garage doors are two businesses sharing one phone number
A garage door company’s office work is mostly measuring and ordering. The evenings go to door orders with the right width, height, color and window layout, opener and spring sizes matched to each door, the callbacks from the day, and the invoices for the spring jobs, and a door ordered at the wrong size is an expensive mistake. Behind all of that are two kinds of call. One is a replacement: she has looked at a dented, rattling door for two years, and tonight she finally wants a number. The other is an emergency: a torsion spring let go with a bang you can hear from the street, and the car is behind the door.
The shopper and the stranded driver are different customers, and neither should have to fill in the other’s form. NapkinPrice™ runs them as separate services on one account — the replacement asks eight questions and puts a range on the screen, the repair carries your trip charge inside the number instead of springing it at the door, and a commercial opening goes down a third path that never guesses a price at all.
The replacement flow also asks whether she has a photo of the door and the wall above it; the lead shows her answer, so you ask for the picture when you call. Getting the photo itself onto the lead is on the roadmap, so it is not ticked above.
The eight things that set a garage door number
Every one of these is a countable unit or a pick-one, which makes this the easiest trade on the site to quote honestly. No area arithmetic, no guessing at square footage. You set the questions up once in the dashboard, and every rate in them stays yours to change.
Door count
The base number, and the only genuinely per-door line on the service: your per-door rate multiplied by how many openings you are replacing. Ask for openings rather than cars — a two-car opening with one wide door is one door, and homeowners often get that wrong if you do not say it.
Opening size
Single, double, or oversize past 16 feet wide or 8 feet high, as a flat step per size. One honest note belongs in the help text: that step is added once for the job, not once per door, because no rule in the engine multiplies one answer by another. The per-door rate is a standard single, so a second wide door is trued up when you measure. Say that plainly and nobody is surprised on the visit.
Material and insulation
Steel, insulated steel, carriage house, full-view aluminium and glass. This one is a percentage on the whole job rather than a line item, because material and insulation change the door, the hardware and the spring sizing together. Full-view glass is not "a bit more" — set the percent your supplier actually charges you.
Opener
Keep the one she has, chain drive, belt drive, or belt with a camera and phone control, installed and programmed. Priced once for the job, on the door she uses most; a second opener is trued up on the visit. A chain is fine over a garage nobody sleeps above and a belt is worth it under a bedroom, and the help text is where you say so.
Windows and hardware
Glass across the top course, or wrought-iron handles and hinges. A yes/no with your own flat amount behind it, priced once for the job on the door she is dressing up. It is a small line that closes a surprising number of replacements, because it is the part she has been picturing.
Haul-away of the old door
Sections and track off a double door fill a trailer and cost you a dump ticket. Ask it as a yes/no with a flat removal and disposal fee. Say no and you stack the old sections where she wants them — either way it is a decision she made rather than a line she finds later.
Headroom and side room
Less than a foot between the top of the opening and the ceiling, or less than four inches of wall beside it, means low-headroom track and a rear-mounted shaft. That is labour, not parts, so it belongs on a percentage rather than a fee. It is also the single most common reason a garage door quote gets revised on site.
Travel zone
Group your ZIPs into zones, whole ZIPs or three-digit prefixes, and give each one a flat charge, a percentage or both; the ZIP she types finds its most specific zone first. A ZIP you mark as outside your area is told politely that it cannot be priced online, and you still get the lead. The job minimum underneath means a single-door call 40 minutes out still pays for the drive.
A real replacement flow, start to finish
Eight questions she can answer from the driveway, in the order our garage door demo account asks them. The total underneath is the live engine’s answer to them, not a number written onto this page.
| # | What she is asked | What she picks | What it does to the price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | How many doors are we replacing? | Two | 2 × the per-door rate — $1,650 each on the demo, so $3,300 |
| 2 | What size are the doors? | Double, 12 to 16 ft | A flat $900 for the job, not per door |
| 3 | What kind of door are you after? | Insulated steel | A percent on the whole job: +18% |
| 4 | Opener | Belt drive, quieter | A flat $625, installed and programmed |
| 5 | Add windows or decorative hardware? | No | Nothing — the rule only fires on yes |
| 6 | Take the old door and track away? | Yes | A flat $180 removal and disposal fee |
| 7 | Is headroom or side room tight? | No | No low-headroom percent on this one |
| 8 | Got a photo of the door and the wall above it? | Offered | Nothing. A photo never moves the price |
| The arithmetic, in the order the engine runs it | $3,300 + $900 + $625 + $180 = $5,005, then the one percentage answer applies once to all of it: +18% → $5,905.90 | ||
| She sees | $5,374 – $6,437 | ||
| What lands in your inbox, the second she submits | Name, mobile, ZIP, all eight answers, and the photo flag | ||
The per-door rate, the size step and the percentages above are the demo account’s, not a Tailgate Office price list, and each one is a field in your dashboard; changing the per-door rate never means editing your website. The total is real: those eight answers return $5,374 to $6,437, and the demo shows you the same in about a minute.
Rather watch it work? Our example garage door company’s website carries NapkinPrice, quoting live with the same engine on a site that is not ours. Answer those eight questions and the same range comes back.
Try the live demo site (opens in a new tab)A replacement and a spring call get a price. A loading dock gets a visit.
A replacement, a spring call and a loading dock are three different conversations. Running them through one form is how you end up quoting a warehouse like a two-car garage.
Replacement — quotes instantly
No trip charge on this one: the visit sells the door. Instead it carries a job minimum, so a single steel door with no opener never comes back under it — $1,750 on the demo, and the low end of the band is that floor rather than 9% below it. The range shown is the midpoint plus or minus a percentage you set. Past $14,000 on the demo it stops pricing and hands you the lead, rather than publishing a figure that size from eight answers.
Spring, cable and opener repair — quotes instantly
The trip charge lives in the service base fee, so it is added once however many doors you look at and cannot be dodged by answering nothing to everything. That is $89 on the demo, and it is inside the range from the start instead of turning up at the door. There is a job floor underneath and a ceiling above, because past a certain number the honest answer is a new door instead of a repair. One question raises the floor on its own: a door off its track or a bent section means straightening or ordering a panel, so it lifts the minimum rather than pretending to be cheap. A snapped spring on one double door, next available, quotes at $449 to $549.
Commercial and custom — site visit, never priced
Site-visit mode captures the whole spec and shows no number at all, which is the right answer for duty cycles, three-phase operators and fire-rated rolling steel. The service still asks what kind of building, how many openings, how high the opening is and whether there is a commercial operator or three-phase power — that last one moves no money, it just tells you which tech to send and whether to bring a meter. Her confirmation screen tells her plainly that this one is seen first, and your lead has enough in it to decide whether the job is worth a bid.
The repair and the replacement each need a real base fee or a real minimum before they can go live. That is on purpose: a priced service with neither could put $0 in front of a homeowner, and a wrong number on your website is dearer than a day of setup.
The spring call is the one you cannot afford to miss
A snapped torsion spring is the closest thing this trade has to a burst pipe. The car is shut in, somebody has to be somewhere in twenty minutes, and she is dialling down the search results until a human picks up. Only 52% of callers to home-service businesses speak with a person (Invoca, 2026 (opens in a new tab)), and fewer than 3% of callers sent to voicemail leave a message (Invoca, 2024 (opens in a new tab)). On a spring call, a missed call is the entire job.
| What a missed garage door call is worth | On the demo account |
|---|---|
| Two double doors, insulated steel, one belt opener | $5,374 – $6,437 |
| A snapped spring on one double door | $449 – $549 |
| Callers sent to voicemail who leave a message | Under 3% (Invoca, 2024 (opens in a new tab)) |
| One recovered door replacement pays for | 27 months of the bundle |
| One recovered spring call pays for | 2 months |
Once texting is switched on, CallMitt™ sends the stranded driver a text, the first one from you carrying your company name, and her reply joins the thread that holds her quote. The message is picked by the hour and the day — the demo shop’s counter runs 8 to 6, so a 6:15 call gets the after-hours version instead of one that says you are out on a door — and every version asks the question that sorts your afternoon: is a car shut in?
Where this stands, plainly. The hook that catches a forwarded call is built and is waiting on your texting number, so for now you log the missed call yourself and nothing is sent; a reply queued in the meantime is retired, not delivered, when your carrier registration clears. The rest is built and running: your five messages, the counter hours for each day, the weekend, holiday and vacation rules, the quiet hours, the opt-outs, and the thread her reply will land on beside her quote.
How CallMitt Works Run Your Own NumbersA door tech is hired or lost on one question
A torsion spring holds a few hundred pounds of stored energy over somebody’s head, and a door coming down is how this trade sends people to hospital. So what you need to know first is not his life story. It is whether he is willing to wind springs under tension, and whether he has done it before.
Put “Now hiring — text CREW to your texting number” on the van and the showroom counter. CrewFunnel™ asks seven short questions: is he 18 or older, is he up for winding torsion springs, has he wound one before, how many years in the trade, how far out does he live, can he start inside two weeks, and what was the last job he worked on. Any of three answers ends the screening (under 18, unwilling to do spring work, or living past your distance); the rest are weighted into one fit score.
Two settings from the demo job are worth keeping. Distance is a knockout, never a weight: number answers score higher as they grow, so weighting it would rank the door tech who lives furthest out first. The last-job question gets no weight, because any answer scores full marks and a weighted text box flatters everyone who typed. And every question on the demo job has a Spanish translation.
Until your texting number is live he answers those seven on your screening page, not by text, with the same knockouts, scoring and pool, and the keyword on the van starts working once your carrier registration clears.
See how CrewFunnel works
A new door gets its review the first morning it opens and nobody wakes
The old door shook the bedroom above it every time it went up. The new one goes up before dawn the next morning and nobody in the house stirs. That morning she would happily write you a review. By the end of the week it is just the garage door again, and the tech who hung it is a van she could not describe. The outfit with sixty reviews is not sixty times better than you; somebody there asks every customer, while the quiet 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.
See how HurraBell worksOne recovered replacement covers 27 months
And a single recovered spring call covers 2 of them. On a door company’s books the sum is not close.
The Tailgate Office Bundle
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.
Start Free TrialOnly need one of the tools? After the trial you can keep just that one at its own price; the office stays with the Bundle.
Garage door questions we get asked
You can price a range. The widget only ever shows a bracket, and the disclaimer under it says the final number comes after you measure the opening and check the headroom, the side room and the framing. Write it in your own words: new track, springs sized to the door and programming the opener are included, painted finishes and glass are quoted on the visit, and nothing gets ordered until she has the written number. That is a range you can stand behind at the kerb.
It is a simplification, and the help text says so in the visitor’s own words rather than hiding it: the per-door figure is a standard single, so a second wide door is trued up when you measure. The reason is in the engine — a flat amount on a pick-one is added once per job, because no rule multiplies one answer by another. If that bothers you, run single-door and multi-door replacements as two services with their own per-door rates. Both work today, and the visitor picks the service before she sees a single question.
That is the base fee’s whole job. Put your trip and diagnostic charge on the repair service and it is added once per visit, before any answer, so nobody can answer their way down to nothing. It is inside the range she sees rather than appearing at the door, which is the whole point — you are not surprising her with it, you are telling her up front. Add a job minimum under it too, so no call-out ever quotes below what a call-out costs you.
Once texting is switched on, she gets the message you wrote for closed days if your hours mark Saturday closed; if you open on Saturdays, she gets your business-hours or after-hours message depending on the time she rings, because each day of the week has its own hours (a Saturday that is a holiday gets your holiday message instead, and while vacation mode is on she gets your vacation message on any day). The first text she gets from you names your company, she gets one reply however many times she redials in that hour, and nothing goes to her before 8am or after 9pm where she is. Until texting is switched on, the reply is written when you log her call and held in your outbox, and one held more than an hour is never sent, so ring her back yourself.
In your disclaimer, yes. The demo repair service’s disclaimer says springs are replaced in pairs on a double door, because the second one is the same age as the one that broke, and she reads it before she sends the form. Write your own policy the same way, so the pair is no surprise in the driveway.
She is shopping you either way. The difference is whether she does it with your number in front of her or with nothing but the other guy’s. A homeowner who sees a real bracket at 9pm, with an honest note about what the visit confirms, stops calling down the list — and the person who wanted a $600 door for a $2,000 opening never fills in your callback form at all, which is a kindness to both of you.
No, and it is better if you do not. Put commercial and custom on a site-visit service: it captures the building type, the opening count, the height, the operator and the photo, shows no price whatsoever, and sends her a plain "we like to see it first" note. You get a lead with enough in it to decide whether the job is worth a bid, and nobody has published a number against a duty cycle nobody has seen.
Neither. Your shop number keeps ringing where it rings now, and nothing is ported. The design adds a texting number of your own, a local number in your area code registered to your business, and one forwarding code from the setup guide: a call nobody picks up in about twenty seconds goes on to that texting number, a short greeting tells the caller a text is on its way, and the text comes from there, which is why the first one she gets from you names your company. A call somebody answers at the counter never forwards. An answering service keeps the hours you give it, because an unanswered call forwards to one place at a time, and a second code switches the forwarding off. Until your texting number is live you log the missed call yourself; CallMitt picks the message for the hour and the day, checks your quiet hours, opt-outs and suppression list, and keeps the reply in your outbox to read. The code that will take the forwarded call on its own is written, deployed and tested over signed webhooks, and waits on a phone number.
About fifteen minutes for your five text-back messages and your counter hours for each day, 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, and about an hour for the eight replacement questions with your per-door rate, size steps, material percentages and opener prices. A priced service waits to go live until it carries a real base fee or a real minimum, and that is on purpose. No onboarding call, no setup fee, no contract; $199 a month for all four tools.
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