Everything that sets a gutter price is something she can count
A gutter company’s office is mostly a calendar. Installs are booked around the coil order and the weather, cleanings pile into the autumn, a storm turns the week into repairs, and each of those needs a quote, a day on the trailer’s schedule and an invoice afterwards. The calls come at the worst moment, thirty feet up, and the caller wants to know what a new run or a clean-out costs before she books anybody to come and look.
Feet of eave, a profile, a number of downspouts and a decision about guards. There is no square footage to work out, no attic to look in, nothing hidden under a layer of something else. That is why this trade quotes honestly off a form when plenty of others cannot — and a homeowner who gets a real bracket at nine at night has less reason to keep calling down the list.
Plenty of roofers hang gutters, and that is a real business rather than a mistake: on a tear-off the gutter is the line at the end, priced alongside the roof on the same account. If that is you, the gutter questions belong on your replacement service and the roofing page is the one to read. This page is written for the other shop — the one whose whole trailer is a coil, a machine and a run of ladders, where the gutter is not the last line on somebody else’s invoice. It is the invoice.
On NapkinPrice™ that shop is three services under one account. The install asks eleven questions and puts a range on the screen, the cleaning carries your trip charge inside the number instead of springing it at the door, and a run that has pulled off the fascia goes down a third path that never guesses a price at all.
The install form ends by asking whether she has a photo from the driveway showing a full side of the house. You see her answer on the lead and ask for the picture when you ring; the photo itself arriving with the lead is on the roadmap, so it is not among the ticks.
The eight things that set a gutter number
Not one of these asks a homeowner for an area. Every answer is a count, a pick-one or a yes/no, and the hardest thing on the whole form is pacing the eaves — so the help text does that teaching rather than pretending the question is easier than it is. Every rate behind them sits in your dashboard, where you change it whenever the coil price does.
Feet of eave
The base number: her paced total multiplied by your per-foot rate, and the largest of the three genuinely per-unit lines on the install — $14 a foot on our own demo card. There is no length-by-width box anywhere in the engine, because no rule multiplies one answer by another, so ask for one total and let the help text teach her to pace both sides and the back. Give the answer a lowest and a highest value, and a number outside them is turned back for her to correct, never quietly changed to fit.
Profile and material
Five-inch K-style aluminum, six-inch, half-round aluminum, half-round copper. A pick-one percentage rather than four separate rates, because the profile changes the coil, the hangers and the time on the machine together. Copper is not “a bit more” — it is plus 180% on the demo card. Set the number your own supplier charges you.
How high the run is
One story, two, or three and the steep banks where a ladder cannot be footed flat. Height is labor on this job and not material: taller ladders, a second pair of hands, slower work, more time moving than hanging. So it belongs on a percentage rather than a fee — nothing, plus 12% and plus 28% on the demo.
Downspouts
A plain count times your per-downspout rate, $105 on the demo. Say in the help text how you space them, so her count starts from your rule and not a guess. Let her enter 0 and say you will work it out on the measure, because plenty of homeowners do not know.
Buried downspout runs
Split off from the downspout count on purpose: a line trenched out to a pop-up emitter is pipe, a trench and a morning, not a corner elbow. Its own per-unit rate, $185 each on the demo. Worth knowing the engine cannot read one answer against another, so nothing stops her entering more buried runs than she has downspouts. That is a thirty-second fix on the callback, not a reason to merge two questions that price differently.
Guards, as a tier
No guards, aluminum screen that drops in, or micro-mesh screwed to the gutter lip. A tier and not a yes/no, because those are three different products with three different margins and three different conversations — the screen keeps leaves out and still wants a rinse, the mesh stops the shingle grit and the maple seeds as well. On the demo that is nothing, plus 28% and plus 75%.
Fascia and tear-off
Two answers that behave differently, on purpose. Rotten fascia is an allowance: a flat amount added once for the job — $375 for a corner, $1,250 for a full run on the demo — which you true up per board once the old gutter is down and you can see what you have got. Tear-off is a percentage instead, plus 8%, because taking three hundred feet down really is three times taking a hundred down.
Travel zone
Owings Mills and the northwest of the county are home on the demo, Baltimore City and the east side are one ring out, and Howard, Anne Arundel, Harford, Carroll and Frederick are the next. Each zone is whole ZIPs or three-digit prefixes with its own flat charge, percentage or both, and her ZIP picks the most specific one. A zone marked out of area gets no price, only a note that the ZIP is outside the area you normally cover, and the lead still comes in. The job minimum backs it up, so sixty feet of gutter forty minutes out still pays for the drive.
A real install flow, start to finish
Eleven questions, the order our gutter demo account asks them in, answered for 200 feet on a two-story colonial in Owings Mills with six downspouts, micro-mesh guards and the old run coming down. The live pricing engine worked out the total at the bottom from those answers; nobody keyed it in.
| # | What she is asked | What she answers | What it does to the price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | About how many feet of gutter? | 200 | 200 feet at $14 a foot on the demo: $2,800 |
| 2 | What profile and material? | 5-inch K-style aluminum | The standard profile: +0%. Half-round copper would be +180% |
| 3 | How high does the gutter line run? | Two stories | +12%, pooled with the other percentages |
| 4 | How many downspouts? | 6 | 6 at $105 each: $630 |
| 5 | How many of those run underground or out away from the house? | 0 | Nothing. Each one is $185 when there are any |
| 6 | Do you want gutter guards? | Micro-mesh, screwed to the lip | +75%, figured across the job |
| 7 | Any fascia that has to come off first? | None that we know of | Nothing. A few feet at one corner is a flat $375 allowance |
| 8 | Tear off and haul away the old gutters? | Yes | +8%: the removal, the hangers, the dump ticket |
| 9 | Does any of it need staging or a lift? | No | Nothing. A yes adds no dollars either; it lifts the job minimum to $2,400 |
| 10 | Is this storm damage going through insurance? | No | Nothing. It changes the callback, not the price |
| 11 | Got a photo of the eaves? | Offered | Nothing. It shows you the fascia and the corners |
| The arithmetic, in the order the engine runs it | $2,800 + $630 = $3,430, then the three percentage answers pool into one and +95% applies once to all of it → $6,688.50 | ||
| She sees | $6,087 – $7,290 | ||
| What lands in your inbox, the second she submits | Her name, mobile and ZIP, the eleven answers, whether insurance is involved, and whether she has a photo | ||
The $14, the $105, the $375 and the percentages are Overhang Gutter Co.’s, our demo company, and not a Tailgate Office price list; on your account each one is yours, and a per-foot rate changed in the dashboard the morning the coil price moves is live on your website at once. Two of those percentages are worth reading twice: they pool rather than compound, and the pooled figure lands on the whole additive subtotal, so the guard tier is charged across the downspouts as well as the gutter. That is about $470 of this midpoint, the help text says guards are figured across the job rather than implying a per-foot rate, and if you would rather it did not work that way you price guards as a flat amount instead. The total is the engine’s own: $6,087 to $7,290 for those answers, and the demo will give you the same in about a minute.
Overhang Gutter Co. is an example company we built, and NapkinPrice quotes live on its website from the real engine, on a page that is not ours. Pace out the same 200 feet there and the same range comes back.
Try the live demo site (opens in a new tab)A new run and a clean-out get a price; a gutter off the fascia gets a visit
A new run, an autumn clean-out and a gutter hanging off the fascia are three different conversations. Putting them through one form is how a company ends up quoting a re-hang like a replacement.
Seamless installation — quotes instantly
No trip charge on this one, because the measure sells the job. Instead it carries a job minimum — $750 on the demo, and twenty feet of gutter on a shed comes back at that floor rather than at the $280 its arithmetic works out to. One answer lifts that floor without adding a dollar: staging or a lift over a deck, a sunroom or a steep bank has its own call-out whatever the footage is, so sixty feet with two downspouts and a tear-off, whose arithmetic is $1,134, quotes at $2,400 to $2,616. And there is a ceiling above it all: 350 feet of half-round copper on three stories with buried runs, mesh and a full fascia run reaches a $31,045.40 midpoint, so a midpoint over $15,000 gets her a note that the job is bigger than can be priced online, and you quote it by hand.
Cleaning and tune-up — quotes instantly
The work that keeps a gutter company fed between installs, and the reason the phone rings in October. The trip charge is the service's base fee, $85 on the demo, added once whatever she answers, so a form filled in with every answer at zero still carries it. Two hundred feet on two stories, last done a couple of years back, downspouts flushed, quotes at $325 to $413; add micro-mesh that has to come off panel by panel and go back on, plus a reseal at the corners, and it is $542 to $690; the cheapest answer set possible floors at $195. Its ceiling is $1,200, deliberately low: a 500-foot three-story house with screwed-down mesh routes to you instead, because that is two days with a lift and not a form quote.
Repair and re-hang — site visit, never priced
A site visit takes the whole description and prints no number, which is the right answer for a run that has pulled off the fascia or a section ice has folded. It still asks what it is doing, how much of the run, whether water is getting into the house or down the foundation, and for a photo — and not one of those answers moves money. They tell you whether this is a ladder and a box of screws or a section re-hung on new board, and which visit goes first. Her confirmation screen says you like to see a job like this first, and you get every answer to plan the visit with.
Only one of the three carries a season, and that is a decision
Aluminum coil forms on the driveway in January as readily as it does in June, and an install is scheduled work booked weeks out either way. A seasonal percentage on the install would be a number invented to fill a field, so the demo account leaves it empty.
Leaf fall is different, because it is a dated physical event rather than a mood about the weather. The oaks and maples in this metro come down from the first week of October into the last of November, and for those eight weeks the demo company’s crews are full. That is a capacity constraint on scheduled work, which is the one thing a seasonal percentage can price honestly — so it sits on the cleaning service at plus 12% from 1 October to 30 November, it is an uplift rather than a discount, and the disclaimer says out loud that it comes off again on 1 December. The same 200-foot clean that quotes $325 – $413 in September comes back $363 – $463 booked on 15 October.
The travel zones stack on top of all of it, and they are the same engine run on the same eleven answers with nothing changed but the ZIP: Owings Mills 21117 is $6,087 to $7,290, Baltimore City 21215 is $6,164 to $7,383, Columbia 21044 in the outer ring is $6,232 to $7,465, a ZIP in the catch-all zone is $6,589 to $7,893, and a ZIP in a zone you mark out of area gets no price at all, a polite note instead, while the lead still reaches you. Neither priced service can be switched on with its base fee and minimum both at $0, so no homeowner is ever shown a zero.
October is eight weeks long and your phone does not stop
You are thirty feet up with both hands on a length of coil, and a ladder is the one place in this trade where answering a phone is not a judgment call. 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)). If she cannot get you, the next company on her list is a tap away. In the weeks when the crews in your county are booked out, the calls you miss decide how much of the autumn you actually keep.
| What a missed gutter call is worth | On the demo account |
|---|---|
| 200 ft of seamless on a two-story colonial, micro-mesh, old run out | $6,087 – $7,290 |
| The same house with no guards on it | $3,746 – $4,486 |
| 200 ft cleaned out and the downspouts flushed | $325 – $413 |
| Callers sent to voicemail who leave a message | Under 3% (Invoca, 2024 (opens in a new tab)) |
| One install you did not lose pays for | 30 months of the bundle |
| One recovered cleaning pays for | 1 month |
Once texting is switched on for you, CallMitt™ texts back the call you could not take on the ladder; the first text she gets from you names the company, and her reply files itself on the thread with her gutter quote. The message is picked by the hour and the day, against the hours you actually keep — the demo shop runs 7 to 5, because the ladders go up when the dew is off and they come down before the light goes, so a 5:20 call honestly gets the after-hours version instead of one claiming somebody is on a job.
In October as in May, though, nothing sends until your texting number is live. The forwarded-call part is built and is held back for it, so until then each missed call is one you log, and a reply queued in the meantime is retired, not delivered, when your carrier registration clears. Running already: your five messages, weekday and Saturday hours, the weekend, holiday and vacation rules, quiet hours, opt-outs, and the thread beside her quote.
How CallMitt Works Run Your Own NumbersA gutter hand is hired on one question, and it is about the ladder
The man you want is on a 28-foot extension ladder this morning with a hundred and eighty feet of coil on the trailer behind him. He is not at a laptop with a PDF résumé, and he is not going to fill in a form with a cover-letter box on it. What he will do is answer short questions on his phone over lunch.
Put “Now hiring — text CREW to your texting number” on the trailer, under the coil. CrewFunnel™ asks eight short questions: is he 18 or older, is he comfortable working off a 28-foot extension ladder all day, has he got a valid driver’s license, has he run a seamless gutter machine, how many years has he hung gutter, siding or trim, how far out does he live, can he start inside two weeks, and what was the last job he worked on. Four of those are knockouts — under 18, not comfortable on the ladder, no license because the trailer goes with the crew, or living further out than you will drive — and the rest come back as a weighted fit score.
Look at two of the demo job’s settings. Miles from Owings Mills knock a man out past the limit and earn nothing below it, because a number answer scores higher as it grows and weighted miles would rank the longest drive first. The last-job box is free text with no weight, since anything typed in it scores full marks and weighting it would lift every applicant who wrote a word. All eight questions also read in Spanish.
Text-to-apply needs your texting number first; in the meantime he answers the eight questions on your screening page, with the same knockouts and the same scoring, and the keyword on the trailer takes texts once your carrier registration clears.
See how CrewFunnel works
A gutter job is proved by the first storm and forgotten by the second
The ladders are down, the downspouts are strapped, and there is nothing to look at: gutters that work look exactly like gutters that do not. The proof comes with the first hard rain, when she stands at the window and the water goes where it is supposed to go. That afternoon she has the proof, and a review costs her a minute. By the second storm it is just the house staying dry, and nobody writes a review about that. The outfit with sixty reviews is not sixty times better than you; somebody there asks every customer, while the first storm is still the news.
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 worksA single seamless install covers 30 months
And a single recovered cleaning covers 1 month of it, which is the part worth noticing: in this trade even the small job pays the bill.
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.
Gutter questions we get asked
The roofing one, and nothing is lost by going there. A roofer prices gutters as part of the roof job, which is the right way round for that business — so the gutter questions live on your replacement service, or on a second service on the same account, and the account and the dashboard are identical either way. This page exists because a dedicated gutter company prices differently rather than smaller: four profiles instead of a pick between K-style and half-round, buried downspout runs split out from the downspout count, guards as a product tier rather than a yes/no, a fascia allowance, and a staging rule for the runs a ladder cannot reach. If the gutter is the whole invoice, you want that card. If it is the line at the end of a tear-off, you do not.
As a range, yes; the widget never shows anything else. On the demo the disclaimer says the eaves are measured and the corners counted on site before anything is ordered, and that the price is confirmed in writing after that. Add your own words to it, seamless coil formed on the driveway so the run has no joints except at the corners, the fascia priced as an allowance and trued up per board, and the range is one you can stand behind from the curb.
Then the lead shows you by how much before you go. The engine has no length-by-width box, because no rule multiplies one answer by another, so the question asks for one total and its help text teaches her to pace both sides and the back. The lowest and highest values you set turn back a number that is plainly wrong, and the lead records exactly what she typed, so you call back knowing what she claimed and your wheel settles it on the visit.
A tier because a drop-in screen and screwed-down micro-mesh are two different products at two different margins, and collapsing them into one yes/no means quoting the cheap one and installing the dear one. A percentage because the guard decision changes the hanger spacing, the handling and the time as well as the material. The honest consequence, which the help text does not hide: a percentage pools with the other percentage answers and lands on the whole additive subtotal, so the guard tier is charged across the downspouts too — about $470 of the demo job above. If that is not how you price guards, put a flat amount or a per-foot rate on the question instead. All three are fields you own.
Yes: put your trip charge in the cleaning service's base fee. It is added once per visit, before any answer, so nobody can answer their way down to nothing, and it sits inside the range she sees, so she knows about it before you arrive. Put a job minimum underneath it as well, so a hundred feet of single-story gutter twenty minutes out never comes back under what the drive costs you.
It is when she can see it and can avoid it. On the demo it is a calendar, 1 October to 30 November, and there are only so many crew-days in those weeks, so the plus 12% is a price for booking in them; book in September or in December and it is not there. The disclaimer says so, including the date it comes off. The install carries no season at all, because coil forms the same in February and an install is booked weeks out whatever the month. Leaving a season field empty is a choice the form lets you make.
Only in what you learn. The install asks whether this is storm or ice damage she is putting through insurance, and the answer moves no money; the help text tells her it is so you photograph the damage the way an adjuster wants it and can offer to meet hers. The lead carries the answer, so you know before you ring which kind of job it is.
Yes. The repair and re-hang service asks whether water is getting into the house or down the foundation, and its help text says a wet basement wall or a stained ceiling moves the visit forward without changing the price. It shows her no number, and you see the answer on the lead, so the urgent ones are easy to pick out.
Your five text-back messages and the ladder hours, Saturday included, are around fifteen minutes. About an hour for the eleven install questions: the per-foot rate, the profile percentages, the downspout and buried-run rates, the guard tiers and the fascia allowances; less for the cleaning. Your review link waits until review requests are on: once review requests are switched on for your account, take a minute to paste your Google review link on the HurraBell page and your mailing address on the Account page. No priced service goes live without a real base fee or a real minimum. There is no setup fee, no contract and no onboarding call, and $199 a month pays for all four tools.
Also roof, or hang siding and trim? Siding has a page of its own too, and anything else, ask us.
Give her the number while it is still raining.
Set it up tonight. Free for 30 days, no card, no setup fee, cancel from the dashboard.