Roofing quote widget showing 28 squares, a 6 in 12 pitch, two layers of tear-off and an estimated range of $14,800 to $17,400

The roofing lead window is hours, not days

Roofing paperwork comes in waves with the weather. A storm brings claim numbers and adjuster appointments, the photos for each file, permit filings, the dumpster company’s schedule, shingle colors waiting on an HOA, and the extra items to send the insurer once the old roof is off and the decking is showing. In between there is a crew board that changes with every forecast, and a phone that rings with a wet ceiling on the other end.

Your website gets its worst traffic on a blue-sky Tuesday and its best traffic right after a storm cell clears the county. Both times, the homeowner wants the same thing: a number. Not a form. Not “a specialist will reach out.”

NapkinPrice™ puts a real range on the screen — based on squares, pitch, layers and material, the same math you already run — and hands you the full spec in your inbox before the next guy’s voicemail even finishes playing.

  • Ranges, never a fixed bid — you still climb up and confirm
  • Homeowners grade the damage on a severity question, and the photo prompt tells you to ask for pictures
  • Separate services for full replacement and repair, each with its own questions — and repair can book a look instead of quoting a number
  • Insurance-claim jobs flagged so you know before you call back

The seven things that actually set a roof price

You already price this way on a legal pad. NapkinPrice just asks the homeowner the same questions and does the multiplication.

Squares

Roof area in 100 sq ft squares, from the homeowner’s own footprint estimate. Everything downstream is a multiple of this number.

Pitch

Walkable up to 6/12. At 8/12 you are adding staging, harnesses and a day. Set a percent per pitch band — or a flat adder per band — and it applies itself.

Tear-off layers

One layer or two changes dumpster count, labor hours and landfill tickets. Three layers is a different job and should quote like one.

Material

Three-tab, architectural, standing-seam metal, or synthetic slate. Metal can run about twice asphalt per square foot (HomeAdvisor: $7–$13 against $3–$7, June 2026) — and the homeowner should see that gap before they call you.

Decking & flashings

Chimneys and skylights get counted and priced each. Soft or rotted sheathing carries an allowance you true up per sheet after tear-off. These are the two lines that turn a clean bid into an awkward change order.

Stories & access

Two stories, a steep driveway, a screened pool cage under the eave. Access is labor, and labor is the part that kills margin when you guessed low.

Repair vs. replace

A 12-shingle blow-off and a full 28-square strip should never enter the same form. Run them as two services. The visitor picks first and only ever sees the questions that apply to the one she picked.

A real roofing flow, start to finish

Seven questions a replacement service could ask, in a sensible order. You write the set once in the dashboard, and every word and rate in it stays yours to change.

# What she is asked What she picks What it does to the price
1 Repair or full replacement? Full replacement She picks the service; its rate card loads
2 Roughly how big is the roof? 2,800 sq ft → 28 squares Base: 28 × your per-square rate
3 How steep is it? 6/12 — walkable No steep-pitch percent
4 How many layers are up there now? Two Adds tear-off labor + second dumpster
5 What material do you want? Architectural shingle Mid tier — metal would double it
6 Any sagging or soft decking under the shingles? Yes, widespread rot Adds a sheathing allowance
7 How many stories is the house? Two Adds a two-story percent
She sees $14,800 – $17,400
What lands in your inbox, the second she submits Name, mobile, ZIP, all seven answers, and the damage tier she picked

Rates shown are an illustrative example, not a Tailgate Office price list. You set every number in the dashboard, and you can change a per-square rate mid-season without touching your website.

The example roofing company we keep has a website of its own with NapkinPrice on it, quoting live from the real engine; it is not our page, and its rates are its own rather than the table’s. That company hangs gutters as well as roofs, so its widget carries a standalone gutters service beside the roof ones, priced per foot the way a roofer prices it — and its replacement service still asks whether gutters go on at the same time.

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52% of callers to home-service businesses speak with a person (Invoca, 2026)
Under 3% of callers sent to voicemail leave a message (Invoca, 2024)
1 thread per caller, her call and her roof quote on it
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

What one missed call costs a roofer

Nobody misses calls on purpose. You miss them because you are on a ladder, in a truck with the radio on, or inside an attic with no bars. Meanwhile a homeowner with a wet ceiling is dialing the next names on the search results page.

What a missed roofing call is worth Typical figure
Typical full replacement$5,900 – $13,400 (HomeAdvisor, June 2026)
Typical roof repair$400 – $2,000 (HomeAdvisor, June 2026)
Callers sent to voicemail who leave a messageUnder 3% (Invoca, 2024)
One recovered replacement pays for2–5 years of the bundle

Once texting is switched on, CallMitt™ answers a missed call with a text that names your business, as every text-back has to, and the homeowner’s reply lands on the thread with her roof quote. Straight about where it stands: our SMS gateway is not live yet, so today you log the missed call and nothing is sent: a message queued now is retired rather than delivered when your carrier registration clears. Your messages, the weekday and Saturday hours, vacation mode, quiet hours, opt-outs and the thread are already built and running.

Roofing is not a steady business. Plan for the spike.

Quiet weeks, then one storm and more calls in a few days than your office can answer. Your front office has to survive both.

The window after a storm

After a storm she picks a roofer fast. If your line just rings, the next name on her search is one tap away, and that window closes while you are still on the ladder.

The day your phone breaks

On a spike day you physically cannot answer. Each missed call you log goes into one inbox with your reply written against it, so you can work down the list between roofs instead of forty voicemails you will never get to. Texts go out once texting is switched on.

Insurance vs. cash

Ask “is this an insurance claim?” in the quote flow. Claim jobs need a different callback script and a different calendar slot, and knowing before you dial means you open with the right one.

The off-season problem

Winter and quiet months are when your website earns its keep. An instant-quote widget works at 11pm in February when nobody is manning a phone.

Roofing crews do not fill out application forms

A good tear-off hand is not sitting at a laptop with a PDF résumé. He is on a roof in another county, and he will text you back on his break if you make it a text.

CrewFunnel™ puts “Text CREW to your texting number” on your truck door, your yard sign and your job-site banner. He answers five questions — years on a roof, own harness, valid license, comfortable at 8/12, when can you start — your knockout rules drop anyone who fails a hard requirement, and the rest come back with a weighted score. You get the ones who finished.

How it works before your own number is switched on: he answers on your screening page instead of by text, with the same questions, knockouts and score, into the same pool. Texting the keyword on the truck door works from the day your carrier registration clears.

  • Screens for pitch comfort and fall-protection experience before you meet
  • Bilingual question sets if that is your crew
  • Answers land in the same dashboard as your leads
  • Part of the Tailgate Office Bundle — on Indeed a sponsored job is billed per click or per started application, at a price set by your market and the job (Indeed, checked October 2026)
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

A roof gets its review the day it is finished, or never

The last shingle is down, the yard has been swept with the magnet, and the homeowner is standing in the driveway looking up. If anyone is ever going to ask her for a review, that afternoon is the time. By the weekend it is just the roof again. The outfit with sixty reviews is not sixty times better than you; somebody there asks every customer, the day the job wraps.

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

One recovered replacement covers 2 years

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.

Roofing questions we get asked

No. NapkinPrice only ever shows a range, and the widget says plainly that the final price follows an inspection. You are giving a homeowner an honest bracket so she stops shopping — not signing a contract from your phone.

Plenty do, a little. That is why it is a range, and why the lead records every answer she gave. You call back knowing exactly what she claimed, and the inspection sets the real number. It also filters out the person who wanted a $2,000 roof.

If gutters are a real line of business for you, they get their own setup and their own page on this site — the link is just below this list. If you hang them on the side of a roofing job, they can ride along instead as a question at the end of the replacement service. The example roofing company does both, which is why you will see gutters twice on its demo: a standalone gutters service priced per foot, and a question on the replacement service asking whether new gutters go on at the same time.

Yes, by asking her. On the demo both the replacement and the repair service ask whether it is an insurance claim, a yes or no that moves no money, and its help text says a claim gets a different callback, with the paperwork and an offer to meet the adjuster. The lead shows her answer, so you know which call you are making before you dial.

Not on the demo. A yes to the low-slope question raises the job's minimum to $6,500, because that section gets a membrane and its own crew, and the help text tells her so. A 12-square walkable ranch in architectural shingle with solid decking is $4,500 to $5,184 on the demo in November, and $6,500 to $7,020 with a porch roof on it.

Only the roof. Repairs run on a site-visit service that never shows a number: it asks what is going on up there, how bad it looks, from a few shingles to water coming in now, and whether it is a claim. She reads that you like to see a job like this first, with your disclaimer under it, which on the demo says repairs are priced after somebody has looked. The lead tells you which of those she picked, so the call about water coming in is the one you return first.

The rules do not care what you are doing, which is the point: the message that goes out is chosen by the hour and the day, tells the caller you are on a roof, and asks what they need so you can triage leaks from estimates when you get down. What is not running yet is the delivery. We have no SMS gateway, so today the missed call is logged by hand and the reply is composed and kept for you to read. Texts start sending once your A2P 10DLC registration clears and our gateway is live; a reply held more than an hour before then is never sent, so call that customer back yourself. Better you read that here than assume it.

Two trucks is exactly the size where this hurts most. You are too busy to answer and too small to pay a receptionist, whose median pay is about $3,200 a month before payroll taxes and benefits (BLS, May 2025). $199 covers the same four jobs a receptionist would do badly between calls.

About fifteen minutes for your text-back messages and business hours, Saturday included if you work it, and roughly an hour to write your questions and load your per-square, pitch and material rates. Then, once review requests are switched on for your account, you paste your Google review link on the HurraBell page and your mailing address on the Account page, which is a minute. A replacement service has to carry a real base fee or a real minimum before the dashboard puts it live. No onboarding call, no setup fee and no contract.

Gutters your main trade? That has its own page. Side or deck as well? Siding and decks are on the trade pages too, and for anything else, ask us.

Next storm, be the one who picks up.

Set it up tonight. Free for 30 days, no card, no setup fee, cancel from the dashboard.

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