Window covering quote broken down: twelve windows of cordless cellular shades at $165 a window making $1,980, one oversize window at $95 and $95 to take down and haul away the old blinds, totalling $2,170 with no percentage applied, giving a $2,170 midpoint and an estimate of $1,953 to $2,387 for shades measured, made and installed The same account, drawn as a mechanism: her answers go in on the contractor’s own site — a number, a slider, a dropdown, a yes or no, an optional photo that is flagged rather than attached and never moves the price, then her name, mobile, email and ZIP — one submit is priced server-side on the rates the owner set, and the result forks two ways. Her screen shows a range with a low end and a high end and never a single number, or a plain-English reason instead of a figure when the engine will not price, such as outside the area, a site-visit service, a waitlist, booking ahead for the season, or over the owner’s ceiling. The dashboard gets the lead either way, carrying her name and mobile, her email if she gave one, her ZIP, every answer labelled as she gave it, the range or the reason it did not price, and her thread, so her call and her quote sit together

Window coverings are priced by the window, and by the family the product belongs to

Count the windows, pick the product, choose how much light it blocks: a window covering quote is about the friendliest arithmetic in home services, and a homeowner can do her half of it walking from room to room. The one place it breaks is between product families. A plantation shutter costs more than twice what a cellular shade does on the same window, and no dropdown can honestly turn one into the other with a percentage.

So this page does what the flooring page does with its material families: one instant service for blinds and shades, priced per window, and one for plantation shutters, at their own rate. Inside each, the product moves the job by a believable percentage. Motorized shades, custom draperies and arched or skylight windows go to a consultation that never shows a number. And everything on the form is cordless, which is a statement rather than an option.

  • Blinds and shades priced per window, with the product and the light control moving the job
  • Plantation shutters as their own service at their own rate, never a percentage on a shade
  • Every product cordless, said in the help text where she reads it
  • Motorized shades, draperies and special shapes run as a consultation that never quotes

The flow also asks for a photo of the windows, and the lead tells you to ask for those pictures on the callback. Attaching the image itself to the lead is on the roadmap, which is why it is not a tick in that list.

The eight things that set a window covering number

A count of windows, two more counts, two pick-ones, a yes or no and a ZIP, and one promise that is not a question at all. You build the set once in the dashboard and every rate in it is a field you own — you can change a per-window rate the season your supplier changes theirs without touching your website.

How many windows

Counted and multiplied: $165 a window on the demo for a cordless cellular shade, measured by you and installed. A double window with one shade across it counts once, and the help text says so.

The product

Cellular shades at the rate, faux wood blinds minus 12%, roller shades minus 8%, woven wood +22%, fabric Roman shades +45%. A percentage on the whole job, small enough inside one family to be believable, which is why shutters are not on this list.

How much light

Light filtering at the rate, room darkening or blackout +12%. The question every bedroom and nursery is really about, and she has her answer before she starts.

Oversize windows

Counted and multiplied: $95 a window on the demo for one wider than six feet or taller than seven, which needs a heavier shade or a split one.

High windows

Counted and multiplied: $35 a window for the one above the stairs or in a two-story room, which needs the tall ladder and a second person.

The old blinds

A yes or no with a flat amount behind it: $95 on the demo to take them down, haul them away and patch the old bracket holes, added once for the job.

Cordless, always

Not a question. The CPSC advises cordless window coverings wherever young children live or visit, so the demo offers no corded product at a discount and the help text says every product is cordless. It is also the question the homeowner should be asking you.

Travel zone

List your ZIPs by zone, whole ZIPs or three-digit prefixes, and the widget prices the trip from the ZIP she types, most specific match first, as a flat charge, a percentage, or both. Our demo company charges nothing in its home county and $65 out to the ring beyond it, so the same twelve windows come back $1,953 to $2,387 at home and $2,012 to $2,459 in Arlington. Set one zone to "outside my area" and it declines politely while still capturing the lead.

A real house of shades, start to finish

Seven questions, under a minute. This is the exact sequence running on the blinds-and-shades service of our own window covering demo account, answered for twelve windows of cellular shades in a Reston house — and the total at the bottom is what the live engine returns for these answers, not a figure anybody typed into this page.

# What she is asked What she answers What it does to the price
1 How many windows? 12 12 × $165 = $1,980. This is THE base number
2 Which product? Cellular (honeycomb) shades Nothing. Faux wood −12%, roller −8%, woven wood +22%, Roman +45%
3 How much light should they block? Light filtering Nothing. Room darkening or blackout +12%
4 How many windows are wider than 6 feet or taller than 7? 1 1 × $95
5 How many windows need a tall ladder? 0 Nothing. A number question at zero adds nothing
6 Should we take down and haul away the old blinds? Yes A flat $95 for the job
7 Got a photo of the windows? Offered Nothing. A photo never moves the price
The arithmetic, in the order the engine runs it $1,980 + $95 + $95 = $2,170, and with no percentage answer picked there is nothing to apply: → $2,170
She sees $1,953 – $2,387
What lands in your inbox, the second she submits Name, mobile, ZIP, all seven answers, and the photo flag

Every rate in that table belongs to the demo account, not to a Tailgate Office price list — you set all of them yourself, and you can change one without touching your website. What is not illustrative is the total: $1,953 to $2,387 is what the engine returns for those seven answers, for cordless shades measured, made and installed.

Would you rather try it than read about it? We keep a working example window covering company website with NapkinPrice™ embedded — the real engine, quoting live, on a page that is not ours. Put in those seven answers and see the same number come back.

Try the live demo site

Shades on one rate, shutters on another, and the motorized ones at the kitchen table

This is the one design decision that matters in window coverings, so here is the whole of it in plain words rather than a promise that it all just works.

There are five kinds of pricing rule in the engine and none of them multiplies one answer by another. A number question carries a per-unit rate — the windows, the oversize ones, the high ones. A pick-one adds dollars once or takes a percentage of the whole job. So inside one family the product is a percentage, and the spread is small enough to read as honest: faux wood a little under the cellular rate, Roman shades a good deal over it. Across families it is not small. On the demo a shutter costs $395 a window against $165 for a shade, and as a percentage it would look like a mistake on her screen.

So our demo runs plantation shutters as their own instant service, $395 a window in composite, with painted basswood +20% and vinyl minus 10%, $150 for a window over thirty square feet and $95 to take the old blinds down. Ten windows of composite shutters with one large one come back $3,776 – $4,615. She picks shades or shutters before she answers a question, which is how she thinks about it anyway. Motorized shades, custom draperies and arched, angled or skylight windows go to a consultation that asks what she is looking for and roughly how many windows, and shows no number.

Blinds and shades — quotes instantly

$165 a window on the demo for a cordless cellular shade, with the product and the light control moving the job, $95 an oversize window, $35 a high one and $95 to take the old blinds down. A $650 minimum is the floor under the final number, so three roller shades that work out at $455 come back $650 to $715. Past $20,000 it stops pricing and hands you the lead.

Plantation shutters — quotes instantly

$395 a window in composite on the demo, painted basswood +20%, vinyl minus 10%, $150 for a window over thirty square feet. Its own $1,200 minimum and $25,000 ceiling, and a disclaimer that says shutters take several weeks to make after she approves the order.

Motorized shades, draperies and special shapes — consultation, never priced

Site-visit mode captures the request and shows no number at all, which is the honest answer to a motor she has not chosen and a fabric she has not seen in her own light. It asks what she is looking for and roughly how many windows, which only tells you how many samples to bring.

A service that quotes will not go live until it carries a real base fee or a real minimum. That is deliberate: a service with neither would happily return $0 to a homeowner, and one bad number on your website costs more than a day of setup. Neither priced service carries a trip charge, so on both of them it is the minimum doing that job.

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, Saturday or Sunday the weekend message, and otherwise your 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.

Nobody answers the phone in the middle of an in-home measure

You are on a stepladder in somebody’s living room with a tape and a notebook, or the sample case is open on her kitchen table. The next customer is on her own couch with swatches open in three tabs, working down a list, and she books the consultation with whoever answers her first. In this trade every missed call is a whole house of windows.

What a missed window covering call is worth On the demo account
Twelve windows of cordless cellular shades$1,953 – $2,387
The same windows in blackout Roman shades$3,066 – $3,748
Ten windows of composite plantation shutters$3,776 – $4,615
Three roller shades, at the minimum$650 – $715
One recovered house of shades pays for9 months of the bundle
One recovered shutter job pays for18 months

Once texting is switched on, CallMitt™ writes back by text with your business name in the first words, so she replies into the same thread as her quote. The message is picked by the hour and the day, against the hours you actually keep — the demo showroom runs 9 to 6, because most measures are booked for the hours people are home, so a 6:15 call gets the after-hours version rather than one claiming somebody is in the showroom — and every version asks the two things that sort your week: how many windows, and what she has in mind.

Straight about where this stands. The forwarded-call hook is built and waits on your texting number, so today you log the missed call and nothing is sent: a reply queued now is retired rather than delivered when your carrier registration clears. Everything around it is built and running now: the five messages, the business-hours, weekend, holiday and vacation rules, the quiet hours, the opt-out handling, and the thread her reply lands in beside her quote.

How CallMitt Works Run Your Own Numbers

An installer is hired on one question, and it is about the tape measure

Hanging a shade is a morning’s teaching. Measuring for one is the trade: an inside mount that is an eighth too wide does not fit, and a custom shutter made to the wrong number is a remake at your cost. Has he measured windows for custom blinds or shutters himself? A man who has will tell you where he measures and how many times. The first question is plainer: a valid license and a clean driving record, because he drives your van to a different house every two hours.

Put “Now hiring — text CREW to your texting number” on the van and the showroom door. CrewFunnel™ asks seven short questions: is he 18 or older, does he have a valid driver’s license and a clean driving record, has he measured windows for custom blinds or shutters himself, how many years has he installed blinds, shades or shutters, how far out does he live, can he start inside two weeks, and what was the last job he worked on. Three are knockouts — under 18, no license or a poor record, or living further out than you will drive — and the rest come back as a weighted fit score, years in the trade heaviest, the start date next and the measuring question after it.

Two things about that scoring are worth copying. Distance is a knockout and never a weight, because a number answer scores higher the bigger it is, so weighting miles would rank the man furthest away at the top. And free text carries no weight, because any non-empty answer scores full marks and a weighted text box inflates every candidate who typed anything. Both are set that way on our demo job, and all seven questions carry a Spanish translation.

One honest note on delivery. Text-to-apply waits on your texting number, so today he answers those seven questions on your screening page rather than by text — same questions, same knockouts, same scoring, same pool. The keyword on the van takes over the day your carrier registration clears.

  • Screens for a driving record and real measuring before you give up an afternoon
  • Spanish alongside English on every question, if that is your crew
  • Applicants land in the same dashboard as your leads, with a fit score on each
  • Part of the Tailgate Office Bundle — Indeed is now pay-per-click and typically runs $150–300/mo for a micro business
See how CrewFunnel works
Text-to-apply hiring flow showing an applicant texting a keyword 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 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

New shades get their review the first morning the bedroom stays dark

The last shade is hung, she pulls each one down to check it, and the next morning the bedroom stays dark until the alarm instead of the streetlight. That is the week she would write you a review. After that the shades are just the windows, and the installer who measured every one twice is a name she would have to look up. The outfit with sixty reviews is not sixty times better than you; somebody there asks every customer, the week the shades go up.

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 yet, so none is sent today. 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 is about $399/mo, on an annual contract
See how HurraBell works

One recovered house of shades covers 9 months

A shutter job covers 18 of them. In a trade where the shopper has swatches open at 9pm and books whoever answers first, the arithmetic is not close.

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.

Start Free Trial

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.

Window covering questions we get asked

You can price a range, and only a range — the widget never shows a single figure. The disclaimer under it is yours to write. On the demo it says every product is cordless, that you measure every window yourself, and that the price is confirmed at a free in-home measure, where she also picks the fabric or the color. Nothing is ordered until she has that written number.

Because the engine cannot multiply one answer by another, and on the demo a shutter costs $395 a window against $165 for a shade. As a percentage that is well over a hundred percent, which reads as a mistake on her screen and would mark up the removal fee with it. One service per product family gives each a rate that is right for it, and she picks shades or shutters before she answers a question.

Because the CPSC advises cordless window coverings wherever young children live or visit, and the question a homeowner should ask a window covering company is whether what it installs is cordless. The demo answers yes for every product and says so in the help text and the disclaimer. If you sell corded products, the form is yours to change, but we would not put one on it at a discount.

They count well when the help text says what counts: each window that gets a blind or a shade, and a double window with one shade across it as one. The lead records exactly what she typed, so when you count fourteen against her twelve the conversation is about two windows, not the whole house.

No, and you should not. Put motorized shades, draperies and special shapes on a consultation service: it asks what she is looking for and roughly how many windows, shows no price whatsoever, and sends her a plain "we like to see it first" note. A motor, a hub and a fabric she has not seen in her own light are not a dropdown.

Call it fifteen minutes for your text-back messages and your showroom 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, and about an hour to write the seven questions and load one rate card — per window, your product and light percentages, per oversize and high window and your removal fee. Then half an hour more for shutters. A service that quotes will not go live until it carries a real base fee or minimum, which is deliberate. No onboarding call, no setup fee and no contract: $199 a month buys all four tools.

Also replace windows and doors, or paint interiors? See all the trade pages or ask us.

Quote the windows while she is still counting them.

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

Start Free Trial