How We Make Money

What actually happens when you request a quote

You fill out a form or call us. We ask about your space — square footage, how many rooms, whether there is power nearby, what the room is used for. We pass that to a licensed installer who works in your area. They contact you to arrange an estimate and give you a number in writing. You decide whether to book it.

We are not in the room for that estimate, we do not set the installer's price, and we do not take a cut of your payment. Your contract is with the installer.

How we are compensated

Installers in our partner network pay us a referral fee for connecting them with homeowners who are ready to hire. The structure varies by partner, but three things are always true:

• You pay us nothing. There is no fee to you at any stage, and quotes are free with no obligation to book.
• Your price is not marked up. The referral fee is between us and the installer. It is not added to your invoice.
• We are often paid on the match, not the close. Worth knowing, because it means our incentive is to connect you with an installer regardless of whether you book. Evaluate the quote on its merits.

Why this gets you a better price, not a worse one

The reasonable worry about any referral arrangement is that the fee comes out of your pocket in the end. Here is why it does not.

Customer acquisition is one of the largest costs in home services. A contractor chasing cold leads, buying ads, and quoting people who are still six months from deciding carries all of that overhead into every price they give.

Our customers come ready to hire. Partners know the homeowner has already seen real pricing, understands what the job involves, and is actively looking for an installer. That lets them compete for the work with exclusive pricing they could not offer on a walk-in enquiry. They trade margin per job for volume and predictability.

How we vet partners

Every contractor in the network must hold, and keep current, all three of the following. We verify them before a partner joins:

• A current Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) contractor licence. In Texas, HVAC work on a residence legally requires one.
• EPA Section 608 certification for every technician handling refrigerant. An uncertified install is the fastest way to void the manufacturer warranty on your new system.
• Active general liability insurance.

We also ask about recent ductless installations specifically. General HVAC experience is valuable, but ductless has its own failure modes — improper evacuation, wrong sizing, bad condensate routing — and none of them surface on install day. They surface years later. Routing homeowners to crews who have already learned those lessons is the actual value we provide.

Installations are performed by TDLR-licensed contractors under licence #133305, with EPA certification #3102/A-720-0010. Those are the network's credentials, not a contractor licence held by this website.

What we do to be worth using anyway

Given that we are paid on the match, the fair question is why you should use us rather than searching yourself. Our answer is what is on this site.

We publish real installed prices — actual numbers by system type on thepricing page — so you can check any quote you receive, including one of ours, against a published figure. Most lead-gen sites publish ranges so wide they are useless.

We also tell you when ductless is not in your interest. Themini split vs central AC guide explains when a ducted system is the better buy. TheDIY guide explains when installing it yourself is defensible. Neither helps us commercially. They are there because a site that only ever recommends the thing it sells is not worth reading.

About the reviews on this site

The Google reviews shown across this site are from customers of the installers in our partner network — the people who actually did the work. We label them that way rather than presenting them as reviews of a lead-matching service, which would be misleading.

About the pricing on this site

Published prices are estimates for typical installations, not quotes. Your actual price is set by the contractor after a site evaluation.

Rebate figures are current as of the last update to each page. The federal 25C tax credit expired December 31, 2025, and we removed it from our pricing rather than leaving it up because it made our numbers look better.