Seattle-based Porch.com is a home-services platform that helps homeowners maintain their home and get projects done by connecting them with quality home improvement professionals. Porch is available nationwide online and serves as the exclusive in-store resource in over 1720 Lowe’s stores across the U.S.

Porch has just announced new features to help home professionals grow their business, as well as Porch Perks, a loyalty program (with Fine Homebuilding as a partner) that provides exclusive business and entertainment discounts for Porch Guaranteed professionals. We feel some of the new benefits Porch unveiled would provide a great service to the Fine Homebuilding community.

Flexible features for local professionals

Local professionals across the country wanted more flexibility and control in how they worked with Porch. The following capabilities are now available:

• For professionals who prefer little up-front commitment, “Pay As You Go” is an easy way to get started. By adding a credit card, professionals can browse a list of homeowner projects in a desired area and choose who to connect with. This feature is great for test driving the Porch project marketplace or for filling an occasional hole in a professional’s schedule.
• Instead of browsing projects, professionals can set criteria based on type of work and a monthly budget. Projects that meet the criteria will automatically be “reserved” and delivered to the pro each month. This feature is for professionals who want a steady stream of project requests from the Porch marketplace. This is an evolution of the Premium product that was launched two years ago. Porch has thousands of active professionals already reserving projects.

“Professionals can now decide the best way to grow their business through the expansion of our pro product suite. With our new offerings, Porch caters to every home-service professional across the country, big or small, by providing features that are tailored to their business. Over the past year, the volume of projects that have been requested on Porch from homeowners has exploded—so now is the right time to accelerate the connection with all types of quality professionals,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Matt Ehrlichman.

The new features accompany the Porch Guarantee, a free program for homeowners that guarantees a quality experience with Porch professionals to homeowners. Guaranteed professionals have passed a 30-point check system that includes pre-screening, a comprehensive background check, and accepting the Porch Pledge—a commitment to making it right for every customer.

Also launched is Porch Perks, available immediately to all Guaranteed professionals. These high-quality professionals will now be able to receive dozens of business discounts and hundreds of local deals to help them operate and grow their business.

“Professionals are core partners in building Porch with us. For the past two years, we’ve been working on increasing the amount of qualified service requests that come through Porch. With the quality and value of these requests at an all-time high, we want to reward our professionals by helping them grow their business in other ways. Access to discounts for home products, legal services, payment processing benefits, or food for their crew are just a few examples of how Porch will give time back to professionals so they can continue to focus on doing the work they love,” said Chief Customer Officer, Matthew Neagle.

The role Fine Homebuilding plays in Porch Perks

“Fine Homebuilding is the most trusted and authoritative resource for residential construction and remodeling professionals, and we’re committed to sharing the industry best practices and advancements that help building professionals succeed in their trades. We are pleased to provide an exclusive subscription discount [$5 for one year] to Fine Homebuilding magazine to Porch Professionals, a community of builders and designers that share in our commitment to the pursuit of quality craftsmanship and the advancement of home building,” said Renee Jordan, Publisher of Fine Homebuilding.

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