A free contractor website builder with room for your license number and project photos

What should a contractor website show?

A contractor website should show what homeowners are told to check before hiring: your license number, proof of insurance, reviews from past clients, what your written estimate contains, who pulls permits and how payment is staged. Add projects you take on, photos of finished work, the towns you cover, your phone number and one way to ask for a quote.

The checklist below follows two consumer pages: the Federal Trade Commission's advice on avoiding home improvement scams, and the California contractor board's guide to finding a licensed contractor. Between them they tell a homeowner to consider only licensed and insured contractors, confirm the license with the state, ask for proof of insurance, read reviews with a critical eye, get multiple estimates, and never pay the full amount up front. Each item names the source it rests on, so you can check it yourself.

1. License number, near the top of your homepage, in the form your state uses. The California board's consumer page says every contractor advertisement, an online ad included, must carry the state license number, and the next section has the rules for five states.

2. Insurance. Say what you carry and that a certificate is available on request, if it is. The FTC tells homeowners to ask for proof of insurance, and the California board tells them to ask for a copy of the Certificate of Insurance for both workers' compensation and general liability, so name both if you hold both.

3. Phone number and city. The California board tells homeowners to make sure a contractor has a current business address and telephone number. Google's Business Profile guidelines say a business that travels to its customers should hide its address from customers, so the phone number and city belong on the site, and the street address belongs in the license lookup and in your contract, where the FTC tells homeowners to look for it.

4. Service area. Google's Business Profile guidelines say a service area should not extend farther than about two hours of driving time from where the business is based, so name the towns you actually cover rather than a whole state.

5. What you build, split by project type (kitchens, bathrooms, additions, basements, decks), with one line each on what the job includes. A homeowner comparing three written bids on identical specifications, which is what the California board tells them to get, needs to see the job described the same way on your site.

6. Photos of finished projects, captioned with the kind of house and the job. No source requires them; they are what a homeowner looks at once the license checks out, and the photo section below says how to caption them.

7. Reviews written by past clients, in their words. The FTC tells homeowners to read reviews with a critical eye, so a review in your own words reads as advertising.

8. How estimates work: whether you visit first, and that your written estimate lists the work, the materials, a completion date and the price. Those are the four things the FTC says a written estimate should include.

9. Permits: who pulls them. The FTC lists a contractor who asks the homeowner to get the building permits as a sign of a scam, so if you pull them, say so.

10. Payment: your deposit and payment schedule, in amounts your state allows. The FTC notes that some states limit down payments; California's limit is below.

11. What your contract includes. The FTC tells homeowners a contract should carry the contractor's name, address, phone number and license number, an estimated start and completion date, every promise made in conversation, and a written statement of the right to cancel within three business days when it was signed in the home. One line saying your contract contains all of that answers the question before the visit, if it is true.

12. Lead-safe certification, if you hold it. EPA says firms cannot advertise or perform paint-disturbing work in pre-1978 homes without it, and the section on certification below has the limits.

13. One way to ask for a quote on every page, and your phone number.

In Onelios, items 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 are yours to type. The AI is instructed not to add licenses, credentials, guarantees, prices or years in business you did not give it, and it can still make mistakes, so read every line before you publish. On the homepage, the wording you can type yourself is the headline (up to 90 characters), the line under it (up to 240), and a title and one line for each of up to eight services (60 and 220). Your business details hold the phone number, which becomes a call link, and a city or service area.

Where does a contractor's license number have to appear?

In several states, a contractor's license number must appear on the website itself. California requires it in all forms of advertising, and its contractor board counts websites as advertising. Florida requires it on every advertisement regardless of medium. Washington, Oregon and Arizona have their own versions. Check your own state's contractor board before you publish.

California. Business and Professions Code section 7030.5 says every licensed contractor shall include the license number in “all forms of advertising”. The Contractors State License Board's advertising guide counts “any website or post that solicits business on the Internet” as advertising and puts the civil penalty for a first offense at $100 to $1,000. The same guide says to advertise only the work your license classification covers: its example is a C-29 masonry contractor, who cannot advertise electrical work without a C-10 license, while “A” and “B” license holders can advertise as general contractors.

Florida. Section 489.119(5)(b) of the Florida Statutes says a contractor's certification or registration number “shall appear in each offer of services”, bid, contract or advertisement, “regardless of medium”.

Washington. RCW 18.27.100 says all advertising that shows a contractor's name or address shall show the contractor's current registration number. Washington registers contractors rather than licensing them, so it is a registration number there.

Oregon. The Construction Contractors Board says the number should read “CCB” and then the license number, for example “CCB #123456”, and lists websites among the advertising that must carry it.

Arizona. Arizona Revised Statutes section 32-1124 puts “ROC” in front of the number and requires it on published advertising. An internet ad may leave it off only if it links to a website that prominently displays your name and license number, so the website an ad points to has to show it.

In Onelios, type the number into the line under your headline and save. That line sits at the top of your homepage, not in the footer, and it is also the description in the business details your site hands to search engines. If you later press Rewrite or ask the AI to change the wording, check the number is still there. Service pages do not repeat that line and cannot be edited word by word, so if your board reads “all forms of advertising” strictly, ask it whether each page needs the number before you add them.

Can my website say I am bonded, insured or certified?

A contractor website can say only what is true, in the words your state allows. California's contractor board says the law prevents you from noting in your advertising that you are bonded. Oregon's board says you can include the words “Licensed and bonded”. Washington's law bars advertising “bonded and insured” on the strength of its required bond and insurance.

California gives its reason in its own guide: saying you are bonded “could lead a consumer to believe that bonding offers a higher level of protection than might be the case.” The same guide says false, misleading or deceptive advertising to win improvement contracts is a misdemeanor. So wording Oregon's board allows is wording California's law prevents. Washington's contractor law, RCW 18.27.100, also says no contractor shall advertise that it is bonded and insured because of the bond and insurance that law requires. Check before you copy a line from a contractor in another state.

Not licensed yet? California lets an unlicensed person advertise construction work only for jobs quoted under $1,000 in total for labor, materials and everything else, and only if the ad says the person is not licensed (Business and Professions Code section 7027.2). In Washington, RCW 18.27.100 makes any advertising for contracting work by an unregistered person a violation. Other states have their own rules; ask your board.

Older houses. The Environmental Protection Agency's lead renovation rule covers paid work that disturbs paint in homes and child-occupied facilities built before 1978, and EPA says firms “cannot advertise or perform” that work without firm certification. It names general contractors among the firms covered. Minor repair and maintenance that disturbs six square feet of paint or less per room inside, or 20 square feet or less outside, is exempt, but window replacement and demolition of painted surfaces are always covered. In fourteen states, among them Oregon, Wisconsin and North Carolina, the state runs the program instead of EPA. EPA recommends that homeowners hire a lead-safe certified contractor and offers a search to find one, so if you hold the certification, say so.

Whatever the AI writes about permits, inspections or building code, keep it only if it describes how you work, and delete any service you do not offer. A service page cannot be edited line by line, so if one says something untrue, remove the page. What is on the page is published under your name.

How should a contractor website explain estimates, permits and payment?

A contractor website should say how an estimate happens, what the written estimate contains, who pulls the permits and how payment is staged, before the homeowner has to ask. The FTC tells homeowners a written estimate should include the work, materials, completion date and price, and warns that some states limit the down payment a contractor can ask for.

The FTC's warning signs double as a list your site can rule out: a contractor who asks for everything up front or only takes cash, who asks the homeowner to get the building permits, who pressures for a decision on the spot, or who suggests borrowing from a lender they know. If none of those describes you, one sentence on how you actually work answers the worry before the first visit.

California's numbers are specific. On a home improvement contract, the most a contractor can charge as a down payment is $1,000 or 10 percent of the contract price, whichever is less. Payments before completion must follow a schedule in the contract tied to the work, and apart from the down payment a contractor may not take more than the value of the work done or materials delivered (Business and Professions Code section 7159.5). A contractor that furnishes a performance and payment bond, or an equivalent the registrar approves, is exempt from those three limits. Without one, a line such as “50% deposit to start” on a California remodeler's site describes a down payment that section does not allow.

Onelios has no separate page for this, and its website builder writes no estimates, so it goes in your own words: the line under your headline, or the one-line description of a service, for example “Written estimate after a site visit; we pull the permits”, only if that is how you work. The quote form asks for the homeowner's name, a phone number or email, which service, and anything else they want to say. It has no address, budget or photo field, so ask for those in your reply.

What photos and project pages should a contractor website have?

A contractor website needs finished projects grouped by type, before-and-after pairs taken from the same spot, whole rooms in daylight, and a caption naming the house and the job. Add a page for each kind of project you want more of. Add a page for a town only when you have real projects there to show.

Captions do the explaining a photo cannot. “1920s bungalow, kitchen opened to the dining room” tells a homeowner with a similar house more than a wide shot with no words. Take the before shot from a spot you can stand in again at the end. In Onelios, upload JPEG, PNG or WebP photos from your phone, which are resized before upload, with a caption of up to 160 characters. Your homepage gallery is one set, newest first, with no grouping, so start each caption with the kind of project. It shows the 24 most recent, so the oldest drops off as you add more, and service pages do not show photos.

For a project page, type a title such as “Home additions” and Onelios writes the page and links it from your homepage: an introduction, what's included, common questions, a Request a quote button that takes the visitor to the form on your homepage, and a link back. The AI writes it from the title, your trade and your city, so read it. You can remove a page and ask again, but you cannot edit its wording line by line.

Towns are different. Google's spam policies list “multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page” as doorway abuse. A page for a suburb earns its place when it shows projects you finished there; ten near-identical pages with the town name swapped are the pattern that policy describes. An Onelios page is written from its title and shows no photos, so it cannot show the projects you finished in a town; name the town in your photo captions instead.

Your site on the free Onelios address is kept out of Google on purpose; on a domain you already own it can appear in Google, and connecting one is free. Google's Business Profile guidelines ask a business that travels to its customers to hide its business address and keep its service area within about two hours' drive. Your Onelios site has no street address field; it shows your city.

What happens when a homeowner asks for a quote?

When a homeowner asks for a quote on an Onelios site, the request is saved in your inbox and an email alert to you is attempted; the alert can fail, so check the inbox too. If the homeowner left an email address, replying to the alert answers them directly. Nothing goes to them by text or automatically.

If you want homeowners to book an estimate visit, save your days, hours, time zone and days off, and your site offers times from them. A booking is a request you confirm: the requested start is held, but your outside calendar and overlapping jobs are not checked, so look at your week before you say yes. When you confirm, Onelios emails the homeowner the time if they left an email address, and a reply reaches you. Until you save hours, the site points visitors to the quote form.

Each Monday an email counts the quote requests, bookings and new reviews that came through your site that week, and when a request from that week is still marked New after 48 hours, answering it is the one thing the email asks of you. Phone calls and texts never pass through Onelios, so they are not in those numbers.

When a job is finished, send the client a review request by email from your dashboard. They write the review themselves through a private link and it appears on your site; if they reply to the email instead, the reply reaches you. There are no review requests by text, and you cannot reply to reviews from Onelios.

Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy for a contractor website?

Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy are general website builders: you pick a template, their AI writes starter text, and you type the license line yourself. On September 23, 2026, Wix started at $17 a month and GoDaddy at $9.99 on an annual term; Squarespace prices by country and has no free plan. Onelios is free and built around quote requests.

Wix, plans page read September 23, 2026, US prices. Creating a site is free, on a free Wix address of the form username.wixsite.com/sitename, and its FAQ says a Premium plan is what lets you connect your own domain and remove Wix branding. Wix's Light plan is $17 a month, Core $29, Business $39 and Business Elite $159, for yearly subscriptions paid in full, before tax; a half-price offer on Core, Business and Business Elite ($14.50, $19.50 and $79.50) was running that day, valid only for the first term. Most Premium plans include a one-year free domain voucher, valid only on a new domain bought from Wix. All plans include AI creation tools, and its AI website builder creates the site “from a single prompt”. Light has 2 GB of storage, which matters if your project photos are large.

Squarespace, pricing page read September 23, 2026. There is no free plan; every site starts with a 14-day free trial, with no card. Squarespace says in its own price data that it prices its plans per billing country and offers a customer in another country a different currency and a different amount, and the page shows each visitor only their own country's plans, so this page quotes no dollar figure for it; open the pricing page from where you work. Every plan bought for an annual term includes one year of free domain registration on its cheapest domain tier, and a domain you already own can be connected with any subscription. Every plan has form blocks for contact forms and built-in AI tools that “generate professional content”, metered in credits that differ by plan.

GoDaddy, pricing page and Website Builder page read September 23, 2026, US. Its builder, whose plans it now sells as Airo AI Builder, says you can “create unlimited websites or apps for free” with no card and 50 AI credits a month; paid plans are listed “as low as” $9.99 a month, billed annually, with “33% savings with an annual term”, and GoDaddy gives a free domain with any paid Airo AI Builder plan. Its AI “quickly lays out pages, sections, starter copy, and images” from a description of your project.

What none of the three pages names is anything a contractor needs by name: no license-number line, no field for insurance or permits, and nothing about what happens to a quote request after it is sent. Each gives you a template and starter text, and you write the license line, the insurance line, the estimate promise and the payment terms into the design you chose. That is the right trade if you want to control the layout, and each lists portfolio sites among what it builds, so project photos fit. Prices and plan contents change; the links at the end of this page go to the pages these figures came from.

Onelios, for comparison. Building and publishing are free right now with no card, connecting a domain you already own is free, and it sells no domains, so a new .com is bought elsewhere. The AI drafts the headline, the line under it and your services from your business name, trade and city, and you type the license number into the line under the headline. Every quote request lands in one inbox with an email alert attempted, and your reply reaches the homeowner. What it lacks: there is no drag-and-drop editor and no template gallery, the layout and colors come with the trade, a service page cannot be edited line by line, the gallery shows your 24 newest photos, and the small “Site by Onelios” line stays at the bottom. Your site on the free Onelios address is kept out of Google; on your own domain it can appear.

Onelios or Jobber, Housecall Pro or Houzz Pro?

Jobber, Housecall Pro and Houzz Pro are software for running contracting work, with estimates, scheduling and invoicing, and each includes or sells a website. Onelios is the website, with quote, booking and review requests. If you need estimating or invoicing, use one of them; if you need only the site, Onelios is free right now.

Read on their own pages, September 23, 2026. Jobber lists its Core plan at $49 a month on monthly billing, and says its website builder “generates SEO-friendly pages based on the services you offer” and is “included with every Jobber plan at no additional cost”. Housecall Pro sells a website built and managed by its team: from $99 a month for 5 pages, or $149 a month for up to 15, plus a one-time $99 setup fee, with a typical build time of 4 to 6 weeks from purchase to publish. Houzz Pro says it will build a website for you with select plans; its website page shows no price.

The Onelios website builder and dashboard create no estimates, takeoffs, change orders or invoices, take no payments, schedule no crews, have no staff logins and send no text messages; what they do and do not do is listed on onelios.com/what-it-does. For paperwork, onelios.com/tools has free printable estimate and invoice templates that you fill in yourself on the page, then print or save as a PDF. Building, publishing and connecting a domain you already own cost nothing right now, with no card, and Onelios does not sell domains; current terms are on onelios.com/#pricing.

Sources

• Contractors State License Board (California), Advertising Guidelines for Contractors, read September 23, 2026
• Contractors State License Board (California), How do I find the right licensed contractor?, read September 23, 2026
• California Business and Professions Code section 7030.5 (license number in advertising), read September 23, 2026
• California Business and Professions Code section 7027.2 (advertising without a license), read September 23, 2026
• California Business and Professions Code section 7159.5 (home improvement contracts and down payments), read September 23, 2026
• Florida Statutes section 489.119 (2026), read September 23, 2026
• Revised Code of Washington 18.27.100 (contractor advertising), read September 23, 2026
• Oregon Construction Contractors Board, Contractor tools: advertising guidelines, read September 23, 2026
• Arizona Revised Statutes section 32-1124 (license number posting and advertising), read September 23, 2026
• EPA, Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Program, read September 23, 2026
• EPA, Renovation, Repair and Painting Program: Contractors, read September 23, 2026
• Federal Trade Commission, How To Avoid a Home Improvement Scam, read September 23, 2026
• Google Search Central, Spam policies: doorway abuse, read September 23, 2026
• Google Business Profile, Guidelines for representing your business on Google, read September 23, 2026
• Wix, Premium plans and pricing (US prices), read September 23, 2026
• Squarespace, Pricing (plans and currency shown per billing country), read September 23, 2026
• GoDaddy, Plans and pricing (US prices), read September 23, 2026
• GoDaddy, Website Builder, read September 23, 2026
• Jobber, Pricing, read September 23, 2026
• Jobber, Website builder, read September 23, 2026
• Housecall Pro, Websites, read September 23, 2026
• Housecall Pro, Pricing and features, read September 23, 2026
• Houzz Pro, Contractor website builder, read September 23, 2026