Why we are building WorkMate

Why we are building WorkMate

If you have ever hired a tradesperson in Ireland, you know the drill. You search, you find a name, you ring them three times, you get a quote on the back of a receipt, and you cross your fingers. If you are the tradesperson, the same friction runs the other way: you pay a directory monthly, you buy leads that have been sold to several other people, and you chase the customer for a deposit that may or may not arrive.

This is not a complaint about Irish trades. It is an observation about the tools both sides have been handed.

Where the existing options fall short

Generic lead-buying sites charge tradespeople for the privilege of pitching, with no real check that the customer is ready to hire. Five quotes per job is good for the platform; it is expensive and demoralising for the provider.

Cheque-by-text arrangements between customer and provider work fine until they don't — and when they don't, there is no platform to escalate to.

International marketplaces that treat Ireland as an afterthought (one shared pool with the UK, no Eircode validation, no awareness of Revenue or the CRO) end up serving neither side well.

What we are optimising for

WorkMate is built around three commitments.

Payment held until the work is done. Customers authorise on a card; nothing moves until the job is marked complete. Five days to confirm release or report a problem, and the funds release automatically if everyone is happy.

One platform, one verification. Providers go through Stripe Connect KYC — identity, business legal documents, bank ownership — once. We do not ask for the same documents twice and we do not process personal identity papers manually. That is a GDPR principle as much as a UX one.

Free while we grow — and fair when that changes. Right now WorkMate is free at launch: no service fee for customers and no commission for providers. You pay the price you agree with your provider, with nothing added on top. When we do introduce charges, it will be a small, transparent customer service fee and a per-job provider commission, announced in advance — not lead-buying, and never a charge you did not see coming.

Where we are today

I am writing this from a desk in Ireland. WorkMate is run as an Irish sole trader, registered under "Workmate" with the Companies Registration Office, and operates below the services VAT threshold while we get to scale. That is not a marketing line — it is why the prices on this site do not show VAT yet, and why our Terms describe a single-operator entity.