Instant Estimate: your homeowner estimator

Instant Estimate is your own homeowner estimator. A homeowner opens your link or scans your QR code, types their address, answers two quick questions and leaves their name, email and phone. RoofGo measures the roof from aerial imagery, prices it with your Price Book and shows them a preliminary estimate with your logo, your contact details and your next step. The lead and the estimate save in your Estimates, marked with the source Instant Estimate. The homeowner never needs an account, and there is no map for them to deal with.

Launch checklist

1. Open Instant Estimate in the menu (owners and admins).
2. Branding and contact: check your logo, name, phone and email (they come from Brand Studio) and confirm.
3. Pricing and assumptions: your Price Book must be saved with your own price per square. Edit what every estimate assumes and confirm. Financing shows only if you chose it in Price Book (the line Financing available, or your lender’s example payments) and you confirm the offer is real and current.
4. Service area and roofs: a centre and radius, extra ZIP codes, and which roof systems homeowners may pick.
5. Lead fields and notifications: who gets an email for each lead, your privacy policy link, and an optional, always unticked, marketing box. Address, stories, first and last name, email and phone are always required before the price shows, so you always know who to call, and the homeowner always gets their estimate by email.
6. Next step: a booking link, call, email or your website. A booking link is checked before you can confirm it.
7. Preview and test: run it in test mode (below).
8. Publish: read the credit charge, set your daily limit, tick the box and publish. Copy your link.

What the homeowner sees

One short form: their address (picked from the suggestions as they type), 1 or 2 stories, the roof they want if you offer more than one, then first name, last name, email and phone. All four are required and checked before anything is measured. The price shows only after they tap Show me my price. They then see your own proposal, the same one you open in the app for that estimate (logo, company details, what is included, options and terms), can download it as a PDF, and get a copy by email. You get a lead email and the estimate saves in Estimates.

A weather section appears on these proposals, as on every proposal, only when your company has the RoofGo Storm add-on, in the app and for the homeowner alike. Hail is shown only as NOAA radar hail at the address itself.

With only 1 or 2 credits left on a plan that stops at its included credits, the homeowner gets the quote request instead: an estimate is never charged in part.

Pricing and credit use

Instant Estimate is included in every plan, the free trial too. Each homeowner estimate that is measured, priced and saved, after the homeowner gives their name, email and phone, uses 3 Property Credits from your plan’s credits (a rep’s tap uses 1: a homeowner who asked for a price is a warmer lead). Only a priced estimate is charged. These cost nothing: page visits, QR scans, address suggestions, addresses outside your area, roofs that cannot be measured, failed attempts, double taps, refreshes, reopening a result, and test mode. The same house again within 30 days reuses its measurement for free.

You set the most estimates a day (from 1 to 200, 20 to start). On the free trial the limit is 5 a day. By default the estimator stops pricing when your plan’s included credits are used up; on a paid plan you can choose to keep pricing and pay for extra credits at your plan’s rate.

When you run out of credits

Homeowners never see your balance. When there are no credits left, or today’s limit is reached, the estimator takes a quote request instead: the homeowner is told you will follow up, the lead saves in Estimates with no price, you get the usual lead email, and your owners and admins get one email that day saying why prices paused. Nothing is charged for a quote request.

Add a button to your website

1. Open Instant Estimate, Install and share.
2. Copy the Button HTML and paste it into a Custom HTML block (WordPress) or any HTML box. Or make a normal button in Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy and set its link to your hosted link.
3. Suggested text: “Get an Instant Roof Estimate”.

Share the hosted link

Your link works on its own: paste it in texts, emails, social posts, your Google Business Profile and ads. No website changes or developer are needed. If you change the address in step 7, the old one keeps working.

Embed it in a page

On Install and share, list the sites allowed to show the estimator in a frame (up to 5, each like https://www.yourcompany.com), then paste the embed code into the page. Any site not on the list is blocked from framing it. The small script in the code lets the frame grow with the form.

QR codes and campaigns

1. Open Campaigns and QR codes (owners, admins and managers).
2. Make one campaign per place a code appears, for example “Brittany, sales rep cards”, “Door hangers, fall campaign” and “John, yard signs”. Pick a channel and, if you like, the rep who should get its leads.
3. Download the code as PNG, SVG or a print-ready PDF, or copy the campaign’s link for texts and posts.

Codes are black on white with a quiet border and no logo, so they scan reliably. Print them at least 2 cm (0.8 in) wide. A printed code keeps working if you change your estimator’s address. Archive a campaign to hide it; its codes keep working and its history stays. A campaign with leads cannot be deleted.

Separate links for each rep

Yes: Brittany’s cards and John’s signs are two campaigns with their own codes. A lead from a campaign with a rep goes to that rep, as long as they are still on your team. Nothing in a link can assign a lead to anyone else. Leads from campaigns without a rep, and from your plain link, are unassigned website leads your managers and office see and can assign or claim like any other.

Reading campaign analytics

Analytics shows, per campaign and per rep, for the dates you pick: QR visits, page views, estimated unique visitors, starts, contact forms, estimates, quote requests and booking or call taps, plus customers your team marked as appointment or sold. Download either table as CSV.

• A QR visit is a request to the code’s address, not proof a person scanned a printed code.
• A booking tap is a tap, not a booked appointment. Appointments and sales come only from the status your team sets in RoofGo.
• Each lead is credited to the campaign of the visit that sent it. The first campaign that browser came from in the last 30 days is kept as well. Link previews and crawlers are left out.

Where the estimates save

In Estimates, with the filter Source: Instant Estimate and a campaign filter. Each one opens in the normal estimate screen, so you can edit, email, text, print or request a mailer as usual. A homeowner who comes back for the same house gets their earlier result, and two different people at one address stay two separate leads.

Connect your CRM

In Settings, Webhooks, add your Zapier, Make, n8n or CRM webhook URL and tick New homeowner lead, Instant Estimate priced and, if you like, Instant Estimate without a price. Each delivery is signed and retried if your system is down (after 1 minutes, 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 2 hours, 12 hours). A lead is never lost or charged twice because a CRM failed. RoofGo has no built-in connection to a specific CRM. See Webhooks.

Service areas

A homeowner is inside your area when they are within the radius of your centre or in one of your extra ZIP codes. With neither set, any US address is inside. Outside, they either get a quote request form (you still get the lead) or a polite message, as you chose.

Test mode

Step 6 opens your estimator in test mode, on sample houses in “Your Town, US”, priced with your real Price Book. It makes no Google lookups, uses no credits, saves no lead and sends no email or webhook. One sample shows a roof under trees, one an address outside your area, and Preview the out-of-credits screen shows what homeowners see with no credits. Test links last two hours and only open your own estimator.

Does this need my own API key?

No. RoofGo runs the address search, measurement and photo on its own Google Maps Platform account. The cost is inside the 3 Property Credits each priced estimate uses. You never create or store a key, and nothing secret goes on your website.

Notifications and troubleshooting

• Each lead emails the people you chose in step 4 (or your owners and admins), plus the campaign’s rep if you ticked that.
• The homeowner’s copy is sent from your company name; replies go to your Brand Studio email. Their page says when it was handed to the email service; it cannot know whether it reached the inbox.
• “Not taking online estimates”: the estimator is paused, or not published.
• Only quote requests and no prices: check your credits on Billing, your daily limit in step 7, and whether your account is in good standing.
• “Could not measure this roof”: usually trees or new construction. The lead is saved as needing a site visit.

Pausing the estimator

Step 7, Pause estimator. Homeowners see that you are not taking online estimates and your phone number. QR codes and links keep pointing at the page. Resume estimator turns it back on.

What the estimate is, and is not

Every result says it is a preliminary estimate from aerial imagery, not a bid or a final price, and lists your assumptions. Homeowners can download it as a PDF. Your final price comes after an inspection.