A local-services marketplace: a subscription for the pro, a free search for the client

Helpe is a two-sided SaaS with asymmetric roles, and that shapes the entire product. The self-employed professional pays a monthly subscription to keep an active profile and show up in searches. The client pays nothing — no subscription, no commission, no contact fee: they come in, look for someone who works in their city, and reach out. There are 24 service categories, from electrician and bricklayer to lash designer, physiotherapist, mover and elderly caregiver.

That asymmetry is the product's hardest requirement. The one who pays is the one who wants to be found, so the showcase has to justify the subscription on its own: the profile must give the professional something they cannot get alone — a place to show finished work, reputation that stays on the record, and presence in every city they serve. And the side that does not pay cannot face any friction: if the client had to sign up just to look, the side that funds the subscription would disappear.

• The subscription is justified by the showcase — the profile is what the professional is buying, not access to a system.
• Search is local before it is anything else: nobody hires an electrician from another city.
• Trust has to be visible before the conversation: rating, time on the platform and finished work, in plain view without an account.
• The same professional works across several categories and several cities — and needs to show up in all of them.
• Zero friction on the side that does not pay: browse, filter and reach out without logging in.

The showcase was built as a page that answers before the conversation: average rating with the star histogram open, "member since", a bio, categories, differentiator tags (own tools, training, years in the trade), image references — the finished work — and every city served. None of it requires a login, because that is exactly what the professional is paying to display.

On the other side, the search starts with the right question: where? Three ways to answer it — use the device's location, search by distance, or pick the city from a list. Only then come the deciding filters: service category, minimum rating, time on the platform and favourites, sorted by best rated or most favourited.

The second decision was to treat the phone as identity. This audience runs their life from a mobile and often does not use email day to day. So verification and login by SMS went in, with phone and email coexisting as identifiers: the login has a single field that detects the format of whatever is typed, and changing the phone number requires being logged in by email — the lock that stops someone from taking over a profile with earned reputation by swapping the number.