Why Hosted Reviews exists.
I run Top Care Cleaning in Grand Rapids. I spend $2k–$6k a month on Google Ads. Half of it works. The other half I'm pretty sure is wasted. Every tool that was supposed to help was built for companies 10x my size and priced like it. So I built Hosted Reviews.
The problem.
Local service businesses live and die on Google reviews. A jump from 4.3 to 4.7 stars can double the click-through rate on the same ad. But asking for reviews is awkward, easy to forget, and the moment you blink you've missed the window. The customer's already moved on to the next thing.
The big SMS review tools all knew this. Sticker prices in the category run anywhere from a couple hundred to several hundred a month, and every one of them is built for a sales team with a marketing budget — not for the operator with a truck in the driveway who just wants more 5-stars without thinking about it.
The fix.
Hosted Reviews does the one thing that actually moves the needle: send an SMS the moment a job ends, screen the reply so unhappy customers route to a private form instead of Google, and follow up automatically if the first text gets ignored. That's it. No CRM integration required, no annual contract, no pricing page that says "talk to sales." $29 a month or $49 a month, with a 14-day trial and no credit card on the Growth plan.
The product is narrow on purpose. SMS only on V1 — not because email is bad, but because email review requests get filtered into promotions and SMS gets a 95% open rate. CRM-agnostic on purpose — the operator already has 14 logins, doesn't need a 15th. Funnel screening on by default — because a 1-star review on Google is worth more than a 5-star review on a survey.
Built at Top Care Cleaning.
Top Care Cleaning has been running in Grand Rapids since 1980 — my dad and uncle started it, my brother and I run it now. We do interior (carpet, upholstery, tile, blinds, area rugs) and exterior (pressure washing, window cleaning, gutter cleaning, roof cleaning, Christmas lights). 400+ Google reviews, 100% satisfaction guarantee, clients going back 20+ years.
Every feature in Hosted Reviews was tested at Top Care first. The four tone-tested SMS templates exist because we already have technicians sending review texts for window jobs, gutter jobs, carpet jobs, and Christmas-light jobs — the wording was sharpened against actual completion data. Multi-tech attribution and signed-by-tech SMS exist because our customers actually do reference techs by name in reviews — and the team feels it on the leaderboard. The smart send window and 14-day cooldown exist because we got tired of accidentally double-texting customers.
If a feature wouldn't survive a Tuesday at Top Care, it doesn't ship in Hosted Reviews.
The bigger picture.
Hosted Reviews is the entry point to the Hosted Stack — a suite of tools for local service businesses where each one makes the next more valuable. A completed job becomes a 5-star review (Reviews), then a postcard to that customer's neighbors (Reach), then an attributed lead from the new caller (Leads, included free in every paid bundle), then a piece of social content from the photo your tech took on-site (Proof). One job, four marketing touches, all automatic.
The bundles start at $89/mo and ladder up to $199/mo for the Authority Bundle (everything plus an AI-built site, city × service landing pages, and a full SEO blog). Standalone Reviews stays at $29 or $49 forever — the bundles exist because some operators want the whole stack, not because Reviews stops being useful on its own.
Who's writing.
Alex Host. Owner-operator at Top Care Cleaning. Founder of Hosted Brands. Building the Hosted Stack in public — livestream builds, weekly newsletter, no growth-hacker vocabulary. Full bio at hostedbrands.com.
Get in touch.
- Email: [email protected]
- App: https://app.hostedreviews.com
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