Contractor Bear vs. Scorpion: Why Performance-Based Beats Flat-Fee
If you are a contractor evaluating marketing agencies, Scorpion is probably on your radar. They are one of the largest home services marketing companies in the country, with aggressive sales teams and a recognizable brand. They sponsor industry events, run slick demos, and their pitch sounds compelling.
But once you sign the contract and the honeymoon phase ends, what does the relationship actually look like? And how does it compare to what we do at Contractor Bear?
This is an honest comparison. We are not going to pretend Scorpion has zero value — they are a large operation with real capabilities. But we believe there are fundamental structural differences in how our two companies operate that lead to very different outcomes for contractors.
How Scorpion Works
Scorpion is a full-service marketing agency that provides websites, SEO, paid advertising, social media management, and reputation management to home service businesses (along with other verticals like legal and medical). They have been around since 2001 and serve thousands of clients.
Scorpion’s Pricing Model
Scorpion charges a flat monthly fee that typically ranges from $3,000 to $10,000 per month depending on your market size, the services included, and your competition level. Some contractors report paying $5,000 to $7,000 per month as a starting point in competitive metro areas.
The fee is the same whether Scorpion generates 5 leads or 50. They get paid the same amount regardless of your results. That is the fundamental reality of a flat-fee model — and it shapes everything that follows.
Scorpion’s Contract Terms
Scorpion typically requires a 12-month minimum contract. Breaking the contract early means paying an early termination fee, which can be thousands of dollars. This means you are locked in for a year even if results are not meeting your expectations.
If you are three months in, your phone is not ringing, and you want to leave — you are still on the hook for nine more months of payments. The contract protects Scorpion, not you.
Website Ownership
This is where things get particularly problematic. Scorpion builds your website on their proprietary platform. When you leave Scorpion, you do not take your website with you. You lose it entirely. All the pages, content, and SEO equity that was built on your domain — gone. You have to start over from scratch with a new agency or a DIY website.
This creates a switching cost that keeps contractors locked in even when they are unhappy. You have invested months or years of content and rankings on a website you do not actually own. Leaving means losing that investment.
How Contractor Bear Works
Our model is built on a fundamentally different philosophy: we should only get paid well when you do well.
Our Pricing Model
Contractor Bear uses a performance-based pricing model with three tiers:
| Feature | Starter | Growth | Dominate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Fee | $2,000 | $3,500 | $5,000 |
| Revenue Share | 5% | 7% | 10% |
| Website | Included (free) | Included (free) | Included (free) |
| Local SEO | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Google Business Profile | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Content Marketing | No | Yes | Yes |
| Review Management | No | Yes | Yes |
| Paid Ads Management | No | No | Yes |
The monthly fee covers the base cost of operating your campaigns. The revenue share is where our incentives align with yours — we earn a percentage of the revenue generated from leads we bring you. If our marketing generates $40,000 in new revenue for you in a month on the Growth plan, our revenue share is $2,800. If we generate $10,000, our share is $700.
When you grow, we grow. When you have a slow month, our revenue share shrinks too. That is the alignment that flat-fee models cannot replicate.
For a deeper dive on how revenue share works and why it benefits contractors, read our full breakdown on revenue share vs. flat fee marketing.
Our Contract Terms
We do not require long-term contracts. No 12-month minimums. No early termination fees. You can cancel at any time with 30 days notice. We earn your business every single month. If we are not delivering results, you should be able to leave.
This scares some agencies. It motivates us. When a client can leave at any time, you have to perform every single month. There is no coasting.
If you are wondering exactly what happens when you cancel, we wrote an entire article about it: What happens if I cancel?
Website Ownership
Your website is yours. Period. We build it, we host it ($49/month after your package starts), and if you leave, we transfer everything to you — files, content, credentials, domain access. You walk away with a fully functional, SEO-optimized website that you can take to another agency or manage yourself.
We do not hold websites hostage. Contractors who choose to stay with us do so because we deliver results, not because we trapped them.
Head-to-Head Comparison
Let us put the two models side by side with a realistic scenario. Imagine you are a plumbing company in a mid-size market doing about $50,000 per month in revenue before marketing.
Scenario: 12 Months With Scorpion
| Item | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Scorpion Fee | $5,000 | $60,000 |
| Revenue Share | $0 | $0 |
| Total Marketing Cost | $5,000 | $60,000 |
Whether Scorpion helps you grow to $80,000/month or your revenue stays flat at $50,000/month, you pay $60,000. If you want to leave after month 6, you owe early termination fees and lose your website.
Scenario: 12 Months With Contractor Bear (Growth Plan)
Assuming our marketing helps grow your revenue from $50,000 to $75,000 per month over 12 months (a conservative trajectory):
| Item | Month 1 | Month 6 | Month 12 | Annual Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Fee | $3,500 | $3,500 | $3,500 | $42,000 |
| Revenue Share (7%) | $350 | $1,225 | $1,750 | ~$13,300 |
| Total | $3,850 | $4,725 | $5,250 | ~$55,300 |
You pay less in total, and our costs scale with your success. In months where growth has not kicked in yet, your costs are lower. As revenue grows, our share grows — but so does yours. That extra $25,000 per month in revenue (month 12 vs. month 1) more than covers the increased revenue share.
And if things go sideways? You can cancel without penalty and keep your website.
What About the Worst-Case Scenario?
With Scorpion, if marketing does not work, you are out $60,000 (or whatever remains on your contract) and you leave with nothing — no website, no content, no SEO equity.
With Contractor Bear, if marketing does not work, your revenue share is tiny (5-7% of minimal growth revenue), you can cancel any month, and you keep your website and all the content. Your worst-case financial exposure is dramatically lower.
What Scorpion Does Well
We said this would be honest, so here is where Scorpion has advantages:
Scale and resources. Scorpion is a large company with hundreds of employees. They have dedicated teams for every marketing function — SEO specialists, PPC managers, content writers, web developers. This scale means they can handle large enterprise-level contractor businesses with complex multi-location needs.
Brand recognition. Scorpion is a well-known name in the home services space. Some contractors feel more comfortable going with a company that has been around for 20+ years and has thousands of clients.
Industry data. With thousands of clients across home services, Scorpion has a massive dataset of performance benchmarks. They know average conversion rates, cost per lead, and competitive dynamics across hundreds of markets.
Where Contractor Bear Wins
Aligned incentives. We have skin in the game. Scorpion gets paid the same whether you succeed or fail. We only thrive when you thrive. This single structural difference cascades into every decision, every optimization, and every strategy recommendation we make.
No lock-in. No 12-month contracts. No termination fees. No proprietary website platform that traps you. You stay because we deliver, not because you are contractually obligated.
Lower total cost in most scenarios. Unless you are doing extremely high revenue (where the revenue share exceeds what a flat fee would be), our total cost is typically lower than Scorpion’s. And at that revenue level, you can afford it — because we helped you get there.
You own everything. Your website, your content, your Google Business Profile, your ad accounts. Everything is in your name, under your control, accessible to you at all times.
Contractor-only focus. Scorpion serves lawyers, dentists, and other verticals. We serve one market: home service contractors. Every strategy, every template, every campaign is built specifically for your industry.
The Fundamental Question
When you hire a marketing agency, ask yourself one question: What happens when my marketing underperforms?
With Scorpion, you pay the same amount and hope next month is better. If it is not, you are stuck in a contract paying for results you are not getting, on a website you do not own.
With Contractor Bear, our revenue share automatically decreases when performance dips (because there is less revenue to share), we are financially motivated to fix the problem immediately, you can cancel if we do not deliver, and you keep your website regardless.
The incentive structure is everything. It determines how your agency shows up every single day.
Ready to Compare for Yourself?
If you are currently with Scorpion — or considering them — we would welcome the chance to show you what performance-based marketing looks like in practice. No hard sell. Just an honest conversation about your business, your goals, and whether our model is the right fit.
- View our pricing plans to see exactly what each tier includes
- Contact us to schedule a free strategy session
- See how we help plumbers in Phoenix and HVAC companies grow
- Learn more about what makes Contractor Bear different