Solo Pro vs. Homeaglow: Which Is Better for Independent House Cleaners?

You just finished a three-hour clean across town. The house looks great. The client is happy. Then you check your account. The homeowner booked at a members-only rate. A transaction fee came off the top. The payout is days away, again. You did the work. Someone else sets the price, keeps the client, and takes a cut every time they book you. Whose business is this?

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That question is the whole difference between renting a marketplace and owning a business. Homeaglow is a marketplace. It can put jobs in front of you fast, which helps when you are starting out. But the model is built on the platform owning the client and advertising your work at fire-sale prices. Here is how Homeaglow and Solo Pro compare, and where the real trade-off lies.

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TL;DR: Homeaglow is a lead-generation marketplace. It can feed you bookings. But you compete on a public rate leaderboard, the platform owns the client, it takes a fee on every job, and it charges your customers a subscription just to reach you. Solo Pro is the opposite. It is software you run your own business on. You keep your clients, set your own rates, and see your real take-home. All for a flat $30 a month, with nothing skimmed off your jobs.

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What Homeaglow is built for

Homeaglow is built for the customer, not the cleaner. Founded in 2015, it is an online marketplace that connects homeowners with independent cleaners. A homeowner enters a zip code, browses profiles and reviews, picks someone, and books. Every part of that flow is designed for the person buying the clean. On Homeaglow, you are not the customer. You are the product.

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For a cleaner, the upside is narrow. You get in front of people actively looking, with no website, no ads, no chasing referrals. Homeaglow says cleaners set their own rate and keep 100% of their pay plus tips, with most earning $50 to $100 per job (not per hour). At those rates, you are likely working well below fair prices for your metro. A platform built for the customer optimizes for a cheaper clean, not a better-paid cleaner. And being underpaid is only half of it. The model also stunts the growth of your own business.

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Where Homeaglow falls short for solo cleaners

Do you set your own prices on Homeaglow?

On paper, yes. In practice, not really. Homeaglow shows a cleaner leaderboard that ranks your rate against everyone else in your area. The whole marketplace is built to help homeowners book cleaning for less. That pressure points one way. Down. Homeaglow advertises member cleanings as low as $18 an hour. That low price devalues the worth of every hour you spend cleaning.

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Late pay is a recurring complaint too. Cleaners have told the Better Business Bureau that delays in getting paid hurt their financial stability, per reporting from consumer watchdog TINA.org. When you do not control your price or when you get paid, you are not really running the business. You are working inside someone else's.

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Does Homeaglow own your clients?

Yes. In a marketplace, the client is not yours. They found you through Homeaglow. They book through Homeaglow. They pay through Homeaglow. Their loyalty is to the platform, not to you. If you ever leave, the relationship stays behind. Every job you do makes the marketplace more valuable. Not your business.

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A cleaning business runs on trust and repeat clients. When a homeowner lets you into their home for two years, that relationship is your most valuable asset. In a marketplace, you are building it for someone else.

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How does Homeaglow's $19 cleaning deal work?

Homeaglow's headline offer is a $19 first clean. To get it, the customer must sign up for a ForeverClean membership that auto-renews at roughly $49 to $59 a month. The membership does not cover future cleanings. Those are billed on top, along with a per-booking transaction fee.

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Regulators have taken notice. In September 2025, ad watchdog TINA.org filed an FTC complaint alleging Homeaglow used the $19 offer to pull customers into a hard-to-cancel subscription, with fabricated reviews and inflated income claims. Homeaglow disputed it. Then in May 2026, the Washington State Attorney General settled with the company for $2.25 million. The consent decree forces clear disclosure of membership terms, an easy way to cancel, and an end to misrepresenting reviews. The state noted an F rating with the Better Business Bureau and more than 3,300 complaints over three years.

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Those fees hit the homeowner, not you, so it is easy to think they are not your problem. But they are the engine of the whole model. A platform that must advertise $19 cleanings and lock people into subscriptions to make the math work is treating your labor as its cheapest input. And when your name sits on a marketplace with that reputation, it rubs off on you.

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What Solo Pro is built for

Solo Pro is built for the cleaner, not the customer. It is not a marketplace. It is a business management tool for the person doing the work: the operator who books the jobs, cleans the homes, and runs the whole business. It does not sit between you and your clients. It gives you the tools to own them.

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Your own booking page, your own clients

Solo Pro gives you a booking link that is yours. Put it on your Google Business Profile, in a text, on a flyer, anywhere. Clients see your real availability, pick a service, and book themselves. Automatic reminders go out before every appointment. When someone books through your link, they are your client. They live in your records, not a platform's directory.

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Solo Pro is built to help you grow your own book. Set up your Google Business Profile, get found by neighbors on Nextdoor, and turn happy clients into referrals. Every client you win is one you keep.

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Charge fair market rates, not marketplace rates

When you own the client you can charge what your work is worth in your market. Solo Pro helps you get there. Connect your bank through Plaid and every transaction pulls in automatically. Supplies, mileage, product, insurance, etc. are all tracked without manual entry. Scan a receipt on-site and Solo Pro reads it on the spot. The real-time P&L view shows income against costs, so you know your true take-home per job. That is how you price with confidence and raise rates when the numbers say you have earned it, instead of undercutting yourself to stay visible.

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Nothing skimmed off the top

Solo Pro is a flat $30 a month, no add-on fees. No transaction fee on your jobs. No cut of your rate. No subscription your clients must buy to reach you. Invoices generate automatically when a job is done, and your client can pay on the spot.

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Side-by-side comparison

Here is how the two stack up for a cleaner running their own operation.

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Which one is right for you?

The honest answer depends on where your business is right now.

• You have no clients yet and need bookings fast. A marketplace like Homeaglow can fill your calendar while you build. Just go in clear-eyed. The clients you serve there are the platform's, and the rates are set to keep the platform cheap.
• You already have clients and want to keep and grow them. This is exactly what Solo Pro is built for. You own the relationships, set your rates, and run booking, invoicing, payments, and expenses in one place.
• You are on a marketplace now and tired of competing on price. Start moving your best clients to Solo Pro. Each one you bring over is a client you keep, at a rate you set.

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The more time you spend cleaning, the more you make. Solo Pro handles everything else. And unlike a marketplace, it makes the business yours. Start your 7-day free trial and see what it looks like when your clients, your rates, and your numbers all belong to you.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Is Solo Pro a cleaning marketplace like Homeaglow?

No. Homeaglow is a marketplace that finds clients for you and keeps the relationship. Solo Pro is software you use to run your own business. It does not bring you leads. It gives you a booking page, invoicing, payments, and expense tracking, so the clients you win are yours to keep. Many cleaners use Solo Pro alongside their own marketing to build a book they own.

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Will I lose my clients if I move off Homeaglow?

On a marketplace, the clients you served were the platform's to begin with. That is exactly why owning your own booking channel matters. The practical move is to start pointing clients to your own Solo Pro booking link so future bookings run through you. From that point on, those relationships are yours, along with the notes, history, and lifetime value that come with them.

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Does Solo Pro take a fee on each job like a marketplace?

No. Solo Pro is a flat $30 a month, with no add-on fees and no transaction fee on your jobs. Whatever you charge a client is what you collect. There is no membership your customers must buy to book you, and no cut taken out of your rate.

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How does Solo Pro help me charge more?

By showing you what your work actually costs. Solo Pro connects to your bank through Plaid, tracks supplies, mileage, and product automatically, scans your receipts, and gives you a real-time P&L. When you know your true take-home per job, you can price to your market and raise rates with data behind you, instead of matching whatever the marketplace crowd is charging.

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Does Solo Pro work if I clean part-time or do other work too?

Yes. Solo Pro works for any independent service business, not just cleaning. If you also do handyman work, pet care, or any other service on the side, the same scheduling, invoicing, and expense tracking apply. There is a 7-day free trial with full access, so you can test it against how you actually work before committing.

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