Lead Smart Inc Voted a Top Pay-Per-Call Network for Seventh Consecutive Year in OfferVault’s 2026 Top Networks Survey

MUNDELEIN, Ill. — 11 August 2026

Lead Smart Inc, a US-based pay-per-call and lead-generation affiliate network serving the home-services industry since 2008, has again been voted one of the top pay-per-call networks in OfferVault’s Summer 2026 Top Networks Survey. It is the network’s seventh consecutive top-three placement since the awards launched in 2020, when Lead Smart was voted #1.

Lead Smart is separately ranked #6 among more than 400 pay-per-call networks in mThink’s 2026 Blue Book rankings, which are based on a survey of over 20,000 performance marketers. The network connects more than 10,000 registered affiliate publishers worldwide with buyers serving an estimated 50,000-plus home-service business locations nationwide, across more than 200 service categories — including plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical, water and fire damage restoration — with live payout coverage in all 50 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico.

Placing in the top three seven years running isn’t luck. It comes down to something unglamorous: we screen every call before it reaches a buyer, and we pay our publishers on schedule, every month, in good years and bad ones. When the network grows, our affiliates’ payouts grow with it — that is the whole design. Seth Pikus, Chief Executive Officer, Lead Smart Inc

A seven-year record

Lead Smart has placed in the top three of the OfferVault pay-per-call category in every survey since the awards began:

Survey	Placement
Summer 2026	3rd
Winter 2025	2nd
Summer 2025	3rd
Winter 2024	2nd
Summer 2023	3rd
Winter 2022	3rd
2021	2nd
2020 (first annual awards)	1st

The OfferVault Top Networks Survey is voted on by the affiliate marketing community across four categories: CPA networks, pay-per-call networks, advertising networks and tracking platforms.

Affiliate base and buyer reach

Lead Smart works with more than 10,000 registered affiliate publishers worldwide and serves buyers representing an estimated 50,000 or more home-service business locations nationwide. Those buyers include multi-market franchise groups and chains, private-equity-backed roll-ups consolidating plumbing and HVAC contractors, and marketing companies serving their own large client bases — which is why coverage extends to essentially every populated ZIP code in the country rather than clustering in major metros, and why publishers in smaller markets can still find an active buyer.

Support and education as the growth engine

Asked what has driven the network’s 2026 growth, Pikus points to support rather than payouts. Lead Smart staffs a support team available to publishers throughout the working day, and runs two of the larger communities in pay-per-call marketing — a Skool community and a Facebook group — where the network publishes what is currently converting, teaches search-engine-optimisation practice for local service traffic, and works through campaigns with publishers directly.

Our whole business model only works if the affiliate makes money. That is not a slogan, it is arithmetic — we do not earn anything until their traffic converts. So we run our support desk like a partner rather than a ticket queue, and we teach openly: what is converting this month, how to rank a local service site, what to stop wasting money on. Ask around in the industry groups and you will find our name comes up for support before it comes up for payouts. That is deliberate. Seth Pikus, Chief Executive Officer, Lead Smart Inc

A global publisher base

Lead Smart’s publisher base is worldwide, with significant concentrations in Pakistan and India, where the network works with young, technically capable marketers earning US-dollar income from their home countries. Publishers there have reported single qualified calls paying close to $500 — more than a month’s typical earnings in those markets — and the network invests heavily in training this cohort in local search-engine optimisation and lead generation for the US home-services market.

The part of this business I did not expect to matter most is what it does outside the United States. We have publishers in Pakistan and India who are as sharp as anyone I have worked with anywhere, and who simply did not have access to a market that pays in dollars. When someone messages you that one call earned more than they usually make in a month, and that it changed things for their family, that is a different kind of result than a revenue number. Giving that cohort real access, and real training, is something we intend to keep expanding. Seth Pikus, Chief Executive Officer, Lead Smart Inc

Published payout coverage

Lead Smart publishes live ZIP-code-level payout coverage publicly, refreshed every morning at 8am CST. As of 11 August 2026 the tool listed 416,715 ZIP-by-service payout rows across 26 active verticals, spanning all 50 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico. Top net payouts per qualified lead on that date included $497.50 for water damage, $365.50 for fire damage restoration, $288.50 for biohazard remediation, $169.00 for roofing and $122.50 for HVAC.

Alongside more than 200 home-service categories, the network also runs legal verticals — personal injury, auto accident and DUI/DWI — with live personal injury coverage in more than 38,000 ZIP codes.

How Lead Smart’s model works

In pay-per-call marketing, affiliate publishers are paid for generating qualified inbound phone calls rather than clicks or form fills. In home services, a single qualified call from a homeowner ready to hire is worth $100 or more to a contractor — which is why the model has grown faster than shared-lead marketplaces, where the same enquiry may be sold to four or five competing businesses.

Lead Smart qualifies every call through its own call center before routing it to a buyer, and pays publishers on calls lasting 90 seconds or longer, with a $100 minimum payout and monthly payment terms. The network operates two independent platforms: an in-house dashboard covering 200-plus home services through a single phone number, and a Ringba-powered platform offering targeted per-service offers at premium payouts.

When I started Lead Smart in 2008, contractors were being sold the same lead as three of their competitors and calling it marketing. Eighteen years on, the model hasn’t changed: a homeowner picks up the phone and one real contractor answers. What has changed is the scale — we can now do that across more than two hundred trades in every state. Matthew Zivkovic, Founder, Lead Smart Inc

Affiliate and contractor partnerships

Affiliate publishers — including local SEO specialists, rank-and-rent operators and paid-media buyers — can apply to the network at leadsmartinc.com/affiliates. Home-service contractors seeking exclusive inbound calls can review pricing by trade at leadsmartinc.com/pay-per-call.