Turn a weak HomeStars profile into a Star Score homeowners trust.

HomeStars is Canada’s leading home-improvement review site and contractor directory, and it’s a genuinely different market than the big US-based home-services platforms. Homeowners across Canada use it specifically to research renovators, roofers, HVAC and plumbing companies, electricians, and other contractors before committing to a job that’s often worth thousands of dollars. If your business serves Canadian homeowners, HomeStars is frequently the first stop, not an afterthought.

The platform centers on a proprietary Star Score, verified customer reviews, and an annual "Best of HomeStars" award that homeowners treat as a meaningful trust signal. Because HomeStars verifies reviews and weighs recency and volume into the score, a contractor with a stale or thin profile can look far less trustworthy than one that’s actively collecting reviews from real, recent jobs — even if the underlying work quality is identical.

Why HomeStars needs its own strategy, separate from US platforms

HomeStars is built around and for the Canadian home-improvement market. Its homeowner traffic, contractor directory, and review base are concentrated in Canada, which means the competitive set you’re actually being judged against on HomeStars is other Canadian contractors — not the national US chains that dominate platforms like Angi or HomeAdvisor. A profile strategy built for a US platform doesn’t automatically translate, which is the core reason HomeStars has to be managed as its own thing rather than lumped in with American review sites.

The Star Score is HomeStars’ headline reputation metric, and it isn’t a simple average of star ratings. Review recency and review volume both factor into how the score is calculated and how a profile ranks in the directory, so a contractor who earned excellent reviews two years ago but hasn’t collected new ones recently can see their score and visibility drift downward even without a single bad review coming in.

HomeStars also verifies reviews and runs the "Best of HomeStars" awards, given annually to top-performing contractors in each category and city. Homeowners researching a big renovation decision often filter specifically for award-winning or highly-rated, verified contractors, which makes both the verification status and the award itself real trust signals — not just badges.