Installer guide · 14 min read
Cost comparison · checked 13 Oct 2026
Short answer: a UK in-house appointment setter on £28,000 costs about £2,800 a month once you add employer National Insurance, the minimum pension and a basic set of calling tools. At 10 meetings a month, that is about £280 a meeting, before recruitment, three months of ramp-up, holidays, management and no-shows. Buying appointments swaps that fixed cost for a price per appointment. Which works out cheaper comes down to how many meetings your setter really books, and how many of them happen.
Your numbers
The defaults are the UK figures sourced on this page. Change them to your own: the salary you would pay, how many meetings you expect a setter to book once up to speed, and the price you have been quoted for buying appointments.
Calculator
Move the sliders to your own numbers. Nothing is saved or sent.
Base pay before commission.
Telesales OTE often runs 30-60% above base (Coburg Banks).
Dialler, CRM, contact data and TPS/CTPS screening.
Your estimate once they're up to speed. 10 is the median monthly SDR quota in the Bridge Group 2025 report (mostly US).
Lower it for no-shows: they still cost you the setter's time.
Use your quote. TNW Marketing charges £250 to £1,000+VAT per attended appointment; Lead Pronto publishes commercial solar appointments from £250.
In-house, every month
Cost per booked meeting
£281
Cost per meeting that happens
£281
Buying the same 10 attended meetings at £250 each costs £2,500 a month.
In-house costs £305 a month more.
Before recruitment, training, management time, sick pay and the months before a new setter books anything. Those all fall on the in-house side.
In-house
Job titles vary (appointment setter, telesales executive, sales development representative or SDR), but the base salaries sit in a similar band. Commission comes on top: Coburg Banks says telesales on-target earnings often run 30% to 60% above base.
Pay less and you are competing for the same people with every call centre in town; the legal floor is the National Living Wage, £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over from April 2026.
In-house
Here is one setter on £28,000, using 2026/27 rates and the published prices of common tools. Prices in dollars are as the supplier publishes them.
Commission is extra and also attracts NI and pension. If you give your setter a power dialler and a richer data tool, the tools line can easily double.
The monthly figure is what a setter costs once they are hired, trained and booking. Getting there, and staying there, costs more.
Recruitment
Agencies typically charge 15% to 20% of first-year salary (£4,200 to £5,600 on £28,000), more for hard-to-fill roles. A single Totaljobs ad is £220.
Ramp-up
The Bridge Group puts new SDR ramp at 3.0 months. At about £2,800 a month that is roughly £8,400 before they are fully productive (mostly US data).
Holiday
At least 5.6 weeks (28 days for a five-day week) a year paid, with no calls made.
Turnover
Average SDR tenure is 1.9 years and median attrition 40% a year (Bridge Group, mostly US). Each leaver means recruiting and ramping again.
Management
Someone has to set targets, listen to calls, coach and check the data every week. That time comes out of your diary or a manager's.
Compliance
Every list must be screened against both the TPS and CTPS registers before calling. The ICO can fine for unscreened calls; that risk sits with you.
Put together, the first year of an in-house setter usually includes a recruitment fee, around three months of near-full cost with few meetings, and a fair chance of starting again within two years. Our guide to cold calling for commercial solar covers the scripts, lists and UK rules if you go ahead.
Outsourced
Most commercial solar lead suppliers quote on request rather than publish prices. Of the UK suppliers we checked, Lead Pronto publishes commercial solar leads from £150 and booked appointments from £250, depending on system size and energy bill, and TNW Marketing charges £250 to £1,000+VAT per attended appointment, set by system size and qualification. A lead is a name and number your team still has to call; an appointment is a meeting in your diary.
Compare quotes on what you actually get: is it a lead or a booked meeting, is it exclusive to you, what counts as qualified, and do you pay if the customer is not there? TNW Marketing books exclusive, pre-qualified commercial site meetings and charges per qualified, attended booking, with no retainer and no minimum spend. A booking that does not meet the agreed brief is replaced. See how pay per appointment works and our comparison of UK solar lead generation companies.
| Compared on | In-house setter | Buying appointments |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Salary, NI, pension, tools and management time, whatever the month brings | Each appointment (or, with pay-per-attended models, each one that actually happens) |
| Up-front cost | Recruitment, plus about three months of ramp-up | Usually none |
| Time to first meetings | Weeks to recruit, then months to ramp | As soon as the first appointments are booked |
| Quiet months and no-shows | Your cost | Depends on the supplier: ask whether you pay for no-shows |
| Compliance | Your responsibility: screening, data, call records | The supplier's calling, but check how they screen |
| Control and product knowledge | High: your person, your script, your brand | Lower: you set the brief and the qualifying criteria |
| Scaling up or down | Hire or let go | Order more or fewer |
| If the setter leaves | Pipeline stops until you replace them | Not your problem |
In-house usually makes sense when:
Buying appointments usually makes sense when:
Many installers do both: a small in-house team for warm leads and referrals, and bought appointments to fill the gaps. Our lead calculator shows how many surveys you need for your install target, and appointment setting for solar installers explains how agencies price and what to ask them. If you want to buy solar leads in the UK rather than meetings, check exclusivity and qualification first.
If you outsource, the pricing model matters as much as the price: our guide to pay per lead vs retainer vs pay per appointment shows who carries the cost of a quiet month and a no-show under each, and our guide to solar telemarketing lists the questions to ask a calling agency before you sign. If you are weighing an agency that also does your website, SEO and ads, see what a solar marketing agency does and how to choose one, or, if you started from a wider search, how a renewable energy marketing agency compares with a pay per attended appointment one. And if you keep it in-house, our guide to generating commercial solar leads covers the channels your setter will use.
On a £28,000 salary, close to the UK average for appointment setters, employer National Insurance adds about £3,450 a year and the minimum workplace pension about £650, so employment costs come to about £32,100 a year before commission. Add a dialler, CRM, contact data and TPS/CTPS screening at roughly £130 a month from published prices, and it is about £2,800 a month. Recruitment, ramp-up and management time come on top.
It depends on how many meetings your setter books and how many actually happen. Divide the monthly cost of the setter by the meetings that happen to get your cost per meeting, then compare it with the price you have been quoted per appointment. The calculator on this page does it for you. In-house only wins when a well-managed setter books consistently, month after month, and stays.
The Bridge Group 2025 report puts the median monthly SDR quota at 10 meetings, and its phone-centric teams average 56 dials and 4.6 quality conversations a day. Its sample is mostly US B2B software companies, so treat it as a rough guide. Commercial solar decision-makers are harder to reach than software buyers, and a new setter takes months to get there.
Few suppliers publish prices. TNW Marketing charges £250 to £1,000+VAT per attended appointment, set by system size and qualification, with no retainer and no minimum spend. Lead Pronto publishes commercial solar leads from £150 and booked appointments from £250, depending on system size and energy bill. Most others quote on request.
Employment Allowance is £10,500 for 2026 to 2027 and comes off your employer National Insurance bill. Most businesses can claim it, but not a company whose only employee paying secondary NI is the director, and only one company in a connected group. If you already use it against other staff, a new hire adds the full 15%.
Yes. The ICO says you need to screen against both the TPS and the CTPS registers, and you must not call a CTPS-registered number unless that business has specifically consented to your calls. Screening costs from £5 for up to 250 numbers on pay-as-you-go.
Checked 13 October 2026. Salary sites differ, so we show ranges from more than one. The Bridge Group figures come from a mostly US, B2B software sample. Tool prices change; check the supplier before you buy.
Browse every installer guide on the guides hub.
Exclusive, pre-qualified commercial solar surveys. No retainer, no minimum spend.
See available projects