Thumbtack and similar marketplaces solve a real problem - getting in front of homeowners actively looking - but the leads are shared with competitors, priced per contact regardless of whether the job closes, and get more expensive as the platform's own competition grows.
The real alternative isn't another marketplace, it's owning the equivalent function yourself: a Google Business Profile and website that get found the same way Thumbtack listings do, but without paying per lead or sharing the homeowner with three other contractors simultaneously.
The tradeoff is time - a marketplace produces leads today, an owned system takes weeks to months to ramp. Most remodelers get the best results running both in parallel initially, then reducing marketplace spend as the owned system starts producing consistently.