THE SHORT ANSWER
A typical windows and doors project in Italy lands at EUR 4,000 to EUR 9,600 in 2026, with a midpoint near EUR 6,800. Gross margin on that midpoint is usually 22 to 32 percent, or EUR 1,500 to EUR 2,200. Against a modelled cost per lead of EUR 50 to EUR 100 and 4 to 6 exclusive leads per signed customer, acquisition consumes roughly 10.5 to 36.1 percent of the gross margin on one job.
Contractors quote job value from memory, and memory drifts upward in a good year and downward in a bad one. Below is a 2026 band for windows and doors projects in Italy and, more usefully, what happens when you divide it: margin on the midpoint job, and what winning that job costs before a single tool comes off the van.
Treat the width of the band as information rather than vagueness. The variables are frame count, material choice between PVC, aluminium and timber, and glazing specification, and on top of them sits the market itself: in Italy, northern regions carry both the higher job values and the higher click prices; a single national campaign averages two very different markets.
The numbers, at a glance
Midpoint contract value: around EUR 6,800, inside a working band of EUR 4,000 to EUR 9,600 for windows and doors work in Italy
What is left after materials and labour: EUR 1,500 to EUR 2,200 of gross margin, being 22 to 32 percent of the midpoint contract
Lead spend per signed customer: EUR 250 to EUR 550, at 4 to 6 exclusive leads each costing EUR 50 to EUR 100
Margin consumed by acquisition: 10.5 to 36.1 percent of one job's gross margin, counting nothing from repeat or referral work
Where the windows and doors number comes from in Italy
Everything here is a complete installed job for a private household, excluding VAT and excluding competitively tendered work. Emergency repairs are excluded too: urgency prices on availability rather than on scope, and mixing the two produces an average that describes neither.
Inside that definition the spread comes from frame count, material choice between PVC, aluminium and timber, and glazing specification. Italy is a market of roughly 59 million people, which is the pool every one of those quotes is written into.
Around EUR 4,000 for the simple version of this job on an accessible property.
Around EUR 6,800 for the version most quotes describe, including the upgrades customers ask for once they have seen the first price.
Around EUR 9,600 once scope, access or specification all move in the same direction.
Frame count is the headline, the per-frame price is the business
Window quotes are read as a total and built as a price per frame, and that price falls sharply with volume. One replacement window carries the full cost of a survey, a delivery, a fitting team's mobilisation and a manufacturing run of one. Ten frames on the same house spread all of it, which is why a whole-house replacement can price 25 to 35 percent below ten windows bought one at a time. Say that to the customer explicitly. A homeowner who came for three frames and understands the arithmetic frequently buys eight, and that conversation moves average job value further than any discount.
Working capital at this contract value
Job value determines how much cash the business needs, not just how much it earns. On a EUR 6,800 project, materials and subcontract labour typically leave the account two to five weeks before the final invoice is paid, which is EUR 3,050 of exposure per job before anything goes wrong.
The remedy is structural rather than clever: a deposit near EUR 2,050 at order, a stage payment against delivery, and a final invoice on handover rather than thirty days after it. It also functions as a qualification tool. A household that cannot pay a deposit on a EUR 6,800 project is not a household that will pay the balance.
Historic centres restrict what you are allowed to quote
In protected historic centres the local Soprintendenza can dictate window materials, profiles, colours and glazing, and permission is required before work starts. In practice that often means timber frames replicating the original section rather than a standard PVC unit, made to order, at several times the price. Job value is high and the lead time is long. The failure mode is quoting a standard product for a property in a restricted zone and discovering the constraint after the deposit has been taken. Establish the address and the zoning before the survey, not after it.
Glazing specification is the upsell most people accept
Triple glazing, acoustic laminate, solar control coatings and warm edge spacers are cheap to add at manufacture and expensive to retrofit, which makes them the ideal option to present at quote stage. Acoustic glass sells itself on any road with traffic and typically adds 10 to 18 percent to the glass line for a marginal increase in fitting time. The mistake is offering it as a technical footnote. Offer it as a choice the customer can picture: this specification for the two bedrooms facing the road, standard units everywhere else, with both prices on the same page.
What that means for what a lead is worth
A modelled exclusive lead for windows and doors work in Italy costs EUR 50 to EUR 100, and it takes 4 to 6 of them to sign one customer, because some enquiries never answer, some quotes lose and some projects are not ready. That puts the cost of a signed customer at EUR 250 to EUR 550 against gross margin of EUR 1,500 to EUR 2,200, so acquisition consumes 10.5 to 36.1 percent of the margin on a single job.
At the favourable end that is comfortably profitable on the first job alone. At the unfavourable end it works only if you convert above average, sell the fuller scope, or earn repeat and referral work. Which end you land on is mostly a function of how quickly you answer the phone, not how hard you negotiate the lead price.
Raising job value beats cutting lead price
Lead prices move by a few percent when you negotiate. Job value moves by tens of percent when you sell the right scope. For windows and doors work the reliable lever is front and back doors alongside the frames, which adds 12 to 20 percent with no extra mobilisation. On the EUR 6,800 midpoint, a 20 percent increase in scope is worth about EUR 1,350 of extra contract value, which is more than the entire acquisition cost of that customer.
Quote the full scope, not the requested scope. Present the minimum job and the complete job as two priced options on the same document.
Bundle work the mobilisation already pays for. Scaffolding, access and travel are sunk the moment you are on site.
Anchor high, then subtract. A customer removing items from a complete quote finishes above a customer adding items to a minimal one.
Sell the monthly figure. Finance changes which end of the windows and doors band a household considers realistic.
Life after the Superbonus
The 110 percent Superbonus, and the invoice discount and credit transfer mechanisms attached to it, reshaped the Italian renovation market and then withdrew from it. Current residential deductions are far lower, spread over ten years and claimed by the household against tax rather than taken off the invoice. The commercial consequence is that Italian customers are paying cash again, which has pulled average contract values back towards their real level and made scope discipline matter. It also left a residue of unfinished projects and mistrust, so proof of completion, references and a clear payment schedule carry more weight here than in most markets on this list.
Break-even on a block of 45 leads
A single lead price is hard to judge. A block is not. 45 exclusive leads cost EUR 2,925 and should convert into 7 to 11 signed windows and doors jobs at a midpoint of EUR 6,800 each, which is EUR 47,600 to EUR 74,800 of work booked and EUR 10,450 to EUR 23,950 of gross margin.
Break-even therefore arrives inside the first job. The useful question is not whether EUR 65 per lead is expensive in the abstract, but what happens to that arithmetic if your conversion is half the modelled rate, because that is the scenario worth planning for.
How to work out your own number instead of using this one
Pull your last twenty signed windows and doors contracts and take the median value rather than the mean, so one outlier project does not distort the figure.
Subtract materials and installation labour from each to get real gross margin, then take the median of that too.
Count how many enquiries it took to sign those twenty jobs, including the ones that never answered, to get your true leads-per-customer ratio.
Multiply that ratio by the lead price you are being quoted to get your actual cost per signed customer.
Divide that by your median gross margin. Above 25 percent, fix conversion or scope before you buy more volume.
How these figures were built
These figures are a benchmark model, not a survey. They combine an industry base range observed across Western European home-improvement campaigns with a country multiplier for local auction pressure. Treat them as a band to negotiate against, not a quote. Every figure derives from two inputs: a base band for windows and doors work and a labour and materials index of 0.80 for Italy against a Benelux baseline of 1.00. The index is not the ad auction multiplier, and treating the two as one number is the most common error in cross-border benchmarking.
How Flock Leads prices this
Set against the margin numbers on this page, here is the actual price of buying exclusive enquiries rather than generating them:
Starter - 10 leads for EUR 750, which is EUR 75 per lead
Growth - 25 leads for EUR 1,750, which is EUR 70 per lead
Scale - 45 leads for EUR 2,925, which is EUR 65 per lead
Pro - 70 leads for EUR 4,340, which is EUR 62 per lead
Max - 90 leads for EUR 5,400, which is EUR 60 per lead
No retainer, no contract term, and no lead sent to a second business. Unused volume rolls over under the Flock Lead Promise.
Want leads like this in your pipeline?
Flock runs the campaigns, screens the enquiries and hands you only the ones that match your service area, job size and capacity. You pay per lead, not per month.
Book a 15-minute fit check | See lead package pricing
Related answers
Frequently asked questions
How much does a windows and doors project cost in Italy?
Between EUR 4,000 to EUR 9,600 for a private household in 2026, midpoint around EUR 6,800, excluding VAT and excluding competitively tendered work. Where a specific job lands depends on frame count, material choice between PVC, aluminium and timber, and glazing specification.
Does this figure include VAT?
No. Every number here is exclusive of VAT, because rates on home improvement work vary by country, by measure and sometimes by the age of the property. Quote your customer inclusive if that is the local convention, but do your margin arithmetic exclusive, otherwise the tax looks like profit.
Is job value in Italy rising or falling in 2026?
Material prices have largely stabilised after the volatility of the early decade, while installation labour remains the tighter constraint across most of Western Europe. The practical effect is that job values drift upward slowly and the labour component grows as a share of each quote. Re-check your own median twice a year rather than trusting a published figure.
How does this compare with what a lead costs?
A modelled exclusive windows and doors lead in Italy runs EUR 50 to EUR 100, and it takes 4 to 6 of them to sign a customer. Against gross margin of EUR 1,500 to EUR 2,200 on the midpoint job, that is 10.5 to 36.1 percent of the margin from one project.
Why do you use a different index for job value and lead cost?
Because they measure different things. Lead prices track how many installers are bidding in a local advertising auction. Job values track labour rates and material logistics. Poland has cheap clicks and cheap labour, Ireland has mid-priced clicks and very expensive labour, and a single multiplier would misprice both.
NEED A CLEARER PLAN?
Let’s turn your next move into momentum.
Talk to us →