Selling to cleaning companies: a trade of owner-operators, and how to reach them
To sell to cleaning companies, assume you are talking to an owner-operator: the US Census Bureau counts about 74,472 janitorial and carpet cleaning establishments with paid employees, against about 1.1 million janitorial businesses with no employees at all. Most cleaning businesses are one person or a small crew. The owner reads the email, answers the phone, and may have no website, so the best lists split cleaners with a site from those without and treat each differently.
Key numbers
- 6,430Sellable businesses with a phone (cleaning companies)
- 704No website on the listing (cleaning companies)
- 298No website, 10+ reviews (cleaning companies)
- 0Email confirmed by the mail server (cleaning companies)
- 380Owner name read from the company site (cleaning companies)
Live from the 67Leads warehouse, computed (US Central) when this page was served. Sellable means graded as the trade, with a phone, opted-out businesses removed. Methodology.
How big is the cleaning trade?
Census County Business Patterns for 2023 counts about 74,472 establishments with payroll across NAICS 561720, Janitorial Services, and 561740, Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning, and about 88% of them have fewer than 20 employees (US Census Bureau). The 2023 Nonemployer Statistics count about 1,095,927 janitorial businesses with no employees (Census NES 2023). Census codes do not map one to one to how cleaners describe themselves online, so treat both as orders of magnitude.
That is more than ten janitorial businesses without payroll for every cleaning establishment with it, and it is the defining fact of this trade: the buyer is usually the person who also does the work.
The 67Leads warehouse holds 6,430 sellable cleaning companies today, from public business listings and company websites. That is what we have collected, not a census. The cleaning company lead list and the cleaning statistics page have live counts by state and city.
Who sells to cleaning companies
- Home-services marketing and cold email agencies selling booked quotes, ads and recurring-client campaigns.
- Web designers selling a first site with a quote form. In this trade that is often the whole pitch.
- Local SEO and review agencies.
- Booking, scheduling and invoicing software built for small crews.
- Insurance agents writing general liability, bonding and commercial auto.
- Equipment and supply distributors.
- Buyers of businesses and franchise developers looking for established local operators.
Each wants a different cut. The selling to cleaning companies use case has the filters for each.
What counts as a cleaning company
"Cleaning" is one of the loosest words in local search. A search for cleaning services returns dry cleaners, laundromats and car washes, none of which buy a residential cleaning booking tool. We grade every listing before it can be sold:
- Core: house cleaning, maid services, commercial and office cleaning, janitorial services, carpet cleaning and window cleaning.
- Adjacent, kept and flagged: pressure washing, upholstery cleaning, water damage restoration, air duct cleaning and property maintenance.
- Left out: dry cleaners, laundromats, car washes, and cleaning product or janitorial equipment suppliers.
Today 287 listings (4% of what we collected) were graded off-trade and withheld, and 380 (6%) were kept as adjacent. Residential and commercial cleaners also buy differently: a maid service sells to homeowners week to week, a janitorial company bids for contracts. Decide which you want before you export. Our study of off-trade listings by trade shows how often each trade's searches go wrong.
What a cleaning list looks like in our data
Live figures, as of 5 Nov 2026:
- 6,430 sellable cleaning companies with a phone number
- 704 (11%) list no website
- 298 of those have 10 or more reviews (42% of the no-website group)
- 57 have no website, 4.5 stars or better and 50 or more reviews
- 464 have a listed website that did not load when checked (8% of those with a site)
- 0 have an email the mail server confirmed (0%)
- 380 name an owner on their own website (6%)
The review and email profile against every trade we carry:
| Measure | Cleaning companies | Every trade |
|---|---|---|
| Sellable businesses | 6,430 | 135,182 |
| Rated on Google | 6,264 | 128,489 |
| Median Google rating | 4.9 | 4.9 |
| Middle half of ratings | 4.8 to 5.0 | 4.7 to 5.0 |
| Median review count | 45 | 37 |
| No reviews yet | 3% | 5% |
| 1 to 9 reviews | 16% | 21% |
| 200 or more reviews | 19% | 19% |
| Perfect 5.0 rating | 42% | 42% |
| Found emails the mail server confirmed | 0% | 16% |
| Found emails on a catch-all domain | under 1% | 17% |
| Found emails the mail server refused | 0% | 2% |
| Found emails that are not a shared inbox | 49% | 58% |
The states with the most cleaning companies in our data:
| State | Sellable | Verified email | No website | Owner named |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | 1,080 | 0% | 18% | 3% |
| Texas | 716 | 0% | 12% | 8% |
| Arizona | 281 | 0% | 7% | 7% |
| Florida | 256 | 0% | 5% | 5% |
| Colorado | 246 | 0% | 10% | 7% |
| North Carolina | 196 | 0% | 5% | 8% |
| Oklahoma | 181 | 0% | 13% | 9% |
| Tennessee | 177 | 0% | 11% | 5% |
| Missouri | 164 | 0% | 10% | 7% |
| Ohio | 154 | 0% | 6% | 8% |
States with 50+ sellable businesses, largest first, live from the 67Leads warehouse.
The no-website list is the best list in this trade
For web designers, the most valuable line above is not the no-website count. It is the no-website businesses with real reviews. A cleaner with no site and no reviews may not be trading. A cleaner with no site and 10 or more reviews has customers, a reputation and nowhere to send the next one. That is 298 businesses today. The 57 with 4.5 stars and 50 or more reviews are the strongest of all: busy, liked, and invisible to anyone who searches for a website.
The cleaning companies without a website page tracks this group live, and our guide to finding businesses without websites explains how the check works.
The catch: we read emails from company websites, so a business with no website has no email in our data. The no-website list is a phone and mail list.
How to reach a cleaning company owner
Phone first for the no-website group
The owner of a small cleaning business may be on a job during the day. Call, leave a short message with one reason to call back, and try again at a different time. Do not follow up with automated texts. Autodialed texts to a mobile need prior express consent under federal law, with damages of $500 to $1,500 per text (47 USC 227), and in a trade made up mostly of owner-operators the listed number may be the owner's own phone. Of the cleaning companies in our data, 692 have no website and a local, not toll-free, number.
Texas adds a registration requirement for text solicitations since Senate Bill 140 took effect on 1 September 2025 (SB 140). Our roofing guide walks through it.
Email for the rest
- Use the owner's name where the site gives one. Our guide to finding owner names covers where to look.
- Say something true and specific: the towns they serve, their review count, a quote form that does not work on a phone.
- Keep it to a few sentences and one question.
Business email has rules even when the recipient is a one-person company. CAN-SPAM "makes no exception for business-to-business email": include a postal address, an opt-out and an honest subject line (FTC). Read whether buying an email list is legal first.
A postcard to the business address reaches the no-website owner who ignores unknown calls. It costs more per contact, so keep it for the reviewed, no-website group.
What cleaning owners respond to
Tie the pitch to something an owner-operator can count: one more recurring client, or one fewer missed quote request. That is easier to say yes to than a pitch about brand. Price it for the size of the business: a one-person company is a different buyer from a janitorial firm with crews. If your offer is expensive, sell it to the commercial and janitorial end of the list, where contracts are larger.
A plan for your first 100 cleaners
- Pick one metro and pull every core cleaning company. Decide whether adjacent rows stay.
- Split into no website with 10+ reviews, dead website, verified email, and everything else.
- Call the no-website group, best-reviewed first. Mail the ones you cannot reach.
- Email the dead-website and verified groups with a note about the specific problem.
- After 100 contacts, compare replies by group and keep the one that answered.
Questions
How many cleaning companies are in the US?
About 74,472 janitorial and carpet cleaning establishments with paid employees (Census County Business Patterns, 2023), plus about 1.1 million janitorial businesses with no employees (Nonemployer Statistics, 2023).
How do I find cleaning companies without a website?
Use the no-website filter on the cleaning company lead list. Today 704 cleaning companies in our data list no website, and 298 of them have 10 or more reviews.
Is it legal to text cleaning companies?
Autodialed texts to mobile numbers need prior express consent under the TCPA, and Texas requires registration for text solicitations. A small cleaning business's listed number may be the owner's mobile, so treat texting as high risk and use phone, email and mail instead.
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Sources
- https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
- https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/nonemployer-statistics/datasets/2023/historical-datasets/nonemp23us.zip
- https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/227
- https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/SB00140F.htm
- https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business