About KnockPortal
KnockPortal at a glance
KnockPortal helps contractors decide where to send direct mail. It uses public permit records for your trade to show where recent permitted work is concentrated, filters out homes with prior permits for the same kind of work, and builds postcard mailings to nearby homes based on the areas you choose. Autopilot is the main way to use KnockPortal: you set a mailing rule and a spending cap per run, then authorize automatic sending under those settings. Sending depends on the required checks and payment, and you can pause or stop the rule. You can also build, approve and pay for a one-off mailing yourself. It shows where permit activity is happening; it does not predict who will hire you.
Available in San Francisco · Roofing: Autopilot (Neighbors of new permits) and one-off mailings.
San Francisco · Roofing snapshot: Oct 17, 2026, 13:30 UTC. It covers the last 30 days of permits: 442 permits, 230 of them in 52 groups.
Subscription for San Francisco · Roofing: $99.00 a month. Postcards: $0.89 each, printing and postage included.
One job covers a month of the subscription and 100 postcards if at least $188.00 is left from it after the job's direct costs, such as materials and crew. This is arithmetic, not a forecast.
Permit records show where permitted work is concentrated, not where work is under way or which homes need it. A home with no permit on record may still have had the work done.
More about KnockPortal: About · Pricing · How it works
KnockPortal turns a city’s public building-permit records into a decision about where to send mail. Direct mail is not the hard part — deciding which streets are worth the postage is. A roofing permit does not say who does that job or whether it has started, but it marks a block where roofs tend to be of the same generation and where the neighbors may see the work from their own windows. KnockPortal finds those blocks and lists the houses on them that have no qualifying roofing permit in the available public record. It can mail those homes every week under a rule and a cap you approve — after the required checks and payment — or you can send a one-off mailing yourself.
What it does not do: it does not sell leads, does not introduce homeowners to contractors, and does not promise calls or work. The permit record is a signal about a block, not a statement about any household. A house with no permit found may still have had work done — roofs get replaced without a permit, before the digital record starts, or filed under another category.
When KnockPortal is not a fit
- You want leads — names and phone numbers of homeowners who asked for a quote. KnockPortal does not have them and does not sell them.
- You work outside the cities and trades listed on the home page.
- One job leaves you less than a month of subscription and postcards. Then the arithmetic on How it works does not add up.
- You need postcards out today. An autopilot runs weekly, and every new text and logo is reviewed before it prints.
- Right now, sending is open only to licensed contractors who pass a sender check.
How it compares
- A mailing list by ZIP code or radius: you pay for every address, including homes that just had the work done. KnockPortal starts where permitted work is happening and leaves those homes out.
- Every Door Direct Mail: cheap per piece, but it covers whole carrier routes with no filter at all.
- Lead services: they sell contacts of people who asked for a quote, and the same contact may be sold to more than one contractor. KnockPortal sends your postcard; it does not sell contacts.
- Doing it yourself from the city's open data: possible — the data is public. KnockPortal does the work of turning it into a filtered, addressed list, every week.
Who runs it
KnockPortal is operated by Abalon Construction Management LLC, a company registered in North Carolina. It is built and run by one person — the same person who answers your email. There is no sales team, which is why the answer comes from someone who knows how the data is put together.
Where it works today
San Francisco, roofing. That is one city and one trade, and it is the whole of it right now — other cities and trades are not available yet. Availability is listed by city and trade. Before adding a combination, we check that the source data supports the service we offer there. That takes calibration against real records, not a switch. If you want a city or a trade that is not here, say so in the selector on the home page.
Contact
Operated by
Abalon Construction Management LLC
Address
4030 Wake Forest Rd, Ste 349, Raleigh, NC 27609
Questions, corrections, or anything the site does not answer — write, and a person will read it.