About
About the Countertops Contractors Ranking
The Countertops Contractors Ranking is the first national rating of companies that fabricate and install stone countertops in the United States. Since its inception, our ranking has been a non-commercial project, funded entirely by our founder, who believes that this initiative is already making a positive impact on the stone countertop fabrication and installation industry in the U.S.
In February 2022, we began researching the market — manually collecting information from public sources about all companies involved in the fabrication and installation of countertops. Despite facing various challenges, delays in development, and a general reluctance from contractors to speak with representatives of the ranking, we continued to diligently gather valuable data about contractors and the industry. By January 2025, we were ready to present what our team believes are the best companies in the field to the American public.
We can’t change the whole world — but we truly believe that our ranking and online magazine will help make one industry in the world better!
Why Did You Create a Countertop Company Ranking?
It all started with a story shared by a friend of our founder — Yuriy, the owner of a stone countertop fabrication company. He explained that clients often came to him after already spending large sums of money with other contractors, only to end up with poor results, problems, and disappointment. These homeowners were forced to pay twice — first for a failed project, and then again to fix someone else’s mistakes.
This story seemed very telling to us, and we asked ourselves: is this kind of customer deception happening only in South Carolina, or is it a nationwide issue? To find out, we conducted in-depth market research — analyzing reviews, customer stories, and contractor experiences across different cities and states. The result was shocking: the problem Yuriy described turned out to be a systemic pain point affecting the entire industry throughout the United States.
We’ll be honest: when we started this project, our team weren’t professionals in the countertop industry. We were professionals in website development, SEO, sales, and customer service — but not in stone. Still, we were strongly motivated to bring real value to the market and to homeowners, because every one of us had been in a situation where we hired an unverified contractor and ended up paying for it — with both stress and money.
After weighing all the pros and cons — and with the support of Yuriy, who had already been working in the industry for 7 years by that time (starting as a stone cutter and eventually becoming an experienced business owner with his own production facility and an impeccable reputation) — we decided to take a shot at creating a new, unique, and highly specialized project.
We made a strategic decision: to build our largest in-house project — not a broad rating of all home services, but a niche-specific product that is as deep and expert-driven as possible. Our goal was to help homeowners across the U.S. choose reliable contractors not just based on reviews (which are often fake or manipulated), but through real expert evaluation.
We chose to focus on a narrow niche because we believe that in order to create a truly high-quality ranking, we need to be EXPERTS in our field.
After three years of intense work on the project, we’ve become true industry professionals. We’ve studied an incredible amount of information on pricing, service quality, technologies, and materials; written hundreds of articles; and conducted thousands of research studies. We’ve immersed ourselves so deeply in the subject that even we’re amazed by the amount of knowledge we’ve accumulated. We’ve truly become top-level experts in the U.S. stone industry.
But we believe that even this is not enough. Right now, our expertise is focused on the U.S. market — but our goal is to become the leading global experts in the industry. The whole world lies ahead of us!
How is your ranking different from
Google, Yelp, Angie’s List, and other platforms?
Yes, we are different. But first and foremost — we have deep respect for what Google, Yelp, Angi, and other major platforms are doing. They’ve done an enormous amount of work developing their products and helping millions of people find services and read reviews.
However, we are something else.
Countertops Contractors is not an aggregator, not a social platform, and not an ad marketplace. It’s an independent industry ranking focused exclusively on a single niche: companies that fabricate and install stone countertops. And it’s this narrow specialization that gives us our greatest advantage — depth of analysis and true expertise.
We understand how important reviews are to users. That’s why we collect and take into account ratings from public sources — Google, Yelp, Facebook — but we don’t rely on them alone. We complement them with data from our own research: our analysts and mystery shoppers interact with contractors just like regular customers do — requesting estimates, asking questions, checking timelines, pricing, and customer service quality. This allows us to build an objective and accurate picture.
Unlike aggregators, we don’t just collect data — we evaluate it. We create a balanced, multi-layered assessment that takes everything into account: from reviews to real customer experience. We don’t sell ranking positions, and we don’t allow anyone to influence the scores. We’re not trying to be bigger than others — we’re striving to go deeper. And that’s our key difference.
Why should I trust your ranking more than Google reviews?
You don’t have to choose between them. We actually use Google reviews as one of the key sources when evaluating a company. It’s truly an important indicator of reputation, and we strongly recommend that everyone start their contractor selection process by reading reviews.
But we also understand that reviews alone aren’t enough — especially in a niche where a contractor’s mistakes can cost you thousands of dollars and a ruined kitchen. Some companies with excellent reviews may not have earned them all honestly (some do inflate their ratings, even though Google tries to detect it), while others with lower ratings may offer outstanding service and quality — they just don’t have enough active customers to reflect that. And that’s something that needs to be taken into account.
We’re not competing with reviews — we’re complementing them, just like any reasonable homeowner would. Before placing an order, you read reviews, but you don’t stop there: you make calls, ask questions, request estimates, and compare approaches. We do the same — only at the level of analysts and mystery shoppers. We simulate the customer journey: we submit a real project, evaluate the responses, request quotes, check prices and timelines, and assess how clear and convenient it is to communicate with the company.
Are you truly independent?
Yes. From the very beginning, we built the Countertops Contractors project as an independent and objective ranking — and we remain fully committed to that principle.
We don’t charge for inclusion in the ranking, we don’t sell positions, we don’t adjust scores in exchange for payment — and we have no plans to do so in the future. All of our research, including analytics, mystery shopping, and data verification, is conducted independently of the companies being evaluated.
We would gladly accept support from sponsors — but only under the condition of full editorial and methodological independence. A sponsor could be, for example, a major supplier of stone, equipment, or tools, but no partner will ever be allowed to influence the final company scores in our ranking. That’s our principle.
We understand that in the future, the project will need to generate revenue in order to grow — but we will never allow commercial interests to outweigh user trust. Independence is not just a word for us. It’s the foundation of our mission and our reputation.
