You’ve worked hard to establish your cleaning business. Now the next step is to protect your business from financial risks due to lawsuits or property damage.
- The 6 Best Providers of Cleaning Business Insurance
- What is the Cleaning Business Insurance?
- House cleaning insurance: What it covers and how much it costs
- Window cleaning insurance: Cost, coverage, and providers
- Carpet cleaning insurance: Cost, coverage, and providers
- What Affects the Rates of Cleaning Business Insurance?
- How Much does Cleaning Business Insurance Cost?
- Comparing Cleaning Business Insurance Quotes
- Best Bonding and Insurance for Home Cleaning Business
- Best Commercial Cleaning Business Insurance
The 6 Best Providers of Cleaning Business Insurance
Here are the best 6 companies offering excellent insurance that you will need as a cleaning business owner.
- CoverWallet: Best for Comparing Online Quotes
- Next Insurance: Best for A Simple and Fast Quoting and Purchase
- Hiscox: Best for Providing a Wide Variety of Business Insurance Policies
- InsurePro: Best for Short-Term Small Business Insurance Policies
- The Hartford: The First Insurance Company Focuses on Small Business Insurance
- Simply Business: Best brokerage firm to find cheap coverage
CoverWallet: Best for Comparing Online Quotes
CoverWallet is a digital business insurance broker. They are not a carrier or insurer themselves. They work with several insurance companies to help you compare quotes from these companies. After you provide your and your business’s information, within minutes, you will be able to compare several quotes and select the best one for you.
After buying a cleaning business insurance policy through them, you can use their digital dashboard with great features to manage your policy conveniently. If you buy the policy from elsewhere and want to use their digital dashboard, you have to pay $99 a year.
Next Insurance: Best for A Simple and Fast Quoting and Purchase
Next insurance believes that small business insurance should be simple, affordable, and tailored to you. You can get a quote from their online quote system by entering the type of business, your state and your email address and voila! It comes back with a quote. For janitorial services in Colorado it came back with $37.50 for general liability insurance and $25 a month for commercial auto.
Customer reviews are very positive and they earn an A+ from the BBB.
Hiscox: Best for Providing a Wide Variety of Business Insurance Policies
Hiscox is another popular insurance company catering to small businesses. They have many different policies to insure your cleaning business and they pride themselves on tailoring policies to business owner. To get a quote, you can use the online quote system or call a broker.
They have a wide variety of policies, everything from general liability to commercial crime insurance.
It is not yet available in every state, though—just 39 plus Washington D.C. so if you don’t live in a state where it’s available, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
Customer service reviews are mostly positive and they get an A+ from the BBB.
They do give estimates of what you might pay for insurance before even getting a quote: try hiscox quotes to get an idea of what you might pay.
InsurePro: Best for Short-Term Small Business Insurance Policy
InsurePro is another insurance startup, specializing in small business insurance. The unique differentiator about InsurePro is that they provide short-term insurance – no need to get a policy for an entire year if you run a seasonal business. You can buy insurance that covers just a week or even a day.
They have an online quote system that is fast and efficient—what state do you live in and what type of business is it? Based on that, it told us that for a cleaning business in MA could get a policy with 1,000,000 in coverage for $12.24 a month.
They insure over 100 professions, everything from house cleaners to DJ’s. They’re available pretty much everywhere in the country.
So far, customer reviews are very positive. They are not rated by the BBB, so it’s hard to say how the company will respond to its success. But for ease of use and flexible policies, InsurePro is worth a look.
The Hartford: First Insurance Company Focuses on Small Business Insurance
The Hartford was the first insurer to focus specifically on small business insurance, 35 years ago. They have general liability insurance as well as almost any other insurance a small business owner might need.
Similar to Nationwide, getting an online quote from the Hartford isn’t easy, you can fill out the online quote form and they will get back to you or call a broker. Customer reviews are mostly positive.
They have an A+ rating on BBB, although it’s worth noting that they are not accredited by the BBB.
Due to their long history of insuring small businesses, it might be worth it to get a quote from The Hartford.
Simply Business: Best brokerage firm to find cheap coverage
Simply Business is a broker specializing in small business insurance. They work with many carriers with a focus to help you find low-cost coverage that your business may need. They vet the carriers that they work with carefully to ensure that all of them have excellent financial ratings. They select the carriers that can offer low-cost coverage even if these carriers may not be well-known and small businesses may not have access to them otherwise.
Pros:
- Easy to get and compare several quotes online
- Able to get quotes from A-rated carriers which you may not be aware of and offer low cost
- Knowledgeable agents that are available to help you along the process
Cons:
- If you prefer a particular carrier that Simply Business doesn’t work with, you may need to look elsewhere
- Have to file a claim directly with the carriers
What Insurance do You Need for a Cleaning Business?
There is no “cleaning business policy” for insurance, but rather a set of policies that most cleaning business owners will find helpful. Some companies actually offer something they call “cleaning business insurance policy”, this policy actually combines two or more relevant insurance types for cleaning businesses into one single policy to make it simple and convenient. Insurance types to consider include:
- General liability insurance
- Commercial property insurance
- Commercial auto insurance
- Workers’ compensation insurance
- Bonded Insurance
General Liability Insurance for Cleaning Business
General liability insurance protects you in case of customer injuries, customer property damage, and advertising injuries.
Since you own a cleaning business, almost all of your work is at someone else’s home or business. General liability insurance will protect you in case your customer trips over a mop and breaks an ankle, or claims your cleaning solution damaged their new floor. Advertising insurance is handy in cases of defamation (someone says something harmful about your business).
According to Insureon, a digital broker for small business insurance, cleaning businesses pay a median of about $45 a month or $530 a year for general liability insurance. Learn more how much general liability insurance costs and best general liability insurance for small businesses in general.
Commercial Property Insurance for Cleaning Business
Commercial property insurance will protect all of your cleaning supplies, such as industrial pressure washers, vacuums, carpet cleaners, and other items. The only thing is, you’ll need a floater to cover your equipment while it is at someone else’s property.
If you can, bundle your general liability policy and your commercial property insurance into one policy, called a Business Owner’s Policy (BOP). This will save you some money over buying separate policies.
Commercial Auto Insurance for Cleaning Business
Anyone who drives a company vehicle may get into an accident. Commercial auto insurance protects you if an accident in the company vehicle causes injuries or damage to property.
>>MORE: How Much does Commercial Auto Insurance Cost?
Workers’ Compensation Insurance
Workers’ compensation insurance pays your employees’ medical bills and wages if they are injured on the job or fall ill due to exposure to chemicals. All states, except Texas, require workers’ compensation insurance. Check here to find requirements in your state.
>>MORE: How Much does Workers’ Compensation Insurance Cost?
Bonding Insurance for Cleaning Business
It is also called janitorial bond or fidelity bond. A bond is different from insurance—a bond is an investment you make to protect your customers who are, after all, trusting you with their property in the case that one of your employees steals something or has a brain lapse and loses the keys to a client’s house. A janitorial bond, or also called business service bond, or employee dishonesty bond, will pay directly your clients in an event of theft or property loss, up to the the amount purchase.
A janitorial bond will save you money from spending it out of your pocket when your employee commits theft while cleaning your client’s house.
House cleaning insurance: what it covers and how much it costs
If you run a house cleaning business, you send your employee to clean your clients’ houses everyday. You definitely need to have janitorial bond and general liability insurance policy. These are the two most basic policies to protect your business. If your employee steal something from your client’s house, the janitorial bond will pay your clients directly. If your employee accidentally damage something valuable at your client’s house or cause some bodily injury to a third-party person while cleaning, the general liability insurance policy will pay for it.
The good news is that it is quite inexpensive to get a janitorial bond and a general liability insurance for your house cleaning business. On average, a janitorial bond costs as little as $10.99 a month or $125 a year. And a general liability insurance policy costs around $45 a month or $155 a year.
Window cleaning insurance: Cost, coverage, and providers
Window cleaning insurance is a more specialized cleaning service. The clients of window cleaning insurance are usually office buildings or other types of commercial high-rise building such as hospitals or apartment complexes.
Compared to other cleaning businesses, window cleaning work is exposed to greater risks. Imagine that your employees hang themselves at a very steep height from the ground and try to grab onto the windows of these high-rise building to clean them. Many things can go wrong for this kind of work: weather, the expected rain and wind can put these employees at risk of their lives; they might break the windows as they are trying to clean them, etc.
If you are running a window cleaning insurance business, you definitely need to have workers comp insurance for each and every employees of yours, even they work part time and general liability insurance. Workers comp insurance will pay medical expenses, lost wages, disability benefits, and more if your employees get injured at work. General liability insurance will pay if your employees cause property damages or bodily injured to third party persons as they are doing their work.
Window cleaning insurance may be more expensive than other cleaning business insurance types given the greater risks they encounter. A general liability insurance might cost up to $300 a month. Be sure to shop around to compare several quotes to find the cheapest one.
Learn more at the best providers of window cleaning insurance.
Carpet cleaning business: Cost, coverage, and providers
Another popular type of cleaning business is carpet cleaning. They specialize in cleaning the carpets in houses or commercial building such as offices, restaurants, hospitals, grocery shops, etc. Some commercial customers such as restaurants and hospitals have a monthly carpet cleaning contracts.
If your cleaning business specializes in carpet cleaning. You will need to have at least general liability insurance and janitorial bond. It will pay when your employees steal something from your clients’ properties or causes property damages and bodily injury as they are cleaning the carpets.
Similar to house cleaning insurance, they are both quite inexpensive. A janitorial bond can be as cheap as $10.99 a month or $125 a year and a general liability insurance policy can cost around $45 a month or $155 a year.
Learn more at the best providers of carpet cleaning insurance
What Affects the Rates of Cleaning Business Insurance?
Many things affect what rates you pay for cleaning business insurance. Here are a few things your insurance company will look at:
- If your business cleans residential or commercial properties
- Location
- How much your business makes
- Whether you’ve ever filed a claim
- Number of employees
- Whether you have a storefront/office or if you run your business out of your home
How Much does Cleaning Business Insurance Cost?
We tried to get quotes for cleaning business insurance from both insurance companies who provide quotes online and online commercial insurance brokers. It costs a cleaning business in a range of $12 for general liability insurance only to $70 for both general liability and commercial auto insurance policies. Below are the detailed results:
| Carriers | Cleaning business insurance cost |
| NEXT | $37.5/month for general liability insurance; $25/month for commercial auto insurance |
| Thimble | $12.24/month for general liability insurance |
| CoverWallet | $29/month for general liability insurance; $39/month for commercial auto insurance |
| Coverhound | $30-70 for a bundled policy of general liability and commercial auto coverages |
The insurance rates vary for each business, so you should definitely shop around to find the best price.
Learn more details about cleaning business insurance cost here.
Comparing Cleaning Business Insurance Quotes
If you don’t want to hop from insurance website to insurance website, you can enter your information into digital broker websites like Coverwallet or Simply Business. Both of these will then give you quotes from insurance companies so you can compare them.
According to CoverWallet, one can get a general liability policy for a cleaning business for about $29 a month. If you add Property insurance and bundle them, expect to pay $39 a month.
To get a quote from Simply Business, you’ll have to answer more questions about your business, such as:
- Type of business
- How you are set up as a business (sole proprietor, LLC, partnership, etc.)
- Estimated revenue
- Number of employees
- Location
- If you have an office or operate your business out of your home
- Any claims filed
After filling out the form, Coverhound gave us an estimate of between $30 and $70 a month for a business owners’ policy.
Both Coverhound and Coverwallet are free to use, so you can try both and see which one gives you the best policy for the best price.
Protect your cleaning business and all your hard work by buying business insurance. It should only take a few minutes and you’ll have peace of mind for years to come.
Best Bonding and Insurance for House Cleaning Business
If you own a cleaning business and specializes in cleaning houses, as opposed to commercial building, you need to make sure your employees have sufficient bonding and insurance before they enter your clients’ houses. General liability insurance for your business and your employees isn’t every expensive, just about $30-$50 a month. The best companies to get bonding and insurance for your house cleaning business are CoverWallet, Next Insurance, or Thimble.
While CoverWallet is good if you want to compare quotes from several companies to find the cheapest one for you, both Next Insurance and Thimble allow you to buy house cleaning business insurance by day. That is a great option if you have part-time employees. It usually costs just $1.5-$3 per day.
Best Commercial Cleaning Business Insurance Companies
If you cleaning business specializes in commercial buildings, you definitely need to have proper cleaning business insurance. Many companies require you and your employees to have sufficient cleaning insurance coverage before signing a contract with your company.
Depending on the size of your company and the types of cleaning business insurance you decide to get, cleaning business insurance costs vary. You may also get more than just general liability insurance policy. You may want to also consider commercial auto insurance, workers compensation, professional liability insurance, and equipment and tool insurance.
The best companies for commercial cleaning business insurance are CoverWallet, Nationwide, or the Hartford. While CoverWallet is best for you to compare online quotes from multiple companies to get the cheapest one, Nationwide and the Hartford have been in business insurance industry for centuries, they have the reputation, capital strength, and resources to support your cleaning business insurance need.
What Business Insurance does a Pool Cleaning Business Need?
Swimming pool cleaning is a subset of cleaning business insurance. They will need similar business insurance types as a general cleaning business does. The most important business insurance they need to have is general liability. This will protect them from bodily injuries and property damages that your pool cleaning work causes.
Cleaning a swimming pool where many people will be using is a high risk activity. Many things can happen to people using the pool. Whether it is your fault or not, when you get sued, you need to have proper legal representation. Without general liability insurance coverage, you have to pay for attorney fees and court costs out of your pocket. It can cost a lot of money and put your company’s financial wellbeing in trouble. Get a general liability insurance policy to protect you, your employees, and your company from these risks.
How to Get Cheap Cleaning Business Insurance?
Getting the right insurance policies for your cleaning business is important. Depending your cleaning business specialization, the size of your business, and the main customer segment that you service, you might need different types of cleaning business insurance.
After identifying the right cleaning business insurance types, you need to always compare quotes from a few companies to get the cheapest price. Many business insurance companies do not offer online quotes and required you to speak to an agent to get quotes, which can be time-consuming and inconvenient. You can choose to work with a digital broker like CoverWallet or Simply Business. They work with many leading business insurance companies and are able to provide you with several quotes in one place. That will make it easier and more convenient for you to compare several quotes to get the cheapest one for you cleaning business.
Pressure washing business insurance
According to a statistics, more than 10,500 pressure washing businesses are operating in the US. Pressure washing is a type of cleaning businesses. It is actually a higher risk cleaning business since pressure cleaning and washing are involved with other risky equipments like ladders and power tools. Therefore, pressure washing business insurance is more expensive than usual cleaning business insurance and it can be a bit more difficult to find. But all pressure washing businesses need business insurance protection especially general liability, equipment & tool insurance, and commercial auto insurance. Learn more at the best pressure washing business insurance companies.
