Search for a fence company in San Antonio and the same handful of names comes back, each with a star rating beside it. Type the search from Alamo Heights, Helotes, or Leon Valley and the list barely changes.
A star rating cannot tell you whether a crew shows up on the day it promised. It cannot tell you what happens if a post moves in year two. It grades how a company finished its last job.
No Single Fence Company Owns the San Antonio Market
No one contractor is the best fence company in San Antonio, and the star ratings cannot settle it. Texas issues no statewide license for a fence contractor, and leaves the question to cities and counties (TDLR, 2026). That leaves the rating doing a job it was never built to do. Four things do separate one bidder from another, and each one is a question you can ask on the phone.
Those four are the warranty and what it covers. Then the review record, read for volume and dates. Then the crew count behind the start date you were given. Then where the contractor buys its wood.
The job here is a full replacement: the old fence comes out, a new one goes in. That is a harder job than a fence on a bare builder lot, because someone has to dig out old posts, work around mature trees and irrigation lines, and haul the old line away. Every criterion below is written for that job.
Know These Four Terms Before You Read a Fence Bid
Four words decide what a San Antonio fence bid actually promises, and three of them show up in the fine print rather than the price. Most buyers compare the number at the bottom because it is the only part written in plain English. Learn these first and the rest of the page gets easier to read.
| Term | What it means on your bid |
|---|---|
| Craftsmanship warranty | Covers the crew’s work: how the fence was built, set, and aligned |
| Manufacturer warranty | Comes from the mill or maker of the material, never from the crew |
| Callback | A return trip to correct work covered by the craftsmanship warranty |
| Picket grade | The quality tier of the board, #1 through #3, set at the mill |
A bid that says “1 year warranty” and nothing else has told you almost nothing. A bid that says one year on craftsmanship, and names what craftsmanship means, has told you what you are buying.
Ask Whether the Warranty Covers the Install or the Wood
Almost no fence warranty in this market covers both, and the two halves come from different places. The crew warranties its own work. The wood carries whatever the mill gives it, which on a picket is often nothing at all. San Antonio requires registered residential contractors to carry general liability coverage of at least $500,000 per occurrence (City of San Antonio Code of Ordinances), so insurance and warranty are two separate promises to check.
Our own warranty is one year on craftsmanship. It covers our work and does not cover the material, and we would rather write that sentence than let a buyer assume otherwise. Last year we completed more than 20,000 projects and had zero craftsmanship warranty callbacks. That is the record to date, and it is the number we would want to see from anyone bidding your fence.
Here is what clear warranty wording names in writing.
| Line in the warranty | What clear wording looks like |
|---|---|
| Term and start date | One year, starting at the final walkthrough |
| What it covers | Posts set, framing, gate hang, and line alignment |
| What it excludes | Wood movement, mill defects, storm damage, soil heave |
| Who pays | Parts and labor both covered, with no trip charge |
| How a claim starts | A phone number, an office, and a named person |
Read the Review Book Behind the Star Rating
The count and the dates under an average carry more than the average itself. Star ratings do move buyers: 68% of consumers will not use a business rated below 4 stars, up from 55% the year before, and 31% now require 4.5 or higher (BrightLocal, 2026). But a 4.8 and a 4.9 are the same signal to a shopper and two different books underneath.
Read four things in the book itself.
- Dates. A rating built this year describes the crews working now. An old book describes a company that may have changed hands, salespeople, and subcontractors since.
- Names. Reviews that name the salesperson and the crew are harder to fake and easier to check.
- The middle reviews. The 3-star and 4-star ones tell you how the company behaves when something goes sideways.
- Work that matches yours. A book full of gate work says little about a 200-foot replacement.
Volume buys you range. A book of 200 reviews covers several summers, several crews, and more than one salesperson, so it shows you the bad week as well as the good one. A smaller book can be perfectly honest and still only cover one good season.
Our own numbers: we hold 4.9 stars across 60 Google reviews on our company Google Business profile. On SoTellUs we hold 4.9 stars across 170 reviews. Those are two separate books and we never add them together, because SoTellUs mirrors part of the Google one.
Check more than one place before you decide. The average consumer now consults six different review sites before choosing a local business (BrightLocal, 2026), and a company that looks thin on one platform often has years of history on another.
Crew Depth Is What Holds the Start Date You Were Given
The crew count behind a promised date predicts whether that date holds, and most fence companies in Texas are small. About 599,000 specialty trade establishments employ 5.26 million workers between them, under ten people each on average (BLS, 2025). A shop running one to three crews has no slack. One sick installer, one rained-out day, one job that runs long, and you move to next week.
We run over 100 crews across Texas, with 5 to 15 in every market outside Houston. That is why a missed day does not become a missed week. Our published operating numbers are the same ones we would tell you to ask for: a callback the same day, a quote the same day on 95% of real leads, work starting within about 4 days of an accepted quote, and most residential jobs finishing the day they start.
In a June 2026 SoTellUs review, a customer wrote: “In addition the crew showed up promptly per schedule and Matt came by early to coordinate some changes I requested after accepting the original quote. The fence was installed in just 2 days and looks great!”
Ask Where the Contractor Buys Its Pickets
Two bids for the same fence usually differ because the wood cost the two contractors different money, or because the two bids mean different boards. A picket has grades, #1 through #3, and “cedar” on a quote is not a spec until somebody names one. A cheaper bid on a higher grade is a good deal. A cheaper bid that quietly drops a grade is the same fence with a shorter life.
Master Halco named us its 2026 Largest Volume Customer for the Southwest Region and for the World, and we are a top customer of Solid Wood. That buying power shows up as a picket cost smaller buyers cannot get, and we pass it through. The claim is the same fence for less, because we buy the wood for less. We also name the grade on the quote so you can compare bids line for line.
On our reviews page, Celeste T. wrote: “Options were presented to work within our budget. Supervisor confirmed timeline, crew arrived promptly, confirmed work scope, worked efficiently and left the property clean.”
