Molly Maid are on the dear side of cleaning, the cleaners get minimum wage and the rest of the money goes in to feed the huge franchise machine that it Molly Maid which is the way they have to operate.
By necessity a large franchise will need to charge it out at those prices, they don't sell it hourly but research (asking the clients we have picked up after MM) leads me to believe they charge in the way of £75 for an average clean in an average sized house, which is about £35 more than we charge! alot of those costs go towards management, office buildings, franchise fees, marketing, branding, fleets of cars etc.
They are not an agency, all their staff are employed by MM which is a big plus (agency staff are self-employed) and they do not promise an exceptionally detailed clean - they would never be able to absorb the training costs for providing detail cleaning - I know someone who used to work for them apparently training consists of watching a video and that's it! however, it has to be said they are very reliable and it does what it says on the tin.
Molly Maid are good at providing so-so cleaning and are hugely reliable they will always have the man-power to cover sickness and holidays but at the end of the day they are in the market for selling business rather than cleaning.
A smaller private company will be able to set there prices lower, although not as low as an agency given they have employment costs to cover and agencies send out self-employed cleaners much like a match making service. The trouble with agencies (having picked up many of their dissatisfied customers too!) is that they cannot legally train or equip their staff as they are self employed, I believe they very often shirk liability issues too as they have told people 'it's not our liability - she is self-employed' when damage has been reported! This is why they can be cheaper than private companies they just do not have the same level of control of staff due to the staff being self-employed, thus making it the same gamble as hiring a self-employed cleaner yourself and yet paying a third party for the privilege! Time for You are an agency!
Private independent companies with employees not self employed staff will have the tightest control over quality of service etc and they supply all the equipment and supplies, which is a must as they will have done risk assessment and material safety data checks to cover all concerned and make sure the materials of you home are cared for with the correct chemicals. Of course this is only true for companies who have done this research however, I would find it unusual for a private company not to take good care, word of mouth being a huge provider of business without marketing costs!
I hope this helps somebody, I know all the different cleaning business models can be so confusing, obviously we will only pick up a client when there has been dissatisfaction so I am aware there are agency clients who ARE happy with their service, it just seems a bit hit and miss due to the lack of control of the business owner, I prefer a more fully-managed approach, ask about customer service too, if there should be an issue is someone going to take care of it and who is that person and how will they deal with it, what procedure are in place for this?
HTH