The best software for an in-home service agency, compared honestly

There is no best one. There are four different kinds of product sold to the same people, and most bad purchases in this category are someone buying the wrong kind rather than the wrong brand.

We make one of these. That is a reason to read this sceptically, and a reason we have put the arithmetic in so you can check it rather than trust it. Every figure is dated and attributed, we say where each competitor beats us, and we say plainly when none of them is the answer.

What are the four kinds, and which do you need?

The test is what your business is organised around. If you place people into ongoing relationships with households, you want the first. If you only recruit and hand over, an ATS is a better fit and cheaper. If your people do discrete jobs at addresses and nobody is vetted, field service is simpler. And if you bill Medicaid or a local authority, you need the regulated category and nothing else will do, because electronic visit verification and funder billing are not features you can add later.

What does it actually cost at your size?

Published prices, read October 2026, for an agency with 3 office staff and 25 people on the books. This is the comparison nobody runs, because the headline price and the bill are different numbers.

Two things fall out of that table, and neither flatters us.

Connecteam is a quarter of our price. If what you need is a rota, a time clock and a way to message your team, it will do that well for about $49 a month and you should buy it instead of us. What it will not do is track a DBS expiry against a worker, give a family a portal, hold a placement, or turn verified hours into an invoice. You would be adding those back in spreadsheets, which is what you are trying to leave.

ShiftCare looks cheapest per head and is not. $13 a user is the lowest sticker price in the industry category, and it is per user. At 28 people that is $364 a month and it grows every time you hire. Ours is $197 and does not move when you take on twenty more workers. Which is better depends entirely on your ratio of office staff to field staff, and the crossover is somewhere around eight to ten people on the books.

Which pricing model bites you?

This matters more than the number.

Per person on your books (ShiftCare) is cheapest at the start, which is why it is offered, and it taxes the thing you are trying to do. It also makes a bank of relief staff expensive to keep, which quietly discourages you from having one, which is the opposite of what a staffing business needs.

Per user, with a minimum (Recruiterflow, ShiftCare's 5-user floor) means a two-person agency pays for people it does not employ. If you are small, ask for the bill at your actual size before anything else.

Per office seat (Rostavo, and EngineHire's reported model) means field staff are free. Good if you have many workers and few coordinators, which describes most agencies. Worse than per-user if you are three coordinators placing six people.

Quote only (EngineHire, Aaniie) is not a model, it is a negotiation. It usually means the price varies by what they think you will pay. Our view is obvious from the fact that ours is on the pricing page, but the honest point is narrower: a quote-only vendor can also discount, and a published price cannot. If you are a large agency with leverage, quote-only may get you a better deal than we will.

Where each one beats us

This is the section that makes a comparison worth reading, so here it is without hedging.

EngineHire has been doing this longer and has the deepest recruiting side in the childcare space: a mature applicant pipeline, a large customer base in US nanny and staffing agencies, and a knowledge base built from years of real questions. If you are a placement-first agency with a high volume of candidates, they have solved problems we have not reached yet. They also run payroll features we deliberately do not.

ShiftCare is more established in home care specifically, with care-plan structure and documentation we do not match. If your work is personal care rather than placement, and your headcount is small, it is a reasonable choice at a lower sticker price.

Recruiterflow is a better pure ATS than we are, and it is not close. Sequences, email campaigns, sourcing extensions, and a pipeline built by people who do nothing else. If your business is recruiting and the placement is where your involvement ends, buy it.

Connecteam beats us on price and on deskless basics. Better time-clock polish, better internal communication, cheaper at almost any size.

Jobber is more mature at quoting and job management for address-based work, and better if your business is really field service that happens to be in homes.

The regulated home care platforms do EVV and funder billing, and we do not and will not. If you bill Medicaid, a local authority or an insurer, this is not a feature gap you can work around.

Where we think we are better

Shorter, because we are not a neutral party.

The price is published and it does not move when you hire. First seat $99, £79, €89, CA$139 or A$149, each further seat about half that, and workers, candidates and families are free however many there are.

One record carries a person from application to placement to booking to invoice. Most of this category is either a recruiting tool that stops at the hire or a scheduling tool that starts after it. Agencies doing both usually run two systems.

It is multi-vertical. The same product relabels itself for nanny, cleaning, pet care, household staffing and home care, so an agency running more than one line is not buying two things.

Compliance is attached to scheduling. Documents carry real expiry dates and the status is visible where you assign work, so an expired certificate cannot be scheduled by accident.

We are also newer and smaller than EngineHire and ShiftCare, with fewer customers and a shorter track record. That cuts both ways and you should weigh it.

When is none of this the answer?

More often than any vendor will tell you.

Under about five workers and twenty regular clients, a well-kept spreadsheet and a shared calendar genuinely work. The thing they cannot do is invoicing, and the point at which they stop working is specific: it is when a second person needs to be in the system at the same time as you. A spreadsheet cannot be two people's source of truth, and the week your first coordinator starts working from a copy is the week your data diverges.

The other trigger is the first thing that gets missed. A booking that did not happen, an invoice that never went out, a certificate that lapsed. One is an accident. Two in a quarter is the system telling you something.

How should you decide?

Five questions, in order. The answers eliminate faster than feature lists do.

1. Do you bill a public funder? If yes, you need the regulated category and this comparison is mostly irrelevant to you.
2. Does your involvement end at the hire? If yes, buy an ATS. If the person keeps working through you, you need a platform.
3. What is your ratio of office staff to field staff? Many workers and few coordinators favours per-seat pricing. The reverse favours per-user.
4. What is the bill at twice your current size? Ask every vendor this in writing. It is the question that separates the models.
5. Can you get your data out? Ask specifically whether client history and job history export in a usable format, and what it costs to leave.

If you want ours answered: the price is on the pricing page, there is a 14-day trial with no card, we will move your existing data across at no cost, and there is no minimum term. If one of the others above fits you better, we would rather say so now than after you have migrated.

Prices are published figures read in October 2026 and some conflict between sources, which we have marked where it matters. EngineHire's and Aaniie's are not published; the EngineHire figure is what agencies report. Check current pricing with each vendor before deciding, and tell us if something here is out of date: hello@rostavo.com.