CoolCare vs Nourish: which care software, and where Carelo fits

1. What each one is for

CoolCare is management software built around residential care homes: occupancy and enquiries, staff rostering and timesheets, resident billing and fees, HR and compliance for a building with beds. Its strength is the business side of running a home.

Nourish is a digital care planning and recording platform used across residential and home care: care plans, daily notes, medication and evidence for inspection, recorded by care staff on handheld devices. Its strength is the care record itself.

Many care home groups run both: CoolCare for the business, Nourish or a similar platform for the care record. For a care home, the question is rarely one or the other. For a domiciliary agency, neither was designed with your day in mind, and that is where the comparison changes.

Features and pricing of other products change. Confirm anything here with the vendor before you decide.

2. If you run a care home

Your software needs split into the building and the care. Occupancy, enquiries, fees and staff rostering for shifts in one place are business tools, and CoolCare is one of the established choices for them. Care plans, daily recording, medication and evidence for the regulator are care tools, and Nourish is one of the established choices for those. Ask each vendor how they integrate with the other, because a home that enters the same resident twice pays for it every day.

3. If you run domiciliary care

A home care agency has no beds and no building. Its day is hundreds of short, fixed-time visits in different houses, carers travelling between them, and an office that needs to know, now, which call is late. The software that matters is the rota, the live monitoring of calls, GPS check-in, travel time and timesheets, eMAR at the door, and the apps the carers and families use. Care-home rostering does not model visits and travel; care-record platforms built for homes do not always model the rota at all. That is the gap domiciliary providers find when they shortlist on name recognition.

4. Seven questions that decide it

• Does the rota understand visits? Fixed-time calls, travel between them, double-handed calls, runs, continuity with the same carers. Ask to see a real week built.
• Does the office see a late call while it is late? Not in tomorrow's report. On a board, now, with the carer's name.
• How do carers check in? GPS at the door, with the time and the place, working without signal.
• Where does the medication record live? On the carer's phone at the call, with every outcome and a reason, visible to the office the same day.
• Do timesheets come from real check-ins, with travel time and mileage, ready for payroll and for a minimum wage check?
• What is the price in public? Per carer, per client, per module, setup fee, minimum term. If you cannot find it on the website, ask why.
• What happens to your data when you leave? Export in a usable format, and a migration path in.

5. Where Carelo fits

Carelo is built only for domiciliary care, so it answers the seven questions directly. The rota models visits, travel, runs and double-ups and cannot double-book a carer. The live monitor shows late and missed calls as they happen. Carers check in by GPS at the door and record medication and notes before they leave, online or off. Timesheets, travel time and mileage come from the real day. The carer app and the family app are included. The price is public: from £59 a month for up to 15 active carers, £89 for up to 30, £119 for up to 50, £169 for up to 100 and £249 for unlimited, excluding VAT, with unlimited service users, no setup fee, no per-client charge and no minimum term. Migration from your current system is free and verified before you switch.

If you run a care home, Carelo is not for you and we will say so on the call. If you run home care and arrived here comparing two names, the questions above are the ones to take to every demo, including ours. See also Carelo for teams considering Nourish and our guide to choosing home care software.