Most care software is priced and sold for the 200-carer group: per-client fees, setup charges, annual contracts and a sales call before you may see a price. A five-carer agency gets the same system at a price built for someone else. Carelo was built the other way round: the full platform from £59 a month, nothing to install, nothing hidden, and it grows with you to any size.
A new or small domiciliary care company has the same obligations as a large one: electronic call monitoring for the council, an eMAR the inspector will read, timesheets payroll can trust, training and supervision records that are up to date. It does not have the same budget, and it does not have an IT person.
The established systems were designed for large providers and priced accordingly. The usual pattern is a monthly platform fee of £250 or more, a charge per service user on top, a setup or onboarding fee, a twelve-month contract and a demo call before any price is shown. For a company with 20 clients, the per-client charges alone can double the bill.
The up-to-15 carers band is the whole platform. There is no cut-down starter edition.
| Included at every band | |
|---|---|
| Rota and scheduling, carer and service user weekly rosters | Yes |
| Live call monitoring with GPS check-in and check-out | Yes |
| eMAR, case notes, tasks, incidents, body maps | Yes |
| Timesheets and invoicing from actual times | Yes |
| Training and supervision matrices, spot checks, holidays, sickness | Yes |
| Carer app and family app, offline-capable | Yes |
| Unlimited service users and unlimited office logins | Yes |
| Free migration from spreadsheets or another system | Yes |
| Carelo AI coworker | Optional add-on |
Monthly billing, cancel any month, no exit fee. No setup fee, no onboarding fee, no per-client charge. The first month is free. Prices are public on the pricing page and exclude VAT, which matters because most small care providers cannot reclaim it. Yearly billing is available at a lower rate when you are ready.
The bands run from up to 15 carers to unlimited, and the price moves only when your active carer count does. A provider that opens a second office adds a branch inside the same company, with its own staff and clients walled off and the owner seeing both. Nothing has to be migrated again.
It is not care home software. A residential or nursing home needs beds, rooms and shift handovers, and Carelo does not do those. It is domiciliary care only: visits to people in their own homes by travelling carers. Within that, it covers personal care, companionship, complex care with double-handed calls and night calls. If you are a care home, we will say so and point you elsewhere.
No. A provider with two carers and three clients pays £59 a month on the up-to-15 band, and the first month is free. There is no minimum term either.
Monthly. You can stop at the end of any month with no exit fee, and your data is exported for you if you leave. Yearly billing is optional and cheaper.
No. The office uses a web browser on any laptop; carers use the free app on their own phones or on phones you provide. There is nothing to install and nothing to maintain.
Yes, and many providers do, during registration. Having the rota, call monitoring and eMAR already working is useful evidence at the registration interview and means the first call is recorded properly.
Carelo records what frameworks ask for: carer, planned and actual times, GPS confirmation at the home and reasons for late or missed calls. The size of the provider does not change the evidence.
Support from the people who build Carelo, by chat inside the app and by email, with a written user manual and a staff handbook built in. Migration and setup are done with you, not left to you.