How to make an app like Care.com? Know the business model and app building steps to get started

The internet has simplified many businesses, such as online shopping, healthcare, booking services, etc.

The caregiving business has also changed since most of the audience started using the internet. 

As per the report of Coherent Market Insights, the market size of the caregiving market is expected to reach $ 311,850 million by the end of 2027.

If you want to know how to start a service platform like Care.com, understand its development steps. 

What is Care.com?

The platform is an online marketplace where families can find professionals for accessing caregiving services for their members. The audience base of this platform is divided into two parts:

I. Care Seekers

These are the audience base looking to hire individuals for their families related to caregiving services. 

II. Caregivers 

These individuals provide specific services to the audience and customers through the platform.

Now, let’s check how the caregiving platform works.

How do platforms like Care.com work?

Platforms like Care.com works by allowing its app users to explore different caregiving profiles based on their needs. 

The platform enables users to post jobs and mention their needs and requirements, which helps available and interested caregivers apply for particular caregiving jobs.

Also, for caregivers, the platform provides valuable features such as:

1. Caregiver profiles

The caregiver can customize their profile which helps family members to search for them based on their needs and preferences

2. Job search 

The caregivers can search for different profiles relevant to the services they provide to the audience of care.com 

3. Message families

The caregivers can directly contact potential family members through the app’s inbuilt messaging feature. 

4. Get paid 

Users can pay straight from the Care.com app to the caregiving service providers without needing third-party payment services.

Now, let’s check what services the platform Care.com offers its potential customers.

What services does the caregiving platform offer?

Caregiving platforms offer a wide range of services to their users, such as:

1. Childcare

Families can explore caregiving professionals for taking care of their children. The caregivers can provide great relief regarding childcare to their families and can leave their children peacefully.

2. Senior care

The platform also offers professionals for providing senior care services to their app users. Users can explore nearby caregivers easily through the “Care” platform.  

3. Housekeeping

The app users can explore caregivers for specific purposes related to their housekeeping services, such as cleaning, gardening, and so on.

4. Petcare

Care.com provides easier access to pet care services by letting its app users hire pet care professionals for their pets in their absence.

5. Tutoring 

Families can hire tutors from Care.com to let their children learn specific skills without needing to leave their homes.

But how can caregivers and care seekers use this platform? Let’s check!

How do caregivers and care seekers use caregiving platforms?

There is a separate way how caregivers and care seekers can use caregiving platforms:

I. For care seekers:

1. Sign up: Care seekers can enter their registration details 

2. Create a job: The audience posts their job requirements 

3. Review profiles: Users can check the profiles of available caregivers 

4. Hire caregivers: Users can interview different caregivers and check references to hire the best one for their family 

II. For caregivers:

1. Sign up: Caregivers enter their registration details 

2. Profile creation: Caregivers can create their profiles along with mentioning the skills and services they are going to provide

3. Search for jobs: The professionals can explore all the available jobs relevant to their profiles 

4. Get hired: After applying for different jobs, the caregivers provide their valuable services after getting from particular care seekers.

5. Get paid: Care seekers can pay caregivers directly from the “Care” platform after providing a particular service.

Now, let’s understand the different ways how the Care.com platform makes money.

How do platforms like Care.com make money?

Here are the different ways caregiving platforms make money:

1. Premium Subscription Plan

The platform offers exclusive paid features and services for both audience bases, including potential customers and caregivers, enabling customers to directly message caregivers through the platform, background checks, and much more. 

The premium services of Care.com comes with its premium subscription plan, which costs $38.95 per month.

2. Care Homepay

An audience looking to hire caregivers on a regular and long-term basis can subscribe to Care Homepay services.

Homepay offers payroll and tax preparation services which is useful for both care seekers (families) and caregivers. Care seekers can use Homepay as a payroll service that simplifies their taxation and auto payments to pay caregivers regularly.

3. Care for business(B2B)

The Care has partnered with multiple companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Toyota, and many more, allowing them to offer care services as benefits to their employees.

4. Recruiting and marketing solutions 

Along with individuals, many businesses officially started as caregiving companies that offer their services to potential customers. 

To allow businesses to scale and expand their caregiving services, the platform offers paid recruiting and marketing services, which are profitable for caregivers and the platform itself.

5. Advertising

Care.com promotes the products and services of other brands on its platform through advertisement by embedding their links and sponsored content. 

Whenever their audience makes a purchase through advertisement, Care.com makes money as a commission from their business partners who placed their ads on the platform. 

These were the few ways we have discussed how caregiving platforms make money. However, there are many other possible ways you can make money from your caregiving apps. 

Other business models to make money from caregiving apps

Check different possible ways by which you can make money from your caregiving provider platform:

1. Commissions 

On each successful transaction (whenever care seekers pay caregivers after using their services), you can take out a fraction of the pay as commission fees for providing your platform for caregiving services.

2. Dedicated business model

You can submit your exclusive caregiving services to make profits on the ultimate level(Instead of allowing other businesses to offer their caregiving services). However, it may need a massive investment at the start. Still, it can surely give better earnings in the long run. 

3. Paid apps

Instead of allowing free download, you can charge a one-time fee from your app users to enable them to download and use your caregiving platform. However, this business model will not serve as a recurring source of income for your business. 

4. Mixed business model

In this model, you can combine multiple app monetization models to make money from your caregiving apps. You can pair and test multiple monetization models on your platform to find the best.

Check the list of top features you can add to your caregiving app.

Top features you can add to your caregiving app

Here are some standard features you can add to your caregiving apps: 

1. Easy onboarding 

Allow your users to join your platform quickly by asking them only a few essential identification questions to improvise their first experience. 

Also, you can enable social media integration on your platform to allow your users to create their profiles on your forum in just a few clicks. 

2. List of services

You can provide multiple subsections of caregiving services on your caregiving platform. To help users quickly find particular caregiving services they need. 

3. Rating and review

With this feature, care seekers can check out the experience of other app users from particular caregivers on your platform. 

Also, the feature will encourage caregivers to offer their services in the best possible way, eventually improving the experience of care seekers on your platform. 

4. In-app message

Let app users interact with caregivers directly on your platform by offering an in-app messaging service. You can earn additional income by offering in-app messaging services to your app users through premium subscription services.

5. AI-based chatbots

Automate your business and cut additional business expenses by integrating AI-based chatbots on your platform. 

With AI-based chatbots, you can solve the basic queries of your platform users. While for in-depth discussion, you can handle them with your customer service department (that will be limited to just a few staff to cut your business expense).

6. Accessibility to schedules

The feature will help app users to schedule their appointment with caregivers straight from your platform. Also, scheduling provides a better way for caregivers to manage their licenses and sequentially offer services. 

7. Requests

The users can directly ask for caregiving services from an individual or organization by placing requests on their profile. The caregivers can access all the recommendations from their clients in one place with the help of the “Requests” feature.

8. Care Plans

Another essential feature you must add to your application is “Care Plans.” The feature in which you can list all available services on your platform helps your users access all the caregiving services quickly and easily.

9. GPS Integration

The GPS integration will help caregivers to reach their clients’ location by taking permission access to their location. The GPS integration will also allow users to know the place of caregivers and enjoy benefits such as getting an estimated time and distance needed for caregivers to reach a particular site.

10. Push notifications

Instead of making the audience open your caregiving app every time, you can add push notifications to keep your app users updated with the latest events, such as confirmed booking, completion of services, and so on.

11. In-app payment 

Let your app users make payments straight from your caregiving app by integrating the in-app payment feature into your app. 

With in-app payment features, caregivers and care seekers can avoid third-party payment platforms to make payments.

If you don’t know how to start building your caregiving platform. Here are the development steps you can take to develop your caregiving app.

Development steps for creating a caregiving app

You can start app development for your caregiving platform by following the given mobile app development steps:

1. Confirm your caregiving app idea

Define what unique features you will provide in your caregiving platform. List out all the essential app features required in the caregiving platform, such as posting and finding caregiving jobs, caregiving job scheduling, GPS integration to allow users to find their nearby caregiving/ care seekers’ profiles, etc.

2. Do market research 

Market research will help you know your audience more effectively. Check user reviews of other caregiving platforms to know what challenges care seekers and caregivers are facing on other platforms.

One of the most common challenges we have noticed on Care.com is users need to pay premium fees to find jobs relevant to their caregiving profiles quickly. 

You can benefit from this drawback and improve them in your caregiving platform By allowing them to find jobs quicker without paying any premium fee.

Also, you can download caregiving apps on your mobile to know what features they are providing to their app users. You can add the same to your caregiving app.

3. Choose platforms for your caregiving app

There are different ways to build your platform and launch them in the market to attract caregivers and care seekers to your app, such as

I. Native app

Target your caregivers and care seekers audience by building your mobile app for separate operating systems like Android and iOS. 

However, you can also target additional devices such as desktops-based operating systems like Windows, macOS, and Linux to expand your caregiving platform. 

II. Cross-platform app

If you want to launch your caregiving platform on all the platforms to target a broader audience base in the caregiving market, You can best go for cross-platform app development. 

You can build your caregiving platform once and deploy them on multiple platforms such as Android, iOS, and websites with the help of cross-platform development. 

You can choose React Native or Flutter as an app development tool for building cross-platform apps.

III. HTML Web app

The web application is a platform-independent app that performs identically on all browsers. The web app of your caregiving platform would be accessible from the browsers of all devices.

We suggest Hybrid app development to quickly and easily scale your caregiving provider business. 

4. Build your caregiving app’s wireframe

It is essential for you to design your platform so that your targeted audience can easily use your caregiving platform.

You need to simplify the usability of your caregiving platform, as your target audience will also include older audiences unfamiliar with the regular usage of mobile apps.

Therefore you can first create a wireframe of your care-providing platform. Consider the app wireframe as a blueprint of your caregiving platform. 

Wireframe helps you experience the app design idea of your caregiving platform, which displays the design of your app functionality, navigation, and usability. 

Try to adopt a minimalist design for your caregiving app, as that done by the “Care.com” platform:

Here are a few tips for building your app’s wireframe:

• Identity: Dig into the problems of app design
• Build: Design strategy 
• Diversify: Build many apps design solutions as possible
• Select: Choose the best design ideas so far
• Prototype: Build something quick and unfinished
• User feedback: learn what works & what doesn’t

5. Build features for your caregiving app

The next step is to make your app fully functional by starting a back-end development of your caregiving provider application. 

You need to add many features to your caregiving platform, such as posting and searching caregivers’ jobs, profile customizations, job suggestions relevant to caregivers’ profiles, etc.   

The development steps include the programming part for building your app features, API, integrating the back end part with the front end part, etc. Let’s understand the following elements in detail:

I. Back-end/server technology

All the decided features for your caregiving app will be built during the back-end development stage. The app developers will use the tools to build the features you have decided on before proceeding with your project with an app development team.

Also, you must configure server-side objects to test all the functional components of your apps.

II. Application programming interface

An API is a set of practices, protocols, and instructions that will allow your caregiving platform to work ideally on different platforms, such as websites and mobile devices. With an API, your mobile app can fetch and display data from your caregiving website.

III. Mobile app’s front-end development

The front end of your caregiving apps is your app’s part through which your app users will interact with your platform. 

However, creating your caregiving app will require structure, design, animation, and behavior, all of which can be fulfilled while developing your mobile app front end.

6. Break down your app features into caregivers and care seekers

Instead of providing the same platform for both caregivers and care seekers, you can best create a separate one for both, with required and customized features to enhance their platform experience on your caregiving app. 

For caregivers, you can add features such as finding caregiving jobs, Profile creation (including hourly rates and services they provide), etc.

While for care seekers, you can add features such as posting caregiving jobs, exploring profiles of caregivers, enabling them to rate and review caregivers, etc.   

7. Test your caregiving app

It’s essential to provide a lag-free experience on your caregiving app. You can ensure by testing your app multiple times until you are fully satisfied with your app quality. 

You can use the code analysis app, “Codegrip,” to review code structure quickly and easily. Also, you can perform app testing in multiple parts, such as:

• Documentation testing 
• Functional testing
• Usability testing
• Compatibility testing
• Performance testing
• User interface testing
• Security testing
• Certification testing 

8. Launch the beta version of your app

Your caregiving app’s beta version will help you test your app’s success potential in the market. Introducing the beta version or MVP of your app will help you get feedback from your beta testers, feedback which you can use to improve your caregiving platform and make it ready to launch on a full scale.

9. Launch your app on a full scale

Once your caregiving app is ready to launch, you can follow the rules and guidelines of your targeted platform to launch your caregiving app without any difficulties. 

Know the best social media platform where caregivers and care seekers are mostly active, and choose the same platform to promote your caregiving app.

You can perform different app marketing practices to attract your caregiving and care seeker audience to your platform by promoting the features and benefits they can get on your platform.

10. Upgrade your caregiving app

Even after successfully running your caregiving platform provider business, you will need to add additional features and regularly eliminate drawbacks from your app to improve your platform experience.

You can check reviews of your targeted audience to know their difficulties in your caregiving platform so you can improve them on the next update.

However, there are some possible challenges you may face when building your caregiving app.

Common challenges while building caregiving apps

Here are some common challenges you may face when you start building your caregiving app:

1. Finding and hiring care workers

Your platform will need a qualified and experienced care worker to provide a more excellent platform experience to your app users. However, you can promote your caregiving app among caregiving service providers to make them create their profiles on your platform.

2. Expanding audience base

You may need help attracting care seekers due to the limited availability of caregivers on your platform. Also, by looking at a few audience bases of care seekers on your platform, only some caregivers would be interested in creating their profile. 

However, performing well-app marketing practices can help you attract care seekers and caregivers to your platform. 

3. Building and launching your care provider platform

The absence of your app development team can cause a great challenge in building a platform like Care.com. 

However, multiple options exist to build your caregiver platform, such as hiring in-house app developers, hiring freelancers, building an app by yourself, or outsourcing your app to an app development company.

The best step is to contact an experienced app development company to build your care provider app quickly and easily. Also, they consist of other essential professionals such as programmers, project managers, and UI/UX designers who can help you build your app from scratch.

Different factors can affect your app development budget for creating the caregiving platform you can check.

Cost-depending factors for building a caregiving app

Here is the list of different factors that can determine the cost of building your caregiving app:

1. Location and service charges of the app developers

The location of app developers is one of the most important factors that decide the app development cost of your caregiving service provider platform. 

The development cost is relatively high in western countries like the USA, which gets reduced when you look out for app developers in Asian countries such as India.

Also, the app developers’ charges of each app development company differ, which you can check by discussing them directly. 

2. Decided features for caregiving apps

The features you add to your platform will also determine your caregiving platform’s overall app development budget. 

Adding minimal features might reduce your platform development budget. Still, it might not provide any competitive advantage to your caregiver app. 

3. Selected tools for app building

The tools and tech stack you will select for building your caregiving app are other factors that can decide your app development cost. You can use free or less costly app development tools to make your platform from scratch.

4. Selection of platform for app launching 

Numerous platforms are available for your caregiving platform, such as mobiles, desktops, wearables, etc. Selecting a platform carefully for launching your caregiving app is another factor that can decide the app development cost for apps like “Care.com.” 

At the start, you can go for a few platforms to minimize your app development, and later you can scale your caregiving business by choosing the rest of the platforms for your caregiving app. 

So, how to start your caregiving app?

There are multiple options to start your caregiving platform like Care.com, such as hiring in-house app developers,  freelancing your project, or outsourcing your platform to a skilled app development company. 

It will be best for you to know the pros and cons of each option to decide which option will be best suited for you for building your caregiving platform.

However, the best way to develop your caregiving platform is to outsource your project to app development companies. 

Almost every app development company includes professionals, such as project managers, app developers, UX/UI designers, and others, that can help you build and launch your caregiving platform.

Contact Idea Usher to build your caregiving app

Look no further if you are looking for the best app development team to outsource your caregiving platform. 

Idea Usher already has hands-on experience creating caregiving platforms for their past clients. Their app development team has a list of all the required professionals, such as project managers, app developers, and UI/UX designers, that can help you successfully build your caregiving platform.

Also, you can check the app portfolio to understand how we can help you quickly and easily build your caregiving platform project.  

Email:

[email protected]

Phone:

(+1)732 962 4560

(+91)859 140 7140

FAQ

1. What does it take to create a service web application like Care.com?

You can follow the steps to create a service web application like Care.com:

1. Do research in the caregiving industry 

2. Study similar brands like Care.com to know what works for them

3. Identify areas of improvement in your competitors’ business

4. Based on your research, create a list of features you can add to your caregiving app 

5. Determine the cost of different factors that can decide your app development budget

6. Outsource your caregiving platform project to the best app development company 

7. Follow post-app launching practices such as app marketing and referral program to scale your caregiving platform business

2. How much would it cost to pay a web developer to design a site similar to care.com?

It’s impossible to give the exact fees a web developer will charge for your project. However, several factors can decide the cost of building your site identical to Care.com, such as:

• The Complexity of your project
• List of app features
• Selected app-building tools and technologies 
• Development charges of the web developer 
• Locality of the web developer