How to build a website like Care.com

Care.com built its business on one of the hardest problems in the service marketplace space: convincing people to let a stranger into their home to care for their children or elderly parents. Twenty years later, that trust problem is still the core product.

The platform now connects families with caregivers across childcare, senior care, pet care, and housekeeping in 20+ countries. The company has changed hands twice: acquired by IAC for $500M in 2020, then sold to Pacific Avenue Capital Partners for $320M in March 2026. The trust problem has not changed.

Building a caregiving marketplace means taking that trust problem seriously from day one. A bad match in most service categories means a disappointing outcome. In caregiving, it can mean something far worse. This guide covers how Care.com works, what the regulatory landscape looks like after the FTC's 2024 action, and how to build a caregiving platform that takes trust as seriously as the category demands.

What Care.com is

Care.com is the largest online caregiving marketplace in the US. The platform peaked at 31.7 million members (families and caregivers combined) before going private in 2020 (last publicly disclosed figure, 2019). Since the IAC acquisition, user counts are no longer reported.

The business went through a significant period of difficulty. IAC paid $500M for Care.com in 2020. Six years later, Pacific Avenue Capital Partners paid $320M, a $180M loss for IAC. On the way, Care.com settled a major FTC complaint for $8.5M.

The June 2025 rebrand is the most significant product signal in years. Care.com launched CareProtect (continuous background monitoring for new subscriptions), a 24/7 safety hotline, AI-enhanced search, and expanded category coverage including adult care, kids camps, senior living communities, and daycares. CEO Brad Wilson described a shift from "transactional platform to a holistic, guided platform" (Care.com press release).

How Care.com makes money

Care.com runs a freemium subscription model with a transaction fee layer on top.

Family subscriptions:

• Basic: free (browse only, cannot contact caregivers)
• Premium, monthly: $39/month
• Premium, quarterly: $26/month
• Premium, annual: $13/month ($156/year)
• Premium unlocks direct messaging, background check results, and job posting

Caregiver subscriptions:

• Premium caregiver profile placement: approximately $9/month

Transaction fees: Care.com charges families a 12% transaction fee on bookings. Families can optionally add 2% to pass to the caregiver.

Care@Work (B2B enterprise): Employer-sponsored backup care benefits. This was the fastest-growing segment at 18% in 2024 and is now the platform's primary growth engine, per IAC investor filings.

Background check add-ons: Tiered background check packages are available as add-ons. Pricing is not publicly listed.

The 2024 FTC complaint revealed one important fact about Care.com's model: more than half the job postings on the platform came from users on free accounts who could not actually hire anyone. For founders, this is a useful reminder that a marketplace's apparent supply depth can be misleading. Actual purchasable inventory matters, not total listings.

Key features of a caregiving marketplace

What separates a caregiving marketplace from a generic services marketplace:

Layered background checks. At minimum: criminal database (multi-jurisdictional), sex offender registry, and SSN trace. Care.com uses Checkr. The check covers national criminal databases, county courthouse records, and sex offender registries across all 50 states. No check is 100% complete; juvenile records are sealed, aliases create gaps, and fingerprint checks are not standard on consumer platforms. Be clear with users about what a background check does and does not cover.

Continuous monitoring. Care.com's CareProtect (launched June 2025) notifies the platform if a caregiver's background check record changes post-hire. Most competitors do a one-time check at signup and stop. Continuous monitoring changes the trust proposition significantly.

Certification verification. Collect and display first aid, CPR, dementia care, and state licensing credentials. Verification (not just self-reported) requires integrations with certification bodies or manual checks.

Reference management. Platform-facilitated reference requests (sent by the platform, not the caregiver) with stored responses. Removes the obvious problem of self-selected references.

Structured caregiver profiles. Care types offered, certifications, languages, hourly rate, availability calendar, and experience type (infant care, special needs, etc.).

Recurring booking architecture. This is the core distinction from task marketplaces. Families need weekly recurring arrangements, not on-demand single bookings. Your booking system needs to support recurring schedules with easy modification and clear cancellation terms.

Session logging. Especially relevant for elder care and special needs care. Caregivers log what happened during the session; families review. This creates accountability and a paper trail.

HIPAA-adjacent data handling. Caregiving platforms handling health-related data for minors or adults with medical conditions may enter territory that requires careful legal review, even if it falls short of formal HIPAA obligations. Get legal counsel early.

In-platform messaging moderation. Platforms that allow unmonitored off-platform contact lose two things: the ability to intervene in problems, and the commission on any transaction that moves off-platform.

Emergency contact management and incident reporting. A clear workflow for caregivers to reach family contacts in an emergency, and for families to report incidents to the platform.

How to build a caregiving marketplace

You have three realistic options:

1. Vibe coding from scratch

Tools like Lovable, Bolt, and Cursor can generate a working caregiver directory prototype quickly. For pressure-testing a concept or communicating your vision to a developer, they're genuinely useful. For launching a platform that handles caregiving bookings and sensitive caregiver background data, they're probably not sufficient on their own.

Caregiving adds specific complexity that vibe-coded outputs tend not to handle reliably: background check API integrations (Checkr, Persona), secure storage of caregiver data, recurring booking logic, and session logging. A documented 60-hour experiment at Sharetribe produced a demo that impressed developers initially, but revealed a checkout exploit that would have allowed any user to manipulate transaction prices via a direct API call. Bringing a vibe-coded prototype to production standard requires significant time, testing, and a thorough understanding of how the different components of a web application interact. In caregiving — where platform trust is the core product — this is not a risk worth taking at launch.

2. Custom development from scratch

Custom development gives you full control over every trust and vetting system. Budget $20,000-$100,000 for an initial launch, 6-12 months of development. Ongoing maintenance: a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month. Full-custom makes sense if you need a deeply proprietary vetting system, integration with a specific state's childcare licensing database, or a business model that does not fit standard marketplace patterns.

For most founders, the custom path is premature for a V1. Make the hard decisions (which background check tier families accept, which certifications caregivers hold) after you have real users on the platform.

3. Building on a marketplace operating system like Sharetribe

You start at roughly 90% done on the standard marketplace foundation: listings, search, messaging, bookings, payments, and reviews. Your time and budget go toward the caregiving-specific trust layer. Three paths within this approach, which most founders combine:

• No-code builder. Configure caregiver listing types (childcare, senior care, pet care, housekeeping), care category filters, availability, booking flows, and payment processing from the admin panel without code. The right starting point if you want to validate demand and business model before investing in the safety infrastructure.
• AI-assisted development. Connect an AI coding tool (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) to Sharetribe's open APIs and open-source frontend template. Add a Checkr integration for background checks, certification verification fields, a recurring booking module, and session logging. Because Sharetribe handles the marketplace infrastructure, AI-assisted development on top of it carries much lower risk than building from scratch.
• Custom code. Build directly on the developer platform for deeper trust infrastructure: a proprietary vetting pipeline, integration with a specific state's childcare licensing database, or continuous monitoring workflows.

Most founders start with the no-code builder, then add the trust layer via AI or a developer as they validate demand.

Do you need to build everything Care.com has?

No. Care.com's current feature set is the result of 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars.

A useful V1 has a fraction of that. What it actually needs: a caregiver listing directory with basic profile fields (care types, rate, availability), a family-side search with category and location filters, a direct messaging flow, a payment mechanism, and one-time background checks at signup.

What to defer: continuous monitoring (expensive, complex), certification verification at scale (do it manually for early caregivers), session logging (paper or simple form works early), reference checks (collect but verify manually at first), and everything in the Care@Work enterprise segment.

The minimum viable trust bar for a caregiving marketplace is higher than for most other categories. A background check at signup is not optional. But you can do that manually at small scale before building an automated pipeline. The first 50 caregivers on your platform can go through a real human review process.

Can you build this from scratch using AI coding tools? You can build a working prototype. Sharetribe tested vibe-coding a marketplace from scratch in 60 hours. The prototype worked but had a checkout exploit that went unnoticed for three days. In caregiving, payment flow security is only one layer of the problem. The background check integration, the caregiver data storage, and the messaging system all need to be built correctly and reviewed carefully. Bringing a vibe-coded prototype to production standard requires significant time, testing, and a thorough understanding of how the different components of a web application interact. AI-generated code is a useful accelerator, but should probably not be used as a launch path in a category with this level of trust sensitivity.

Running a caregiving marketplace

Background check quality and transparency. Be explicit with users about what your checks cover and what they do not. The FTC enforcement against Care.com included charges related to misleading safety claims. If you advertise "background checked" caregivers, define clearly what that means.

Cancellation flows. The FTC found Care.com had buried its cancellation process in confusing multi-step flows that made it difficult for subscribers to cancel. The FTC now requires simple, single-step cancellation for Care.com. For any subscription-based marketplace, a straightforward cancellation flow is both good practice and, increasingly, a regulatory expectation.

Supply accuracy. More than half of Care.com's job postings came from users who could not actually hire. If your platform shows job count or caregiver count prominently in marketing, ensure those numbers represent actionable supply. Inflated supply numbers that do not convert to real opportunities erode caregiver trust quickly.

Incident response. Establish a clear policy for handling reports of caregiver misconduct before you need it. Who reviews reports? What is the suspension threshold? What triggers a police referral? How do you communicate with affected families? Document and test it before your first incident.

Mandatory reporting obligations. In most US states, platforms that receive disclosures of child abuse or elder abuse may have mandatory reporting obligations. Get legal counsel on whether and how this applies to your platform.

Retention on both sides. The recurring nature of caregiving relationships is a retention advantage if caregivers stay and if families stay. Losing a caregiver mid-relationship is a serious product failure. Track relationship continuity as a key metric, not just booking volume.

What does it cost to build a marketplace like Care.com?

Three realistic scenarios:

Vibe coding from scratch: Free or very cheap to start. A working caregiver directory prototype is buildable in days. What you can't get easily from here is a production-ready caregiving platform: background check API integrations, secure caregiver data storage, and recurring booking logic all require careful implementation. In a category where trust is the core product, AI-generated code needs thorough review before handling real users and their sensitive data.

Custom development from scratch: Expect $20,000-$100,000 for initial development and 6-12 months to a first launch. Background check integrations (Checkr) and continuous monitoring add cost on top of this baseline. Ongoing maintenance runs a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month. Custom builds make sense when you have requirements no existing platform can meet.

Building on Sharetribe: Subscription pricing ($99–$299/month, billed yearly) covers the core marketplace foundation. Custom development for caregiving-specific features (Checkr integration, certification verification, session logging) is additional, but starts from a much smaller surface area than a full build.

Why Sharetribe for a caregiving marketplace

Care.com's core marketplace mechanics are not what makes it hard to compete with. What makes it hard is the trust infrastructure: the background check pipeline, the continuous monitoring, the credential verification, the incident response process.

Sharetribe handles the marketplace layer: listings, profiles, search, messaging, bookings, payments, and reviews. That is solved infrastructure, not your differentiation. Your engineering time and budget should go toward the trust systems that actually separate a caregiving marketplace from a generic services directory.

Building on Sharetribe means you launch faster and spend your development budget on the hard problems. A team that spends four months building a booking engine from scratch is four months behind a team that started with Sharetribe and spent those four months building a better vetting system.

Sharetribe's no-code builder also lets you get to a working marketplace before you have hired a developer, which matters when you are still figuring out which care categories families actually need and which background check tier caregivers are willing to accept.

Frequently asked questions

What is Care.com and how does it work?

Care.com is an online marketplace connecting families with caregivers across childcare, senior care, pet care, and housekeeping. Families subscribe (premium plans from $13-$39/month) to contact caregivers and post jobs. Caregivers subscribe to appear in search results and apply to jobs. Care.com also charges a 12% transaction fee on bookings. The platform is now owned by Pacific Avenue Capital Partners after IAC sold it in March 2026.

What happened with Care.com's FTC settlement?

In August 2024, the FTC charged Care.com with two violations: inflating job counts by including postings from users who could not hire anyone (over half of postings), and making it difficult to cancel subscriptions through multi-step confusing cancellation flows. Care.com settled for $8.5M without admitting wrongdoing. In June 2025, the FTC distributed $8.1M to 194,207 affected consumers. The lesson for founders: supply counts and cancellation flows are regulatory risks, not just product decisions.

What background check does Care.com use?

Care.com uses Checkr for background checks, covering national criminal databases, sex offender registries, and SSN trace. No background check covers 100% of records; juvenile records are sealed, aliases create gaps, and fingerprint checks are not standard. Care.com's CareProtect program (launched June 2025) adds continuous monitoring that alerts the platform if a caregiver's record changes after their initial check.

How does a caregiving marketplace handle trust differently than other service marketplaces?

Three key differences: (1) the recipients of care are often vulnerable (children, elderly, people with disabilities), so consequences of a bad match are more severe; (2) caregivers work alone in private homes with no external supervisor, making platform vetting the primary protection; (3) caregiving relationships are ongoing and recurring, so a bad match that continues is a sustained problem, not a one-time event.

What is the Care@Work program?

Care@Work is Care.com's B2B enterprise channel, where employers purchase backup care benefits for employees. An employer's HR team configures the benefit; employees use Care.com to book backup childcare or senior care when their usual arrangements fall through. This was IAC's fastest-growing segment at 18% growth in 2024, per IAC investor filings.

Who are Care.com's main competitors?

Sittercity (US, large caregiver pool, expensive paid membership required to contact applicants), UrbanSitter (social graph model, parent group recommendations), Bambino (hyperlocal, neighborhood-based), Helpr (B2B corporate backup childcare specialist), and Rover (pet care only, acquired by Blackstone for $2.3B in 2024). No competitor covers exactly Care.com's breadth across childcare, senior care, and housekeeping.

How large is the caregiving market?

The global childcare market was approximately $231.9 billion in 2024, according to a GlobeNewsWire report. This includes licensed daycare centers. The peer-to-peer online caregiving segment (nannies, babysitters, in-home care) is a fraction of that total but large enough to support significant marketplace businesses.

Do I need to handle HIPAA compliance for a caregiving marketplace?

Caregiving platforms that handle medical information about care recipients (conditions, medications, care plans) may enter HIPAA-adjacent territory that requires legal review. Standard caregiving marketplaces (connecting families with babysitters and nannies) typically do not trigger formal HIPAA obligations, but platforms serving medically complex populations or elderly adults with significant health records should get counsel before building.

What is the minimum viable trust infrastructure for a caregiving marketplace launch?

At minimum: a one-time background check (criminal + sex offender registry) for every caregiver at signup, clearly disclosed limitations of what the check covers, a direct messaging system that stays on-platform, a payment mechanism, and a defined incident reporting process. Everything else can be added after you have validated demand.

Can I build a niche caregiving marketplace instead of competing with Care.com directly?

Yes, and it is often a better strategy. Care.com covers childcare, senior care, pet care, and housekeeping across 20+ countries. Successful niches include: special needs care (caregivers with specific certifications), overnight or travel care (parents who travel for work), corporate backup care (Care@Work style but for a specific employer or industry), and senior in-home care with clinical coordination. Narrow focus lets you build deeper trust verification for a specific caregiver type.

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