CareTechGuide.co.uk – Care Home Listing Services

Dated 17^th March, 2026, produced by Liam Palmer, Care Tech Guide.

The Complete Independent Buyer’s Guide — Care Home Listing services

All 3 marketing platforms compared – carehome.co.uk, lottie and autumna

What’s in this guide Section 1: Platform comparison at a glance Section 2: Platform selection Section 3: Platform profiles — carehome.co.uk, Lottie, Autumna Section 4: Why care home listing sites exist Section 5: How listing models work Section 6: Beyond listing services – CRM, Marketing agencies and building occupancy. Published: March 2026  |  Independent research. No platform has paid for inclusion.

Disclaimer – The information contained therein is based on research for various sources, independently checked and edited by those with sector knowledge but limited by the quality of original data sources and supplier corroboration available. If readers have suggestions for edits, do e mail [email protected] stating the source of your proposed change, so it can considered.

1       Platform Comparison — At a Glance

Feature	carehome.co.uk	Lottie	Autumna
Established	2007	2021	2019
Backing	Commercial	VC-backed (£25m+)	Independent commercial
Annual traffic	16 million+ visits	Growing rapidly	2 million+ visits
Reviews model	400,000+ verified family reviews	Data-led quality scoring (10 criteria)	Detailed profiles; no review collection
Real-time availability	No	Yes — Found CRM integration	No
Pricing transparency	Not publicly disclosed	Yes — fee ranges shown	Yes — £58+VAT/month flat rate
Provider fee model	Paid subscription tiers	Per-enquiry + SaaS ~£150/mo	Flat £58+VAT/month
Referral/residency fee	No	Yes — % of residency developing	No — explicitly none
Primary audience	Self-funders, LAs, broad	Self-funders, families	Self-funders (90%+ of enquiries)
Awards scheme	Yes — Top 20 Groups, review-led	Yes — Top 100 Homes (data-led)	No
Human adviser support	No	Yes — Care Experts helpline	Yes — 7-day advice line

2       Platform selection

Choosing which care home listing platform or platforms to use is a commercial decision with direct implications for enquiry volume, occupancy levels, fee income, and brand positioning. There is no single correct answer — the right mix depends on your setting type, your primary audience, your current occupancy position, and your budget.

What a good listing strategy must cover

• Audience alignment: Are the people finding you through this platform actually your ideal enquirers — right care need, right geography, right funding position?
• Fee model fit: Understand the total cost — flat subscription vs per-enquiry vs percentage-of-residency models have very different cost profiles at different occupancy rates.
• Enquiry quality: A platform with high traffic does not automatically generate better enquiries than a specialist platform with a more targeted audience.
• Real-time availability: Some platforms show availability live (via CRM integration). Appearing on a platform when you have no vacancies wastes your budget and frustrates families.
• Review strategy: On carehome.co.uk particularly, review volume and score significantly affect your ranking and visibility. This requires an active, consistent internal process.
• Contract terms: Minimum terms, notice periods, and cost escalation clauses vary significantly between platforms. Read them carefully before committing.
• Measurement: Every enquiry from every platform should be tracked. Without attribution data you cannot judge ROI or make informed renewal decisions.

3       Platform Profiles — The Three Main UK Listing Services

The following profiles cover the three main independent listing platforms used by UK care home operators to generate family enquiries. Each profile covers: overview, key features, commercial model, and best fit.

1. carehome.co.uk  [TIER 1 — MARKET LEADER] Review-led listing platform  |  UK market leader by traffic and review volume

 

carehome.co.uk is the UK’s dominant care home listing and review platform by almost every measure. Founded in 2007 and with over 18,000 care homes listed, the platform receives over 16 million visits annually. Its most distinctive asset is its review database: over 400,000 verified reviews collected directly from residents and their families. This review depth is unmatched in the sector and is the primary reason the platform retains its dominant position in Google search rankings for care home searches across the UK.

Strengths

• UK’s number one care home website by traffic — by a significant margin
• 400,000+ verified reviews collected directly from residents and families: the largest independent review base in the sector, exceeding Google by over 170,000 reviews
• 12-category review scoring gives detailed, granular quality data (food, activities, value, care quality and more)
• Strong Google search visibility — top-ranked for the majority of ‘care homes near me’ searches across the UK
• Awards scheme — Top 20 Care Home Groups and top-rated homes — based entirely on review scores
• Jobs board — the sector’s leading care jobs platform with 5,000+ vacancies monthly
• API integration available (paid listings) — allows enquiry data to be fed directly into CRM systems such as CareHQ

 

Commercial Model

Fee model	Paid subscription listing — tiered pricing (not publicly disclosed)
Enhanced placement	Available for additional fees
Referral fees	None
CRM integration	Available on paid listing tiers (API)

Best For All care home operators, particularly those dependent on self-funding enquiries and where Google search visibility is critical to occupancy. The dominant review base makes it effectively non-optional for most operators. Essential for any home serious about its online presence.

2. Lottie  [TIER 1 — FAST-GROWING CHALLENGER] VC-backed marketplace platform  |  Real-time availability  |  Sophisticated technology

Lottie was founded in 2021 by brothers Chris and Will Donnelly after their own experience searching for care for their grandmother. Backed by significant venture capital funding (£25m raised to date), Lottie has grown rapidly to become the most technologically sophisticated of the three platforms. Its defining differentiator is real-time availability: through its acquisition of CRM software Found, Lottie can display only listings with genuine current capacity. The platform is rated 4.9/5 on Trustpilot from over 1,000 family reviews.

Strengths

• Real-time availability — the only major platform showing live vacancies, directly integrated with care home CRM via Found. Families only see homes with actual capacity
• Pricing transparency — care homes can display weekly fee ranges, addressing one of the biggest friction points in the family search journey
• Strong UX and platform design — built with a consumer-product mindset, significantly more polished than legacy platforms
• Lottie’s ‘Care Experts’ provide human guidance to families, supporting conversion
• Lottie Awards (2025) — Top 100 Care Homes assessed on 10 data-led criteria across four categories
• LA directory partnerships — adopted as the listing platform by a number of local authorities, broadening its audience
• VC backing provides platform development investment that legacy competitors cannot match

 

Commercial Model

CRM (Found)	Subscription from approximately £150/month
Marketplace placement	Per-enquiry fees
Residency fee	Percentage of residency model in development — significant long-term cost consideration
Pausing listings	Homes can pause listings when full, avoiding wasted fees

Best For Operators with strong digital capability who can integrate CRM and manage live availability actively. Particularly valuable for homes with a high proportion of self-funding admissions and those wanting transparent pricing presentation. Monitor commercial terms carefully as the residency fee model develops.

3. Autumna  [TIER 1 — SELF-FUNDER SPECIALIST] Transparent flat-rate model  |  Most detailed profile depth  |  Explicitly independent

Autumna was founded in 2019 with a specific, stated focus: the self-funding care seeker. Over 90% of Autumna’s enquiries come from families who are paying for care from their own assets — the highest proportion of any major platform. The site lists over 26,000 care providers across all care categories and operates on a deliberately transparent commercial model: a flat subscription fee of £58+VAT per home per month, the same rate for all operators regardless of size, with no referral fees of any kind.

Strengths

• Self-funder audience focus — over 90% of enquiries from self-funding families: the most commercially valuable audience segment for most private care home operators
• Transparent, flat-rate pricing — £58+VAT/month per home, identical for all operators. No hidden fees, no referral charges, no residency percentages
• Explicitly independent — Autumna does not take referral fees and states this clearly to both care seekers and operators
• Most detailed profile depth of any UK listing platform — food offering, dining experience, sustainability, green credentials, specialist care capabilities and more
• Seven-day-a-week advice line (8:30am–5:30pm weekdays, 10am–5pm weekends) providing human guidance to families
• Free profile build — Autumna’s data entry team will build the initial care home profile at no additional charge
• 2 million+ care seekers annually with page 1 Google rankings for care home searches across the UK

Commercial Model

Fee model	Flat £58+VAT per home per month — identical for all operators
Referral fees	None — stated explicitly and central to the brand
Residency percentage	None
Profile build	Free — Autumna’s data entry team builds initial profile on sign-up

Best For Operators with a primarily self-funding or mixed-funding model who want a transparent, predictable cost structure with no referral fee risk. Particularly suited to operators who want the most detailed profile presentation available and who value an explicitly independent platform. An excellent complement to carehome.co.uk — different audience emphasis, low cost, clear model.

A note on choosing between platforms These three platforms are not mutually exclusive. Most care home operators and groups who manage listing strategy actively will use at least two, and often all three. carehome.co.uk is effectively non-optional given its dominant traffic position. Autumna’s flat-rate, no-referral model makes it a low-risk complement at minimal cost. Lottie offers real-time availability and a sophisticated technology platform but requires careful evaluation of the evolving residency fee model. The right question is not ‘which one?’ but ‘what mix, managed how, at what cost, measured against what result?’

  

 

4       Why Care Home Listing Platforms Exist

Finding a care home is one of the most consequential decisions a family makes — often under pressure of time, without prior experience, and in circumstances of personal stress. Care home listing platforms exist to solve this problem: aggregating supply (care home listings) and demand (families searching for care) into a single searchable marketplace.

     a) The occupancy context

Occupancy is the financial engine of a care home. For most operators, a difference of two or three vacant beds represents a material change in weekly revenue. The average UK residential care fee is approximately £1,400 per week per resident. A home with three persistent vacancies is losing around £200,000 in annual revenue against theoretical full occupancy. Listing platforms are, at their core, an occupancy management tool — a way of ensuring that when a bed becomes available, the right family finds it quickly.

This context shapes everything about how operators should approach listing platforms: not as a brand exercise, but as a specific, measurable commercial channel with a calculable cost-per-admission and return on investment.

The self-funder distinction The three platforms profiled in this guide are primarily used by self-funding families — those paying for care from their own assets rather than through local authority funding. Self-funders represent a significant proportion of the residential care market and typically pay higher weekly fees than LA-funded residents. For operators with a mixed funding base, the audience composition of each platform matters significantly when evaluating commercial return.

     b)    The Unique Challenges of Managing Care Bed Occupancy

At first glance, care home occupancy might appear to be a straightforward supply and demand problem — not unlike running a hotel. In practice, it is considerably more complex, more regulated, and carries a level of legal and clinical responsibility that has no equivalent in commercial hospitality.

Admission assessment

Every potential new resident must be assessed before admission, typically by a skilled staff member such as a nurse or registered manager. This assessment is usually conducted in writing and covers all relevant dimensions of need — eyesight, hearing, mobility, mental health, and psychological wellbeing — often using a scored framework. The service must then determine whether it can genuinely meet those needs, or decline. This involves matching the individual’s requirements against the team’s current capacity, the existing mix of residents being cared for, and the care categories the service is registered to provide.

In practice, assessments are ideally conducted in person. However, they are sometimes carried out by phone — when a prospective resident is moving from another part of the country, for example. In these cases, medical records may be incomplete, and the full picture of a person’s needs may not be clear until after admission. Occasionally, discharge teams from NHS hospitals face significant pressure to free up beds and may underrepresent the complexity of a person’s needs, creating tension at the interface between the NHS and social care. This is a known systemic pressure, though it is handled well in the majority of cases.

Safe admission

Taking in a new resident represents a formal transfer of legal responsibility. For an admission to be considered safe, a number of conditions must be in place before the person arrives: GP and pharmacy registration must be completed, sufficient medication must accompany the resident, the room must be ready, and a care plan must be prepared. A body map must also be completed promptly on arrival. It is considered poor practice to accept a resident and subsequently discover that their needs cannot be met — a risk that increases when assessment information is limited or incomplete.

Critical clinical detail must be known and communicated to the care team in advance. A resident may be unable to eat solid foods and require thickened drinks. They may have specific allergies — to paracetamol, for example. The team must be briefed and ready from the moment the person walks through the door.

Weekend admissions

Many services are reluctant to admit new residents at weekends, when management staffing is reduced and access to GPs and pharmacies is more limited. While a weekend admission can be managed safely with careful planning, the threshold for risk within regulatory oversight bodies — CQC, safeguarding teams, and local authority teams — tends to be lower, and providers are often playing it safe to avoid the scrutiny that comes with any incident during a period of reduced oversight. This dynamic is invisible to families and largely misunderstood outside the sector, but it reflects the reality of operating a regulated service with compliance implications.

Staffing and the occupancy equation

Occupancy management cannot be separated from staffing decisions. Opening a new wing or increasing capacity requires staff to be recruited and in post first — a process that typically takes several months once referencing, DBS checks, and notice periods are accounted for. This means a manager may need to commit to additional staffing costs based on anticipated enquiries, before those enquiries convert to admissions. Agency staff can fill short-term gaps but are more expensive, potentially disruptive to new residents, and carry greater risk.

The conversion path from enquiry to admission is also far less predictable than in other sectors. Enquirers may ultimately require a higher level of care than the service provides — nursing care rather than residential, for example. Some will deteriorate following a fall and be admitted to hospital instead. Others, particularly those with complex health needs, may pass away while still on a waiting list. Registered managers must therefore balance staffing levels and hours carefully against a pipeline that is inherently uncertain — managing agency reliance, wage costs, and regulatory expectations simultaneously. It is a skilled and underappreciated discipline.

5       How the Listing Model Works

All three platforms in this guide operate a broadly similar model: care homes pay to be listed or to receive enhanced placement, and families search and enquire for free. Understanding the commercial model of each platform — and where their interests align or diverge from yours as an operator — is essential context before evaluating which to use.

What care homes typically pay for

• Basic listing: Presence on the platform with standard information, photos and CQC rating. On some platforms this is free; on others it requires a paid subscription.
• Enhanced or premium listing: Better placement in search results, more prominent profile display, additional photography, video, or virtual tour capability.
• Per-enquiry fees: Some models (principally Lottie) charge per enquiry received rather than a flat subscription, shifting cost to performance.
• Percentage of residency: Lottie’s evolving model moves toward taking a percentage fee for each residency booked through the platform — a more significant long-term cost commitment for operators with high Lottie-sourced admissions.

Where interests align — and where they diverge

Listing platforms are businesses. Their commercial interests are not identical to yours as an operator. Understanding the divergences helps you use each platform on your terms rather than theirs.

• Review volume: carehome.co.uk’s ranking algorithm rewards review volume and score. The pressure to generate reviews can incentivise behaviour that inflates scores rather than reflects genuine quality. Worth holding in tension when reading competitor ratings.
• Referral fees and residency percentages: Lottie’s long-term model creates a financial relationship between platform and operator that persists for the duration of each Lottie-sourced admission. Model the long-term cost carefully before committing at scale.
• Enquiry quality vs enquiry volume: Platforms with high traffic metrics are not necessarily better for your specific home. Targeting and audience composition matter more than raw traffic volume.

6       Beyond the listing platforms – occupancy

Getting listed on the right platforms is the starting point, not the finish line. This addendum covers three further considerations that significantly affect whether listings translate into filled beds: choosing the right CRM system to manage enquiries, working with a specialist marketing agency, and ensuring your team has the skills to convert enquiries into admissions.

A. Managing Enquiries — Choosing a CRM System

Listing platforms generate enquiries. What happens to those enquiries once they arrive determines whether they become admissions. For many care homes, the gap between enquiry volume and actual occupancy is not a marketing problem — it is a process problem. Enquiries are logged in notebooks, followed up inconsistently, or simply lost in the noise of a busy home. A care home CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system solves this by centralising every enquiry in one place, tracking each one through the admissions pipeline, and ensuring that no family is left waiting for a response.

The right system for your organisation depends on your size, the complexity of your operations, and what you already have in place. Smaller single-site operators may need something simple and affordable; larger groups need group-level visibility, reporting, and integration with existing care management platforms. Key questions to ask any CRM provider include: How does the system capture enquiries from multiple channels — phone, web, walk-in, listing platform referral? Can it show real-time occupancy and bed availability? What does the reporting look like for group-level oversight? Does it integrate with your existing care management or rostering software? And what does onboarding and ongoing support look like in practice?

Among the purpose-built care home CRM options available in the UK, a handful stand out. Found CRM — now part of Lottie — was built specifically for care home enquiry and occupancy management and is notable for its integration with Lottie’s listing platform. CoolCare includes a strong enquiry management module alongside its broader care home management capabilities, and is well regarded in residential care. CareHQ is a focused CRM built around care enquiry conversion, with tools for pipeline tracking and admissions management. Centrim Life offers a CRM module designed for care homes and retirement living, with automated lead capture and occupancy reporting.

CareTechGuide maintains an independent guide to CRM and enquiry management systems at caretechguide.co.uk — updated regularly and covering a wider range of options with independent commentary on fit for different operator types.

CareTechGuide recommendation Don’t evaluate a CRM system in isolation. Your CRM should connect to the listing platforms you use, reflect your actual admissions process, and give whoever is above home level the visibility they need to act quickly when occupancy dips. For independent guidance on which system fits your operation, contact [email protected]

B. Working With a Care Home Marketing Agency

Listing platforms put your home in front of families who are already searching. A good marketing agency does something different — it builds the awareness, reputation, and digital presence that means families find you through multiple routes, trust what they find, and choose to enquire in the first place. For operators serious about occupancy, particularly those competing for self-funding residents, the question is not whether to invest in marketing but how and with whom.

The care home marketing landscape has matured considerably over the past decade. There are now several agencies with genuine sector specialism — people who understand CQC ratings, self-funder psychology, the emotional weight of the family search journey, and the commercial reality of a care home P&L. That specialism matters. A generic digital marketing agency will burn your budget learning the sector. A care-specialist agency arrives already knowing it.

The following agencies are among the most established in the UK care home marketing space. Each has a different emphasis — choosing the right one depends on your size, your primary need (occupancy, brand, recruitment, or all three), and how you want to work.

Prosperwell prosperwell.co.uk  |  UK’s leading specialist care marketing and sales agency Prosperwell (formerly Smooth Digital) is the most established and widely recognised specialist care marketing agency in the UK, with over a decade of exclusive focus on the sector. Founded by Tobi Alli-Usman, the agency covers the full digital marketing mix — paid search, paid social, SEO and content — with a specific focus on driving private-pay enquiries and increasing occupancy for care homes and groups. They have won every major UK care marketing award and work with operators ranging from single homes to large national groups. In 2024 they launched a dedicated Sales and Customer Experience division, adding sales training, mystery shopping and enquiry handling support to their marketing offer — a recognition that generating enquiries is only half the challenge. For operators who want a proven, high-performance agency with deep sector knowledge and a strong track record, Prosperwell is the benchmark.

Care Launch carelaunch.uk  |  Occupancy-focused care home marketing specialist Care Launch is a specialist care home marketing agency with a clear focus: helping care homes build occupancy with self-funding families. Their model is performance-oriented — notably, they operate a policy of not charging until a home has received its first lead from their campaigns, which reflects confidence in their approach. They work closely with operators on strategy, training, and ensuring that marketing campaigns speak directly to the families most likely to choose a given home. Well suited to independent and smaller group operators who want a hands-on, results-focused partner without a large agency overhead.

Springup PR springup-pr.com  |  Care home PR and content marketing, founded 2012 Springup PR was founded in 2012 by Adam James, an award-winning journalist, and takes a distinctly editorial and PR-led approach to care home marketing. Rather than leading with paid advertising, they build profile, reputation and ‘word of mouth’ presence through media coverage, content marketing and storytelling — an approach that generates organic enquiry growth rather than paid lead volume. They have worked with a wide range of operators from individual homes to larger groups, and their client results include significant occupancy improvements driven by reputation-led campaigns. Best suited to operators who want to invest in brand and reputation over the medium term, or who are looking to differentiate through story and community presence rather than outspend competitors on paid ads.

Bridgehead Communications bridgeheadcommunications.com  |  Care home PR, digital marketing and reputation management Bridgehead Communications takes a multi-channel approach to care home marketing, combining PR and media coverage with SEO, paid digital campaigns, social media, and multimedia content production. Led by Will Walter, whose team has a strong understanding of the adult social care media and policy landscape, Bridgehead works with care homes and groups to build visibility, attract self-funding residents, and manage reputation both online and offline. Their approach emphasises brand and trust-building through media presence — securing coverage in local, national and trade press — alongside digital campaigns that generate direct enquiries. Will Walter contributes a monthly column to Care Home Professional, giving the agency an active voice in sector commentary. Well suited to operators who want an integrated PR and digital strategy rather than a purely performance-marketing approach.

Note: CareTechGuide does not have a commercial relationship with any of the agencies listed above. These profiles are based on publicly available information. Operators should conduct their own due diligence, speak to references, and ensure any agency they appoint has direct experience with care homes of a similar type and scale to their own.

 

C. A Final Word — The Limits of What Platforms Can Do

The services covered in this guide — listing platforms, CRM systems, marketing agencies — all play a genuine and important role in helping a care home become and remain financially viable. Used well, they generate enquiries, manage pipeline, and build the visibility that keeps beds filled. But they are not the full story, and it is worth being direct about why.

Most of these service providers have never run a care home. That is not a criticism — it is simply a fact that shapes what they can and cannot offer. Their frameworks tend to simplify the occupancy challenge into a set of inputs and outputs: spend here, get leads there. What they cannot easily account for is the complexity of what actually drives a family to choose one home over another, and what keeps occupancy high over time rather than just when a campaign is running.

The reality is that occupancy is shaped by a much wider set of variables than any platform or agency controls. The reputation of the home and its registered manager. The way the phone is answered on a Tuesday afternoon when the manager is in a meeting. The cleanliness and warmth a family feels on a show round. The fee pricing strategy relative to local competition and what families perceive as value. The quality of food, the character of the night team, the mix of residents and how that feels to someone visiting for the first time. The home’s relationship with the local authority, with CQC, with the safeguarding team. Its CQC rating and what that rating communicates before a family has even set foot through the door.

These variables interact in ways that are sometimes contradictory and always contextual. A home with a strong CQC rating but poor kerb appeal will lose enquiries it should win. A home with a warm, skilled manager but weak listing platform presence will miss families it could have served. Cost pressures push against quality, accountability cultures can conflict with supportive ones, and the right answer in one home is not always the right answer in another.

A skilled leader — at registered manager level and at group level — knows how to read these variables, hold the tensions between them, and make decisions that keep the home both operationally excellent and commercially sustainable. That skill is not taught by a platform, a CRM, or an agency. It comes from operational experience, good development, and the kind of honest, practical coaching that most registered managers have never been offered.

This guide gives you the tools to be visible and to manage your pipeline. What you do with the enquiries when they arrive, and the quality of the home that families experience when they visit, is down to the people you develop and the leadership culture you build.

Liam Palmer  |  CareTechGuide.co.uk I have spent over a decade as a CQC registered manager and senior operational leader across private hospitals, care homes, retirement villages and mental health charities. I work with care providers to develop the occupancy skills and leadership capability that platforms and agencies cannot supply — 1-to-1 coaching for registered managers, commercial and occupancy skills development for home managers and sales staff, and contextual programmes for executives who are new to the care sector.  If any of this resonates, I’d welcome a conversation.  [email protected]  |  caretechguide.co.uk