01How to choose a listing platform for your care home marketing

Choosing which 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 right answer. The right mix depends on your setting type, your primary audience, your current occupancy position and your budget. The questions below are the ones we would put to any platform before signing a contract.

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? A platform with a self-funder bias and a platform with a local-authority bias will produce very different enquiry quality from the same listing.
• Fee model fit. Understand the total cost. Flat subscription versus per-enquiry versus percentage-of-residency models have very different cost profiles at different occupancy rates. Model the cost at full occupancy and at 80 per cent occupancy before you commit.
• 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 by integrating with the home’s CRM. Appearing on a platform when you have no vacancies wastes your marketing spend and frustrates families.
• Review strategy. On carehome.co.uk in particular, review volume and score affect your ranking and visibility. The platform’s published methodology weights both the average rating and the number of recent reviews, so an active, consistent internal review-collection process is part of the cost of being on the platform.
• Contract terms. Minimum terms, notice periods and cost escalation clauses vary 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.

Two ways to approach procurement

Most operators will arrive at this guide for one of two reasons. Either you are running the listing-platform decision in-house, or you want independent help structuring the choice and the contracts. Both routes are legitimate; what matters is being explicit about which one you are on and what “good” looks like in each.

02Platform comparison at a glance

Every figure in this table is sourced from the platform’s own website or a named third party, and date-checked. Where a platform has not publicly disclosed pricing or a metric, the table says so rather than guessing.

03Platform profiles: the three main UK care home listing services

These three platforms are the dominant independent listing services for UK care home operators.

Tier 1 baseline

3.1  carehome.co.uk: traffic, reviews and care home marketing reach

Type: Review-led listing platform  |  Tier: Tier 1 effectively non-optional for most operators given dominant traffic share and review base

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carehome.co.uk is the UK’s number-one care home website by traffic and the largest source of independent care home reviews on every public measure. The platform’s own About page (May 2026) states the company has been operating for over 25 years; older third-party records put the founding date at 1998 and with 16,440 care homes listed (10,520 of which are older-person homes, per the platform’s December 2025 data), the platform receives approximately 16 million visits annually. Its most distinctive asset is its review database: 404,000 verified reviews as of December 2025 collected directly from residents and their families. This review depth is the largest in the UK (the platform states it is over 170,000 ahead of Google) and is the primary reason the platform retains a top organic search position for the majority of “care homes near me” searches in the UK.

Strengths

• UK’s number one care home website by traffic (the platform reports over 70% of all older-person care discovery website traffic happens on carehome.co.uk per Similarweb, August to November 2025)
• 404,000 verified reviews (December 2025) collected directly from residents and families: the largest independent review base in the sector, more than 170,000 ahead of Google per the platform’s own comparison
• 12-category review scoring gives detailed, granular quality data (Overall Experience plus 11 specific dimensions including care, dignity, staff, food and drink, value for money), with a published calculation methodology
• Strong Google search visibility, consistently a top organic result for “care homes near me”-style searches, driven by review depth
• Awards scheme, Top 20 awards across 12 UK regions for both individual care homes and care home groups, awarded automatically based on review scores; eligibility requires at least 5 reviews and full regulatory compliance
• Jobs board, over 75,000 care job postings published a year on carehome.co.uk/jobs (the platform’s own figure)
• API integration available (paid listings), allows enquiry data to be fed directly into CRM systems such as CareHQ

Commercial model

Fee model	Paid subscription listings, tiered pricing (not publicly disclosed). Platform states it never charges per lead and never takes commission on move-ins
Enhanced placement	Available for additional fees
Referral or commission fees	None, explicitly disclaimed
CRM integration	API integration on paid listing tiers

Best for Most UK care home operators, particularly those dependent on self-funder enquiries and where Google search visibility is critical to occupancy. Given the platform’s traffic share and review base, presence on carehome.co.uk is effectively a baseline requirement for any home that depends on online discovery for self-funder enquiries. The cost-benefit calculation is rarely whether to be on the platform; it is which tier of listing to take and how to run a sustainable internal review-collection process.

3.2  Lottie UK: live availability and the marketplace model

Type: VC-backed marketplace platform with integrated CRM  |  Tier: Tier 1 fast-growing challenger; differentiated by live availability via Found CRM, but with the most complex commercial model of the three

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Lottie (Lottie UK) was founded in 2021 by brothers Chris and Will Donnelly after their own experience searching for care for a relative. The Lottie care homes marketplace is now one of the most active product-engineering teams in the UK care sector. Backed by significant venture capital funding (£25m raised to date, including a £16.3m Series A in October 2023 led by Accel), Lottie has grown rapidly to become one of the most active product-engineering teams in the sector. Its defining differentiator is real-time availability: through its acquisition of CRM software Found, Lottie can display only listings with genuine current capacity.

Strengths

• Real-time availability, live availability is the default consumer experience, directly integrated with care home CRM via Found. Families only see homes with actual capacity
• Pricing transparency, Lottie was the first major UK directory to require care providers to display weekly fee ranges to families, addressing one of the persistent friction points in the family search journey
• Strong UX and platform design, built and designed for non-technical family users, with structured filtering and side-by-side comparison
• Lottie’s “Care Experts” provide human guidance to families, supporting conversion
• Lottie Awards (2025), inaugural Lottie Awards 2025, Top 100 Care Homes assessed on ten data-led metrics across four categories: Quality of Care, Operational Excellence, Digital Impact and Workplace Culture
• LA directory partnerships, adopted as the directory platform by several UK local authorities, broadening its audience
• Significant venture funding underpins continued investment in product engineering and software development

Commercial model

Found CRM	Subscription from approximately £150/month
Marketplace placement	Per-enquiry fees
Residency fee	Percentage-of-residency model announced as in development in October 2023; current rollout status and rate to confirm directly with Lottie before signing
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. The commercial model is the most complex of the three platforms, and the residency-fee element warrants careful contract review and a long-term cost model before scaling.

3.3  Autumna care homes: flat-fee directory for self-funder enquiries

Type: Independent flat-rate directory  |  Tier: Tier 1 self-funder specialist with the most transparent commercial model and the deepest profile depth of the three

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Autumna (the Autumna care homes directory) was founded in August 2019 by Debbie Harris, who had previously run the bespoke care-search consultancy Chosen with Care since 2015, with a specific, stated focus: the self-funding care seeker. Autumna reports 85% to 90% of its enquiries come from self-funders (“over 90%” on the website; 85% in a March 2024 Care Home Professional interview with the founder), the highest proportion of any major platform. The site lists over 26,000 providers (across care homes, home care, live-in care and retirement living) 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, Autumna reports 85% to 90% of its enquiries come from self-funding families, the highest published share of the three platforms in this guide
• Transparent flat-rate pricing, £58+VAT/month per home, identical for all operators. No hidden fees, no referral charges, no residency percentages
• Explicitly independent commercial model, Autumna has stated repeatedly, on its own website and in trade interviews, that it does not take referral fees and is structurally unable to favour larger groups in search results
• Deep profile depth, Premium Profiles offer up to 300 searchable fields covering food, dining experience, specialist care capabilities, sustainability and Go Green credentials, against around 50 fields on a free listing
• Seven-day-a-week advice line (Mon to Fri 8:30am to 5:30pm, Sat 10am to 5pm, Sun 10am to 4pm) providing human guidance to families
• Free profile build, Autumna’s data entry team builds the initial care home profile at no additional charge, removing a typical onboarding cost
• Over 2 million care seekers a year, per Autumna’s own published figure

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 strong consumer-side experience but carries the most complex commercial model, particularly the residency-fee element, which any operator should price carefully before scaling Lottie-sourced admissions. The right question is not “which one?” but “what mix, managed how, at what cost, measured against what result?”

04Why 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, and they make a market that was historically opaque rather more visible.

The occupancy context: care home fees, vacancies and revenue at risk

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 self-funded residential care fee in 2025 was approximately £1,300 per week per resident, with nursing care closer to £1,500 (carehome.co.uk fees data, September 2025). A home with three persistent vacancies is losing in the region of £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 (council rates are commonly £200 to £400 per week below self-funder rates in the same home). For operators with a mixed funding base, the audience composition of each platform matters significantly when evaluating commercial return.

The unique challenges of managing care home 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 (under its CQC registration) 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, and a CQC risk, 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.

05How 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 (Autumna, free standard listings on carehome.co.uk) this is free; on others, basic visibility may itself require a paid subscription.
• Enhanced or premium listing. Better placement in search results, more prominent profile display, additional photography, video, virtual tour or expanded fields.
• Per-enquiry fees. Some models, most clearly Lottie’s marketplace, charge per enquiry received rather than a flat subscription, shifting cost to performance.
• Percentage of residency. Lottie has previously announced a percentage-of-residency model, a fee taken for each residency booked through the platform. As of mid-2026 the rollout status and the percentage rate are not publicly disclosed; any operator considering a significant Lottie-sourced admissions volume should ask Lottie directly and price the long-term cost before signing.

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 published ranking methodology rewards both average rating and recent review volume. That creates a strong incentive for homes to ask families for reviews actively, which is often legitimate, but it also means review counts can reflect operational marketing capacity as much as clinical quality. Worth holding in mind when comparing 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 versus enquiry volume. A platform with high traffic figures is not automatically better for your specific home. Targeting and audience composition matter more than raw traffic volume, particularly for self-funder-dependent homes.

06Beyond the listing platforms: care home marketing in the round

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 the variables that no platform or agency can control.

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 (acquired by Lottie in 2022) was built specifically for care home enquiry and occupancy management and is the only CRM that integrates natively with the Lottie listing marketplace. 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.

B. Care home marketing: agencies that specialise in the sector

Care home marketing is its own discipline. Generic digital agencies burn budget learning what self-funder families respond to, what CQC-rated content can and cannot say, and how to talk to a registered manager who is buying. Specialist agencies arrive already knowing it. The four agencies below all have a documented track record working specifically with UK care home operators.

Inclusion in this section is editorial. CareTechGuide does not have a commercial relationship with any of the agencies named below, and inclusion is based on three criteria: a documented track record of working specifically with UK care home operators, a public-facing brand and named leadership, and direct evidence of sector-relevant work in the trade press or on the agency’s own site. There are other capable care-marketing agencies in the UK; this is not an exhaustive list.

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.

Note: CareTechGuide does not receive referral fees, commissions or any payment of any kind from any of the agencies listed above. The profiles are based on the agencies’ own public materials and trade-press coverage as at 6 May 2026. 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. The limits of what platforms can do

The services covered in this guide, listing platforms, CRM systems, marketing agencies, all play a real 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. They are not the full story, however, 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.

08About the author