Sittercity Review

Friday, July 30th

2021 Babysitter Agency Reviews

Sittercity

• Cost: 1 month for $35
• 3 months for $49
• 12 months for $98

Sittercity was founded in 2001 and provides caregiver services for children, seniors, people with special needs, seniors, and even pets. Although there are a range of resources they offer, their primary service is childcare.

Focus on trust

Their focus on trust and safety by offering detailed profiles, ratings on candidates, interview booking, secure messaging, background check options, scam prevention, and family watchdog screenings make Sittercity a fantastic option for finding safe babysitters.

Babysitters and nannies

Sittercity helps families find babysitters and nannies. According to Sittercity, a babysitter is someone local who can help temporarily with childcare to fit around a family's schedule for last-minute appointments, date nights, or special occasions that happen infrequently. On the other hand, a nanny would be used long-term and might live with the family, work full-time, part-time, or overnight on a regular basis.

Browse your candidates

Before posting a job, we recommend quickly browsing the candidates that appear in your area. To do this, you can choose the state and city you live in and view a list of potential candidates. You'll see their picture, a short bio, their babysitting experience, specific qualifications, desired pay range, and reviews (if they have any) from previous families they have nannied or babysat for. Sittercity has a nice layout that makes it fast to gauge initial interest and decide if you want to get in contact with anyone you see.

3 step process

The process for using Sittercity to find a babysitter can be understood in three simple steps:

1. Post a job: Make a job posting for free
2. Receive responses: Babysitters will view your job posting and apply (sometimes responses come in as little as a few minutes, but you may still see responses a day or two after you post)
3. Connect: Use the messaging tools to start connecting with babysitters and begin the interview process

Free resources

Without paying for a membership at Sittercity, you have just a few options as to what you can do on the site. There are a few free articles that parents might find helpful that focus on topics such as making childcare more affordable, a doctor's perspective on home child care, the importance of reference checks, babysitter interview questions, outdoor educational activities for children during the summer, and many more. These posts might help parents feel more confident about hiring someone online.

3 subscription plans

To fully take advantage of what Sittercity has to offer, including getting your job posted and accessing babysitter contact information, you have three subscription plans to choose from. They can be purchased for 1 month at $35, 3 months for $49, or 12 months for $98. All memberships are non-refundable, but they can be cancelled at any time if you are done using Sittercity's services and don't want to renew your subscription.

Background checks

Ideally, background checks would automatically be done on all of the babysitters through Sittercity, but unfortunately this is not the case. Families can choose to run checks on any candidates they want and the date of the background check will appear on the babysitter's profile. If you find a candidate that has had a background check run in the past, you can request to view it or run another one if it is outdated. The price for the enhanced background check is $60, the motor vehicle check is $30, the enhanced check (background + motor vehicle report) is $80, and a basic background check is $15. An extensive list of what is included with each report can be viewed on the Sittercity website.

Highest rating

We really like the services offered by Sittercity because their platform makes it easy to browse babysitters in your local area and quickly get a feel for each candidate. There are many candidates who use this platform all throughout the United States, so families should have quite a few babysitters to choose from. Pricing is affordable even if you have to run a couple of background checks during the interview process. Sittercity's A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau is another reason we highly recommend their services and have given them our highest rating.