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Table of contents
Care management software gives a home care agency one place to write care plans and assessments, manage medication with eMAR, record what happens at every visit, and build the evidence CQC expects.
Four things should decide your choice. Does it handle care planning and medication well for care delivered in people's own homes? Is it on the NHS assured list? Does the carer app keep working without signal? And does the price structure suit the size of your agency?
The comparison table and the "best for" lines below will help you get to a shortlist of two or three demos.
Birdie makes one of the products in this guide. We've given every product the same information and linked each price and NHS listing to its source, so you can check them yourself.
Last updated: 6 October 2026. Prices and NHS listings checked on 6 October 2026.
This guide covers home care only. If day-to-day rostering is your main concern, read our guide to domiciliary care software.
Care management software compared: the 2026 table
Every column below can be checked against a public source. "Best for" is based on each vendor's own positioning. Prices exclude VAT.
Birdie
Who it's for: Birdie is built for home care. Over 1,200 providers use it, and over 68 million care visits were delivered using Birdie in 2025.
How it fits home care: Office teams work in the Agency Hub and carers use the Carer App. Care plans and assessments sit alongside eMAR, visit notes, observations, body maps and incident records. What's planned and what's delivered are in the same place, so you don't have to cross-check two systems. The Carer App works offline in areas with poor or no signal, so carers can still see care plans, complete tasks and record notes. Everything syncs automatically when they reconnect. Authorised staff can view GP records through GP Connect, for providers who meet NHS England's eligibility criteria. Families can follow updates in the Family App (see all three apps).
For quality, the Q-Score benchmarks performance against CQC criteria across five key areas and flags potential issues early. Birdie is ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certified, and data is hosted in the UK (AWS, London region). In Birdie's State of Tech in Care 2025 survey of 160 homecare providers, Birdie partners reported saving 57% of their time on care planning, 52% on rostering and 45% on finance processes, on average.
Best for: home care agencies, from small to multi-branch, that want care records, medication, quality evidence, rostering and finance built as one and working as one.
Price: from £200 a month (excluding VAT), with the final price based on scheduled care hours. Checked 6 October 2026.
NHS assured: Yes (checked 6 October 2026).
Access Care Planning
Who it's for: Access Care Planning is part of The Access Group's wider range of care software. Access says the product is built for domiciliary, residential and local authority services, so it covers home care alongside other settings.
How it fits home care: On its care planning page, Access lists:
- digital care plans and forms
- eMAR
- GP Connect integration
- customisable access levels
- access to records on web and mobile, including offline
If your organisation already uses Access products for other parts of the business, you might prefer to keep everything with one vendor.
Best for: larger or mixed-setting organisations, or groups already using other Access Group products.
Price: price on request (checked 6 October 2026).
NHS assured: Yes (checked 6 October 2026).
Nourish (Nourish Community, formerly CarePlanner)
Who it's for: Nourish acquired CarePlanner in 2023, and that product is now Nourish Community. CarePlanner is no longer sold as a separate product, so we've merged it into this entry. Nourish works across residential care, home care and children's services.
How it fits home care: On its home care page, Nourish describes care planning, assessments, visit records, electronic call monitoring and drag-and-drop rostering in one platform. It also says the platform works for services supporting a small number of people right up to multiple branches.
Best for: home care agencies, including former CarePlanner users, who want care planning and rostering from a vendor that also covers other care settings.
Price: price on request (checked 6 October 2026).
NHS assured: Yes (checked 6 October 2026).
Log my Care
Who it's for: Log my Care supports residential care, supported living and home care.
How it fits home care: Its home care page describes:
- care plans that carers can see online or offline
- eMAR with PRN protocols and dose limits shown at the point of administration
- visit data you can use for payroll
The free Starter plan makes it a low-risk way for a very small agency to move off paper. Check which features come with each plan before you commit.
Best for: very small agencies moving off paper, and providers running supported living alongside home care.
Price: Starter plan free for fewer than 10 people supported; Pro and Outstanding plans on request (checked 6 October 2026).
NHS assured: Yes (checked 6 October 2026).
CareLineLive
Who it's for: CareLineLive is built for home care.
How it fits home care: Its website describes three connected parts:
- a management platform covering rostering, invoicing, payroll and real-time call monitoring
- a carer companion app
- a portal for family and friends
CareLineLive also says MOA Benchmarking, an audit tool for CQC and CIW, is now included in the platform.
Best for: small to mid-sized home care agencies that want clear per-carer pricing.
Price: £8.10 per carer a month (eRoster), £19.70 (carer's own device) or £45.00 (managed phones). Minimum £120 a month, onboarding up to £300, admin users free (checked 6 October 2026).
NHS assured: Yes (checked 6 October 2026).
PASS
Who it's for: PASS, by everyLIFE Technologies, calls itself a home care platform covering care planning, rostering, eMAR, reporting and finance.
How it fits home care: Its care planning page lists more than 120 templates, including care plans, risk assessments and incident forms, with medication guidance linked to eMAR. PASS also offers AI-assisted care note summaries through PASSgenius, and says it's ISO 27001 certified.
Best for: small home care agencies that want a published starting price, and larger agencies interested in AI-assisted review of care notes.
Price: Foundation plan from £185 a month for 1–15 people supported, with a 12-month minimum term. Larger plans on request (checked 6 October 2026).
NHS assured: Yes, listed as PASS by everyLIFE (checked 6 October 2026).
Unique IQ
Who it's for: Unique IQ's software, IQ:caremanager, is used across home care, supported living and complex care. Unique IQ says it's been working with care providers since 2006.
How it fits home care: Its care management page lists:
- digital care planning
- eMAR
- scheduling and rostering
- invoicing and payroll
- real-time alerts
- auditing
- a family portal
Unique IQ wasn't on the NHS assured list when we checked on 6 October 2026. Ask them directly about their assurance status.
Best for: agencies that want a long-established home care specialist (working with providers since 2006).
Price: price on request (checked 6 October 2026).
NHS assured: Not listed when checked (6 October 2026).
What to look for in care management software
A feature list won't tell you much on its own. These are the questions that separate one product from another in home care.
Care planning and assessments
Care planning is the core of any care management software, and the part your carers rely on at every visit. Ask how quickly you can build a person-centred plan from a first assessment, how reviews are scheduled and recorded, and whether a change to the plan reaches carers' phones before their next visit. Take one of your own care plans to each demo and ask the vendor to rebuild it live. That will tell you more than the slides. If you need a starting point, see our person-centred care plan examples. To see how structured assessments feed a plan, look at Birdie's digital assessments.
eMAR and medication
Medication is where errors cost the most. Check that the eMAR:
- handles PRN medication with clear protocols
- flags missed or late doses to the office straight away
- produces MAR charts you can share with a pharmacist or GP
Our guide to what eMAR is covers the basics.
Visit records and observations
Every visit should leave a clear record: tasks completed, notes, observations, body maps and any incidents. Ask whether edits are logged with a reason and a full audit trail. When CQC asks what happened on a particular day, that trail is your answer.
Evidence for CQC
CQC rates services as Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement or Inadequate. Good software won't give you a rating, but it should make your evidence easy to find. Ask:
- how you'd pull together evidence for an inspection
- how the system shows trends across visits and carers
- what reports you can export
Birdie's quality and compliance tools show one approach.
NHS assurance and GP Connect
Being on the NHS assured list means a product has passed the government's capability and standards checks for digital social care records. Those checks include connecting to GP records. GP Connect lets authorised care staff view relevant GP information without waiting on phone calls. Ask each vendor whether GP Connect is live for home care partners today, not just on their roadmap.
Offline working
Carers often visit homes with weak or no signal. Ask what carers can do offline (view the care plan, record tasks, record medication) and how records sync once they're back online.
Security and data
Ask every supplier for ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certificates, and find out where data is hosted. For comparison, here are Birdie's security credentials.
Total cost
Look past the headline price. Per-carer charges, monthly minimums, onboarding fees and minimum terms all change the real cost. Here are two worked examples using public prices checked on 6 October 2026, excluding VAT:
- CareLineLive: an agency with 10 carers using their own phones would pay 10 × £19.70 = £197 a month, plus up to £300 onboarding.
- PASS Foundation: an agency supporting up to 15 people would pay from £185 a month on a 12-month minimum, which is at least £2,220 over the year.
Ask every vendor for the same written breakdown so you can compare like for like.
Best care management software for small and growing agencies
If you're a small agency, you'll mostly be weighing up price structure, how quickly you can get started and what you'll outgrow.
Price structure. Some products are free or cheap to start with:
- Log my Care's Starter plan is free for fewer than 10 people supported.
- PASS Foundation starts at £185 a month for 1–15 people.
- CareLineLive charges per carer, with a £120 monthly minimum.
- Birdie starts from £200 a month, with the final price based on scheduled care hours.
Check which features each entry-level plan actually includes, especially eMAR.
Contracts and minimums. A 12-month minimum term is fine if you're confident in the product, but it's riskier if you're still testing. Ask what happens to your data and your price when you move up a tier.
Getting started. Small teams don't have spare capacity for a long setup. Ask who moves your existing care plans and medication records across, and how long carers usually take to get comfortable with the app.
What you'll outgrow. Think about where you'll be in two years. If you expect to add local authority contracts or a second branch, check now how the product handles invoicing, payroll and quality reporting at that scale. Switching later is much harder than choosing well now.
Best care management software for multi-branch agencies
Once you run several branches, the questions shift towards consistency, oversight and the finance workload.
Consistency between branches. Can you set standard care plan templates and assessments centrally, so every branch works the same way? Ask how changes to templates reach existing plans.
Comparing quality across branches. Senior leaders need to see where quality is strong and where it needs attention. Birdie's Q-Score lets you compare scores across branches. Nourish says its platform works across multiple branches. Ask every vendor to show you a cross-branch view in the demo, using realistic data.
Permissions. Branch managers, care coordinators and quality leads need different access. Check that permissions can be set by role and by branch. Access lists customisable access levels on its care planning page.
Carers working across branches. If carers cover more than one branch, check they can see all their visits in one place. Birdie's Carer App supports this.
Finance and payroll load. More branches mean more funders, rates and pay rules. Ask how invoicing and payroll exports handle different commissioners and pay rates, and how much manual reconciliation is still needed at month end. Our domiciliary care software guide covers rostering and finance in more depth.
Common questions about care management software
What software do care managers use?
Most care managers in home care use care management software through a web app in the office. It's where they write and review care plans and assessments, oversee medication, check visit records and prepare evidence for CQC. In Birdie, this is the Agency Hub. Most products in this guide include an office web app and a carer mobile app.
What apps do carers use?
Carers use a mobile app from their agency's care management provider. It shows their visits, the care plan and tasks for each person, and their medication rounds. It's also where they record notes and observations. Birdie's is the Carer App, CareLineLive has a carer companion app, and Unique IQ has a carer mobile app. Whichever you choose, check it works offline.
How much does care management software cost?
These are public prices from each vendor's website, checked on 6 October 2026 and excluding VAT:
- Birdie: from £200 a month, with the final price based on scheduled care hours.
- CareLineLive: £8.10 per carer a month (eRoster), £19.70 (carer's own device) or £45.00 (managed phones), minimum £120 a month, onboarding up to £300.
- PASS: Foundation from £185 a month for 1–15 people supported, 12-month minimum.
- Log my Care: Starter free for fewer than 10 people supported. Pro and Outstanding on request.
- Access Care Planning, Nourish and Unique IQ: price on request.
What's the difference between care management and care planning software?
Care planning software covers writing, reviewing and sharing care plans and assessments. Care management software includes care planning and usually adds eMAR, visit records, incident reporting and quality reporting for CQC. Many products also bring in rostering and finance. If you only buy care planning software, you may end up running medication, rostering and invoicing in separate systems and reconciling them by hand.
What does "NHS assured" mean?
It means the product has passed the government's Digital Social Care Records capability and standards assurance process. That covers core functions, national quality and security standards, and the ability to connect to GP records. You can check any product on the NHS assured list.
Choosing the right care management software
The best care management software for your agency is the one that:
- handles care planning, medication and visit records well for care delivered in people's homes
- is on the NHS assured list
- works offline
- charges in a way that fits your size
Use the table to shortlist two or three products. Then take one of your own care plans to each demo and ask for a written total cost covering per-carer fees, minimums, onboarding and contract term.
You can see how Birdie's pricing works on our pricing page.
Want to try Birdie for your business? Hit the demo button below.
We think you'll love it. However, there's no obligation to buy, no sales pitch and no commitment. See if it suits you.
Lucy Ogilvie is Senior Content and Community Lead at Birdie. She founded and runs Flock, a free community for over 4,000 UK social care business leaders.
Published date:
October 6, 2026
Author:
Lucy Ogilvie
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