What you are actually buying
A nanny agency site has a harder job than most childcare sites, because it serves two strangers at once. A family wants a vetted nanny quickly and wants to know what an agency does that a marketplace does not. A candidate wants roles and a simple way to register. Both arrive on the same home page, and if neither finds their route in five seconds, both leave.
The bands below are what the market charges to build that. Prices are given in dollars with a rough sterling equivalent, and they are market observation rather than our own numbers, which are on pricing.
Band 1: a builder template, nothing to a few hundred
Squarespace, Wix or a WordPress theme with a photograph of a woman reading to a toddler.
You get: a presence and a contact form.
You do not get: two routes, a vetting page anyone believes, fees stated, a family enquiry that captures children, hours, location, start date and budget, or candidate registration with a CV upload that lands anywhere useful.
Right for: an agency in its first months, still placing from a personal network.
Band 2: a template build, $800 to $2,500, roughly £650 to £2,000
An agency or recruitment theme with your branding, a few pages of copy and a generic contact form.
Usually missing: the split between families and candidates on the first screen. A vetting page written in order rather than as the phrase "fully vetted". Fee structure. A form that asks the questions you would ask on the phone. CV upload into your CRM rather than into a mailbox. Speed on a phone.
Right for: an agency that is full from referral and wants a business card online.
Band 3: a purpose-built agency site, $2,500 to $6,000, roughly £2,000 to £4,800
Built around how a family chooses an agency and how a nanny chooses where to register.
Two routes from the first screen, each with its own pages, its own language and its own form. A vetting page that walks through identity, references taken up and spoken to, background checking named accurately for where you operate, qualifications, paediatric first aid and interview, framed as what your agency does rather than as legal advice. Fees stated: placement fee basis, what is included, any ongoing or replacement terms. A detailed family enquiry form. Candidate registration with CV upload and availability, both posting into your CRM. Role types explained, from full-time live-in to after-school and au pair placements. Team profiles with real faces. Testimonials from both sides. Fast on a phone, structured data, tracking, everything in your name.
Not usually included: photography and copy unless the quote says so.
Right for: an established agency that wants family enquiries from search rather than only from referral.
Band 4: multi-branch or portal work, $8,000 and up
Separate branches with their own consultants and enquiry routing, a logged-in candidate area, or a family-facing shortlist portal. Once you are storing candidate documents behind a login you are handling sensitive personal data, which changes the build and the hosting conversation.
After launch
- Hosting: managed WordPress at $20 to $50 a month, or free on a framework host, in your name.
- Domain: small, annual, and it must be registered to the agency and not to a developer.
- CRM or applicant tracking: whatever you already pay, per seat.
- Scheduling: Calendly or Acuity if you take consultations by diary, on a modest monthly plan.
- Maintenance: a care plan, which is where fees and role types get kept current.
- Photography: half a day for team portraits. Real faces on the team page do more for a nervous parent than any amount of stock.
Where the band 3 money goes
- The two-route home page, tested with people who have never seen the site.
- The vetting page, written once, carefully, in order. This page is the whole reason a family pays an agency fee, so it earns real time.
- Fees stated as editable records, so you change them yourself in January.
- The family enquiry form: children and ages, hours and days, live-in or live-out, location, start date, budget band, anything unusual about the role.
- Candidate registration: CV upload, availability, right-to-work position, qualifications, first aid, references offered, areas covered.
- Consent and privacy handling, because both forms collect personal data about adults and children.
- Speed, local search foundation and tracking of which pages produce family enquiries rather than candidate ones.
Judging a quote
Ask six questions. Are families and candidates separated from the first screen. Is the vetting process a page or a phrase. Are fees stated. Does the family form ask the things a consultant asks on the phone. Where do CV uploads land, and who can see them. Whose name is the domain and hosting in. A quote that cannot answer those is a template quote whatever the figure at the bottom says.
Where this sits
Our nanny and au pair agency websites sit in band 3 at a fixed price, with the two routes, the vetting page, stated fees and both forms included, and the wider approach is on the childcare and family page. If your site is in band 1 or 2 and your consultants still spend mornings asking families how many children and what hours, that time is the number to weigh against a rebuild.