Chickadee Bandit

Seven caregiving apps, by what each one is actually for

Caring Village, ianacare, CaringBridge, Lotsa Helping Hands, Meal Train, SignUpGenius and ours, compared by price and by the care job each one does.

Compare › Apps for coordinating elderly parent care

Quick answer

For siblings sharing a parent's care: Caring Village if the circle fits its plans, ianacare if an employer, a health plan or Medicare's GUIDE program pays for its care navigators, and ours if each sibling's own household should stay separate. To keep a wide circle informed, CaringBridge, or our Updates page if the care already runs here. To schedule volunteers, Lotsa Helping Hands; for meals alone, Meal Train; SignUpGenius if your group already uses it.

"Caregiving app" covers two different products. One is a care organizer for the few people actually running a parent's care: the medications, the appointments, the documents, who is visiting this week and what they saw. The other is for the wider circle who want to help: friends, neighbours, church, the parent's old colleagues. That circle needs news and a way to sign up for a meal or a ride, and should never see the medication list. Most families need both, and most apps are only one.

This list is ordered by that: organizers first, then the tools for keeping the circle informed and signed up. We make one of the seven and it is marked. Every price here is from each product's own pricing page or app store listing, checked in September 2026, and where a price is not published we say so rather than quote a review site.

The list

  1. Caring Village

    Best for: A care organizer for one parent, with the whole family in one account

    The closest thing on this list to a purpose-built care organizer: a shared calendar with priority events, tasks someone claims with one tap, a medication list with each dose marked as taken and missed-dose reminders, a wellness journal of mood and symptoms you can export for a doctor, care plans, and medical, legal and financial document folders. Aides, nurses and care managers can join to post visit notes, and an AI assistant answers caregiving questions. Check the member count before anything else: the free plan holds two people, so three siblings and a parent is a paid plan. Its own pages disagree on the free plan, too — the pricing table lists it as ad-free with calendar sync, the FAQ says both come with a paid plan, and the Android listing is marked as containing ads. It runs on iPhone, Android and the web.

    Cost: Free for 1 village and up to 2 members. Circle $14.99/mo or $149.99/yr (up to 2 villages, 5 members each); Village $24.99/mo or $249.99/yr (up to 5 villages, 50 members each).

  2. ianacare

    Best for: A family whose employer, health plan or Medicare coverage includes it

    The free organizer is a real one: a shared calendar, help requests for meals, rides, errands, check-ins and medication reminders that a helper takes with 'I got this', an updates feed and messages, a daily tracker of mood, appetite, sleep and medication with an AI summary, and an action plan with local resources by zip code. What sets it apart is the route to a professional: through PLUS, a one-to-one care navigator by phone, video or chat, and for a parent on traditional Medicare with a confirmed dementia diagnosis who lives at home, the GUIDE program at no cost, including a respite benefit. Each team supports one care recipient, it is primarily a mobile app, and reminders and calendar sync work only on the phone. On PLUS, everything logged in the tracker is shared with the care navigator.

    Cost: The Caregiver Organizer is free for anyone and for everyone they invite. ianacare PLUS — a care navigator, respite coordination, education and live events — comes only through a participating employer, health plan or organization; no retail price is published.

  3. Chickadee Bandit

    That's us

    Best for: Siblings in separate households who share the care and nothing else

    Every other organizer here is one account for the care. Here each sibling keeps their own household — their own calendar, chores, kids — and the care space between them holds only what the care needs; it cannot see into any home, and no home can see into another. In the space, Elder Care keeps a profile for each parent, the visit rotation, a shared observation log, care tasks, appointments with who is driving, and readings such as blood pressure and weight with a trend, and prints them as one record for a doctor's appointment. Medications nudges at each dose and tells the family members you name when one is still unticked thirty minutes late; in the space every sibling sees the same list and the same ticks, and the parent ticks their own. Wellness Check-In is the parent's one-tap daily 'I'm OK', and a missed one alerts family and outside contacts such as a neighbour with a key. Health Cards prints the emergency card for an aide or an ER, Documents holds the power of attorney in adult-only folders, and Meal Train gives neighbours one link to claim a night with no account. Updates is the page for the wider circle: the siblings post news, mark each update for everyone or for the family only, and share one link that friends read and leave a message on with no account. That is seven apps and a Family plan's space holds six, so pick the six this parent needs or sponsor from Group. The parent can be a member on their own phone or a kitchen tablet. A paid home aide gets a guest login with an end date in a household, not in the space: there Elder Care gives them a shift log with a handoff note, lets them tick tasks and record readings, and keeps notes marked family only out of their sight. What we do not do: no care navigator or professional helpline, no guest logins inside a care space, no email to the circle when an update is posted (people open the link to read the latest), and no fundraising. It runs on iPhone, Android and the web, with no ads and a full data export on every plan.

    Cost: $6/mo or $60/yr for one household on the Family plan, 30-day free trial with no card. One sibling sponsors the care space and the others join free. A Family plan's space holds up to 8 people and 10 apps; Group ($10/mo) sponsors two spaces of 12 people and 12 apps, Organization ($30/mo) three of 20 people and 14 apps.

  4. CaringBridge

    Best for: Keeping a wide circle of friends and family informed

    The standard for one-to-many health updates: a journal the family posts to, and followers who read and leave comments, so the same news does not have to be told forty times. Requests ask the circle for childcare, chores, errands, meals, pet care, rides or visits, and every follower is emailed when one is posted; each request is one slot that one person takes, so a week of rides is a request per ride, and there is no shared calendar. Meals link out to Meal Train and fundraising to GoFundMe. Check the privacy setting when you start: the default for a new site is Semi-Private, which any signed-in CaringBridge user can see, and a page is invite-only only when set to Private. It keeps no medication list, documents or tasks; it is the broadcast, not the organizer. Web, iPhone and Android.

    Cost: Free. A donor-supported 501(c)(3) nonprofit; no ads on any site, and it states your data will never be sold.

  5. Lotsa Helping Hands

    Best for: Rallying volunteers for meals and rides, free

    A volunteer calendar first: a care calendar where helpers sign up for meal deliveries, rides to appointments, errands and other tasks, with automatic email reminders, plus announcements, well wishes and a photo gallery. Groups keep a family-only circle apart from the wider community, so an announcement or task can go to one group and not everyone, and roles let more than one person coordinate. A community can be found in its public search by name and zip code, though joining through the shared link needs an administrator's approval. There is no medication list, document storage or emergency information. Web, iPhone and Android.

    Cost: Free, funded by sponsors, with no paid tier. Organizations can contract for a co-branded version.

  6. Meal Train

    Best for: Meals and practical help after a hospital stay or a surgery

    The simplest answer to 'what can I do': a calendar of meals with the recipient's allergies and preferences and what has already been brought, email reminders a week and a day ahead, updates and photos, and, for people too far away to cook, gift cards and a donation fund. Pages are private by default, shared by link and not searchable. Anyone with the link can view it, send a gift card or donate, but booking a date needs a Meal Train account. It is web only, with no native app, and it holds nothing but the help calendar.

    Cost: Free for one meal a day. Meal Train Plus is $10 per page and adds several activities a day, rides, childcare and errands. Meal Train Pro, $15/mo, is for congregations and organizations. Its Donation Fund deducts 7.9% + $0.30 per donation.

  7. SignUpGenius

    Best for: A group that already runs on it, or a large volunteer rotation

    Not a care tool, but the one many churches and schools already use, which is its advantage: helpers claim a slot from a link without an account, slots close when they fill, people can swap, and reminders go out on their own. It suits a long rotation of visits or rides across a big group. There is no updates feed, no recipient profile, and nothing for medications or documents, and ad-free starts at $8.99 a month. Web, iPhone and Android; both apps are listed as containing ads.

    Cost: Free with ads on every sign-up. Silver $11.99/mo, or $107.89/yr, for one ad-free sign-up and 150 texts a month; Gold $29.99/mo or $269.89/yr for ten; Platinum $59.99/mo or $539.89/yr for unlimited. Payments cost 3.95% + $0.95 by card.

Prices and features are from each product's own site as of September 2026; where a product has a head-to-head page here, its entry restates that page. Products change — always check the other product's site for current details.

Choosing between them

  1. If a sibling's employer or health plan offers ianacare, or your parent qualifies for Medicare's GUIDE dementia program, start there: the care navigator is the one thing on this list no family can buy directly.
  2. If you want a care organizer with the whole family in one account, Caring Village is the most complete; budget for a paid plan once more than two people join.
  3. If each sibling runs a busy household of their own and the care should sit between them rather than inside one of them, that is what we built.
  4. If the job is telling forty people the same news, CaringBridge: it is free and emails every follower. Set the page to Private. If the siblings already run the care in our space, the Updates app there does the same job by link, without the emails.
  5. If the job is meals and rides from a wide circle, Lotsa Helping Hands is free and built for it; Meal Train if it is only meals; SignUpGenius if your church or school already uses it.

Count the people before the price

The number on a pricing page means different things. Caring Village prices by villages and members, and its free plan stops at two people. ianacare's organizer is free for everyone you invite; what an employer pays for is the professional help. CaringBridge, Lotsa Helping Hands and the free Meal Train page cost nothing and are paid for by donors, sponsors or upgrades. On ours one sibling pays for their household and sponsors the care space, the others join free, and the plan sets how many people and apps the space holds.

CareZone

CareZone, the medication organizer many families used, is gone. Walmart acquired its technology, patents and product team in June 2020, and the app is not listed in the US App Store or on Google Play. What it did — a shared medication list with dose reminders — Caring Village, ianacare and our Medications app all cover.

What none of them does

None of these apps connects to a doctor's patient portal or a pharmacy: medications and appointments are entered by the family. None imports another's history, so if you switch, export or copy what matters first. And no app gives a sibling the right to speak to a parent's doctor or bank. That is a HIPAA authorization and a power of attorney, signed by your parent, and it is worth doing before it is needed.

The feature list is not fixed

Every other product on this page is a fixed set of features: it does what it does, and a need it did not anticipate gets a no. Chickadee Bandit is built from small apps, and a household can add one of its own. An admin describes the app in a paragraph on the Apps page and the hub builds and installs it, using the AI credits that come with every plan; someone who writes code can start from any of the open-source apps and install their own version from a URL. A custom app gets the same checks as the ones we ship: it declares what it reads and writes, keeps its data in your household's own database, and the hub refuses anything it did not ask for.

How to build a custom app for your household

Where this list comes from

We make one of the products on it, and it is marked. Every claim about another product was checked against that product's own pricing and feature pages on the date above — not against another review site — and where we could not find a published price we say so rather than quote one. The order is by what each product is for, not a ranking of merit.

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