Basics:
Housesitter matches homeowners and house and pet sitters, charging a fee to communicate with prospects
Expected pay: varies
Husl$core: $$
Commissions & fees: $14 monthly or $99 a year
Where: Nationwide
Requirements: 18 or older
HouseSitter.com Review:
HouseSitter.com allows homeowners, house and pet sitters to sign up and seek both house sitters and employment as a house sitter. However, the site requires you to sign up and accept its terms before you know anything about its pricing.
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While the site does offer a free plan, that plan makes it impossible for house sitters and potential clients to talk to one another. Membership fees are also renewed automatically and are non-refundable. This is the main reason that Housesitter.com is rated more poorly than the other house sitting sites on SideHusl.com, including HouseCarers, House Sitters America, and Rover.
Sitters everywhere
Within minutes of bailing out of a test application to list the availability of a house-sitting job, we received 8 emails from potential house sitters. Our takeaway: The site either has an abundance of sitters or creates fake sitter emails to get you to pay their fees.
According to SimilarWeb, Housesitter.com drew about 100,000 visitors in April 2021. Given that the site covers all of the U.S. and Canada, you’d probably need to be very flexible about the areas you serve to find clients. It’s also unclear whether you can make money here or if you are essentially providing house and pet care in exchange for free accommodations. (This is common with housesitting jobs, which appeal to those wanting to travel rather than those wanting to work.) The site provides little guidance about setting rates.
Recommendations:
If you are looking to make money as a house or pet-sitter, (or are looking for house or pet sitters), we’d recommend you sign up for Rover, which gets millions of page views each month and actively operates around the country.
(You can sign up with Rover here.)
You may also want to check out House Sitters America, Nomador, or HouseCarers, which are better-established sites that charge less to sign up.
TrustedHousesitters, the most expensive site to sign up with, may also be worth your time in that it gets six-times the web traffic of this site and offers some valuable bells and whistles, including access to a vet for petsitters.
(You can sign up for TrustedHousesitters here.)
What their users say (from Indeed.com)
Let me be clear, I’ve house sat and watched pets for years and it is a wonderful job. Five stars all around. HOWEVER, DO NOT USE HOUSESITTER.COM. You’ll pay a fee to join and there are almost NO people looking for house sitting. All of the existing profiles are outdated, last touched in 2018. The only response I received was from a person I believed to be a predator who wanted my address, along with my banking information. Horrible customer service. NO listings that are relevant. Steer clear.
From Reddit
I am a new user of Rover, and having some difficulty getting my first gig. So I am trying these websites as well. I got some requests on the sits from people. However when I tried to reply Petsitting decided to blur out the original message and demand payment for me to reply. Just curious is petsitting.com or Housesitting.com websites legit? I am kind of reluctant to give money to websites in which I might receive nothing in return. No matter what they try to say.
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