NannyLane

NannyLane Review:

NannyLane proposes to play matchmaker between full and part-time nannies and families who need them.

It is free for both families and child care workers to register with the site. However, the site will encourage both nannies and employing families to buy a premium subscription.

(This post may contain affiliate links. You can read our full affiliate policy here.)

How it works

If you want to sign up as a nanny, all you need to do is register with your name, email address and a cell phone number. The site will verify your phone number before allowing you to go on.

Then, you’ll answer a few questions about how much you charge and your caregiving experience. This includes the number of years of caregiving experience; the age of children you’ve cared for; whether you’ve been trained in CPR; and whether you’ve got a car and are willing to do light housekeeping.

At that point, the site will ask whether you’d like help finding a job. If you say “yes,” the site will ask for a credit card number to charge you $10 a month. If you say “No, I’ll search myself,” you go directly to families looking for help in your geographic area.

Getting work

When we tested the site as a Los Angeles-area nanny, we found a relative handful of families looking for work. And those jobs were scattered over a large geographic area. The same held true when searching as a family looking for a nanny. There were about a dozen profiles from nannies in a large geographic area.

It may be possible to find work here. However, the site doesn’t appear to have anywhere near the volume of job seekers or potential employers as a site like Care.com.

That said, you really can register for free. So, why not?

Nanny sharing

It’s worth noting that when we first reviewed NannyLane five years ago, the site differentiated itself by offering “nanny sharing.” This, presumably would involve two nearby families sharing one caregiver, possibly trading off bringing their kids to the other family’s home for care.

The site still makes nanny-sharing an option, but it doesn’t appear to be widely used. This may simply be because the site doesn’t have enough families registered to make sharing practical. (When we tested the site, we didn’t find two families in the same zip code.)

Subscription prices

Nannies can buy a subscription for $10 a month; Families pay $55 a month. Both types of subscriptions auto renew.

Are the subscriptions worth the cost? For nannies, subscriptions mainly provide early notifications about new job listings. If you’re actively seeking work, you’ll probably check the site often enough to find those anyway.

Payroll service

For families, the premium subscription provides significantly more benefits. (Of course, it’s also more expensive.) It entitles the family to up to five free background checks on nannies they’re considering. The site also will provide payroll services.

If you use NannyLane’s payroll service, you will hire the nanny as a household employee. And NannyLane will handle the nanny’s pay, including deducting taxes and sending in the appropriate forms to federal and state agencies.

When you’re hiring a full-time person, you legally need to treat the nanny as an employee. And handing tax reporting and withholding can be complicated and time consuming. Having a company provide that service is probably worth paying for. That said, this is also the only area where we see any complaints about this site. (See what their users say below.)

However, if you’re looking for just part-time help, your babysitter is not likely to be an employee. And, in that case, the premium membership is costly and probably not necessary.

Recommendations

The free membership is easy to say yes to for both nannies and families.

However, nannies may find more work through Care.com. (Care gets about 20 times the web traffic as NannyLane, a good indication of how many nannies and families connect there.) Care requires both nannies and families to pay for a membership to communicate. But the memberships are fairly inexpensive. (You can sign up with Care.com here.)

If you want just part-time work, also check out Bambino. If you have a car and would prefer to simply drive kids to and from school, consider Kango.

What their users say (from Reddit)

I am a parent who has been looking for over a year – I am starting to think this is not a real website – cannot tell who is available or who is not, and I never hear back from the dozens I have contacted. I am one of the families that spelled out my contact info incase someone was actually interested and wanted to reach out – I was thinking my add might have been used for fishing for subscriptions.

I’ve reached out to families but no one has ever responded.. seems to be a ghost town. Even when it says someone is online i get no responses. I’m wondering if this website is even real at this point.

I’m on there but I haven’t reached out to any NFs, mainly cause it’s a ghost town for my area. The same perfect ads have been sitting for years.

I like the site but being so basic I think it’s just not ran as diligently as Care does.

Love it

I love it, I recently installed it and I’ve found many job offers already compared to Care.com where I found 0. Will be using this from now on.

I found a good job in one week using nanny lane! I’ve been on care.com for years and never once found anything!

Payroll nightmare

NannyLane is the most incompetent company I have ever dealt with. It has been 2 years that I requested to close my account yet It is still open and I get charged hundreds of dollars a year. In addition to this, they have sent me the person information and timesheets of other nannies by mistake, and overcharged me many times. There are about 10 claims I’ve filed with nanny lane within the 1 year used them to handle my nannies payroll. They are unreachable and do nothing to correct thier mistakes.

From Indeed

Super convenient and something new everyday. Good money depending on client. Good amount of money. Always make sure to screen your clients as much as they will screen you. You never know who you will get.

It was very easy to use and I had landed a job within three weeks of creating an account. They take out your taxes and directly deposit the money to your account.

From Glassdoor

Placed with amazing families who are honest and kind

The family I ended up with has been incredible. We did have trouble with the payroll with NannyLane at first but over all it’s been great.

Easy to find work and be safe while communicating with new families. Subscription required for premium use.