Non-medical home care — personal care and companion care — is its own category, and the platforms that win here are different from the clinical heavyweights. For most agencies it’s AxisCare. If you’re already in the WellSky ecosystem, it’s WellSky Personal Care (the former ClearCare). If you’re tech-forward and growing toward multi-service, it’s AlayaCare. Here’s how they compare.
We focused on platforms purpose-built for, or strong at, non-medical home care — personal care and companion care — for private-pay and Medicaid-funded non-medical agencies. Rankings draw on our first-hand integration work with these platforms, their public install-base and pricing disclosures, and feedback from agency owners who’ve contacted HeyHomeCare. No platform paid for placement.
We weighted three things non-medical operators care about most: simplicity of daily use, total cost at mid-market size, and how cleanly the platform scales if the agency grows.
Purpose-built for personal and companion care, fast to implement, and priced for agencies of 10–250 caregivers.
The former ClearCare, now under WellSky. The natural pick if you’re already in the WellSky ecosystem or running multiple post-acute lines.
Cloud-native with Visit Optimizer — the pick if you expect to grow past 250 caregivers or add home health and community care.
Its starter tier is the most common first-software purchase for new non-medical agencies, without enterprise cost or complexity.
AxisCare is the default non-medical pick for a reason: it does personal and companion care well and doesn’t make you pay for clinical modules you’ll never use. Scheduling, caregiver matching, shift swaps, EVV, and a clean mobile app are all tuned for the non-medical workflow, and implementation runs 2–6 weeks. For agencies from a handful of caregivers up to 250, it’s the safe choice.
WellSky Personal Care is the former ClearCare, acquired by WellSky in 2019 and rebranded. It remains a capable non-medical platform, and its real advantage is breadth: if you run personal care alongside home health or hospice, WellSky offers one vendor across all of it. The trade-off is a slower product cadence than AxisCare, since engineering attention is split across WellSky’s broad portfolio.
AlayaCare is the tech-forward growth pick. It costs more and takes longer to implement than AxisCare, but its cloud-native architecture, modern caregiver app, and Visit Optimizer scheduling make it the right call for non-medical agencies that expect to scale or add service lines. If you’re building for the next five years rather than the next quarter, it’s worth the premium.
| AxisCare | WellSky | AlayaCare | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2011 | 1980 | 2014 |
| HQ | Waco, TX | Overland Park, KS | Montreal, QC |
| Focus | Non-medical home care (personal care, companion care) | Home Health, Hospice, Personal Care (ex-ClearCare), Rehab | Home care + home health + community care; cloud-native |
| Best for | Non-medical agencies, 10–250 caregivers, mid-market growth | Enterprise multi-product post-acute organizations | Tech-forward mid-market to enterprise, multi-service agencies |
| Install base | ~5,000+ agencies | 20,000+ providers | ~800+ agencies |
| Pricing model | Per active caregiver | Enterprise per-license | Per module + per user |
| Mid-market spend | ~$300–600/mo (50 caregivers) | ~$500–1,500/mo (Personal Care) | ~$1,000–3,000/mo |
| EVV compliant | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Caregiver app | iOS + Android | iOS + Android | iOS + Android |
| Analytics | Standard reporting | Broad post-acute reporting | Advanced (Visit Optimizer AI) |
| Integration ecosystem | API + select partners | Active integration program | API + iCarol (acquired call center) |
| Implementation | 2–6 weeks | 12–26 weeks | 6–16 weeks |
| HeyHomeCare integration | Native API | Webhook + manual workflow | Deep native API |
New agency owners often ask whether they can run on a generic scheduling app or spreadsheets. You can — briefly. But home care has compliance, billing, EVV (for Medicaid-funded visits), and caregiver-workflow requirements that generic tools don’t meet, and migrating off them later is painful. QuickBooks handles your accounting, but it isn’t home care software.
None of these platforms fully solves caregiver inbound — the call-outs, missed clock-ins, and shift swaps that hit after hours. For a non-medical agency that’s usually a coordinator’s nights and weekends, or a traditional answering service that just takes messages.
HeyHomeCare is the AI voice and SMS layer that resolves it, on top of AxisCare, AlayaCare, or WellSky. For most non-medical agencies it replaces the need for a dedicated after-hours coordinator.
HeyHomeCare handles non-medical caregiver inbound — call-outs, swaps, missed clock-ins, PTO — on top of AxisCare, AlayaCare, or WellSky. For most agencies it replaces a dedicated after-hours coordinator.