Care.com Alternatives for Childcare Centers Hiring Teachers and Staff

One boundary first, so this is not misread: ChildcareHires does not help families find, arrange or compare childcare.

Every option below is about hiring staff — nothing here compares nanny or babysitting sites.

Care.com is a general care marketplace, and its product for early learning centers is deliberately two products in one.

The same "List Your Business" listing is pitched to "connect with parents, fill spots, and recruit your staff": families find the center and book tours through its profile, while job posts bring in applicants.

For a director who only needs to fill an infant-room lead teacher opening, that bundle is the friction.

The recruiting half arrives attached to a family-enrollment product, the center page publishes no price, and Care.com's own footer says the information in job posts and applications "is created by users of our site and not generated or verified by Care.com."

The alternatives fall into four groups:

• Boards built only for early-education staff — ChildcareHires and EarlyDay.
• Association career centers with published prices — the NAEYC Early Childhood Career Center and the Child Care Aware of America Child Care Career Center.
• General job sites — Indeed, with free posting and coverage of every industry.
• Substitute pools — Wonderschool SubPool and SitterTree, for the shift that needs covering today.

The offer is one bundle.

On Care.com's early learning centers page, the center profile is family-facing — families book tours directly through the profile — and the job-post side promises speed: "Publish a job in minutes and you could start seeing applications within hours."

The scale figures on that page are Care.com's own: 10k+ care-related businesses listed, and 29 million families having turned to Care.com to find care.

Treat them as self-reported.

The page publishes no price.

Signing up runs through "Get started" and "List your center" calls to action, so the cost of the center product is not something you can budget from the page.

One tool is members-only: the hiring hub, a dashboard where an employer can sort, message and note applicants, "is available to Premium members," per Care.com's hiring hub page — a page Care.com writes for families hiring caregivers.

Care.com is also plain in its footer about what it does not do: "Care.com does not employ any caregiver," and information in member profiles, job posts, applications and messages "is created by users of our site and not generated or verified by Care.com." Screening applicants stays with the center.

ChildcareHires is a job board that lists early-education jobs and nothing else: lead and assistant teachers in infant, toddler, preschool and pre-K rooms, floaters and aides, Head Start and school-age staff, directors, cooks, drivers and front-office staff, across 31 role pages.

It publishes its prices: a Standard post is $199 and a Featured post $399 at launch pricing (regular $299 and $499), each a one-time payment that runs 30 days with no contract.

Centers that hire constantly can take a slot plan instead — $899 a month for up to 10 posts live at once, or $1,749 a month for 25.

Candidates who click Apply go to the center's own application page or inbox; ChildcareHires never sees or stores what they send, and there is no résumé database.

The NAEYC Early Childhood Career Center is the professional association's own job board.

A single 30-day posting costs $195 for NAEYC members and $220 for non-members, every package includes resume search access and can be used within 1 year.

The Child Care Aware of America Child Care Career Center prices a 30-day listing at $199, with Job Flash packages above it: $299 emails the job to qualified child care professionals, $399 adds staying high in search results and highlighting, and $599 adds a TalentBoost distribution to a network of 1,000+ sites.

A single resume purchase is $35.

Membership matters here: Child Care Aware of America members can post basic 30-day listings free, non-members' 30-day listings start at $199, and both can upgrade.

EarlyDay calls itself "The only dedicated career marketplace for early childhood educators": centers post openings, receive applications from its pool of qualified, pre-screened candidates, and can search candidates.

Its site published no price when we checked.

Indeed is the volume play.

Many jobs can be posted for free, "subject to Indeed's terms, conditions, quality standards, and usage limits" — but some jobs are sponsored only, including jobs aggregated directly from a career site or company website and jobs published from an Applicant Tracking System.

Indeed says it makes that clear in the product.

For a first sponsored job, Indeed's preschool-teacher hiring page offers a $75 credit to new US accounts that post a job.

The credit expires one year after account creation, and after it expires, users are charged based on the Sponsored Job budget.

The fit depends on the center.

A general site takes jobs from every industry, so its applicant flow is broad rather than early-education-specific — a fit for employers with the time and process to screen it.

A board built only for early-education jobs trades that reach for applicants who are only seeing early-education roles.

Wonderschool SubPool is built for the day that needs covering.

A child care provider posts a half- or full-day substitute job, an alert goes to available subs within a geographic radius who are a good match, and the provider reviews the responses, decides whether to hire the sub, approves the recorded hours and pays the sub.

Wonderschool recruits, screens, qualifies, trains and onboards the subs, and qualified applicants are helped through an onboarding process to ensure they meet state requirements.

SitterTree works the other direction: a group (a center) posts a job — child care provider, substitute, or a direct hire for a full- or part-time staff member — sets the hourly rate and schedule, and lets local providers come to it.

Posting a job is free for groups, and a group can invite up to 5 to apply per job.

If the need is a permanent floater or substitute position rather than one specific day, that is a job-board posting: ChildcareHires carries a dedicated substitutes role page among its 31.

Start with what you are actually buying:

• Staff only, or families too? If you want family enrollment and recruiting in one product, Care.com's bundle is the point. If you only need staff, a staff-only board is the more direct tool.
• Published price, or sign up to find out? ChildcareHires ($199 a Standard post at launch pricing), the NAEYC career center ($195 member / $220 non-member), the Child Care Aware career center ($199 a 30-day listing) and SitterTree (free group job posts) publish prices. Care.com, EarlyDay and Wonderschool SubPool did not on the pages we checked.
• Where do applications land? On ChildcareHires, candidates apply on the center's own application page or inbox. On Care.com, applications arrive through Care.com, with the content user-created and not verified by Care.com.
• Permanent role, or today's shift? Substitute pools — Wonderschool SubPool and SitterTree — cover the day; job boards fill the position.

Prices and terms change: every competitor fact on this page was checked on the company's own website in October 2026, so confirm the current price on the company's own pricing page before you buy.

For everything ChildcareHires charges and how posting works, the fact sheet has the details, and the pricing page is where a post is bought.

And for the channels beyond job boards — free local channels, community college and CDA programs, workforce boards — where to post childcare jobs compares them channel by channel.