Help - For families

For families

Families can find babysitters and childcare providers on Babysits through our search page. You can enter your city, address, or postcode in the search bar to easily browse babysitters, childminders and nannies in your area.

If you’ve signed up and posted your profile, childcare providers who are interested can also contact you.

If you want to send a message to a childcare provider, you can contact them by going to their profile and clicking on the “contact” button.

Please note: To contact or respond to childcare providers, you need to have your own, complete profile (so don't forget to sign up or log in) and an active premium subscription.

So, once you’ve found a babysitter that you want to contact, you can upgrade to a premium subscription!

Parents can also find alternative sources of childcare on Babysits, such as special needs babysitters and other parents (with our parents-help-parents feature).

Parents will need to upgrade to a premium account to contact babysitters. You can upgrade to a premium account via the upgrade page (after registration) or via the Babysits app.

Your premium account renews monthly and can be cancelled at any time.

If you would like to cancel your premium account, you can easily do so on the account status page.

Keep in mind, if you subscribed to a premium account via the iOS app, you will also have to cancel your subscription via Apple. You can do so in your device settings via Apple ID under Subscriptions.

Please be aware that when you cancel your premium account, a final payment collection might still take place. This is because we collect with a delay. For example, if your new month just started last week, it may be that the monthly fee for the month will still need to be collected. However, no new term will be charged.

If you have any days left on your premium account, you can of course still use the premium services for these remaining days after the cancellation of your premium account. If you are still having trouble with cancelling your premium account, please get in touch with our customer service.

When you have found a childcare provider, you can easily schedule an appointment with them.

You can schedule an appointment by going to the profile page of the childcare provider and clicking the ‘Request a Booking’ button or by going to your inbox and clicking on the conversation with the childcare provider. On the left side, you can click the “Request a Booking” button to schedule an appointment. Once the childcare provider accepts the request, you can pay for the booking to officially schedule it.

Click here for more information about Bookings.

Yes, you can! When your premium account has been cancelled you can still message new childcare providers within your contract period. When your contract period expires, you can still continue conversations that you already started during your premium account, but you can’t start new conversations anymore.

How much you pay a childcare provider will depend on the childcare provider and situation.

Childcare providers set their own hourly rates for babysitting, based on the minimum wage, their qualifications, skills and experience. You can view this on their profile.

You can also set the rate you want to offer a potential childcare provider on your profile.

At the end of the day, it is up to you and the childcare provider to come to an agreement regarding how much you will pay them.

The hourly rates may vary according to the amount of children you have, the duties required, the type of childcare provider and the location of the babysitting job.

In some jurisdictions, it is legally mandatory to arrange a contract. Because of this and to make the babysitting experience smoother for both parties, we suggest filling out and going through our intake form.

Did you have a negative experience with a childcare provider? We’re sorry to hear this.

If you contacted the babysitter through the Babysits messaging system, you can leave a review and/or even block the user. In any case, we ask you to report the childcare provider via the customer service. Babysits will then be notified of these reports and will take any action that may be necessary.

Are you having trouble getting responses from childcare providers? We're sorry to hear this. We understand that this can be a frustrating experience.

We regularly send reminder notifications and emails to them and hide inactive profiles on our search page. However, there are also some steps you can take:

  • On their profiles you can see their last activity and their average response time. We recommend that you contact childcare providers who have been active recently to increase your chances of getting a response.
  • Babysitters may not have read your first message because they are busy with school. In that case, it may be helpful to contact them again.
  • The last tip is to be active yourself. If the childcare provider sees that you haven't been active for a while or that you don't respond to your messages, they may conclude that you are no longer looking for a babysitter and chances are they won't contact you.

Find Recently Active Babysitters

Unfortunately it is currently not possible to update your bank account details of your premium subscription. Please contact customer service if you want to update your bank account details.

Parents can request a full refund* of their premium subscription within 14 days of the purchase. Simply contact our customer service for a refund. After 14 days, we unfortunately can’t provide refunds.

  • This only applies to premium subscriptions purchased directly from Babysits. Payments through third parties such as Apple are excluded.