Finding a good, reliable sitter or nanny is a surprisingly tough task. We actually tried to use Craigslist for this - and wasted hours interviewing several people on the phone and in person before we found someone even remotely worth considering. However, we were fortunate to hear about two good websites from our neighbor that can help you save time doing this task: Care.com and Sittercity. We ended up trying both sites, as they seemed very similar, so I wanted to post up our findings here to help others compare and find what's best for you.

How they work

Both Care.com and Sittercity are subscription sites, you pay a monthly fee to be able to search their listings for nannies and babysitters (they also offer different types of care providers such as elderly care and pet care). You get to see very detailed information about their providers, including photos, background checks, education level, prior experience, and other customer's reviews and comments. You can then contact any provider you're interested in to set up an interview.

Hands down, both sites make the search process far easier than anything else we've tried, including word-of-mouth recommendations, newspapers, Craigslist, and other local job listing sites. We find that we need sitters frequently, and having a large pool of providers that we can trust is such a nice thing. 

Pricing

Sittercity costs $9.99 / month (using their 1-year membership) which is slightly lower than what Care.com costs at $11.67 / month (also using their annual package). For some reason the sites are incredibly more expensive if you subscribe month-by-month - Sittercity tacks on an additional $39 just to start your subscription if you pay monthly, then charges the $9.99 per month thereafter. Care.com charges a whopping $35 / month if you go monthly. If you think you'll need the service on an ongoing basis (we tend to need sitters frequently, so we did the annual) it probably makes sense to do an annual subscription, but if you're just checking it out, going month-to-month is a good place to start.

Location and number of providers

One important question to ask is whether there will be a lot of providers in your area. Based on what I've seen and heard, both Sittercity and Care.com have good coverage in any sizable city in the US from the Los Angeles area (where we live) to Austin to Boston to Miami and Minneapolis. The sites start to show differences when it comes to smaller cities and towns, so you should do a quick test search on each to see how many results come up (you can do a simple search for free on either site).

How many providers in your area? Run a test search on Sittercity and Care.com to see how many providers there are in your area.

Response rates and quality of providers

Both sites have a good number of care providers. After posting our job listing on each site we got plenty of response within 2 days. On Care.com we received 48 replies and 34 responses on Sittercity. Going through the response is very quick, as you can scan each applicant based on a very detailed profile, and contact a few for interviews. On both sites we were able to bring in 3-4 people for interviews within 3 days of posting our listing, and we were surprised with the overall level of quality of the providers we met. Simply a higher level of professionalism and, how else can I describe it, cleanliness? than we found using other ways of searching.