The short answer
What's the best care coordination app for families in 2026?
It depends on the job. For broadcasting health updates, CaringBridge is still the standard. For organizing helpers, Lotsa Helping Hands does one thing very well. For a structured shared care record, the real choices are Caring Village and Mallowa — and if your care team includes professionals, Mallowa is the one built for that. The detailed cases are below.
Best for broadcasting health updates
CaringBridge
A free, donor-supported nonprofit (since 1997) for sharing a private health-update journal with friends and family. Privacy is set per page — Public, Semi-Private, or Private — and co-authors can help write updates. It isn't a care record: there are no medication lists, care notes, or structured data, and its group calendar was retired in December 2023.
Pricing: Free — no paid tiers; donor-supported.
Best for: Keeping a wide circle informed during a health crisis without repeating yourself.
Best for organizing helpers
Lotsa Helping Hands
A free volunteer-coordination platform (since 2004) built around a Care Calendar where helpers sign up for meals, rides, and visits, with announcements, well wishes, and coordinator and site-admin roles. Posts can be scoped to member groups. Like CaringBridge, it isn't a care record — there's no medication, notes, or goals data.
Pricing: Free — no paid tier exists.
Best for: Turning “let me know how I can help” into an actual schedule of meals, rides, and visits.
Best paid family care record
Caring Village
A family care-coordination app with a genuinely structured shared record — medication lists and schedules, a shared calendar, customizable care plans, document storage, and a wellness journal — governed by four member permission tiers. The free tier is limited (one village, two members, ad-supported); the full feature set is paid.
Pricing: Free tier (limited) · Circle $14.99/mo · Village $24.99/mo.
Best for: Families who want a real care record with differentiated permissions and are comfortable paying for it.
Best employer-sponsored caregiver support
ianacare
A free family-caregiver app that mobilizes an invitation-only support team — team calendar, help requests for meals, rides, respite, and errands, a private update feed, and medication reminders — with caregiver, care-recipient, organizer, and supporter roles. Its paid navigator services come through employers, health plans, and Medicare GUIDE partners rather than consumer subscriptions.
Pricing: Consumer app free; navigator services via employers and health plans.
Best for: Caregivers whose employer or health plan sponsors caregiving support — check your benefits.
Best for coordinating a whole care team — family and professionals
Mallowa (that’s us)
Our own platform, so judge this entry accordingly: Mallowa is a HIPAA-compliant shared care record — notes, goals, medications, appointments, crisis plans, and files on one timeline — with per-note visibility (team, clinical-only, family-only, private) and per-member permissions. It's built for teams that include professionals: therapists, teachers, and clinicians work in the same record as the family, and providers can capture billable coordination time as they work.
Pricing: Roots free forever (one individual, ten team members) · Roots+ $9/mo · Growth $19/mo.
Best for: Families coordinating complex, ongoing care across relatives and professionals — and anyone who needs real privacy controls.
Common questions
Choosing between them
Is there a completely free care coordination app?
Yes — several. CaringBridge and Lotsa Helping Hands are free with no paid tiers, ianacare's consumer app is free, and Mallowa's Roots plan is free forever with one individual and up to ten team members. Caring Village's free tier is limited to one village and two members.
What's the difference between CaringBridge and a care coordination app?
CaringBridge is built for one-way health updates — a journal your circle reads. A care coordination app is built for the team doing the care: shared medication lists, notes, appointments, and tasks with permissions. Many families use both — updates for the wide circle, a care record for the working team.
Do any of these apps meet HIPAA requirements?
Of the tools on this list, Mallowa is built on HIPAA-compliant infrastructure with permission-checked, logged access. CaringBridge and Lotsa Helping Hands make no HIPAA claims in their own policies — which is normal for consumer update and volunteer tools, where families share information by choice. HIPAA matters most once professionals and clinical information are part of the workflow.
How did you choose these apps?
We verified every product against its own published site, pricing, policies, and help documentation in July 2026, and only included tools that are clearly maintained and accurately described by their own materials. We excluded apps we couldn't verify as active or whose published claims contradicted themselves. And yes — we make Mallowa; every competitor fact here comes from the vendor's own materials so you can check us.
Last reviewed July 17, 2026. All product details verified against each product's own published materials as of that date.