CHARMS alternatives: what to weigh before you move

Most homes looking at CHARMS alternatives are running residential care inside a system built to also serve fostering and adoption. That breadth is the whole point of CHARMS, and it is exactly what starts to grate when children's homes are all you do.

Everything said about a supplier below comes from their own public material and links to the page it came from. Where a vendor doesn't publish something, we say so rather than guess. Last checked August 2026.

Request a demo Arc vs CHARMS, row by row

Ask what the breadth is costing you

CHARMS covers fostering, adoption and residential across the UK and Ireland. If you only run children's homes, you are configuring away most of a platform to get at the part you need.

You can budget for Arc before the sales call

£149 to £249 per home per month by registered beds, published, unlimited staff. CHARMS quotes on request, so a like-for-like comparison needs an enquiry first.

Migration is free either way

CHARMS includes implementation, training and data import at no charge, and so does Arc. The real switching cost is retraining staff, not moving data.

Start here

What CHARMS costs, all in

Worth pinning down before you compare anything, because the licence fee is rarely the whole bill.

Published price
Not published on the UK site; quote on request. [1]
What the price is charged on
Not published. [1]
AI included in the price
Not published. [1]
Minimum contract
Not published. [1]
Setup and migration fees
None. Implementation, training and data import are stated as free, as are custom reports. [1]
The field

What else UK children's homes are using

The systems that come up most often, with what each publishes about itself. Follow any of them through to a full row-by-row comparison against Arc.

Published price
£150–£250 per home / month excluding VAT on a one-year contract, by bed band. Lower on longer terms: £100–£200 on three years. [2]
Who the product is built for
Children's homes and supported accommodation. [3]
Independent security certification
ISO 27001, ISO 9001 and Cyber Essentials Plus. [4]
Track record and availability
Over 3,250 children's homes claimed. [2]
Published price
Not published. The pricing page describes the model and routes to a demo; no figure appears anywhere on the site. [5]
Who the product is built for
Children's residential care, with supported accommodation priced separately. [6]
Independent security certification
Cyber Essentials, certified for CRIS itself. ISO 27001 is claimed for the AWS infrastructure they sit on, not for CRIS. [7]
Track record and availability
No customer count, home count or years trading published. CRIS Care Technologies Ltd, company no. 17305092, incorporated June 2026. [6]
Published price
£149 / £199 / £249 per home per month ex VAT by bed band, published in full. Annual plans £129 / £179 / £229. [8]
Who the product is built for
Ofsted-regulated children's homes in England, plus registered supported accommodation for 16 and 17 year olds. [8]
Independent security certification
None held. Cyber Essentials and then ISO 27001 are stated as roadmap items. [9]
Track record and availability
No customer or home count claimed; they state directly that they are early with a small number of homes. Hearth Systems Ltd, company no. 17349265. [8]
Published price
£99 or £199 per home / month (two tiers), excluding VAT. Published. [10]
Who the product is built for
Children's homes and supported accommodation. [10]
Independent security certification
GDPR and NHS Digital DSPT compliance claimed. [11]
Track record and availability
500+ carers claimed. [11]
Published price
From £185 per home / month excluding VAT for children's care homes. [12]
Who the product is built for
Children's care homes, supported accommodation and family assessment centres. [13]
Independent security certification
Cyber Essentials Plus, DSPT compliant. [13]
Track record and availability
100+ care facilities claimed. [13]

Sue Solutions

Arc vs Sue Solutions →
Published price
Not published; the site routes to a demo booking. [14]
Who the product is built for
UK children's residential homes, from new providers to local authorities. [14]
Independent security certification
Not published. [14]
Track record and availability
1,000+ homes claimed. [14]
Published price
£149, £199 or £249 per home / month by registered beds (1–3, 4–6, 7+), published on our pricing page. Two months free if you pay annually.
Who the product is built for
UK children's residential homes only.
Independent security certification
Role-restricted access, an append-only audit trail on every record, and a signed data processing agreement, running on ISO 27001-certified AWS infrastructure in the UK.
Track record and availability
Live now, with onboarding, migration and UK-based support included from day one. Request a demo before 1 January 2027 and your first home is free for its first year.
The honest bit

When staying with CHARMS is the right call

Staying with CHARMS is right if your organisation is more than children's homes. Fostering, adoption and residential under one supplier is worth more than depth in any one of them, and no amount of children's-homes focus replaces it. They also build custom reports free of charge, have 600 organisations and 50,000 practitioners behind them, and hold Cyber Essentials Plus.

Where Arc fits

Built for one setting, priced in one number

Arc does UK children's residential homes and nothing else. Regulation 40, 44 and 45, keywork, contact logs and placement plans are first-class parts of the product rather than templates laid over a platform built for several parts of the care sector.

£149, £199 or £249 per home per month by registered beds covers unlimited staff, every feature, AI, onboarding and migration, with no minimum term. And for year one there is nothing to compare: request a demo before 1 January 2027 and your first home is free for twelve months.

See Arc's full pricing →

Questions to ask any supplier you shortlist

  1. Is the price per home, per registered place, or per user?
  2. Which features sit behind a higher tier or an add-on — including AI?
  3. What do onboarding, training and data migration cost?
  4. Is that price conditional on a one, two or three-year term?
  5. Where is our data hosted, and where does any AI processing happen?
Questions

CHARMS alternatives: common questions

What are the main alternatives to CHARMS?

The systems UK children's homes use most are listed above with what each publishes about itself. The first question to settle is scope: if residential care is all you do, a children's-homes-only system will fit better than a platform serving fostering and adoption too.

How much does CHARMS cost?

Social Care Network does not publish CHARMS pricing on their UK site; they quote on request. Their US site lists per-licence pricing, but that is a different market and should not be assumed to apply here. Arc publishes £149, £199 or £249 per home per month by registered beds, with unlimited staff accounts.

Is it hard to move off CHARMS?

The data transfer is usually the easy part, and CHARMS states that implementation, training and data import are free. The harder question is scope: if you run fostering or adoption alongside residential, moving to a children's-homes-only system means finding somewhere else for that work.

Sources

  1. [1] https://socialcarenetwork.com/Product/Page?pageType=Charms_Child_Residential_Care “Free Implementation & Data Transfer - We handle the complete migration of your existing data securely and at no extra cost. All implementation, training, and data import included free of charge.”
  2. [2] https://www.clearcaresolutions.co.uk/price-setup/ “1-3 Bed Home · One Year Contract · £150 · PER MONTH · Excluding VAT” “Join over 3,250 Children's Homes currently using Clearcare!”
  3. [3] https://www.clearcaresolutions.co.uk/home-and-staff-management/ “Reg 44 & Reg 45 for Children's Homes, and Annex A, Annex A1 & Reg 32 for Supported Accommodation Provisions”
  4. [4] https://www.clearcaresolutions.co.uk/benefits-of-clearcare-childrens-social-care-settings-software/ “Clearcare maintain rigorous security standards which are reflected in our ISO 27001, ISO 9001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certification.”
  5. [5] https://www.criscare.uk/pricing.html “Pricing is simple and per-home — book a demo and we'll walk you through it.”
  6. [6] https://www.criscare.uk/ “Mobile-first children's residential care software” “© 2026 CRIS Care Technologies Ltd · Company No. 17305092”
  7. [7] https://www.criscare.uk/security.html “Hosted on ISO 27001-certified AWS infrastructure (UK region) / Cyber Essentials certified”
  8. [8] https://carehearth.co.uk/pricing “Per home, per month, excluding VAT. Unlimited staff accounts on every tier. Registered beds / Monthly / Annual plan / 1 to 3 £149 £129 / 4 to 6 £199 £179 / 7 to 10 £249 £229” “Adult social care. Hearth is built around Ofsted and the Children's Homes Regulations. If you are CQC regulated, this is the wrong product.” “Hearth is early and has a small number of homes on it. I would rather write that down than imply otherwise”
  9. [9] https://carehearth.co.uk/security “Cyber Essentials certification, then ISO 27001 on the roadmap after it. We claim no certification we do not hold.”
  10. [10] https://home.lief.care/pricing/ “£99/mo. or £900/yr. (per home) after first 3 months” “Children's Care Home”
  11. [11] https://home.lief.care/ “NHS Digital DSPT Compliant” “Join the 500+ carers in hassle free care”
  12. [12] https://www.ovcare.co.uk/pricing “from £185 per home / per month · excl. VAT”
  13. [13] https://www.ovcare.co.uk/ “Children's Care Homes” “Cyber Essentials Plus Certified” “100+ Care Facilities Using”
  14. [14] https://www.suesolutions.co.uk/ “We work alongside 1,000+ homes across the U.K.” “We work alongside 1,000+ homes across the U.K. And this number is growing”

Supplier information taken from their own public material, last checked August 2026. We re-check every 6 months. If anything here is wrong or out of date, email hello@arccare.co.uk and we'll correct it.

Switching

Moving from CHARMS to Arc

Changing recording system mid-placement is a real risk, so we plan the move around your home rather than the other way round. Onboarding and migration are included in the monthly price.

Review what you hold

We look at your current records together and agree what must come across and what can be archived.

Migrate the record

Young person records, plans and open incidents are moved and checked before anyone relies on them.

Train on shift

Short sessions with the people who will use it, in the home, on real entries.

Run in parallel

A short overlap so nothing is lost, then a clean cut-over on a date you choose.

See Arc in your home.

See Arc against whichever system you are weighing it up with. Request a demo before 1 January 2027 and your first home is free for a year.

No spam. We'll only use this to arrange your demo.

Free first year: one home per company, for demo requests received before 1 January 2027 and accounts opened before 1 June 2027. Full terms.