When a parent hears about your daycare (from a neighbor, a community group, a sign in your window), the first thing they do is search for you. And if the search turns up nothing, or just an unclaimed map pin, a lot of them quietly move on. Not because your program isn’t wonderful, but because in 2026, “no website” reads as “maybe not open anymore.”

You know this. You’ve probably also priced the alternatives: a website builder subscription that costs more than it should, a domain name to renew, a template that assumes you have a logo, brand colors, and a free weekend. Or a nephew who “does websites” and got as far as a homepage in March.

The result is that most solo home daycare providers (people running genuinely full programs) are invisible to the one place every prospective family looks first. Meanwhile, your actual marketing runs on word of mouth and a Facebook page you update twice a year.

What this costs you today

Families you never hear from. The parent who searched, found nothing, and enrolled somewhere with a photo gallery and posted hours. You’ll never know how many of these there are. That’s the problem.
Repeating yourself on the phone. Hours, ages you take, where exactly you are, whether you have space: the same five questions, answered one call at a time, often during care hours.
A waitlist that lives in your head. Interested families end up as a screenshot of a text, a name on a sticky note, and a “call me back in the fall” you have to remember.
Looking less established than you are. You might have a decade of experience and a beautiful program. Without a web presence, a brand-new center with a template site looks more legitimate than you do.

An afternoon fixes this. Here’s the walkthrough.

How you solve it in CubbyBook

CubbyBook includes a website builder made specifically for home daycares: real sections a daycare actually needs, your hours and location pulled from your profile, and a built-in path from “parent found you” to “enquiry in your inbox.” Nothing goes public until you say so.

Step 1: Add your city to your daycare profile first

Do this before anything else. Your site’s web address at daycares.cubbybook.com is built from your daycare’s name and your city at the moment the site is created, and it can’t change afterwards. The builder will warn you about this, but it’s much nicer to get it right up front.

So: open your daycare profile, make sure your daycare’s name is exactly what you want it to be, and add your city. Thirty seconds now saves a permanent address you’re unhappy with later.

📸 Screenshot: The daycare profile with the name and city fields filled in.

Step 2: Create your website

In the sidebar, choose Daycare Website, then Create my website. You land directly in the builder.

Take a breath here: nothing is public yet. The builder is a completely private workspace until the moment you publish, so you can experiment, half-finish, walk away for a snack cracker emergency, and come back. No parent will ever see the work in progress.

📸 Screenshot: The Daycare Website entry in the sidebar and the Create my website starting point.

Step 3: Choose your sections

The builder offers thirteen sections, all purpose-built for a daycare: a top banner, about us, programs & ages, our team, photo gallery, opening hours, where to find us, parent reviews, common questions, contact form, waitlist sign-up, closing invitation, and an announcement banner.

A new site starts sensibly with four already on: the banner, opening hours, location, and contact form. That’s honestly enough to publish. Every section has a Show on my site toggle, so you add or remove sections with a switch, and you reorder them with the arrows. No dragging things around a blank canvas wondering what goes where.

Two of the defaults do something quietly great: opening hours and where to find us are drawn from your daycare profile. There’s nothing to type, and when you update your hours in your profile later, the live site updates without republishing. Your website can’t drift out of date on the facts that matter most.

📸 Screenshot: The section list with Show on my site toggles and reorder arrows.

Step 4: Pick a style

Choose one of four styles (Hearth, Sprout, Civic, or Studio) and then set a “Your colour” accent to make it yours. That accent is the closest thing to design work you’ll do, and it takes one tap.

All four styles and the accent color are free on any plan. Pick the one that feels like your program; you can change your mind later without redoing content.

📸 Screenshot: The four style choices with the Your colour accent picker.

Step 5: Add photos

Photos do more selling than any paragraph you’ll write. Upload them per section (the top banner, the gallery, and so on) in JPEG, PNG, or WebP, up to 10 MB each.

For each photo, you confirm you have permission to publish it. That prompt is there for a reason: photos of enrolled children need parent permission before they go on a public website. Sunlit playroom shots, your backyard setup, craft-table close-ups with no faces. Those carry a gallery beautifully all on their own.

📸 Screenshot: A section’s photo upload with the permission confirmation.

Step 6: Set your Google title and description

Open the SEO settings and fill in two fields: Title on Google and Description on Google. This is the headline and blurb a searching parent sees in results, so make it concrete: the kind of care you offer and where you are.

Everything else search-related is handled for you: published sites automatically get proper page titles, social sharing previews, structured data, and a sitemap. And while your site is a draft, it isn’t indexed. Search engines won’t stumble onto your half-finished page.

Step 7: Publish when you’re ready

The builder separates saving from publishing. Save as often as you like (you’ll see “You have saved changes that parents cannot see yet.”) and nothing changes on the public site. When you’re happy, Publish changes puts it live. If you ever need the site down (extended leave, a big rework), Take offline unpublishes it in one step.

This same save-then-publish rhythm applies to every future edit: tweak in private, publish when ready.

📸 Screenshot: The builder with unsaved-to-the-public changes and the Publish changes action.

Step 8: Handle enquiries as they arrive

When a parent submits your contact form or joins your waitlist, they see “Thank you. The daycare will be in touch shortly.”, and the submission lands in Enquiries in your sidebar, with an unread count so new interest is impossible to miss. Mark enquiries read, archive the ones you’ve handled, delete the noise.

If you’d rather not remember to check, switch on “Send me an email” in the notification settings and list up to five addresses: yours, a partner’s, an assistant’s.

Spam is handled for you: an invisible bot check, a trap field, and a rate limit run behind every form, so what reaches Enquiries is overwhelmingly real families.

📸 Screenshot: The Enquiries screen with an unread count, and the email notification setting.

What changes

Searching parents find a real website, with your hours, your location, your photos, and a form that reaches you. The “are they even open?” doubt disappears.
The five phone questions answer themselves. Hours, location, ages, programs: posted once, current always, because hours and location track your profile automatically.
Interest becomes a list, not a memory. Waitlist sign-ups and contact messages accumulate in Enquiries instead of evaporating into voicemail.
You look as professional as you are. Four polished styles mean the floor for “how good can my site look” is high, with zero design skill required.

The honest fine print:

Tip: Your web address is permanent, built from your daycare’s name and city at creation. Treat Step 1 seriously; a typo in your daycare’s name lives at that address forever.

Tip: A waitlist sign-up is an enquiry only. It does not create a child record in CubbyBook. When a waitlisted family actually joins, enroll them the normal way (an enrollment form invitation, or Quick Enrol). Think of the waitlist section as your inbox of interest, not your roster.

Tip: A website works best with somewhere to point people. Put the link in your Facebook page, your email signature, and your community-group posts. The site can’t attract families who never see the address.

Common questions

Is the website really free?

Yes. The builder, all four styles, the “Your colour” accent, and enquiries are available on the Free plan, which is free forever with unlimited children. Your site lives at an address on daycares.cubbybook.com, so there’s no domain to buy or renew.

Can I change my web address later?

No. The address is built from your daycare’s name and city when the site is created, and it can’t change afterwards. The builder warns you before you commit. That’s why adding your city to your profile and double-checking your daycare’s name is Step 1, not an afterthought.

Will half-finished changes show up to parents?

No. Saving keeps everything private. The builder tells you plainly: “You have saved changes that parents cannot see yet.” Only Publish changes updates the public site. The one exception works in your favor: opening hours and location follow your profile, so those stay current on the live site without a republish.

What happens when someone fills out the contact form?

They see “Thank you. The daycare will be in touch shortly.”, and the submission appears in Enquiries in your sidebar with an unread count. Turn on “Send me an email” with up to five addresses if you want enquiries pushed to your inbox too. Built-in spam protection (an invisible bot check, a trap field, and a rate limit) keeps junk out.

See what a finished site looks like on the daycare website feature page, or start free, no card needed. Free forever plan; 14-day Pro trial included.

Setting Up Your CubbyBook Daycare Website, Step by Step