No Lock-In Contracts: Alpaka Is Free While You're Stuck

We spent this week on a stand at the Care Show at the NEC in Birmingham. We've been exhibiting at that show since 2019, and every year we hear the same sentence: "We're locked into [product] and we hate it."

This year we heard it more than ever. So we've done something about it.

If you're tied into a contract for workforce software that isn't working for you, you can run Alpaka free until you're out. We won't bill you for Alpaka while you're still being billed for the system you're trying to leave. If you can get out early, great. If you can't, starting now costs you nothing.

Why So Many Care Providers Are Locked Into Software Contracts

Social care has gone digital fast. The government reports that four in five CQC-registered providers now use digital social care records, up from 40% before the push. Its own technology survey found digital records and digital rostering are the most common business systems providers use.

Fast adoption, backed by funding with deadlines attached, means a lot of buying decisions made at once and a lot of contracts signed at once. The NIHR's 2026 rapid evaluation of digital social care records found that funding and policy attention drove adoption, but also found evidence of providers choosing systems poorly, and no evidence of providers measuring whether they got a return on the investment. The LSE Care Policy & Evaluation Centre flagged long-term affordability as a particular worry for small independent providers.

Essentially, much of the sector bought quickly, didn't measure whether it worked, and signed terms that outlast its patience. Annual minimum terms are standard in this market, even on promotional offers. Public-sector tenders for care rostering run on initial terms of two to five years, with extensions on top.

What Lock-In Actually Costs

The contract is only the visible part. Around it you usually find:

• A setup fee, paid before anything works.
• Clocking hardware bought from the vendor, which only works with that vendor.
• Training days before a manager can publish a rota.
• Weeks of data entry and staff organising before the first useful report.

By the time you find out whether the product suits you, you've paid for it several ways over, and the contract makes sure you keep paying.

That's the part worth understanding. When value only arrives after a long, expensive setup, the vendor needs the contract, because without it plenty of customers would leave before they ever got there. Lock-in isn't a pricing quirk. It's what a slow product needs to survive.

How Alpaka Starts

We built Alpaka the other way round. Nothing is asked of you up front:

• No setup fee.
• No hardware sale. Alpaka clocking runs on any Android phone mounted at the entrance. If you haven't got a spare, a budget Android on pay-as-you-go costs about £80, from whoever you like.
• No training cost.
• No data needed to start. Alpaka Presence recognises faces first and lets you attach names later. You don't load your staff, build a rota or organise anyone into teams before it does something useful.

That's zero financial commitment and zero technical commitment. Put a phone by the door on Monday and by Friday you have a week of attendance records you didn't have before.

Switching Rota Software Without a Migration

This is why the free-while-locked-in offer works in practice and not just on paper.

Because Alpaka doesn't need your data to start, it doesn't need to replace anything to start either. Run it next to the system you're contracted to. Let staff clock on both. Compare what each one tells you at the end of the month.

When your contract ends you aren't facing a migration project. You're switching off the one you didn't like.

Month to Month, Permanently

The offer is new but the commitment behind it isn't. Alpaka has never had lock-in contracts and still doesn't. Every customer is month to month, from £2 per person per month, with facial recognition clocking included on every plan.

That isn't generosity. It keeps us honest. A customer who can leave next month has to be earned again next month, and that decides what we build. Alpaka is bootstrapped and family-run, with no investors pushing us to trade your freedom for predictable revenue. The product has to earn the renewal, every month.

If Alpaka stops being worth it, leave. We'd rather lose you cleanly than keep you against your will. You already know what the alternative feels like.

Before You Leave Your Current Supplier

Worth checking in your existing contract now (this is practical advice, not legal advice):

• Notice period, and the exact date notice must be served by.
• Auto-renewal. Some contracts roll over for a full term, not a month, if you miss the window.
• Data export. What you can take out, in what format, and whether you'll be charged for it.
• Hardware. Whether terminals are owned, leased, or have to be returned.

Put the notice date in your diary today. Then start Alpaka.

The Offer

Who

Care providers currently contracted to another workforce management or rostering system.

What

Use Alpaka free for as long as you're still being billed by your current supplier.

After that

Standard month-to-month pricing, from £2 per person per month. No setup fee, no hardware sale, no lock-in.

How

Sign up and tell us who you're contracted to and when it ends, or book a demo and we'll set it up with you.

Contract Switching FAQ

Sources

• Digital revolution in care saves millions of admin hours - DHSC
• Findings from the 2025 adult social care provider technology survey - DHSC, March 2026
• A rapid evaluation of the implementation of Digital Social Care Records (PDF) - NIHR Health and Social Care Delivery Research, May 2026
• Recommendations for implementing digital social care records (PDF) - LSE CPEC, June 2026