u/elinordottaylor

I’m the founder of Sizoro, a South African marketplace that helps households find and book domestic workers and gardeners.

There are already other platforms in this space, so the obvious question is: why did we think South Africa needed another one?

The idea partly came from my own frustration with apps such as SweepSouth. I didn’t simply want someone assigned to a booking. I wanted to browse individual workers, see what they charged, check when they were available, choose the person I preferred and easily request the same person again if the first job went well.

There were ways to express a preference, but choosing a particular person and understanding their availability still felt harder than it needed to be.

When we started speaking to domestic workers and gardeners, we realised that they had frustrations of their own. Many wanted greater control over their work: what they charge, when they are available, where they are willing to work and which jobs they accept.

We therefore built Sizoro around two fairly simple ideas:

• Households should be able to compare and choose workers before booking.
• Workers should have more control over how they offer their services.

On Sizoro, workers create their own profiles, list the services they offer, set their rates and choose their availability. Households can then compare profiles, rates, services, reviews and availability before deciding whom they would like to request.

When you find someone you work well with, you can save their profile and request them again when they are available. We want the relationship to be between the household and the worker—not for both sides to feel interchangeable every time a booking is made.

We’re still early, and I want to be honest about that. Availability will vary depending on your area, and we are still working to bring more households and workers onto the platform. Creating a profile also does not automatically guarantee that a worker will receive jobs.

That is partly why I’m sharing Sizoro here. We would genuinely appreciate feedback from South Africans on both sides of the marketplace.

For households: what would you need to see before trying a new platform for finding home help?

For domestic workers and gardeners: does having control over your rate and availability solve a meaningful problem, or are there more important things we should be focusing on?

You can explore Sizoro here:

For households looking for a domestic worker or gardener:
https://sizoro.com/for-employers

For domestic workers and gardeners who want to list their services:
https://sizoro.com/for-workers

I’m also happy to answer questions openly—including questions about pricing, worker fees, payments, verification, cancellations or how Sizoro differs from the platforms already available.