CareZone alternative
A CareZone alternative your family owns.
CareZone closed. If you kept your parent’s medication list and care notes there, you already learned the hard lesson about who holds the record. Here is what happened, what to look for in whatever you use next, and where Kinbase fits.
What happened to CareZone
CareZone was a free app that a lot of families used to keep a parent’s medication list, health records, and shared care notes in one place. Walmart acquired it. Over the next few years the consumer app was wound down. The Wellness app it became was retired in 2023, and accounts that had not been migrated were deactivated. Walmart Health closed in 2024.
When the app closed, the records inside it closed with it. Families who had built up a medication list and a folder of documents found there was no simple way to get them back. Years later, people are still looking for somewhere to put what they lost.
The lesson families took from it
There is one lesson worth carrying out of this, and it has little to do with CareZone in particular. When an app owns the record, and the app shuts down, the record goes with it. It does not matter how careful you were or how much you trusted the company. The medication list you spent an evening entering, the notes about what settles your mother at night, the scanned documents: all of it lives or dies with someone else’s business decision.
This is the part of Kinbase we built on purpose. The record belongs to your family, not to us. You can export everything, always, in one click, as readable files and a printable book. You do not have to ask us, and there is no waiting.
And if Kinbase itself ever wound down, the record does not vanish. Archive mode keeps it free and readable, held for as long as your family wants it. We would rather you never need that promise. It is here anyway, because the last app taught everyone why it matters.
What to look for in any replacement
Whatever you choose next, five questions are worth asking first. They apply to any app that holds your parent’s care record, not only this one.
Can you export everything?
Look for a one-click export of the full record in a format you can read and print today, not a promise to email you a file someday.
Who owns the data?
Read the plain answer to one question. If you stop paying, or the company is sold, does the record stay yours? The answer should not need a lawyer.
What happens at shutdown?
Ask what becomes of your record if the app closes. CareZone is the reason this question is now fair to ask of anything you sign up for.
Does it share with the family?
A care record is only useful when your brother, the Tuesday caregiver, and you are looking at the same thing. Check how sharing works and who controls it.
Can a caregiver use it without training?
The person doing the hands-on care will not sit through a tutorial. If logging a visit takes more than a minute, it will not happen.
What Kinbase is, and what it is not
It helps to be plain about what Kinbase is. It is your family’s care record. You log what happened by voice in about thirty seconds. It keeps a handbook the next caregiver reads before her first shift, an emergency sheet the ER can open from one link, and a shared circle so everyone who helps sees the same record.
Kinbase keeps the record first: what happened, what changed, and what the next person needs to know. Reminder times per medication are there when the family wants them, so the phones that opt in get a nudge at each set time of day. Each medication can also carry the doses on hand, and the circle’s phones get a quiet heads-up about a week before it runs out. It is not a health portal, and it does not connect to your parent’s hospital or pull lab results. What it holds is the medication list and the care record, current and ready when someone needs them.
That record earns its keep when caregivers come and go. The habits a caregiver learns stay in the handbook even after she leaves, which is the whole point of writing it down before the last shift.
Moving on after CareZone
If you are rebuilding, start with the medication list. It is the highest-value twenty minutes you will spend. Names, doses, what each one is for, and which ones are blood thinners. That single list is what the ER asks for first, and it is what you will reach for at every appointment.
Once the med list exists, the emergency sheet exists too. Kinbase compiles it from the record the same day, so there is something to hand a paramedic before you have finished setting everything else up. The rest of the record fills in over time, one logged visit at a time. You do not have to reconstruct years of history in a weekend. Write down what is true today, and keep it current from here. If you are watching for changes, a dated record is what tells you later whether something is new.
Common questions
Is CareZone still available?
No. The consumer app was wound down after Walmart acquired it. The Wellness app it became was retired in 2023, and Walmart Health closed in 2024.
Can I get my CareZone data back?
Probably not. Accounts that were not migrated were deactivated when the app retired, and there is no active service left to export from. If you kept old printouts or emailed records, gather those before you start fresh.
Is Kinbase free?
Free for families to start. There is a paid plan in the app with a longer history and extra features once your record grows into it, and some families get Kinbase through their home care agency at no cost. See pricing.
Does Kinbase do medication reminders?
Yes, optionally. Each medication can remind the phones that opt in at set times of day, and each one can also carry the doses on hand, so the circle gets a quiet heads-up about a week before it runs out. The list itself stays the record: current, printable, and ready when the ER or a new doctor asks.
Start your family’s record.
Name the book, invite the people who help, and the record starts keeping itself. Most families are set up inside ten minutes.
Free for families to start. Everyone you invite joins from a link or by scanning a code, and nobody has to install anything to read or write.