Our story
We built the progress portal we wished we had. Twice.
Carme is not a big software company and it is not an agency. It was started by two parents who went through surrogacy themselves, came out the other side with two children and one clear thought: this would have been so much easier if we could have seen where we were.
Who is behind this
A couple, not a corporation.
If you are deciding whether to trust a new platform with your families, the first thing you should know is who built it. So: we are a UK couple. Between us we have spent around thirty years building and running technology. And we became parents through surrogacy in Colombia — our son in 2024, our daughter in 2025.
We did not set out to build software for agencies. We set out to have a family. Carme is what happened when those two halves of our lives met.
How we got here
Two journeys, one agency, a lot of WhatsApp.
- 2022A year of research. The UK, Cyprus, the USA, Canada, Albania, Argentina — before we chose Colombia.
- Jan 2023First trip to Colombia. Our journey begins.
- Jan 2024Our son is born.
- Nov 2024A second pregnancy is confirmed — same agency, by choice.
- Jul 2025Back to Colombia, with our son, to welcome our daughter.
- 2025–26Carme: the portal we kept wishing for, built for the agencies who run these journeys.
We write about our journeys, and help other UK intended parents for free, at solsurrogacy.com
What it felt like from our side
The care was excellent. The picture was scattered.
Our agency and clinic looked after us well — well enough that we went back for our second child. But the story of where we were lived in a dozen places at once: WhatsApp threads, email attachments, a shared folder, a coordinator’s memory, and our own notes.
Every week brought the same questions. What happens next? Are we waiting on someone, or are they waiting on us? Did that document arrive? None of those questions needed a meeting. They needed one place to look.
When we compared notes with other couples — and we spoke to many — almost every one of them described the same thing. Nobody was unhappy with the people. Everybody wanted to see the journey.
“We did not need more updates. We needed to see where we were.”
Then we looked at what agencies had
Very few options, and none built for this.
We assumed the tool already existed and agencies simply were not using it. So we researched the market properly. What we found fell into two camps:
General-purpose tools
CRMs, project boards and spreadsheets — capable, but not designed for surrogacy. A two-year journey with a surrogate, a clinic, lawyers and a family in another country does not fit a sales pipeline.
Legacy specialist platforms
Built for the sector, but heavyweight and expensive: long implementations, sales calls before you see anything, licence fees before you have a single client on it — and little an agency can set up for itself.
So we built Carme around three decisions
Built so the agency takes no gamble.
Each of these came straight from what we saw agencies — and parents — struggling with.
Minutes
Your own workspace, set up by you
No sales call, no implementation project. Sign up and your agency’s own workspace exists minutes later, with your name on it. It opens in Simple Mode, with just the essentials, so your team is hands-on fast; switch to Full Mode in Settings whenever you want the rest. Same price either way.
Hours
Configured in an afternoon
Your stages, your branding, your team, your languages. A couple of hours of set-up, done by you, not a consultant.
Free
You pay only when families are on a journey
Nothing for the workspace, nothing for your staff, nothing for enquiries. Charging starts when your first intended parents begin an active journey — US$45 per active journey a month, with a US$150 monthly minimum that covers your first three. You never pay for software before you have paying clients on it.
How we work
Obsessive about the details you never notice.
Thirty years in technology teaches you that most software fails not because it lacks features, but because it is hard to use on a busy Tuesday. We would rather do one thing properly than ten things nearly.
And because we have been the parents waiting for news, we build every screen with both sides in mind: the coordinator with forty things to do, and the family on the other side of the world refreshing their phone.
Ease of use
If a coordinator needs training to find it, it is in the wrong place.
Simplicity
Every optional module can be switched off. You see what you use, nothing else.
Effectiveness
Judged by one thing: fewer “where are we?” messages and faster journeys.
What we are not
Plainly, so there is no confusion.
- We are not an agency, and we do not compete with you. We never contact your families for our own purposes. The portals and every email carry your name, logo and colours, with a small “Powered by Carme” line at the foot of each email.
- We do not hold or move money. Payments are tracked against milestones; they are never processed by us.
- We do not give legal or medical advice. The steps in your journey are yours to define.
- We are a young company. We tell you exactly what we do and do not have yet on our security page.
In one line: we have been the family refreshing the phone, and we built the thing that would have let us stop.
Kyle and family
Founders of Carme · parents through surrogacy, twice · hello@carmesrm.com
Start where we wish our agency could have.
Your workspace is free, and stays free until your first family begins a journey. Or talk to us first — you will be talking to the people who built it.