Sleep help now comes in two shapes. One is a person: someone who takes a call, writes a plan, and checks in by text for a week or two, or in the fuller version comes to your house and sits through a bedtime. The other is online: a questionnaire, a plan, and some form of support you reach through a screen. The marketing on both sides is loud. Here is a quieter comparison.
What an in-home consultant does that a screen cannot
Watch. A consultant in your nursery sees things you cannot describe on a form: the light leaking around the blind, the way the feed drifts into a full sleep, the moment the pacifier goes back in for the ninth time. Some problems are obvious in the room and invisible in writing.
Coach live. When your baby is crying at the point where you would normally pick up, a calm person beside you saying “give it one more minute” is a different thing from a paragraph you read that afternoon. For families whose difficulty is following through, that presence is the product.
Cover a night. Overnight support, where the consultant handles the wakings while you sleep, is expensive and, for a parent at the very end of their reserves, occasionally exactly right.
What online does that a person cannot
Speed. The first available appointment with a good consultant is often a week or two away. A questionnaire can be done at 3am and the plan can be back before the morning nap. When the problem is this week, that matters.
Price. In the 2026 price guides a plan with a week or two of support runs $300–$600 and longer packages $500–$2,000; in-home and overnight support is higher still. Online services cost a fraction of that because there is no travel and no calendar.
Privacy and distance. Nobody comes to your house, nobody judges the laundry, and it does not matter that the nearest consultant is ninety minutes away or that you work nights.
Consistency. A written plan that both parents and the grandparents can read is often more useful than an hour of conversation one of you was too tired to remember.
What neither can do
Neither will make your baby sleep more in total (behavioural approaches add about nine minutes a night, pooled across trials), neither will stop the waking every baby does several times a night, and no method either of them uses has been shown to beat any other. What both can do, when done well, is get your baby settling faster and signalling less, and get you up less and less exhausted. Set the bar there and you will be pleased with a good service of either kind.
The families each one suits
Hire a person if: you know you follow through better with someone checking in; you want a bedtime watched or a night covered; you are managing twins or triplets with very different needs; you want to talk it through out loud; or your child has a medical condition that shapes sleep, in which case start with your pediatrician and choose a consultant who will work alongside them.
Go online if: you want a plan now rather than an appointment later; you would rather have something specific to follow than someone to call; the price of a consultant would be a real strain; you are far from anyone; or you simply prefer written guidance and a coach you can reach at 3am.
Neither, yet, if: your baby is under six months (foundations only: routine, light and dark, feeding sorted, safe sleep, your own rest); or your baby snores, pauses in breathing, is not gaining well, or has clusters of jerks on waking. Those are pediatrician questions first.
Six questions to ask either one
- Do you follow the AAP 2022 safe-sleep policy without exception?
- Do you offer sleep training under six months? (The right answer is no.)
- Will you ask about feeding and growth before proposing changes to night feeds?
- How do you choose a method: by my baby’s temperament and my tolerance for crying, or by your brand?
- What does support include, in messages, hours and days, and what does day fifteen cost?
- What is in the written plan, and can I see an example with the family’s details removed?
Where Lamplight sits
Lamplight is the online version done carefully: a ten-minute questionnaire that asks what a consultant’s intake asks, a plan written for your answers and delivered in minutes, and 90 days of a coach that has read it, for $129 once. There is no person in the room, which is the honest trade-off, and if you want one, use the six questions above and pay for the time. The full comparison →
A personalized sleep plan, in minutes
Answer a ten-minute questionnaire and get a written plan for your baby, your home and your limits — routine, naps, settling approach and a 14-night guide — for $79. An online alternative to a traditional infant sleep consultant.