Terms of Service

BookFreely is an online marketplace that connects customers with independent local service providers. Customers browse services, book appointments, and pay securely online; businesses manage bookings and receive payouts through Stripe Connect. BookFreely is not a service provider itself. All services are performed by the independent Businesses acting on their own behalf. BookFreely does not employ, supervise, direct, or control any Business or any individual providing services through the platform.

Each Business is an independent third party solely responsible for the services it offers, including its quality, timeliness, safety, workmanship, licensing, insurance, and compliance with applicable law. BookFreely disclaims any warranty regarding the accuracy of Business listings, availability, credentials, or the outcome of any booking.

BookFreely enforces the following age requirements. If we discover an account has been created in violation of these rules, we will suspend or terminate it and cancel any pending bookings.

• Under 13 — Not permitted to create any BookFreely account.
• Customers 13–17 — May use BookFreely only with the permission and supervision of a parent or legal guardian. A guardian’s full name and email must be on file at signup.
• Customers 18+ — May use BookFreely independently.
• Business owners 18+ — May independently create and operate a business account, including completing identity verification and receiving payouts.
• Business owners 13–17 — May operate a business account only under the supervision of a parent or legal guardian. The guardian’s full name and email must be on file, and the guardian is legally responsible for identity verification, tax reporting, payout account ownership, and compliance with these Terms.

By using BookFreely you confirm you meet these requirements. Date of birth is collected at signup (or on first sign-in for social-login accounts). Once set, only BookFreely support can update it — please contact bookfreely.support@gmail.com for corrections.

Customers agree to:

• Provide accurate booking information.
• Treat Businesses respectfully.
• Verify the identity of any provider arriving on-site before granting access or making payment.
• Resolve most service-quality issues directly with the Business.
• File good-faith reports through the platform when policies are violated.

Businesses agree to:

• Provide accurate profile and service information.
• Hold any licenses, permits, and insurance required by law.
• Complete Stripe Connect identity verification (KYC) — this is the sole identity verification BookFreely performs. KYC is required to receive payouts and to display the Verified badge. It is not required to publish services, appear in search, or accept bookings: a Business with an active subscription, in good standing, and with at least one published service is visible and bookable before KYC is complete. Until KYC is complete, the Business’s share of each payment is held by BookFreely as a pending transfer.
• Perform booked services professionally, safely, and on schedule.
• Respond to customer messages within a reasonable time.
• Comply with BookFreely’s Community Guidelines (Section 9).
• Accept BookFreely’s automated deposit routing and the 5% platform fee model.

BookFreely relies exclusively on Stripe Connect for Business identity verification. Government-issued IDs, business formation documents, tax information, and bank details are collected, verified, and held by Stripe under Stripe’s own terms and privacy policy. BookFreely does not collect, store, or manually review any government-issued ID or other KYC document separately from Stripe, and there is no separate BookFreely approval workflow.

What KYC does and does not control. A Business becomes active on BookFreely — visible in search and able to accept bookings — once its subscription is active, its account is in good standing, and it has at least one service that meets the publication requirements. Stripe KYC is not part of that gate. Stripe KYC controls two things: whether the Business can receive payouts, and whether the Verified badge is displayed on its listings and profile.

Not every listed Business is identity-verified. Only Businesses that Stripe has approved (Stripe reports both charges enabled and payouts enabled) display the Verified badge. The absence of the badge means Stripe has not yet approved that Business’s identity — it does not mean the Business is unable to take your booking. Customers should apply the same judgement they would with any independent local provider.

BookFreely uses Stripe Connect for all payments. Customer deposits are charged on the BookFreely platform account and routed to the Business’s connected Stripe account minus a 5% platform fee. Customers pay a processing fee on top of the service booked (currently a one-time 3.85% of the full service price, charged once at checkout, subject to change).

Payments before a Business completes Stripe KYC. Customer payments succeed normally. The charge is taken on the BookFreely platform account, BookFreely retains its 5% platform fee, and the Business’s exact share is recorded as held as a pending transfer. Once Stripe reports both charges enabled and payouts enabled for that connected account, the held amount is released to that Business’s connected account exactly once. The customer is never charged a second time when held funds are released, and the customer never needs to re-book or re-pay.

Refunds. A refund returns the customer’s money regardless of where the Business’s share currently sits. If the funds are still held as a pending transfer, the pending transfer is cancelled and nothing is ever sent to the Business. If the funds were already released to the Business’s connected account, the transfer is reversed, so the Business’s Stripe balance is reduced by their share and BookFreely gives up its 5% platform fee. In both cases the refunded amount comes back to the customer’s original payment method.

Business subscription fees are billed directly to Businesses through Stripe. Current pricing is $14.99/month (with a 7-day free trial available once per business, on the Monthly plan only) or $149.99 for the first year, renewing at $179.99/year thereafter. The Yearly plan is billed immediately at checkout and does not include a free trial. Business subscription fees are generally non-refundable, including for partial billing periods upon cancellation, downgrade, or account deletion, except in cases of billing errors or where required by applicable law. Refund requests may be reviewed at BookFreely’s sole discretion. Cancelling a subscription stops future renewals but does not entitle the Business to a pro-rated refund of the current billing period.

Saved cards and later charges. When you book, your card details are collected and stored by our payment provider (Stripe) — BookFreely never receives or stores your full card number. If a booking has a balance remaining after any deposit, you authorize BookFreely to save that card and charge the exact remaining amount shown to you at booking automatically 24 hours before the appointment. If you book 24 hours or less before the appointment, the full applicable amount is charged at checkout instead and no later charge is made. The amount cannot be increased without you approving a new amount, we do not charge cancelled or declined bookings, and a saved card is not reused for any other purpose without separate authorization. If a charge is declined or needs authentication we set the booking to “Payment required” and send you a secure link instead of retrying your card automatically.

To keep BookFreely safe and fair for everyone, users may not, directly or through others:

• Engage in fraud, scams, deceptive advertising, or any misrepresentation of identity, credentials, licensing, insurance, pricing, or availability.
• Impersonate any person, business, employee, or BookFreely staff, or falsely claim affiliation with any third party.
• Upload, transmit, or link to viruses, malware, spyware, worms, or any other malicious code or content that could harm the platform or its users.
• Circumvent, evade, or attempt to avoid BookFreely’s platform fees, deposit routing, subscription billing, or payment flows — including taking customers off-platform to avoid the 5% fee.
• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to accounts, servers, databases, APIs, or restricted areas of the platform; scrape, harvest, or crawl the platform except as expressly permitted.
• Interfere with, disrupt, or place unreasonable load on the platform, including denial-of-service attacks, spam, mass account creation, or bot traffic.
• Harass, threaten, discriminate against, stalk, or endanger any user, Business, provider, or BookFreely employee.
• Violate any applicable federal, state, local, or international law, including consumer protection, tax, employment, health & safety, licensing, and anti-money-laundering laws.
• Upload or share content you do not have the right to share, or that infringes intellectual property, privacy, or publicity rights.

Violation of this Section may result in immediate suspension or termination of the offending account, cancellation of pending bookings, forfeiture of platform benefits, and referral to law enforcement where appropriate.

Customers may report Businesses through the platform. Reports are automatically summarized and severity-scored by an AI moderation assistant to help human reviewers prioritize their queue. The AI moderation assistant never issues punitive action on its own. Every warning, strike, suspension, or permanent removal is reviewed and finalized by a member of the BookFreely team.

Strike ladder:

• Strike 1 — final warning.
• Strike 2 — temporary suspension.
• Strike 3 — permanent removal from BookFreely.

BookFreely may suspend, restrict, or terminate any account — customer or business — that violates these Terms or the Community Guidelines, engages in fraud, forges documents, threatens safety, abuses staff, or otherwise poses risk to the community. Such action may be taken with or without prior warnings, at BookFreely’s reasonable discretion, and subject to applicable law. Terminated Businesses may lose access to their listings, upcoming bookings, and subscription features.

Deposit refundability is set by each Business at the time of listing. BookFreely does not guarantee refunds outside the refund policy in effect at the time of booking. Chargebacks and disputes are handled through Stripe. Service-quality disagreements should first be resolved directly with the Business. Business subscription refund rules are addressed in Section 7.

You may terminate your BookFreely account at any time. Business accounts entering deletion begin a 30-day grace period during which they are hidden from discovery and their subscription is cancelled. Booking history, payments, and dispute records are retained for tax, legal, Stripe, and fraud-prevention purposes as required by law.

The BookFreely name, logo, brand, tagline (“Book It Freely.”), website, software, designs, graphics, copy, and all other platform content (collectively, the “BookFreely Materials”) are owned by BookFreely or its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, reverse-engineer, or create derivative works of the BookFreely Materials except as expressly permitted by us in writing.

User-generated content — including business listings, profile information, photos, videos, descriptions, reviews, messages, and any other content you upload or submit (collectively, “User Content”) — remains your property. By uploading or submitting User Content you grant BookFreely a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, store, reproduce, display, perform, adapt (for formatting), and distribute that content as reasonably necessary to operate, promote, and improve the platform, including in marketing materials and previews of the platform.

You represent and warrant that you own or have all necessary rights, licenses, consents, and permissions in your User Content, and that your User Content does not infringe or violate any third party’s intellectual property, privacy, publicity, or other rights. You are solely responsible for your User Content and agree to indemnify BookFreely against claims arising from it. We may remove User Content that we believe, in good faith, violates these Terms or applicable law.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, BookFreely (and its officers, directors, employees, and agents) shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, data, use, goodwill, or other intangible losses, resulting from (a) your use of, or inability to use, the platform, (b) the conduct or content of any Business or third party on the platform, including any personal injury, property damage, workmanship dispute, scheduling dispute, cancellation, or other issue arising from services provided by independent Businesses; or (c) unauthorized access to or use of our servers, except where such liability cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

BookFreely’s total cumulative liability arising out of or relating to these Terms will not exceed the greater of USD $100 or the total platform fees paid to BookFreely by you in the 12 months preceding the claim.

Neither BookFreely nor its users shall be liable for any delay or failure to perform obligations under these Terms to the extent that the delay or failure is caused by events beyond their reasonable control, including but not limited to: natural disasters (fires, floods, earthquakes, storms, pandemics), internet or telecommunications outages, cyberattacks or other security incidents, government or regulatory actions, embargoes, war, terrorism, civil unrest, labor disputes or strikes, and failures, disruptions, or delays of third-party service providers (including Stripe, our email provider, our AI moderation provider, or our hosting provider). Affected obligations are suspended for the duration of the event, and affected parties will use reasonable efforts to resume performance as soon as practicable.

Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the platform shall first be attempted to be resolved through good-faith negotiation. If unresolved, disputes shall be settled by binding arbitration on an individual basis under the rules of a mutually agreed arbitration provider, in the Business’s or Customer’s local jurisdiction where required by law. Class-action waivers apply to the extent permitted by law. Nothing in this Section prevents either party from seeking injunctive or equitable relief in a court of competent jurisdiction for intellectual property or confidentiality claims.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles, except where local mandatory law provides otherwise. Subject to Section 16 (Dispute resolution & arbitration), the parties consent to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in the State of Georgia for any matter not subject to arbitration.

We may update these Terms from time to time to reflect changes to the platform, our services, our legal obligations, or for other operational reasons. When we make material changes, we will update the “Last updated” and “Effective date” at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify users by email or through an on-platform notice before the changes take effect. Non-material changes (typo fixes, formatting, clarifications) may be made without notice. Your continued use of the platform after the effective date of the updated Terms constitutes acceptance of those changes. If you do not agree to the updated Terms, you must stop using BookFreely and may close your account.

Please see our Privacy Policy for details on how BookFreely collects and uses information.

Questions or notices under these Terms may be sent to bookfreely.support@gmail.com.