Somebody has to go first. Here is exactly what happens when they do.
Seven stages, from first look to money released. What each one costs, whose turn it is, and where we stop.
Two sides, one deal. They meet at the offer.
Buying and selling run on separate tracks for the first four stages. From the offer onwards it is a single process, on a checklist both sides can read before either of them commits to anything.
Filter, sort and put two listings side by side. No account needed.
Every figure says whether the owner typed it, we calculated it, or we measured it.
Exact figures, who the owner is, every link, and the ability to message them.
No cap on the conversation. The offer is structured and written onto the record.
No listing fee, no monthly fee. Five at once free, no cap on Premium.
Every submission is read before it appears anywhere. Four possible answers.
Replying is free and always has been. Owners never spend an unlock.
How quickly you answer is on your record, where buyers can see it.
One upfront amount. What is in, what is out, and how long the owner stays reachable.
Domain, repository, hosting, billing, customers, accounts. Both sides on the same list.
Escrow.com releases the money when the buyer accepts. We never hold it.
The first four stages, from your side.
Pick the side you are on. The two tracks are different until the offer, and then they are not.
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01
Browse, filter, compare
Everything on the platform is browsable without an account. Filter out anything with no price or no declared revenue, sort on the figure you actually care about, and put two listings side by side on the same fields and the same units.
Most listings are ruled out here, which is the point. A comparison is cheaper than a conversation.
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02
Read what is declared, and what is not
Every number on a record is marked with where it came from. Declared means the owner typed it in and nobody has checked it. Derived means we calculated it from declared figures. Platform means we measured it ourselves, and it is the only category we stand behind.
Revenue, costs, customers and traffic are declared unless the listing says otherwise, and we do not independently verify them. The exception is Revenue Verified: when an owner connects their Stripe account, we read monthly recurring revenue and active customers from it ourselves, and the listing says so rather than leaving it to a footnote.
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03
Unlock the listing
One unlock opens the exact figures, who the owner is, every link to the product, unlimited messages in that conversation, the offer form, and the way into the owner's data room. It stays open permanently, so nothing expires mid-negotiation.
Message the owner within 72 hours of unlocking. If they don't reply within 72 hours of your message, the unlock comes back to you, and the listing you opened stays open either way. You are paying to reach a real person, not to read a page.
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04
Ask everything, then make an offer
Ask for the things we cannot check: a screen share of the payment dashboard rather than a screenshot, read access to the repository, twelve months of analytics rather than one good month, the date of the last commit. An owner who will not show you any of it has told you something useful.
The offer itself is a structured question and answer on the record, not an open-ended thread. The owner sees a number and a set of terms.
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01
List your project
A guided form, one question at a time: what it is, what it earns, what it costs to run, what transfers with it. No listing fee and no monthly fee. A free account can have five listings at once; Premium lifts the cap.
If your revenue runs through Stripe, connect it, read-only. We read your monthly recurring revenue and customers from Stripe, and buyers see figures an outside source confirmed instead of figures you typed in.
The lowest price a listing can carry is $1,000, which is also the lowest price a sale can complete at.
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02
Pass the screen
Every submission is reviewed before it appears anywhere. It is a screen for spam, fabrication and missing information – figures that do not reconcile with the asking price, templates presented as finished products, copy-paste descriptions, required fields in the wrong units.
It comes back one of four ways: published, rejected, returned with the specific fields that need more information, or sent to a person. Anything ambiguous goes to a person.
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03
Answer the people who reach you
Replying is free, it has no limit, and owners never spend an unlock. A buyer has already paid, in attention or in money, to get as far as your inbox – which is why a message here is worth answering.
Once a listing is live you can verify your identity through Stripe: a government ID and a selfie, on Stripe's own page. Buyers then see Identity Verified on your profile and in the seller details on every listing.
Optional: Promoted placement puts your listing at the top of the shelf for 30 days with a Promoted badge. One payment, and it does not change your fee.
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04
Accept, counter, or decline
Offers arrive as a number and a set of terms, on the record, with a clock on them. Countering restarts the clock.
How quickly you answer is part of your record, and buyers can see it before they write to you. The cheapest advantage available to a seller here is replying.
From the offer on, it is one process.
The same three stages whichever side you came in on. Most small deals fail here, improvised in a message thread where nobody knows whose turn it is.
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05
Agree terms
One upfront amount, in US dollars. What is included, what is not, and how long the owner will stay reachable for questions – a fortnight to ninety days. Six questions are settled here that are cheap to answer now and expensive to discover later, starting with whether the payment processor can be transferred at all.
A sales agreement is generated, and Escrow.com identity-checks both parties before any money moves.
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06
Work the checklist
Domain and DNS, code and repository, hosting, billing and payments, customers and data, accounts and brand. Both sides watch the same list, the owner leads each item, and anything that does not apply is marked as such rather than quietly skipped.
You can read the whole list before you make or accept an offer. That is the point of publishing it.
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07
Inspect, close, get paid
The buyer has a 48-hour inspection period to accept or reject before funds are released. A rejection opens Escrow.com's return and refund process with the money still held. On acceptance, funds are disbursed and the record is marked transferred.
Your money sits with Escrow.com for the whole transaction. It never passes through Indiemaker, and we cannot release it, hold it back, or touch it at any point.
We are not a party to your sale and we do not arbitrate. What we are is the neutral place the history sits – the listing as published, every edit to it, the full thread, every offer, and the terms you agreed. Either side can ask us for that record at any time. What we keep, and why it matters.
Two things ever cost money.
Reaching more than five owners in a month, and completing a sale. Everything else on this list is free and stays free.
| What | Cost | Who pays, and when |
|---|---|---|
| Browsing, filtering, comparing | Free | Nobody. No account needed. |
| Listing a project | Free | Nobody. No listing fee, no monthly fee. Five listings at once on a free account, no cap on Premium. |
| Replying to a buyer | Free | Nobody. Owners never spend an unlock or hit a message limit. |
| Unlocking a listing | Five a month free, then $25 | Buyer. Given back if the owner doesn't reply inside 72 hours of the buyer's message. |
| Promoted placement | $99 | Owner, optional. 30 days. Not refundable once it starts, and it does not change the fee. |
| Escrow.com fee | At cost | Buyer, at funding. It does not come to us. |
| Indiemaker success fee | 8/7/6% | Owner, on a completed transfer. 8% under $10,000, 7% from $10,000, 6% from $100,000. Taken from the proceeds, never added to what the buyer pays. |
| Success fee on Premium | 6/5/4% | Owner, on Premium. Same bands and terms, two points lower at each one, fixed when the offer is accepted. |
| Minimum listing price | $1,000 | Also the lowest price a sale can complete at. |
Every platform in this market implies more verification than it performs.
Here is exactly where the line sits on ours, in short. The full version, including why the check stops where it does, is on the trust page.
What we do
- Review every listing before it is visible
- Screen for fabrication, scam structures and copy-paste
- Check figures reconcile with the asking price
- Mark every number with where it came from
- Read revenue from Stripe when the owner connects it
- Offer every owner an identity check run by Stripe
- Hold a dated, uneditable record of the whole deal
- Remove a listing, and an owner, when a figure turns out to be false
What we do not
- Confirm revenue the owner typed in, or that any figure is still current
- Confirm the costs are complete
- Confirm customer, traffic or install figures
- Confirm the owner legally owns what they are selling
- Hold, release or touch your money at any point
- Arbitrate, or act as a party to your sale
Verifying the numbers is the buyer's job. The whole platform is built to make that job as cheap as we can – which is a different promise from making it unnecessary. Read the long version.
Four questions people ask before they commit to anything.
Do you verify the revenue?
Only when the owner connects Stripe. Then we read monthly recurring revenue and active customers from their Stripe account, read-only, and the listing says the figures were read from Stripe. That covers subscription revenue on that one account, as of the last time we read it: not other payment processors, not one-off sales, and not costs.
Everything else is declared. We offer the connection rather than require it, because it means an owner granting a third party access to their financial accounts before they have agreed a sale, and most owners of a $3,000 side project will not do that. A screen we can run on every submission is worth more than a stronger one we would have to skip most of the time.
What if the owner never replies?
If you messaged them, the unlock comes back to you 72 hours after your message, and the listing you opened stays open. Reply history sits on every record, so an owner who has never answered an offer is something you can see before you write one.
Who holds the money?
Escrow.com, for the whole transaction. It never passes through Indiemaker. If a deal falls apart, the funds are with Escrow.com under their terms and their protections, not ours.
What if a checklist item cannot be completed?
An app-store account that turns out to be non-transferable, or a service tied to a company rather than a person. Agree at stage 05 whether that reduces the price, delays the close, or ends the deal – rather than negotiating it while the money is already in escrow.
Nothing here costs anything until an owner answers you.
Browse the whole platform without an account, or put a project up and see what it is worth to somebody else.