What we check, what we don't, and what you can check yourself.
Every platform in this market implies more verification than it performs. Here is exactly where the line sits on ours.
Revenue, costs, customer numbers and traffic are declared by the owner. Indiemaker does not check them itself.
We review every listing before it appears, and we do not audit a business. Anything marked verified was confirmed by an outside source, and only the fact it names: Identity Verified via Stripe Identity, Domain Verified via DNS, Verified by Escrow at Escrow.com, and, where a seller connects Stripe, Revenue Verified via Stripe. Revenue Verified covers subscription revenue through that account only, not costs, profit or other processors. Nothing else here is an assurance that a figure is accurate. Checking the rest is your job, and the sections below are about making that job as cheap as we can.
Every listing is reviewed before it appears.
Our system checks every submission before it is published, and a person reviews any listing it is not sure about. That is what Reviewed means on Indiemaker. It is a screen for spam, fabrication and missing information. It is not a financial audit, and a listing does not carry a badge for having passed it: everything on the platform has.
What it screens for
- Figures that do not add up against each other or the asking price
- Templates and starter kits presented as finished products
- Descriptions copied from elsewhere
- Required information missing or in the wrong units
- Projects a buyer cannot try: a direct download, or a repository alone for a project nobody uses yet
What it does not confirm
- That the declared revenue is real, or current
- That the declared costs are complete
- That the customer count, traffic or install figures are accurate
- That the owner legally owns what they are selling
- That the code is any good, or that it is theirs
- That the business will still be earning after you buy it
Why the check stops where it does. Confirming revenue properly means reading a payment processor's records, which means an owner granting a third party access to their financial accounts before they have agreed a sale. An owner whose revenue runs through Stripe can do that here, read-only, and the listing then carries Revenue Verified. Most owners of a $3,000 side project will not, and making it a condition would empty the market rather than improve it. So it is offered, not required. A screen we can run on every submission is worth more than a stronger one we would have to skip most of the time.
Verified means an outside source confirmed it, not us.
Four things on Indiemaker are called verified, and each one confirms exactly one thing. Each is named after what was checked, with the company that checked it beside it. None of them is a judgement about whether an asset is worth buying.
| Verified | Who confirms it | What it confirms | What it does not |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue Verified via Stripe |
Stripe. The owner connects their Stripe account read-only, and we read the figures from it. | Monthly recurring subscription revenue and the number of customers on that Stripe account, as of the last time we read it. The listing says the figures were read from Stripe. | Revenue through any other processor, one-off sales, costs, profit, or how the figure has moved over time. |
| Identity Verified via Stripe Identity |
Stripe Identity. The owner photographs a government ID and takes a matching selfie on Stripe's own page. We never see the document. | That the person behind the listing is real and is who they say they are. It shows on their profile and in the seller details on every listing. | That they own what they are selling, or anything about the business. |
| Domain Verified via DNS |
The domain registry. The owner adds a record to the domain's DNS, and we check it is there. | That the owner controls the domain being offered. | Anything about a business running on it, or its traffic or history. |
| Verified by Escrow at Escrow.com |
Escrow.com, when a deal reaches terms. | The identity of both buyer and owner, before any money moves. | Anything about the asset. Escrow.com holds the money; it does not inspect the business. |
Every number on a record says where it came from.
Three sources, marked on the field itself. If you remember one thing from this page, make it the difference between the first row and the third.
| Marked | Means |
|---|---|
| Declared | The owner typed it in. Nobody has checked it. |
| Derived | We calculated it from declared figures. It is only as good as they are. |
| Platform | We measured it ourselves. This is the only category we stand behind. |
A multiple marked Derived is arithmetic on two Declared numbers. It looks like the most authoritative figure on a listing and it is the one furthest from anything we have confirmed.
Revenue and customers read from Stripe are the exception to all three rows: we did not measure them and the owner did not type them. The listing says where they came from.
A declared revenue figure also carries how it is evidenced. When an owner lists, we ask what backs the figure - a connection to their Stripe account, a payment-processor screenshot, a profit and loss summary, a traffic report, or their word alone - and we ask for the file. We use it in the review. It is not published: the listing shows the method, and you can filter on whether evidence was supplied. A figure backed by the owner's word and nothing else is telling you something, and it is the first thing to look at.
Work out whether it is worth your time first.
Most small deals die in the messages, a fortnight in. Everything you need to rule a listing out sits on the listing.
Filter on declared numbers
Strip out anything with no price or no revenue in two clicks. What has not been declared is excluded rather than assumed.
Sort on what matters to you
Asking price, monthly revenue, multiple, owner hours per week, time on the platform.
Put two side by side
Same fields, same units. A $9K tool and a $48K one become an actual comparison rather than two adverts.
Check the owner answers
Reply history is on the record. An owner who has never responded to an offer is worth knowing about before you write one.
Then, once you are actually interested, ask for the things we cannot check. A screen share of the payment processor dashboard rather than a screenshot, even when the revenue was read from Stripe, because that is one month on one account. Read access to the repository. Analytics for the last twelve months rather than the last good month. The date of the most recent commit. Whether the payment processor can be transferred at all. An owner who will not show you any of that has told you something useful.
Every offer, message and number, held by somebody who is not either of you.
Deals between strangers go wrong in the retelling more often than in the fraud, and the side with the better memory usually wins.
Do the deal in direct messages and it is your word against theirs. Do it here and there is a third party holding an unedited account of what was said, offered and declared, with dates on all of it.
We are not a party to your sale and we do not arbitrate. What we are is a neutral place where the history sits, complete, and where neither side can quietly revise it.
| What is kept | Why it matters when something goes wrong |
|---|---|
| The listing as published | What was actually declared, and on what date. Not what either of you remembers being declared, and not a version edited after the fact. |
| Every change to that listing | Held and dated, so an edit made after an offer was on the table can be established later. It is part of the record you can request, not something displayed on the listing. |
| The full message thread | Every question and answer, in order, with timestamps. Screenshots prove nothing because they can be edited. A platform record cannot be, by either of you. |
| Every offer and counter-offer | What was proposed, what was accepted, and when. The most common dispute in small deals is about what was agreed rather than what was paid. |
| The agreed terms | What was included and excluded, and any period the owner agreed to stay reachable. Written before money moved, not reconstructed afterwards. |
| The transfer checklist | Which items were completed, by whom, and when. If a handover stalls, this shows exactly where and who it is waiting on. |
Either of you can ask us for the record at any time, and we will provide it. Both sides get the same account, because a record only one party can obtain is not neutral. It costs nothing to have, except doing the deal in the open rather than in a private thread.
This is also the practical answer to the thing everybody worries about first. Unless the owner has connected Stripe, we cannot verify their revenue before you buy. Either way, we can make sure that what they told you about it is written down, dated, and impossible for either of you to change afterwards.
What we will do, and what we cannot.
You think a listing is misleading
Report it, with the Report this listing form on the listing page or the support button. If a declared figure turns out to be false, we may take the listing down and restrict the owner's account. We cannot tell you the outcome of a report about somebody else's listing. A listing whose site has stopped working is taken down too.
A deal falls apart mid-transfer
The money is with Escrow.com and is governed by their terms, not ours. Indiemaker holds no funds and cannot release or withhold them. We can help reconstruct what was agreed, because the offer and terms are on the record.
The business is not what was described
There is a 48-hour inspection period after the handover, run by Escrow.com, and that is the point at which a buyer accepts or rejects. A rejection opens their return and refund process with the funds still held rather than paid out. That protection is theirs, not ours.
Once funds are disbursed it is a dispute between the two of you. We are not a party to the sale, we do not arbitrate, and we cannot reverse a transfer. What we can do is remove a listing, remove an owner, and hand you the complete record: the listing as published, every edit to it, the full thread, every offer, and the terms you agreed.
Something about your own data
Owner and buyer details are never published. Market statistics on this site are anonymised and aggregated, so they describe the market as a whole and are never a route back to an individual person or asset. Full detail is in the privacy policy.
Then the handover itself.
This page is what we stand behind before a listing reaches you. The other half is what happens once you and an owner agree, which is run as a checklist you can read in advance.