What you can expect from Makerstead, and what we expect from you.

Makerstead is an after-sale connection platform for the sixteen maker and trade trades. A subscription opens the bench, publishes a care-page URL for each record, gates the QR handoff between maker and owner, and seeds the founders directory — four named offers, all running on the same subscription:

• Care-record service— published records with summary, photo, spec grid, history, and care text.
• QR handoff— a per-record QR that opens a direct line from owner to bench. When an owner sends a note through that path, Makerstead stores the inquiry on the record and emails a notification to the business; the business replies through its normal customer channels. Makerstead does not host a reply inbox.
• Public care pages— owner-facing URLs that stay live while the subscription is active and through the 90-day publish-grace window after cancellation.
• Public care-page visibility — each record resolves at /p/[slug] under a visibility tier chosen by the maker: public(the default — anyone with the link can read), customer_only (a logged-in owner who scanned the QR can read), or business_only(only the maker's staff, behind login, can read — useful for internal bench records that should not appear at all on the public site). The full by-row ownership of those views is on the data ownership page.
• Founders wall— a member directory of name, business, trade kind, and link; no ranking, no promoted placement, no commission.

Makerstead is not a marketplace, not an advertising surface, and takes no commission on any handoff. If something you want to do on the platform would require those, it isn't a feature we provide.

By opening an account you confirm that the registration information you supply is accurate, that you are at least 18 years old (or the age of legal majority in your jurisdiction), and that you have the authority to bind the business or trade you operate to these terms.

You agree to keep your credentials private, not to share them across seats or with anyone outside your business, not to impersonate another maker, business, or Makerstead staff, and to use the service only for lawful trade. You also agree not to circumvent the subscription gates — shared logins, expired-trial tricks, or any pattern aimed at paying for one seat and using many. These are binding obligations, not just friendly guidance; the acceptable-use policy spells out what enforcement looks like when they are broken.

One sign-up creates one User. The owner of a maker business can invite additional people onto the same business through Invitation rows; an accepted invitation becomes a Membership scoped to that business with one of four roles: owner, office, technician, or readonly. Every staff action on the bench is captured in an ActivityEvent log, so the audit trail of who did what at which role over time stays intact even after a member is removed.

Makerstead is sold as four monthly subscription tiers: Founding Member, Solo, Growing, and Professional. The Founding Member tier is a separate product, held at a discount against the standard rate and capped at one seat per business and limited to the first 100 sign-ups; the Solo, Growing, and Professional tiers are the published standard rate for each. Current pricing is on the pricing page.

All recurring billing is processed by Stripe on its hosted checkout, billed in advance each month. By keeping a subscription open you authorise Makerstead to charge the payment method on file monthly until you cancel. You can cancel from the Stripe dashboard at any time; access continues through the end of the current billing period, the published care pages stay live for a further 90-day grace window so existing QR scans still resolve, and the export action stays open for that whole window.

Subscription fees are non-refundable on a pro-rata basis. The full refund mechanics — including how the 90-day publish-grace window interacts with any refund request — are on the refunds page. No Founding Member rate-lock survives a lapse; reactivation after a lapse — whether inside or outside the 90-day grace window — re-bills at the standing standard rate for your tier.

Payments for Makerstead subscriptions are processed by Stripe through Stripe's hosted checkout surface. Makerstead never stores, transmits, or has access to your card details; the stripe-billing module talks to Stripe through a server proxy so the Stripe SDK never ships in our code.

Recurring billing is governed by Stripe's own terms and the subscription configuration you set up at checkout, including the cancellation mechanics described in the previous section. Refunds are governed by the rules on the refunds page. By completing checkout you confirm that you have read and agree to Stripe's terms of service and privacy policy as a third-party processor, and that Makerstead is not a party to that relationship beyond routing the charge.

Makerstead retains all rights, title, and interest in its own intellectual property: the Makerstead name, trademarks, logos, the platform software and its source code, the design system, the templates and starter content we ship, and the founders-wall brand and curation.

While your subscription is active, Makerstead grants you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the platform as it is provided — no sublicensing, no resale, no right to scrape or republish the platform itself. The licence ends when the subscription ends.

The data you put on Makerstead splits cleanly by row type, and the full by-row breakdown lives on the data ownership page. The desktop rule in plain language: business data (your profile, your published care pages, your service logs, your photos) is yours, and you take it with you when you go; customer data is owned by the participating business in the sense that the business controls the customer relationship and may use customer-submitted information to provide requested services, subject to applicable privacy laws — and Makerstead processes and stores that information on the business's behalf; platform bookkeeping(billing state, login events, abuse signals) is Makerstead's. Makerstead's role on every one of those rows is processor only — we hold them as written, route them where they need to go, and never resell, sublicense, or train a model on them.

Using Makerstead is your binding acceptance of the acceptable-use policy. The AUP is the operational companion to these terms: it names what the platform is for, what isn't welcome on it, and how Makerstead responds when a violation is found. A breach of the AUP is also a breach of these Terms, and the enforcement actions listed in the AUP apply as if they were written here.

Makerstead is provided “as is” and “as available.” We do not guarantee uninterrupted access, a specific uptime level, or that the platform will be free of defects or security incidents. We do not warrant that Makerstead will meet your particular requirements or be fit for any specific commercial purpose beyond the use case described in the Service description above.

We may suspend or restrict access to the service — in whole or for a specific record, page, or account — for scheduled maintenance, to respond to a security incident, to enforce the acceptable-use policy, or to comply with a legal obligation. Where a suspension is planned (maintenance, security upgrade) we will try to give you reasonable notice; where it is unplanned or driven by a third-party legal process, we may act without notice.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Makerstead's total cumulative liability to you for any and all claims arising out of or related to the service will not exceed the greater of (a) the total subscription fees you actually paid to Makerstead in the twelve (12) months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred US dollars (US$100).

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Makerstead is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenues, customers, opportunities, goodwill, or data, even if Makerstead has been advised of the possibility of those damages and even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose.

Nothing in this section limits any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded — for example, liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for any other liability that applicable law treats as non-excludable. The limitations in this section also do not apply to liability arising from a third-party processor acting on Makerstead's behalf (such as Stripe) or to liability for content you yourself publish through the platform.

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Makerstead and its operators from and against any third-party claim, demand, action, or proceeding (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or related to (a) content you publish through the platform, including any care request or service entry, (b) your misuse of the platform or violation of these Terms or the acceptable-use policy, (c) your breach of any law or regulation in the course of running your bench, or (d) any dispute between you and one of your owners, customers, or business partners.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States of America, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms, the service, or your use of it will be brought exclusively in the state and federal courts located in California, and you consent to personal jurisdiction in those courts. If your local law gives you a non-waivable right to bring an action in your home courts, that right is preserved. (This choice is the platform's standing default; it is documented here so a post-launch legal review can swap it for a more appropriate forum if needed.)

Material changes to these Terms get a sign-up-screen notice and at least fourteen (14) days' notice before they take effect. Non-material changes (typo fixes, wording clarifications, link updates) are applied silently and reflected in the “Last updated” date at the bottom of the page.

Continued use of Makerstead after a material change takes effect is your acceptance of the updated Terms. If a change is one you cannot accept, cancel from the billing surface and export your records before the effective date.

Questions, comments, or a notice under these Terms go to Contact & support. We acknowledge within two business days. The companion policies — privacy, data ownership, acceptable use, refunds, and cookies — sit alongside these Terms and are part of the agreement you accept on signup.