At Sapling, we care about who our customers are. We don't want our customers to be advertisers and big brands. We want our top priority to be you and your success. With a membership model, we can run our platform without distracting ads, and develop features that exist solely to enable business growth, while allowing creators maintain ownership and agency.

If for any reason your subscription ends, your shop will no longer be discoverable on Sapling and you will be unable to create or modify shop statuses. You will still be able to post, access your shop's followers, and existing events will continue to operate.

In order to keep a high standard for shops on the site, we require all shops to go through a free application process before joining Sapling. You can read more about this process here.

Sapling's following feed is strictly timelined and following only. We do not serve ads, promote posts, or introduce discoverability into this feed. If you post, your followers will see it.

Sapling's discover feed recommends creators based on shared communities. This means that if a user follows Shop A, they will be recommended Shop B if both shops share lots of common followers. The higher the percent of followers two shops share, the more likely their followers will be recommended the other shop. This likelihood is also improved if the two shops are a similar size, so it's not a popularity contest. Small shops can grow their audience just by being a part of Sapling!

Sapling helps you inform your followers about events happening with your business. This can be store openings, crowdfunding ventures, shipping updates, etc, but it can also be fun things like sneak peaks, finished products, works in progress, the process, and teasers! We make it easy for your followers to be informed of what's happening. Promote your business and show off your stuff!

We are not strict about what you can post, but we do encourage creators to keep content business relevant so that your audience can get the important news with minimal noise. Remember, Sapling's main feed has no algorithms, so your followers will see everything you post! You are no longer shouting into the void!

Any major event should use our status system so that your community can be reliably notified about changes to that status. Communicate shop openings, preorders opening, new drops landing, and more without having to repeat, remind, and repost. We highly recommend having at least one live or upcoming status at all times if possible, as this is the most convenient and reliable way for followers to support you!

For statuses unrelated to your online business, such as convention and market attendance, we recommend using your short bio, which is also displayed on every post you make!

We have a zero tolerance policy for generative AI products in any form, even if creative effort was added afterwards. Creators believed to be promoting or selling generative AI products will have their accounts immediately suspended, then undergo review to determine whether or not their account will be banned and blacklisted.

In short, yes, so long as it does not violate copyright laws. However, fandom art is not exempt from our guidelines on minimum creative effort. Designs that are close to 1:1 with the original source material are likely to disqualify your business and lead to suspention and removal.

Yes! We understand that many small businesses are a team of one, often working other jobs as their primary source of income. Therefore, there is no requirement that you keep your shop or services open any percent of the time, provide services to a minimum number of people, or fulfill any shipping turnaround times.

You will never be depromoted on Sapling or treated as a second class user due to the size or frequency of your business. We only ask that you keep your information current and that you have intent to continue marketing goods or services in the future.

No. It is not our intention to be an image hosting platform; our primary goal is to enable discoverability of creators for the benefit of their business. In order to give creators a meaningful stage, we must attract a meaningful audience. To do that, we set the expectation that strong majority of the works on display can be purchased, or are indicative of future works that can be purchased.