Terms of service

1. What this is

Indie Apps is a directory of iPhone, iPad and Mac apps made by independent developers. Anyone can browse it. Developers can list an app, and can pay for a placement that gives their app more visibility for a stated period.

Using the site, submitting an app, or buying a placement means you accept these terms.

2. What we sell

Every price and duration below is also shown on the pricing page and again at checkout. Where the two ever differ, the figure shown to you at checkout is the one that applies.

• A free listing — $0. Your app in the directory, with a page of its own, permanently. No badge, no link back, no expiry.
• Featured — $9 for one week. One of four cards in the featured row on the home page, marked as featured wherever the card appears, plus a followed link to your own site which is kept after the week ends.
• Spotlight — $19 for one week. A week as the only spotlight listing at the top of the home page. One at a time, never rotated with another app.
• Rail placement — $49.99 for one month. One of ten slots in the rails that sit beside every page on the site. The rails need a wide screen to render and do not appear on a phone.

Featured and Spotlight are marked as launch prices. They are low because the site is new and they will rise. A price change never applies backwards to a placement already bought.

Every paid placement is a single one-time payment. Nothing on this site renews automatically, and there is no subscription to cancel.

3. Publication, and the absence of a queue

There is no review step before publication, and this is deliberate.

• A free listing goes live the moment it is submitted.
• A paid listing goes live the moment the payment clears.

Nobody approves your app, and nothing sits in a queue waiting for a decision. What that means in the other direction is that publication is not an endorsement, a check, or a statement that we have verified anything at all about your app.

We can remove a listing afterwards. We will do that where an app is no longer available, where the information about it has become materially wrong or misleading, where the listing breaks these terms, or where it is unlawful, fraudulent or harmful. If we remove a paid placement that is still running for a reason that is not your fault, you are refunded for the part that did not run — see the refund policy.

4. When a placement starts and ends

A placement runs for the dates you choose at checkout, not from the moment you pay. You pick the week, or the month, from what is still free at the time; if a slot is taken, it is not offered to you.

A slot is held for you for 30 minutes while the payment is being completed. If the payment does not clear in that time the hold lapses and the slot goes back on sale. Returning to an unfinished checkout picks the same hold back up rather than consuming a second slot.

When a paid placement ends, the app stays in the directory as an ordinary free listing. Nothing is taken away from you at the end of a week except the position you paid for.

5. App Store information

When you submit an App Store link we fetch and display the public information Apple publishes about that app: its name, icon, screenshots, developer name, category, description, price, ratings information, App Store URL and identifier.

Those names, icons, screenshots, trademarks and descriptions belong to their owners, not to us. Submitting an app is your confirmation that you are entitled to have that material shown here. If you believe something we display about an app is wrong, out of date, or should not be there, write to hello@indie-apps.com and we will fix or remove it.

6. Apps open to offers

The for sale page lists apps whose developers have said they would consider an offer. It is free, it is marked by us rather than bought, and it is a signal and nothing more.

We are not a broker. We do not value apps, verify ownership or revenue, introduce parties, hold money, provide escrow, draft anything, or take a cut. Any conversation or transaction that follows is entirely between the two people having it, and their responsibility alone.

7. Payments

Payments are processed by Dodo Payments, which acts as the merchant of record. Dodo handles the card details, billing, tax where it applies, fraud checks and refunds. We never see or store your card number.

Enough information about your order is passed to Dodo to connect the payment to the placement it is for, and back again when the payment clears.

8. Refunds

The refund policy is part of these terms. The short version: before your placement starts, you can have your money back for any reason. Once it has run, you have had the thing you bought.

9. What we do not promise

A placement buys a position on a page for a stated period. It does not buy an outcome. We do not promise visitors, clicks, downloads, sales, subscriptions, revenue, reviews, App Store ranking, press, or any other result, and results between apps differ enormously.

Where we show you numbers — clicks your listing sent, visits a page received — they describe what has already happened. They are not a forecast, and a placement that performed below your hopes is not by itself grounds for a refund once it has run.

10. Your side of it

By submitting anything to this site you confirm that:

• you are entitled to submit it;
• what you tell us is true as far as you know, and you will not knowingly mislead us;
• you will not use the site for fraud, malware, scams, deception, or anything unlawful;
• you will tell us if your app is withdrawn or becomes unavailable.

We can remove anything that breaks this, immediately and without a refund where the breach is yours.

11. Editorial independence

Paying puts your app in a position. It does not buy an opinion. Paid placements are labelled as such wherever they appear, because a reader who cannot tell the difference is being misled and the directory is worth nothing to them.

Buying a placement gives you no say over the design of the site, what else appears beside you, how apps are ordered, or anything else beyond the specific thing you bought.

12. Other people’s services

This site depends on and links to services run by other people — Apple’s App Store, Dodo Payments, Supabase, Vercel. They have their own terms and their own privacy practices, and we are not responsible for how they behave.

Indie Apps is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Apple Inc. Apple, App Store, iPhone, iPad and Mac are trademarks of Apple Inc.

13. Availability

We try to keep the site up and we do not promise it always will be. Maintenance, hosting failures, and problems at services we depend on all happen.

If an outage is long enough to materially eat into a paid placement, we will extend it, reschedule it, or refund the part you lost, whichever fits. A few minutes of downtime is not that.

14. Ownership

The site itself — its design, its writing, its code — is ours. The apps in it belong to the people who made them. Nothing here transfers ownership of anything in either direction; submitting an app gives us permission to display it, and no more.

15. Liability

As far as the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential loss, or for lost profits, arising out of your use of this site, a listing, a placement, a conversation with another user, or a service we depend on.

As far as the law allows, our total liability for anything connected to a paid placement will not exceed what you paid for that placement.

Nothing here removes a right you have that cannot legally be removed, and consumer protections in the country you live in still apply whatever this page says.

16. Changes

We may change the site, what it offers, and these terms. When these terms change the date at the top of this page changes with them. A change never applies backwards to a placement already bought.

17. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of India, without affecting any mandatory consumer-protection right you have where you live.

18. Contact

Indie Apps — hello@indie-apps.com. See also the privacy policy and the refund policy.