Founding Host terms

Publish your first eligible HabiStays listing and successfully process your first guest payment through HabiStays within 90 days to permanently lock in your 7% Founding Host platform rate.

Creating a reservation or adding a stay to your HabiStays calendar does not by itself qualify. A real guest payment must actually be processed through HabiStays.

Available to the first 50 qualifying hosts.

Payment-processing fees, taxes, government-imposed charges, and other third-party fees are separate.

Qualifying hosts receive a 7% HabiStays platform fee on payments processed through HabiStays, instead of the ordinary 10% HabiStays platform fee.

“Forever” means there is no arbitrary promotional expiration date on that Founding Host platform fee for a qualifying workspace. It does not freeze payment-processing rates, taxes, government charges, or other third-party fees.

Permanent Founding Host status is earned only when both of the following are true within the program rules:

1. The host workspace publishes its first genuine HabiStays listing (an active public or private-link listing with photos), which starts a 90-day qualification window.
2. Within that window, at least one legitimate guest payment is successfully processed through HabiStays for a reservation belonging to that host.

Qualifying payments include successful HabiStays marketplace checkout, HabiStays Payment Management, and collect-via-HabiStays flows where HabiStays actually processes the guest’s payment. Externally paid or manually recorded off-platform payments do not qualify.

Merely creating, importing, scheduling, confirming, or placing a reservation on the HabiStays calendar is not sufficient. Setup or configuration without payment, inquiries, holds, pending or abandoned checkouts, unpaid reservations, failed or still-processing payments, and test or QA payments do not qualify.

The guest may have been found anywhere. A legitimate future stay can qualify before check-in as soon as the HabiStays-processed payment reaches the authoritative successful/paid state.

Creating a checkout at the Founding Host platform rate does not by itself permanently award Founding Host status. Permanent entitlement, including a slot among the first 50, is awarded only when the qualifying payment succeeds and an atomic slot claim succeeds. If spots fill before settlement, the settled transaction may keep the fee it was created with, but the host receives the permanent lifetime entitlement only if the atomic claim succeeds.

Visiting the marketing page, creating an account, starting onboarding, or saving a draft listing does not qualify and does not consume a spot. A Founding Host spot is consumed only when permanent qualification is awarded.

One host workspace receives one Founding Host spot, regardless of how many listings it publishes later. Available to the first 50 qualifying hosts.

The 7% rate is HabiStays’ own platform fee. It does not include or waive payment-processing fees, Stripe or other provider fees, taxes, lodging or occupancy taxes, government-imposed fees or assessments, bank/card/ACH charges, or other third-party charges. Separately priced optional HabiStays products or services offered in the future are not automatically included.

Ordinary Host Terms, Terms of Service, fraud and abuse rules, account closure, taxes, processor requirements, and legal obligations remain applicable. HabiStays may refuse or revoke Founding Host status for fraud, abuse, or ineligible/test accounts.