1. Acceptance of these terms
By creating a HomeRoots account, accessing the HomeRoots websites (`gethomeroots.com`, `app.gethomeroots.com`, `pro.gethomeroots.com`), or using any HomeRoots service ("the Service"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms") and by our Privacy Policy and, for contractors, the Contractor Agreement. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. We may update these Terms; see Section 21.
2. Who we are
"HomeRoots", "we", "us", and "our" refer to HomeRoots LLC, a Washington limited liability company, which operates the Service.
3. What HomeRoots provides
HomeRoots provides software that helps homeowners build a structured digital record of their home and connect with independent contractors for service, repair, and improvement work. HomeRoots provides:
- a home-record workspace where you can organize your home by spaces, items and appliances, documents, maintenance tasks, exterior details, and notes;
- a service-request workflow where you can describe work you want done and route it to contractors;
- in-platform, per-project messaging between homeowners and the contractors they engage;
- a quote, scheduling, and acceptance workflow;
- HomeRoots Pay, a payments capability that routes homeowner payments through Stripe to contractors' connected Stripe accounts;
- optional contractor credential tools for professional licenses, insurance documents, and certification documents; and
- assistive AI features for limited homeowner-facing suggestions. See Section 10.
HomeRoots is not a contractor, insurer, lender, escrow agent, broker, real-estate professional, or government licensing body. HomeRoots does not guarantee any contractor's work, pricing, availability, compliance, or outcome.
4. Payments and fees
4.1 How HomeRoots Pay works
Homeowner-to-contractor payments processed through HomeRoots Pay are charged on the contractor's connected Stripe account via Stripe Checkout direct-charge. The contractor is the merchant of record for those charges. HomeRoots facilitates the transaction but receives no part of the homeowner's payment; HomeRoots does not hold funds, does not act as escrow agent, and does not directly debit your bank account or card.
When you authorize a payment through HomeRoots Pay, your card details are entered into a Stripe-hosted checkout flow. HomeRoots does not see or store your full card number; we receive a payment-method token from Stripe and may display the card brand and last four digits so you can recognize a saved card.
4.2 HomeRoots fees
HomeRoots does not take a percentage commission on payments between homeowners and contractors. Homeowner-to-contractor charges are processed directly on the contractor's connected Stripe account, and HomeRoots receives no part of that payment.
HomeRoots' own fees are charged separately to contractors, not to homeowners. At launch, the platform fee is a per-booking fee charged to a contractor when that contractor's quote or site visit is accepted. The amount depends on the contractor's subscription plan and is shown in the contractor's billing settings; current amounts are $12 per booked job on the Free plan and $6 on the Pro plan, subject to change and to launch-period incentives.
Contractor credential uploads and professional-license review are free at launch. HomeRoots does not charge a separate credential review fee.
These contractor-side fees are billed to the contractor's HomeRoots-side Stripe customer record and are separate from the homeowner-to-contractor payment described in Section 4.1. The full contractor-fee terms are in the Contractor Agreement.
4.3 Refunds, disputes, and chargebacks
Because the contractor is the merchant of record for homeowner-to-contractor charges, refund and dispute resolution follows Stripe's connected-account model:
- The contractor is responsible for refunds and for responding to disputes on those charges.
- HomeRoots may, in its discretion, mediate or facilitate a refund in support of dispute resolution, but does not act as guarantor.
- Chargebacks initiated through your card issuer are processed by Stripe under their dispute timelines and rules.
Either a homeowner or a contractor may also report an issue or open a dispute on a job from within the Service. HomeRoots reviews reported issues and may mediate, but does not decide the legal merits of a dispute and is not a guarantor of any outcome.
4.4 Taxes
HomeRoots does not currently calculate, collect, or remit sales or use tax on homeowner-to-contractor payments. Each contractor is the merchant of record for their charges and is solely responsible for determining, collecting, and remitting any sales, use, or other taxes applicable to the services they provide. You are responsible for any taxes attributable to your account that are not collected automatically. HomeRoots may enable automated tax calculation in the future; if it does, this section will be updated.
5. Accounts and eligibility
You must be at least 18 years old to use the Service. You agree to provide accurate account information, to keep it current, and to protect your password. You are responsible for activity that occurs under your account. Tell us promptly at `support@gethomeroots.com` if you suspect unauthorized access.
You must confirm your email address before you can use the Service. Until confirmation is complete, account access is limited to the email-confirmation step.
HomeRoots homeowner accounts and contractor accounts are separate. A contractor account cannot be used as a homeowner account, and a homeowner account cannot be used as a contractor account. You may not transfer your account without our written consent.
5.1 Households, co-owners, and multiple homes
A home record is a single shared record for a household, not a separate copy for each person. As the homeowner who creates a record, you may invite other people to your home record as co-owners. Co-owners can take certain actions on the record, including accepting quotes, authorizing payments through HomeRoots Pay, and raising or responding to disputes; those actions can bind the household. Structural actions, including deleting or transferring the home, managing members, and billing, remain with the owner. You are responsible for whom you invite and for actions taken by the members you invite.
You may maintain more than one home record under one account. The rights, retention, sharing, and deletion provisions of these Terms and the Privacy Policy apply to each home record.
Designating yourself as the owner of a home record is an operational setting. It is not a representation that HomeRoots has confirmed your legal ownership of, or right to make decisions about, the property. You are responsible for ensuring you have the right to enter information about, and request work on, any home you add.
6. Messaging within the Service
HomeRoots provides per-project messaging so homeowners and contractors can coordinate quotes, scheduling, and project work. Messages are scoped to a specific project and, together with any files you attach, are stored on HomeRoots' systems.
Messages are encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest. Messages are not end-to-end encrypted, and the contents are accessible to HomeRoots' systems and to authorized HomeRoots personnel under the conditions below.
Authorized HomeRoots personnel in privileged support, trust-and-safety, and platform-operations roles may review message contents and attachments inside our internal tooling when reasonably necessary to respond to a support request, investigate a reported safety, harassment, or fraud concern, resolve a dispute, comply with a legal obligation, or operate, secure, and improve the Service. Each such access requires the staff member to enter a reason and is recorded in our internal audit log. Other authorized staff may see only the per-project communication index and cannot read message bodies or open attachments. HomeRoots does not bulk-export, sell, or use the contents of your messages for advertising.
To help keep payments and disputes on-platform, HomeRoots uses automated checks that flag messages containing language suggesting payment or contact outside HomeRoots; flagged messages may be routed to authorized staff for review.
Please do not share payment card numbers, bank account or routing numbers, online-banking passwords, Social Security numbers, government identification numbers, or other highly sensitive personal information through HomeRoots messaging. Payments should be made through HomeRoots Pay. See also our Privacy Policy.
7. Marketplace model and contractor independence
Contractors using HomeRoots are independent businesses, not employees, partners, agents, joint venturers, or representatives of HomeRoots. HomeRoots does not assign work to any specific contractor; does not guarantee that any request will be picked up; does not guarantee any quote price, response time, project outcome, or quality of work; does not supervise, direct, or control the means, manner, or location of any contractor's work; and does not act as a contractor, builder, repair professional, inspector, broker, insurer, or lender.
Homeowners are solely responsible for choosing among contractors and for the agreements they enter into with them. Contractor credentials shown in HomeRoots are informational and do not replace a homeowner's own review, reference checks, contract review, or confirmation of legal requirements before hiring.
8. Contractor credentials
Contractors may optionally upload professional-license details, insurance documents, and certification documents. Credentials are not required to receive leads, quote, request site visits, book work, or receive payments through the Service.
When a professional license is marked "License verified," it means HomeRoots checked that specific professional license detail against public licensing records at a point in time. The scoped statement is: "HomeRoots checked this professional license against public records on [date]. This does not verify insurance, work quality, or project outcome."
Insurance and certification documents are upload-only at launch. HomeRoots does not review them for accuracy, coverage, status, exclusions, limits, authenticity, or continued validity. HomeRoots displays the following notices with those uploaded documents:
- "This insurance document was uploaded by the contractor. HomeRoots has not verified insurance coverage, active policy status, exclusions, or limits. Please review and confirm directly before hiring."
- "This certification was uploaded by the contractor. HomeRoots has not verified this certification. Please review and confirm directly before hiring."
Homeowners should independently confirm licensure, insurance, certifications, references, and suitability before hiring any contractor.
9. Home records and user content
You retain rights to the information and files you put into your home record. By submitting content into the Service, you grant HomeRoots a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, transmit, display, and process that content as needed to operate the Service for you and, for content you intentionally share into a service request or message, for the contractors you share it with.
You represent that you have the rights necessary to upload anything you upload, and that your content does not violate the law or anyone else's rights. We may delete content that violates these Terms or that we are required by law to remove.
10. AI and automated processing
HomeRoots uses AI to assist with specific homeowner-facing tasks inside the Service: classifying and enhancing the project descriptions you type, suggesting service categories, and suggesting item details from a photo of a product or appliance label you scan. AI suggestions are assistive and are presented for review before they affect your record. AI does not accept quotes on your behalf, does not move money, does not share your data with contractors, and does not resolve disputes.
We use Anthropic's Claude API for these features and contractually require that the content we send is processed only on our behalf. We do not send the content of homeowner-to-contractor messages, the contents of documents you store in your home record, contractor credential documents, or payment details to Anthropic. See the AI Use Disclosure and the Privacy Policy for details.
11. Acceptable use and content
You agree not to:
- use the Service for any unlawful purpose, or in violation of applicable consumer-protection, payments, anti-discrimination, or privacy laws;
- impersonate another person or business, or misrepresent your identity, qualifications, license status, insurance status, certification status, or affiliation;
- attempt to access another user's account or any non-public area of the Service;
- circumvent any technical limit, rate limit, or security control;
- use HomeRoots messaging to share payment card numbers, bank credentials, online-banking passwords, Social Security numbers, government IDs, or other highly sensitive personal information;
- send spam, phishing, harassment, threats, hate speech, sexual content involving minors, or content that infringes intellectual-property or privacy rights;
- scrape, harvest, or copy substantial portions of the Service for use outside HomeRoots;
- reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to discover the source code of the Service except as permitted by law; or
- use the Service to coordinate or facilitate off-platform payment for work originated through HomeRoots, where the off-platform routing is intended to evade HomeRoots' contractor fees or the dispute and safety workflows of the Service.
We may suspend or terminate accounts for violations.
12. Reporting safety, fraud, or abuse
If you experience harassment, fraud, or unsafe behavior on the Service, email `support@gethomeroots.com`. If you have reason to believe someone is in immediate physical danger, contact local emergency services first. We investigate reports and may take action including warning, suspending, or terminating accounts. We may share information with law enforcement when required by law or when we believe in good faith that sharing is necessary to prevent imminent harm.
13. Intellectual property
HomeRoots, the HomeRoots logo, and related brand assets are trademarks of HomeRoots LLC. The Service software, design, copy other than user-submitted content, and underlying data architecture are HomeRoots' or our licensors' intellectual property. You receive a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Service for your own use under these Terms.
If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a takedown request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to `support@gethomeroots.com` with the information required by 17 U.S.C. section 512(c)(3).
14. Third-party integrations
The Service integrates with third-party services including Stripe, Supabase, Anthropic, Resend, Upstash, Vercel, Sentry, and Cloudflare. Their terms and privacy practices govern your interactions with them. HomeRoots is not responsible for the acts or omissions of these third parties.
15. Disclaimers; limitation of liability
The Service is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, express or implied, to the fullest extent permitted by law. HomeRoots disclaims implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade. HomeRoots does not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure against every threat.
HomeRoots does not warrant the quality, safety, legality, qualifications, insurance, certifications, licensure, or fitness of any contractor's work, advice, materials, or pricing. Disputes about completed work are between the homeowner and the contractor; HomeRoots may facilitate dispute resolution but does not act as guarantor.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, HomeRoots' total liability for any claim arising out of or related to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the platform fees HomeRoots actually received from or attributable to you in the 12 months preceding the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars (US$100). HomeRoots is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, lost profits, lost data, or loss of goodwill, even if advised of the possibility.
16. Indemnification
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless HomeRoots, its officers, employees, and agents from claims, losses, damages, and expenses including reasonable attorneys' fees arising out of: (a) your use of the Service in violation of these Terms or applicable law; (b) content you submit or actions you take through your account, including actions taken by members you invite to a home record; and (c) for contractors, the services you provide to homeowners through the Service. Contractor-specific indemnity terms are in the Contractor Agreement.
17. Termination
You may close your account at any time from within the Service or by emailing `support@gethomeroots.com` with the subject "Delete my account". See Privacy Policy Section 8 for what deletion does to a shared or co-owned home record. We may suspend or terminate accounts for violations of these Terms, suspected fraud, security risk, or operational necessity. We will give notice where feasible.
Termination does not relieve either party of obligations incurred before termination. Sections that by their nature should survive, including intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, governing law, and dispute resolution, survive termination.
18. Data retention and your privacy
How long we keep your information, how you exercise rights of access, correction, deletion, and portability, and how we protect your data are explained in the Privacy Policy.
19. Communications from HomeRoots
By creating an account, you agree that we may send you transactional emails related to your account and the Service, including email-address confirmation, password reset, receipts, job updates, and service messages. You may opt out of non-essential product-update emails using the unsubscribe link in those messages or by emailing `support@gethomeroots.com`. We do not send text messages as part of normal operation today; if SMS notifications launch in the future, opt-in will be required.
20. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules. Mandatory consumer-protection laws of your home state are not waived by this section.
21. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms. The active version, version string, and effective date are visible at `/terms` in each HomeRoots app. When we make a material change, we will publish the new version, require you to re-accept on next sign-in, and where appropriate email notice. Continued use of the Service after the effective date of an updated version means you accept the updated Terms.
22. Disputes
If you have a dispute with HomeRoots, please contact us first at `support@gethomeroots.com` so we can try to resolve it informally. If we cannot resolve a dispute informally, you and HomeRoots agree that the dispute will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in the State of Washington, and you and HomeRoots consent to the personal jurisdiction and venue of those courts. Nothing in this section prevents either party from seeking relief in a small-claims court for disputes that qualify, or limits your rights under mandatory consumer-protection laws of your home state.