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Much Obliged Terms of Service

Version 2026-10-21.1 · Effective October 21, 2026

Interim launch version 2026-10-21.1. Effective date: October 21, 2026. It is written to describe how Much Obliged actually works.

1. Who we are and what this agreement is

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are an agreement between you and MUCH OBLIGED CO. LLC ("Much Obliged," "we," "us," or "our"), the company that runs the Much Obliged software. "You" means the person who opens a Much Obliged account (a "Creator").

By creating an account, publishing a page, or paying for a Much Obliged subscription, you agree to these Terms and to the documents they incorporate:

  • the Acceptable Use Policy;
  • the Billing and Cancellation terms;
  • the Refund and Transaction Policy;
  • the Seller and Payment Request Terms, which apply only if and when Much Obliged makes selling (Offers, Creative Work, Services, Client Work, Payment Requests or Quick Sale) available to you and you use it;
  • the Privacy Policy, which describes how we handle information and is incorporated here as notice, not as a set of promises you make.

If you do not agree, do not use Much Obliged.

2. Definitions

  • Service: the Much Obliged software, website, dashboard, public creator pages, payment and access tooling, and related features.
  • Creator: a person with a Much Obliged account. When a Creator sells through Much Obliged (Offers, Creative Work, Services, Client Work, a Payment Request or Quick Sale), these Terms also call them a Seller.
  • Supporter: a person who pays a Creator one-time or monthly support through the Creator's page.
  • Member: a person who pays for a Creator's Membership.
  • Buyer: a person who pays for something a Seller sells through Much Obliged: an offer, a way to get a Creative Work, a service or job, a Payment Request or a Quick Sale order.
  • Stripe: Stripe, Inc. and its affiliates, the payment processor.
  • Connected Account: the Stripe account you open, in your own name, through Much Obliged's Stripe Connect onboarding, if you choose to connect Stripe.
  • Subscription: your $8-per-month Much Obliged subscription.
  • Payment Request (also called a Sale Link or Private Sale): a private, single-use checkout a Seller creates for one agreed item, one service, or one deposit-and-balance arrangement, as described in the Seller and Payment Request Terms.
  • Quick Sale: a tool for selling to someone in person, paid through Stripe Checkout or recorded by the Seller as paid in cash or another way, as described in the Seller and Payment Request Terms.

3. Eligibility

To open a Much Obliged account you must:

  1. be at least 18 years old;
  2. be able to enter a binding agreement;
  3. be based in the United States;
  4. if you connect Stripe to accept payments through it, open and keep that Connected Account in your own name and comply with Stripe's Services Agreement and Connected Account Agreement; and
  5. not be a person or entity Much Obliged or Stripe is prohibited from serving under applicable sanctions or export laws.

Connecting Stripe is optional. You can use Much Obliged, start your Subscription and publish your page without it; payments through Stripe need it (section 6). Being based in the United States is a condition of your account whether or not you connect Stripe. If a Stripe account you connect reports a country other than the United States, Much Obliged may treat that as showing you are not eligible, and that account cannot be used for payments through Much Obliged.

Supporters, Members and Buyers are not required to be in the United States. Whether a payment from a particular country or with a particular payment method can be accepted depends on Stripe and on your Connected Account; Much Obliged does not promise that payments can be accepted from everywhere.

Much Obliged is software for people presenting their own work and accepting support and payments for it. It is not a charitable-donation or fundraising platform. It is not offered to registered charities or nonprofits soliciting donations, to political candidates or committees, or for fundraising for causes other than your own work. Much Obliged does not represent that any payment made through it is a charitable contribution or tax-deductible.

4. Your account

  • You are responsible for your login credentials and for everything done under your account. Use a strong password and tell us at support@muchobliged.co if you believe your account has been compromised.
  • One person, one account. Handles are assigned on a first-come basis subject to the reserved-handle list; Much Obliged does not currently offer a rename or dispute process for handles.
  • You must confirm your email address before the signed-in experience is fully available.
  • You must keep the information you give Stripe accurate and complete. Much Obliged cannot see or edit the identity, tax or bank details you give Stripe.

5. Your public page and your content

  • You choose what appears on your page: a handle, a display name, a profile photo and cover image, a short biography and a longer "about" section, links, a support prompt and the amounts you suggest, and, if you create one, a Membership with a name, description and list of benefits in your own words. You can also write a thank-you message that people see after they pay you.
  • Beside a link to a website, your page may show that website's own small icon, which Much Obliged fetches from that website and shows from a copy it keeps; the icon is the website's, not your content.
  • Beside a link to a video, your page may show that video's own picture, which Much Obliged fetches from the video's provider and shows from a copy it keeps; the picture is the video owner's, not your content.
  • If you start your page from a page you have elsewhere, you may be asked to confirm that the other page is yours before you publish. What you bring over is your content under these Terms: you must own it or have the right to use it.
  • You are responsible for your content and for what you promise. Membership benefits are your promises to your Members, not Much Obliged's.
  • Before you publish, you may choose to make your page readable by its link so that Stripe can see what you do. That page shows your page's own words, links and public contact; it takes no payments, asks search engines not to list it, and is not published. You can stop sharing it at any time, and publishing your page ends it.
  • Your page is public and may be indexed by search engines once you publish it. You may unpublish it at any time from your dashboard; unpublishing is always your own choice. Billing problems never unpublish a page you already published.
  • Every published page's footer shows a small "Powered by Much Obliged Co." credit, linking to Much Obliged, beside the links to these Terms, the Privacy Policy and reporting the page, and a page in the Card layout shows Much Obliged's seal in its top corner, linking to Much Obliged, whether or not you have a Subscription or promotional access. While your account has no Subscription or promotional access in effect, a page in the Card layout also shows a small Much Obliged link after your content, inviting visitors to make a page of their own; while you have either, it does not. Your Offers, Creative Work and payment pages, and the widgets you embed on other websites, show a small "Powered by Much Obliged" credit. These are Much Obliged's, not your content, and they never cover your content or the way people pay you.
  • Your offers and your Creative Work are your content too. An offer you turn on, and a work you publish, are public on your pages and anywhere you embed them, until you turn the offer off or archive the work. When you add an image to a Creative Work, Much Obliged keeps a private, web-size copy of it, not the file you uploaded, and shows people a copy made from that, with a watermark drawn into it if you choose one; making and showing those copies is part of formatting and displaying your content under section 13. A work's Work Record shows when Much Obliged received and fingerprinted an image; it is not evidence of when the work was made, of authorship or of copyright. Any history you add to a work is your own statement, which Much Obliged does not check.
  • Content rules are in the Acceptable Use Policy. Ownership and the license you give us are in section 13.

6. Stripe, your Connected Account, and how money moves

This section describes the payment architecture. It is the part of these Terms that matters most. Stripe is optional: you need a Connected Account only to accept payments through Stripe (one-time and monthly support, Memberships, and payments through Stripe on Payment Requests and Quick Sales). Everything in this section applies once you connect one.

  1. Your Stripe account is yours. Through Much Obliged you open a Standard Stripe Connected Account with the full Stripe Dashboard. Stripe collects your identity and bank information directly, under Stripe's own agreements. Much Obliged never receives that information.
  2. Payments to you go to your account. Every payment a Supporter, Member or Buyer makes through Much Obliged is charged directly on your Connected Account. A payment a Buyer makes to a Seller directly, outside Much Obliged, and that the Seller records, is not made through Much Obliged: see the Seller and Payment Request Terms. Much Obliged never receives, holds, routes, escrows, or delays your money, cannot pause your payouts, does not debit your balance, and does not refund a payment made to you. Stripe pays you out under Stripe's schedule, not ours.
  3. You are the merchant. For every payment made to you, you are the merchant of record. Your Stripe business name, statement descriptor and receipt settings are what your customers see. You are responsible for delivering what you offered, for customer service, for refunds, for responding to disputes, and for any taxes on what you receive.
  4. Much Obliged's fee on your revenue is zero. Much Obliged sets no application fee, takes no percentage, and adds no transaction or payout fee on any payment made to you. Reconciliation checks confirm this on every payment.
  5. Stripe's fees are Stripe's. Stripe charges its own fees to your Connected Account at Stripe's rates. These include card-processing fees on every payment; Stripe Billing fees on recurring payments such as monthly support and Memberships; dispute fees; and Instant Payout fees if you use them. Much Obliged does not mark these up and does not receive any part of them. Stripe's fees are not shown in your Much Obliged dashboard.
  6. What Much Obliged does on your behalf. You authorize Much Obliged, as your limited agent for these purposes only, to: create Stripe Checkout sessions, products, prices and subscriptions on your Connected Account for the payments you offer; read the status of your account and of those payments; create Stripe Customer Portal sessions so your Supporters and Members can manage their own subscriptions; and schedule your Supporters' and Members' subscriptions to end when you close your account. When Stripe accepts a payment for your account, your customer has paid you.
  7. What we read from Stripe. Much Obliged stores your Stripe account identifier, the country Stripe reports for it, whether your account can accept charges and payouts, whether onboarding is complete, whether it has been disconnected, and the identifiers, amounts, status, refund and dispute state of payments made through Much Obliged. Before each new payment through Stripe starts, Much Obliged also reads your account's public payment details from Stripe, without storing them, to check that the people who pay you will be able to recognize you: a public name (your business name or, for an individual account, your own first and last name), a website or other online presence, and at least one support contact (an email, a web address or a phone number). If any of them is missing, new payments wait until you add it in Stripe. We share account and payment information with Stripe as needed to operate the Service and to meet our obligations to Stripe, including reporting activity that violates Stripe's terms or the law.
  8. One account, for good. Much Obliged binds one Connected Account to your Much Obliged account. If Much Obliged loses access to it (for example, you disconnect Much Obliged in your Stripe Dashboard), new payments through Much Obliged stop, your page stays up, and your existing Supporters' and Members' subscriptions continue on your Stripe account unchanged. Contact support@muchobliged.co for help. There is no self-service way to reconnect, and a different Stripe account cannot be connected in its place.
  9. You may disconnect us. You can revoke Much Obliged's access to your Connected Account at any time in Stripe. Your Stripe account, your customers and their subscriptions remain yours.

7. The $8 subscription

Your page is free. Getting paid through Much Obliged is $8 a month.

  1. You can create your account, set up and publish your page, set up your Membership, connect Stripe if you want to accept payments through it, and preview everything without paying.
  2. Accepting new payments requires an eligible Subscription or promotional access (item 7); publishing your page does not. Without either, your published page shows who you are and your links, and no way to pay you. A Subscription is $8.00 per month, in United States dollars, plus any sales tax we are required to collect, billed on the day you start it and then monthly until you cancel.
  3. Your Subscription is billed on Much Obliged's own Stripe account. It is entirely separate from the payments your Supporters, Members and Buyers make to you, and it does not depend on your Connected Account: you can start it whether or not you have connected Stripe. Payments to you through Stripe also need your Connected Account to be ready.
  4. Before you start it, you will be shown the renewal terms and asked to tick a box that says you agree to be billed $8 each month until you cancel. Much Obliged keeps a record of that agreement.
  5. You can cancel at any time. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have paid for; you keep everything until then. After that, your page stays published, with no way to pay you, until you subscribe again. Cancelling never cancels your Supporters' or Members' subscriptions to you.
  6. If a renewal payment fails, you get seven days to fix it during which everything keeps working. If it is not fixed, new payments to you stop and your page no longer shows a way to pay you; your page stays published, and your history and your Supporters' existing subscriptions are untouched. Full detail is in Billing and Cancellation.
  7. Much Obliged may, at its discretion, grant an account founder-issued promotional access to what a Subscription gives you, without charge, for a stated period or, for accounts the founder chooses, with no end date. Promotional access is not a public free plan, not a separate pricing tier, and not the standard public pricing model; the standard public price remains $8 a month and Much Obliged's fee on your revenue remains zero. Promotional access requires no card, ends on the date stated (if one is stated), is not a payment, does not convert to a paid Subscription automatically, and never charges you. Starting a paid Subscription afterwards always requires your separate agreement.
  8. There is one paid product, at one price, with no tiers. Publishing your page is free and is not a plan or a trial: it never converts into a Subscription and never charges you. A change to the price or to the recurring-billing terms is a material change: it will not be made through an ordinary revision of these Terms, it will be communicated to you separately, and, where applicable law or the nature of the change requires it, it will apply to you only after you have agreed to it again.
  9. Refunds of the Subscription are described in Billing and Cancellation and in the Refund and Transaction Policy.

8. Supporter payments and Memberships

  1. One-time support and monthly support are payments Supporters make to you for your work. Monthly support renews each month on your Connected Account until the Supporter cancels it. Supporters can manage or cancel it themselves through a private link Much Obliged gives them, without a Much Obliged account, and you can end any Supporter's monthly support from your dashboard at the end of the current period.
  2. Membership is one optional, recurring payment at a price you set that grants access to something you own and operate. Much Obliged is the payment and entitlement layer. Much Obliged does not host your community or content. A Member's access follows the time they have actually paid for: it continues to the end of the paid period after a cancellation or a failed renewal, and stops when paid time runs out.
  3. Fulfillment of a Membership is your responsibility. You may fulfil it yourself, by private instructions Much Obliged shows only to paid Members, or through a managed Discord role. Where you use Discord, Much Obliged adds a paid Member to your server if they are not already in it, and adds and removes one role based on paid-through time; it never removes a member from your server. Discord is a separate service under Discord's own terms; if Discord is unavailable or your server configuration breaks, Much Obliged records the problem and retries but cannot guarantee access, and payment records are never changed by a Discord failure.
  4. You are responsible for describing your Membership truthfully and for delivering what you describe.

9. Refunds, chargebacks and disputes on payments to you

  1. Refunds to your Supporters, Members and Buyers are your decision and your responsibility. You issue them from your own Stripe Dashboard. Much Obliged records the result. Stripe does not return its processing fee on a refund.
  2. If a Supporter's, Member's or Buyer's bank disputes a payment, the disputed amount and Stripe's dispute fees are debited from your Connected Account and you respond in your own Stripe Dashboard. Much Obliged shows you that a dispute is open and how it ended. Much Obliged does not decide disputes and does not submit responses for you. While a dispute is open, Much Obliged does not revoke access already paid for and does not shorten paid-through time; if a dispute is lost, the amount is treated like a refund in your figures.
  3. Much Obliged's own $8 Subscription is different: it is a payment to Much Obliged. Refunds of it are described in Billing and Cancellation and the Refund and Transaction Policy. A dispute of a Subscription charge may be raised through your card issuer and is handled through the payment processor and applicable law; Much Obliged does not decide it. While such a dispute is open, your access does not change. If it is decided in your favor, you keep the access already paid for, and your Subscription is set to end at the end of that paid period instead of renewing. Detail is in Billing and Cancellation.

10. Reporting, moderation, holds and suspension

  1. Anyone can report a page or Payment Request. Reports are reviewed by Much Obliged. A report does not by itself remove anything or move any money.
  2. Much Obliged may place a hold on your account if we reasonably believe your page or activity breaks these Terms, the Acceptable Use Policy or Stripe's rules, creates legal risk, or is required by law or by Stripe. While held, your page is not shown publicly and new payments through Much Obliged are refused, including a balance still due on a Payment Request. Your existing Supporters' and Members' subscriptions, their paid-through access, your Stripe connection, your Subscription, your dashboard and your data export are not affected.
  3. Much Obliged may unpublish content, withdraw a Payment Request that has not been paid, pause your ability to create Payment Requests or take Quick Sale orders, suspend your selling (which also stops further payments on your existing Payment Requests, including a balance still due), or terminate your account for a serious or repeated breach, for illegal activity, if Stripe restricts or rejects your Connected Account, or as required by law. Where practical we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond by email.
  4. Much Obliged may report illegal, fraudulent, deceptive or harmful activity to Stripe and, where required, to authorities.
  5. Much Obliged does not operate a formal appeals system. If Much Obliged takes action on your account or content, you may contact support@muchobliged.co to request a review. Much Obliged reviews moderation matters case by case under these Terms and the Acceptable Use Policy; it does not promise a fixed timeline or a particular outcome.

11. Closing your account and exporting your data

  1. You can download a copy of your Much Obliged data at any time from your dashboard, as one JSON file, in every account state, including after closure.
  2. Close your account is a deactivation, not a deletion. When you close: your page goes offline immediately; new support, new Memberships and new sales stop immediately, including the first payment on a Payment Request that has not been paid; your $8 Subscription, if you have one, ends after the current paid period, with no refund and no early-termination fee; each Supporter and Member subscription Much Obliged created is scheduled to end after the period already paid for, and nothing is cancelled mid-period or refunded automatically; people keep the access they paid for, including Discord, until their paid-through date; your Stripe Connected Account is not disconnected and remains yours.
  3. Closing does not cancel what a Buyer has already paid toward. For a Payment Request a Buyer has paid toward, you can still record the handoff, shipment or completion after you close; refunds and disputes on every payment continue in your own Stripe account; and a balance still due after a paid deposit is not cancelled by closing.
  4. Your financial history stays with Much Obliged for refunds, disputes, reconciliation and record-keeping. We do not currently offer self-service reopening or hard deletion. See the Privacy Policy for what happens to personal information after closure.
  5. If your Stripe account was disconnected before you closed, we may be unable to schedule your Supporters' subscriptions to end; we will tell you, and you can end them in your own Stripe Dashboard.

12. Intellectual property

Much Obliged owns the Service, its software, design, brand and marks. You get a limited, revocable, non-transferable right to use the Service under these Terms. Nothing here transfers any part of the Service to you.

13. Your content and the license you give us

You own your content. You grant Much Obliged a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, format, display, transmit, back up and distribute your content through your page and the Service, and to sublicense those rights to the service providers that run our infrastructure, for the purposes of operating, securing and improving the Service and of promoting the Service by showing your public page, or excerpts of it as it appears on Much Obliged, in Much Obliged's own materials. This license ends when you remove the content or close your account, except for copies in routine backups and copies we must keep for legal, dispute or record-keeping reasons. We will stop any promotional use of your public page if you ask us to at support@muchobliged.co. Private Membership instructions are never used for promotion and are shown only to paid Members. You represent that you own or have the rights to your content and that it complies with the Acceptable Use Policy.

14. Third-party services

Much Obliged depends on Stripe, Supabase, Discord, our hosting provider and our email provider. Each is a separate company with its own terms and its own availability. What Much Obliged controls and what these providers control is described in Third-Party Services. Much Obliged is not responsible for their acts, omissions or outages, and does not verify anything a provider reports beyond what our software records.

15. Availability and changes to the Service

The Service is provided as it is and as it is available. We may change, add or remove features, and we may keep some features switched off for some or all accounts. Turning a feature off later never erases or rewrites payments that already happened. We will try to give notice of material changes.

16. Disclaimers

Much Obliged provides software. Much Obliged does not guarantee that anyone will pay you, that Stripe will approve or keep your Connected Account, that Discord or any other provider will be available, when Stripe will pay you out, or that any payment will not be refunded or disputed. Much Obliged does not verify what Creators promise, deliver, ship or perform. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Much Obliged disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

17. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Much Obliged and its owners are not liable to you for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost revenue, lost profits, lost data or lost access, arising from the Service. Much Obliged's total liability to you for all claims relating to the Service is limited to the amount you paid Much Obliged in the twelve months before the claim arose. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, and nothing limits any non-waivable rights you have under the consumer-protection laws of the state where you live.

18. Indemnification

You will defend and indemnify Much Obliged and its owners against claims, losses and reasonable costs arising from your content, your page, anything you sell, deliver, ship or perform, your Membership promises, your taxes, your breach of these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, or your breach of Stripe's or Discord's terms.

19. Disputes with Much Obliged

  1. Before filing a claim against Much Obliged, email legal@muchobliged.co with your name, account and a description of the problem, and give us 30 days to try to resolve it with you in good faith.
  2. Either of us may bring an individual claim in small-claims court.
  3. Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.
  4. Venue. Any claim relating to these Terms or the Service that is not brought in small-claims court must be brought in the state or federal courts located in Wyoming, and you and Much Obliged consent to the jurisdiction of those courts.
  5. These Terms contain no mandatory arbitration clause and no class-action waiver.
  6. Nothing in this section limits any non-waivable rights you have under the consumer-protection laws of the state where you live.

20. Changes to these Terms

Much Obliged may revise these Terms and the documents they incorporate. A revised version takes effect on the effective date stated on it, and we will post it with that date. Where applicable law or the nature of a material change requires it, we will give additional notice or ask for your renewed agreement before the change applies to you. A change to the price or to recurring-billing terms is never made through an ordinary revision of these Terms (see section 7.8). Using the Service after a revision takes effect means you accept it, except where renewed agreement is required.

21. Notices

Notices to you go to the email address on your account. Notices to Much Obliged go to legal@muchobliged.co. Support: support@muchobliged.co. Postal address: 30 N Gould St Ste N, Sheridan, WY 82801.

22. General

These Terms, with the documents they incorporate, are the whole agreement between you and Much Obliged about the Service. If any part is unenforceable, the rest remains in force. You may not assign these Terms; Much Obliged may assign them to a successor of its business. Neither of us is liable for delay caused by events outside reasonable control. Sections 6, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 22 survive termination.