microPledge help

Supporting projects you like

Other help topics:

Why does pledging work better than donations?

How do I pledge?

Simply find a project on the pledge page and click it. Then fill in the amount you want to pledge. By default, you’ll be notified when releases come out.

When do I have to pay?

You don’t pay till a developer is chosen and starts work on the project.

Pledging to a project without a developer will help get one on board. When the developer starts work, your pledges will be called in, and you’ll have to place the funds into our trust account. (At that point you’ll be able to easily top up your account via PayPal if you need to.)

microPledge will then hold your pledge in a trust account, but it still belongs to you, and you can get it back if the project doesn’t finish.

How much do I have to pledge?

As much as you like. On projects with non-software or proprietary licenses, the developer may set a minimum.

Is microPledge really free?

Yes, our service itself is free for open source projects: we don’t take a cut. Plus, any open source product that is produced is free to the world. This is because we want to encourage others to give stuff away free, too. However, for closed source projects we do charge a small fee.

Unfortunately, the bank charges a small fee for processing your credit card that we simply can’t avoid. We charge this straight to you without adding our own margin. For more detail, see our fees.

Can I get my money back?

You’ve only pledged the money and, even when your pledged funds are called in, they remain yours until all the pledgers agree by vote to pay the developer.

If the developer doesn’t do anything, the pledgers won’t agree to pay. You can remove a pledge until its funds have been called in – do this on your profile page under your current pledges.

How do pledge payments work?

As a pledger, you have a say in the project. When the developer completes all or part of the project, he will post an estimate of his progress. Now you get a chance to review his work and vote on whether you agree with his estimate. You will be emailed to say that the developer has posted evidence of his estimate on the project website (unless you chose not to be emailed on your profile page).

After the vote, if the majority of pledgers agreed that the project is done, then the developer will be paid your full pledge. If the pledgers vote that the project is only partly done then you will have to pay for that part.

Is my money secure?

Yes it is. Our reputation depends on it and we are committed to it. We have taken a number of measures to make sure that it remains safe.

Firstly, we keep all our users’ funds in a trust account to make sure that it belongs to you, not to us. Secondly, even if your money were not in a trust fund, the risk to it would be extremely low as microPledge simply does not have any creditors.

We also take the usual industry-standard precautions of secure, encrypted web transactions, and we record your transactions in one of the world's most secure database systems with up-to-the-minute online backup redundancy.

In order to make sure we keep things above-board, we have a very open-book policy about exactly where your money goes. The help file explains exactly what our fees are and exactly where and when payments take place. Furthermore, all transactions to or from your account are shown clearly on your transaction history page – where you can also print a receipt. Because of this open-book policy, you can easily double-check us to make sure nothing has gone awry.