What we expect in an Envato Author

Summary: This outlines what we expect of an Envato Author across our platforms, including their agreement with customers and with us (Envato).

General Expectations
Authors and Customers
Authors and Envato

General Expectations

In order to provide the best experience and products to our global customer base, we have expectations of you, our authors and how you operate using our platforms.

We want to ensure fair and equal opportunity for all community members and ensure that there is always a high value offering for our customers. This means that when they land on Envato, your item(s) have the best chance for success in selling.

As we work on continuously managing our platforms to equip Authors to sell more items that customers want, we need you to do your part in ensuring only the best quality items are available on Envato.

If you’re new to Envato, please take some time to get to know us at All About Envato and review our general expectations below.

Authors and Customers

When a customer purchases your item, they have a right to expect that:

• The quality will be acceptable.
• The item is described accurately and honestly.
• Any promises made by the author will be kept and honoured.

All members of the Envato Author Community are expected to be fair and truthful in what they say and do. All members should keep the community’s best interests at heart.

Everyone is open, straightforward, trustworthy and plays by the same rules. The information provided is clear, accurate and easy to understand.

There are consumer laws in many countries giving customers protection, that the items quality will be acceptable and works as promised. Envato customers will base their buying decision on the information provided. If the information is not accurate, then not only is a customer potentially misled, other Authors may miss out on a potential sale.

When a customer asks a pre-sales question, it’s important the information provided is clear, accurate and easy to understand. A customer can then correctly determine if the item is suitable for their project.

If a customer is misled by the item information, they may be entitled to a refund which Envato Market staff will fairly assess.

Misleading a customer may include:

• Claiming the item has a feature or function that it does not have.
• Advertising the item is supported, when it is not.

Please Note: If you do provide support, you’ll need to be prepared to;

• Answer technical questions about features and functionality.
• Help with third-party assets sold with the item (eg. bundled plugins).
• Assist in fixing issues.

You are not required to install or customize your items or assist with hosting or third party software. Set expectations clearly in your item description for your customers on what your average response time is, for example; I will aim to respond to all requests within 48 hours. Please refer to Item Support Best Practices and the Item Support Policy if you are planning to offer Support. 

When uploading your items to Envato, please ensure your item(s):

• Works as described and matches descriptions given on the item page (or elsewhere).
• Includes ALL the features and functionality as advertised.
• Matches the demo or live preview.
• Comes with full title and ownership (or properly licensed assets).

Please Note: It’s the Author’s responsibility (yours!) to ensure any applicable consumer laws are followed for the customer purchasing your item(s). This includes all claims made about the item(s) on the item page, on Envato platforms, Envato forums, on social media or any other sites too.

Authors and Envato

When you sign up to create an account with Envato, you agree to our Author Terms, which outline expectations of you, as an Author and how you operate on our platforms.
This means for each of your items, you warrant (promise) to us that:

1. The Item conforms to the Content Guidelines or any Supporting Materials;
2. The Item is of acceptable quality and fit for the purpose for which it is ‘sold’;
3. The Item matches the description given by you;
4. You have the rights necessary to grant us the rights set out in clauses 5 and 6 of the Author Agreement;
5. Nobody else’s intellectual property rights will be infringed by our use of the Item, our licensing of the Item to subscribers, or subscribers using the Item in accordance with the terms of the Envato Elements License (as amended from time to time);
6. The Item complies with our Acceptable Use Policy;
7. The Item and its description do not violate any applicable law or regulation (including those governing export control, consumer protection, unfair competition, criminal law, pornography, anti-discrimination, trade practices or fair trading);
8. You will process a subscriber’s information in accordance with applicable privacy law and data protection regulations;
9. If the Item preview contains watermarked previews sourced through another Envato Company site, you must ensure the following: (i) the watermark must remain on the watermarked preview; (ii) the author and name of the watermarked preview must appear in your Item description; and (iii) the watermarked preview must not be included in your Item file(s) available for download; and
10. Where relevant, you have obtained a valid and binding model or property release for any Items requiring such a release and you must:
    1. Follow the Content Guidelines or any process set out in the Supporting Materials for capturing model and property releases;
    2. Retain copies of all releases and provide those copies to us upon request;
    3. Provide a privacy notice, making the model aware of their personal information that you will receive and how you will handle that information;
    4. Obtain the model’s permission to use their personal information;
    5. Use the personal information only for the limited purposes for which the model gave permission; and
    6. Meet any privacy and spam law requirements that apply to you.

These expectations include certain areas of work that you’d come across as an Author throughout your journey with us, such as:

Legal Responsibilities
Quality Expectations
Technical Requirements
The Review Process

You can find all this information by navigating to the specific sections of the Author Help Center (as listed above) and reviewing the related articles. You can also check out the Beginners Guide to Selling on Envato to see what's involved.