How Sharebay works

More than just a local access center, Sharebay is a free-to-access, community library where you can avail of thousands of free goods and services offered by members all over the world.

Free to use and privacy respecting

Sharebay doesn't run paid advertising on-site, and doesn't follow you with trackers or sell your information, there’s no catch—just a community of thoughtful people who believe that sharing goods and services is good for you, and good for the world.

How Sharebay is good for the world:

Reduce waste and encourage reuse of resources

Promote collaboration and sharing

Build connection and trust in local areas and around the world

Organise community programs

Meet like-minded people in your area

Help organise meetups, find friends and more with our map and member searching system

Support an Open Access Economy. Find out more here.

Getting started

To get started, just create your account, make an offer listing and start sharing free goods and services with other members.

For best results, add as much information about yourself as you can, so Sharebay can better match you with things you might be interested in.

What to offer

You can offer anything on Sharebay as long as it is genuinely free, and yours to give. Please just respect Sharebay's Do's and Don'ts guidelines →

Do:

Do offer complete, working items

Do offer services that you can provide to a reasonable standard

Be courteous and give timely responses to queries

Don’t:

Don't offer faulty or incomplete items unless issues or missing parts are clearly stated

Don't offer items or services that may be illegal in yours or the recipient’s country

Don't use Sharebay to advertise paid products or services †

Don't offer items or services that may cause offense or bring Sharebay.org into disrepute *

You can also request an item or service that another member might be able to help you with, and offer or request items on loan if you wish.

If you’re not sure what to offer, check out Sharebay's listing templates for some commonly offered items and services.

† You may post offers that promote a paid product as long as the item on offer is fully free. Listings that promote free and open-source projects (FOSS) may be permitted if an item offered in the listing is paid, but Sharebay cannot guarantee other members will approve of your listing.
* Offers that do meet these criteria will be removed, and members may be banned from the site.

The Badge System

Sharebay uses a two level ‘badge’ system that denotes the overall trust and giving activity of a member.

These badge levels are as follows:

Active Contributor (has given at least once)

Prolific Contributor (has given to at least three other members)

No badge denotes a member who hasn’t yet completed an offer.

The Badge System works alongside your Trust Score in your profile. Trust scores are calculated based on the total number of offers and completed transactions a member has made using this simple point system:

1 point for every offer listed *
4 points for every offer completed

Higher badge members can choose to limit access to their offers based on a respondent's badge level. This acts as a safeguard for those who may prefer to offer higher value items.

* Up to a maximum of 3 points. Offers must be live. Request listings are not counted, however, fulfilling another member’s request is counted as a completed offer

The Transaction Record

Sharebay logs every transaction that happens. This transaction record is public and helps to ensure transparency and trust on the site. Each completed transaction is recorded as a ‘gave’ and ‘got’ score to giver and receiver respectively. These totals are displayed on every member’s profile page, along with a link to view their site transactions.

The transaction system works like this:

You request a member’s offer ► They are notified and a pending transaction is created
They agree to fulfill offer ► You are notified and the transaction is updated
You confirm delivery of item or service ► They are notified and a completed transaction is registered

In the case of responding to a request, it’s slightly different:

You offer to fulfill request ► They are notified and a pending transaction is created
They agree for you to fulfill request ► You are notified and the transaction is updated
You fulfill request ► They are notified and the transaction is updated
They confirm delivery ► You are notified and a completed transaction is registered

A pending transaction can be canceled at any time by either member.

The Five Star Review System

Sharebay enables you to rate transactions upon transaction completion. You can give a rating between 1-5 stars and leave a review if you wish.

Along with the Badge System, Transaction Record, Trust Score, and offer counters, the Five Star Review System helps you make an informed choice about who you want to share or have contact with.

Safe-Pay

Sharebay features Safe-Pay, a feature that enables members to safely send items to other members to cover delivery costs.

The Safe-Pay system works like this:

Giver and getter agree to delivery ► Getter sends delivery money to Sharebay
Sharebay holds delivery money ► Giver pays for delivery costs and sends item
Getter confirms item delivery ► Sharebay releases getter's delivery money to giver

HonorPay

Sharebay uses HonorPay - an independent award app that allows you to send virtual awards to show your gratitude and appreciation to any other member.

When you register for Sharebay, you have the option to create a linked HonorPay account as well. HonorPay is a free service and you can log in using the same email and password as for Sharebay. Find out more about HonorPay here.

A member's Honor score is displayed beside their name. If you are especially pleased with a transaction, you can award the member an Honor via their profile page.

Member safety

There are a number of measures Sharebay uses to make the site as safe as possible for members:

- Spam or offensive content reporting. Every listing has a link at the bottom to report it anonymously and safely. Sharebay actively follows up reports and removes inappropriate content.
- Profile reporting. You can report another member who behaves inappropriately or who is abusing the site using the link at the bottom of their profile. Reports are anonymous and all are followed up.
- Member blocking. If you no longer wish to hear from or see content from a member, you can block them using the link below a member’s profile. When you block a member, neither of you will be able to send messages or view each other’s content.

NB When arranging to meet other members to collaborate or exchange goods, be sensible at all times. Arrange to meet in a public place, or bring someone with you. Never meet someone you don’t know alone in a strange place.

Automatic translations

Because Sharebay is an international site, Sharebay features optional automatic translations by Google. To set up translation, just set your preferred language and enable automatic translations in your Edit profile & settings page.

Note: Accuracy of translations varies according to language.