Agency membership standard

1. Admission

Every applicant passes all six checks before a seat is offered. There is no application fee, no paid fast track and no minimum third-party review count.

1. Business identity or sole-trader equivalent
2. Verified domain or authorised owner
3. Accountable named people
4. Two verified client projects
5. Two confirmed client references
6. Accurate service, budget, location and commercial disclosures

2. Capacity

The programme has 100 seats. A qualified applicant waits until a seat is free. The waitlist is a pool, not a queue: there is no promised position and no promised wait time, and an application can remain qualified indefinitely.

The first 100 companies ever to activate carry a permanent Founding Member designation. A replacement member after a release does not inherit it.

3. Maintenance

Verification lasts 365 days from a successful review. A renewal notice goes out 30 days before expiry, and the same dates are always visible in the member dashboard, so email is never the only notice.

After expiry the public badge reads "verification expired" for 30 days. If the review has not been renewed by then the seat is released and the membership becomes inactive. The company profile, its URL and any hosting assessment stay online. Inactivity is not a finding of misconduct.

Being at capacity or declining unsuitable work is not inactivity. Availability controls whether the enquiry form is shown, nothing else.

4. Ordering

The member list is a deterministic shuffle seeded by the UTC date and each company identifier. Every visitor sees the same order on a given day, and it changes the next day. This is a rotation, not a guarantee of equal impressions.

There is no agency quality score, no numeric rank, no popularity vote and no HRI tie-break. Filters hide cards mechanically; they never reorder them.

5. Independence from HRI

HRI is a hosting assessment. It does not appear on agency surfaces and it is not proof of agency workmanship. Membership, verification, Featured placement and sponsorship cannot change any hosting score, hosting fact or hosting ranking input.

A company with both agency services and a separately assessable hosting offering is shown with both, on one profile, labelled separately. Admission never reclassifies a company to manufacture hosting eligibility, and a reseller relationship alone does not create an independently assessed hosting offering.

6. Featured placement

Up to 3 Featured cards may appear above the member list. They are paid, labelled Featured, and link with rel="sponsored". A Featured card is available to any company with confirmed agency capability, member or not. It grants no seat, no verification badge, no founding designation and no change to the rotation. When none are sold the block is omitted.

7. Conflicts and owned entities

Companies owned by or related to HostList operators are disclosed here, reviewed by an independent admin, and occupy a seat like any other member. They cannot buy Featured placement. A reviewer recuses from any applicant with which they have a business relationship. Administrative corrections require a recorded reason.

Currently disclosed: none. This line is updated in the same release as any owned entity being admitted.

8. Enquiries

A buyer contacts one chosen member at a time. The message is delivered only to that member, with the buyer's consent recorded. It is never rerouted to another agency, a sponsor or HostList. Members see enquiries in their dashboard; no response-rate score is computed or shown.

9. Suspension and removal

Fabricated reviews, false client claims, link-selling abuse, rights complaints and business closure are moderated separately from inactivity, with a recorded reason, and may suspend or end a membership. A suspended or former member keeps its company profile.