Terms of Service

1. What StayKnit does

StayKnit is an online property-management service for short-stay hosts. Depending on your plan and add-ons, it includes calendar sync between listing sites, a shared booking calendar, direct bookings and blocked dates, income and cost tracking, owner statements, read-only owner portals and, where offered, staff and housekeeping logins and direct channel connections.

StayKnit is a management tool, not a booking channel. Guest messages, guest payments and channel cancellations stay on the listing site where the booking was made. Calendar sync uses the private iCal links you provide; where you choose a direct channel connection, you authorise that connection on the listing site itself through our channel partner. We never ask for your listing-site passwords.

Direct bookings and guest card payments are agreements between you and your guest. Card payments are paid into your own bank account, so you are responsible for refunds, cancellations and chargebacks under the cancellation policy you set. You may refund a guest yourself (for example by EFT). If you ask StayKnit to refund a guest's card, you first pay StayKnit the refund amount plus the handling fee shown in the app; StayKnit only refunds the card once that payment is received. If a guest's bank reverses a payment (chargeback), or StayKnit has to return money to a guest for your booking, you must repay that amount and StayKnit may recover it from you, including by invoice.

2. Minimum age and capacity to contract

You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of entering into a binding contract under South African law to create an account or use the Service. By registering, you confirm that you meet this requirement.

3. Your account and the people you invite

You must provide accurate information and confirm your email address before your account becomes fully active. You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping your credentials secure. Public sign-up creates a host account.

Each login is for one person. Do not share your email and password with anyone, including your team. Give staff and owners their own logins instead. We may contact you, ask you to change your password, or suspend access if we reasonably believe a login is being shared.

You may invite owners (read-only access to their own units) and, where available, staff. You decide who to invite and what they can see, and you are responsible for their use of your workspace. Invited users must also accept these Terms. Remove access for anyone who should no longer have it.

4. Licence to use the Service

Subject to these Terms and your active subscription, StayKnit grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to access and use the Service for your own property-management purposes. This licence does not permit you to resell, sublicense, copy, or reverse-engineer any part of the Service, or to use it to build a competing product.

5. Acceptable use and indemnity

You remain the host of record on every listing site and must have the right to manage and sync every listing you connect. You agree not to misuse the Service, interfere with its operation, attempt to access other users’ data, or use it for unlawful purposes.

You indemnify StayKnit against third-party claims arising from listings you connect without authority, from data you upload without a lawful basis, or from your breach of these Terms or a listing site’s terms.

6. Sync is best-effort

Listing sites refresh iCal calendars on their own schedules and may be delayed or unavailable. StayKnit checks linked calendars automatically and reduces, but cannot remove, the risk of double-bookings. StayKnit is not liable for double-bookings, lost revenue, or other harm caused by a listing site’s delay, outage, or incorrect data. Payout and statement figures are calculated from synced data and your settings; reconcile them against channel payouts before paying owners.

iCal links are private, secret URLs. Keep the links you import, and the StayKnit calendar links you export to listing sites, private. Anyone with a link can read the availability it contains. You can regenerate a StayKnit link at any time from Channels.

7. Third-party listing sites and channel partners

The Service connects to third-party listing sites (such as Airbnb, Booking.com, and LekkeSlaap) via the calendar links you provide and, where offered, via direct connections run through our channel partner. These sites and partners operate independently of StayKnit, and we have no control over their content, availability, or accuracy. Your use of any listing site remains governed by that site’s own terms, including any API or connectivity-partner terms that apply to direct connections, and StayKnit is not responsible for any loss arising from your dealings with them. Standard plans sync by calendar (iCal) link. Direct (API) connections are included in StayKnit Pro and Enterprise and, where offered, available as a paid add-on on other plans. Direct connections are currently offered for Airbnb and Booking.com, as agreed with you for each listing. Other sites supported by our connectivity partner (such as Vrbo, Expedia and Agoda) may be requested; we only switch one on, and only charge for it, once we have tested it with you and confirmed it works for that listing. We do not guarantee that a requested site can be connected. Until then, and for LekkeSlaap, NightsBridge and all other sites, sync stays on calendar (iCal) links on every plan.

8. Billing and cancellation

StayKnit is a flat prepaid fee with no booking commission. Paid plans are billed once, upfront, for a fixed term (monthly, 6-month, or yearly). StayKnit is not currently registered for VAT, so no VAT is charged. If we register, we will give you at least 30 days’ notice before VAT is added.

Auto-renewal is optional and off by default. Unless you enable it, a plan does not renew. When a term ends without renewal, your account is locked: you can sign in to buy a new term or delete your profile, but calendar sync and editing stop until you do. Your data is kept as described in section 9. If you opt into auto-renewal, you authorise StayKnit to store a secure payment token with Paystack and to charge the same term shortly before it ends until you switch auto-renewal off, which you can do at any time from your plan. We will email you at least 30 days before any price increase applies to a renewal. On a 6-month or yearly plan, we will also email you between 40 and 80 business days before the term ends, telling you the end date and your options (renew, change term, switch auto-renewal on or off, let it end, or cancel).

Add-ons are billed monthly. Each add-on runs on its own monthly cycle from the day we switch it on, separate from your plan term. If you tick "Charge my saved card each month", you authorise StayKnit to charge that add-on's monthly fee to your saved Paystack card until you untick it or cancel the add-on. Otherwise we send you an invoice. Cancelling an add-on stops future charges; the month already paid is not refunded except as set out in this section.

7-day cooling-off. Under section 44 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 2002, you may cancel a purchase within 7 days of payment, without giving a reason, for a full refund of that payment. Cancel from your plan; access paid for by that payment ends straight away.

Cancelling after 7 days. You may cancel a paid plan at any time from your plan. A notice period of 20 business days or one calendar month, whichever is shorter, applies from the date you cancel, but never runs past the end of the term you have paid for. You keep full access during the notice period, and auto-renewal is switched off so no further charge is made. On a monthly plan this simply means access continues until the end of the notice period or the month you paid for, with no refund and nothing further to pay. On a 6-month or yearly plan, any prepaid time beyond the notice period is refunded pro-rata to your original payment method. There is no other cancellation penalty.

How the refund is worked out. Refund = amount you paid for the term × (time left in the term after the notice period ends ÷ full length of the term, including any bonus months). This uses the rate you actually paid: any multi-month discount or bonus months are not clawed back, and used time is never re-charged at the monthly price. For example, on a yearly plan paid at R2,388 for 14 months, cancelling with 8 months left after the notice period gives a refund of R2,388 × 8 ÷ 14 = R1,364.57.

Refunds are reviewed and released by StayKnit and typically reflect within 5–10 business days, depending on your bank. Refunds are reduced only by (a) the payment processing fees StayKnit actually incurred on the original payment, including any VAT on those fees, and (b) any non-refundable third-party costs StayKnit has already paid specifically for your account and cannot recover (for example, a channel-connection setup cost for your listings). Each deduction is limited to the actual cost and is shown on your refund. No other administration or cancellation fee is charged. The free trial requires no card, and nothing is charged until you confirm a paid plan. Payments are processed by Paystack; StayKnit never stores your full card details.

Non-payment. If a payment is reversed or charged back, we may suspend paid features until the matter is resolved. We will tell you by email before doing so.

The Consumer Protection Act, 2008 may apply to you, including if you are a small business below the Act’s threshold. Nothing in this clause limits your rights under section 14 of that Act or any other mandatory law, and where they conflict, those rights prevail.

9. Your data

You own the data you put into StayKnit. You give StayKnit a limited licence to store and process it only to provide the Service to you. Your data is scoped to your account and is never sold.

Personal information. For the personal information of owners, guests and staff that you upload, you are the responsible party under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA) and StayKnit is your operator. As operator, StayKnit will: process that information only to provide the Service and on your instructions; keep it confidential; apply appropriate security safeguards (section 19); and tell you without undue delay if we believe it has been accessed without authority. These Terms form the written operator agreement required by section 21 of POPIA. You confirm that you have a lawful basis for the information you upload. More detail is in the Privacy Policy.

Export, deletion and inactivity. You may export or delete your data at any time from Settings. Deleting your profile permanently erases your account and associated data and cannot be undone. A profile counts as inactive when nobody has signed in to it for 12 months; inactive profiles are deleted automatically. We will email the account address at least 30 days before deletion, and signing in before then keeps the profile. You are responsible for keeping your own copies of statements and records you need for tax purposes (SARS generally expects records to be kept for five years), so download them regularly.

10. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

The Service is provided “as is” without warranties of any kind, to the fullest extent permitted by law. We aim to keep the Service available but do not guarantee uptime or offer a service-level agreement. Features marked “coming soon”, “early access”, or “beta” are provided without any warranty and may change or be withdrawn. We are not liable for failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as power or network outages, load-shedding, or failures of listing sites or payment providers.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, StayKnit’s total liability arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months preceding the claim. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

11. Changes and termination

We may update these Terms from time to time; material changes will be reflected by the “last updated” date above and notified in-app or by email at least 14 days before they take effect, unless the change is required by law or relates to a new feature you choose to use earlier. If you do not accept the updated Terms, you may stop using the Service and cancel your plan before the effective date; we will then treat your cancellation as described in the Billing and cancellation clause above. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of any updated Terms will constitute your acceptance of those changes. We may suspend or terminate access for material breach of these Terms, after giving notice where reasonably possible.

12. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa, and disputes are subject to the courts of the Republic of South Africa.

13. Find a stay directory

Hosts can choose to list their business on StayKnit's public Find a stay page. Listing is optional, and you can hide or remove your listing at any time in Settings.

When you publish a listing, you confirm that its details are accurate and kept up to date, and that you own or have permission to use the text and any images you publish. Do not copy listing text or photos from Airbnb, Booking.com or other sites unless you have the right to reuse them. You give StayKnit a non-exclusive, royalty-free permission to display that content publicly on the Service while the listing is published. We may edit or remove a listing that is inaccurate, unlawful or breaches these Terms.

Listing photos and videos. Photos and videos must be real, current pictures of the property that you took yourself or have the owner's permission to use. Do not upload images made or changed by AI, or pictures saved from Google or other websites. Normal edits such as brightness, colour and cropping are fine. You confirm this each time you upload, and you are responsible if a photo or video breaks someone else's rights.

Photo complaints. If you believe a photo or video on Find a stay is yours and is used without permission, use "Report this listing" on that listing and choose "My photo or video is used without my permission", or email support@stayknit.org. We aim to take the photo down within 48 hours while we check, ask the host to show they have the right to use it, and remove it for good if they cannot. Hosts who repeatedly upload pictures they have no right to use may have their listing removed.

Find a stay is open to hosts on a paid plan only (not trials). Each listing must link to the same property on a recognised booking site (such as Airbnb, Booking.com, LekkeSlaap, Vrbo, SafariNow or NightsBridge), and you must be allowed to rent out that property. StayKnit reviews new listings, and changes to contact details or the booking-site link, before they are shown. A "Verified host" badge only means we checked the phone number, the booking-site listing and the paid account at that time. It is not a guarantee of the property or the host.

Guests can report a listing. We may hide a listing straight away while we look into a report, and we may suspend or close the account of anyone who publishes a fake or misleading listing or uses Find a stay to take money from guests dishonestly. Where we suspect fraud, we may share the account details we hold with the bank, payment provider or the South African Police Service, as allowed by law and our Privacy Policy.

StayKnit only displays the listing. We are not a party to any booking, payment or dispute between a guest and a host, we do not check or guarantee the properties listed, and we do not guarantee that a listing will lead to enquiries or bookings.

14. Storage and fair use

Each account includes up to 10 GB of stored photos and files (StayKnit Pro: 50 GB). You can see how much you are using in Settings → Storage. Photos are made smaller when they are uploaded, so most hosts use only a small part of this.

If your account goes over its limit, we will email you and give you at least 30 days to download or delete older files, or to take extra storage as a paid add-on at the price we tell you at the time. We will not delete your files, or charge you for extra storage, because you are over the limit without first giving you that notice.

How long photos are kept. Photos on staff reports are kept for 24 months, then deleted; the report itself is kept. We email you at least 30 days before, so you can save any photos you need. Guest reviews, complaints and their photos are kept for 24 months, as set out in the Privacy Policy.

15. Contact and complaints

StayKnit (Pty) Ltd
Registration number: 2026/740258/07
Director: Johan Pawson
Pai Nosso Close, Paternoster, Western Cape, 7381, South Africa
support@stayknit.org

To raise a complaint, email support@stayknit.org with “Complaint” in the subject. We will acknowledge it within 2 business days and aim to resolve it within 14 days. If you are not satisfied, you may refer it to the National Consumer Commission or, for personal information, the Information Regulator.