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Shop Owner Guidelines

Updated

Creative Market Guidelines Overview

By operating a shop, becoming an partner, or creating an account on Creative Market, you agree to abide by our legal terms. This includes our usage, user-specific, privacy, and licensing terms.

Please read them carefully—they are designed to keep our members safe and happy.

In addition to the legal terms mentioned above, we’ve developed site Guidelines (see below) and Best Practices in order to help everyone have the best experience possible on Creative Market.

What is the difference between the Terms of Use, User Specific Terms, Licenses, Guidelines, and Best Practices?

  1. Terms of Use, User Specific Terms (Partner Terms, Shop Owner Terms, etc.), and Licenses: These are legal agreements that you enter into with Creative Market when you create your account and/or open a shop on Creative Market. Failure to adhere to these will result in the termination of your account, and closure of your shop (if you are a Shop Owner), and could also result in legal action.

  2. Guidelines: While not legal agreements, Guidelines are mandates that Creative Market has for site users. Failure to adhere to these Guidelines may result in the termination of your account. For Shop Owners, failure to adhere to the Guidelines could also result in the closure of your shop, removal of one or more of your products, and/or refunded sales.

  3. Best Practices: These are not mandatory, but the best and most successful Creative Market members adhere to these practices. These Best Practices are especially important for Shop Owners, and we encourage Shop Owners to follow them. As a Shop Owner, following Best Practices can contribute to your success on the Creative Market platform, and also helps your customers have a great experience with your shop and products.

Shop Owner Guidelines

Click on a topic to learn more:

Listed Content for Sale

In order to ensure that your listed products may be sold under the Creative Market Licenses free from potential liability, Shop Owners are expected to secure the rights or proper license(s) to sell any material that incorporates third-party Intellectual Property, such as trademarks. (Learn more in our Shop Terms, section 1.) Not only does this protect our Shop Owners, but it also helps provide peace of mind to our customers, who want to be assured their purchases are free from potential liability.

To clarify:

  • Content and listings (including product files, listing description, tags, title, etc) containing visible trademarks are prohibited, unless you are able to provide evidence of the appropriate license / direct permission from the Trademark holder stating that you may sell content featuring their brand.
  • Creative Market reserves the right to request the above information from any Shop Owner found to be selling material visibly depicting a trademark.
  • Any such product(s) being sold without the appropriate license or permission may be removed without notice.

Site Actions

Communication & Support

Shop Owners must respond within a reasonable amount of time to outreach from the Creative Market Team regarding product support, customer topics, or any other issue. In general, Shop Owners should respond to outreach from the Creative Market Team within one week or less. However, it is important to note that some areas of outreach by the Creative Market Team may be more time-sensitive than others, and may require a swifter response. Please make sure you can receive emails from noreply@creativemarket.com, hello@creativemarket.com, and support@creativemarket.com. 

Additionally, the best Shop Owners will actively respond to their customers and swiftly address any questions or concerns. While we do not mandate a specific response time, and we recognize that many Shop Owners work in different time zones, the most successful Shop Owners respond within at least 48 hours.

If Creative Market receives a significant number of complaints regarding a Shop Owner’s failure to respond, or if a Shop Owner fails to respond to outreach made by the Creative Market Team, the Shop Owner’s shop(s) may be suspended or permanently closed.

Product Update Feature

Abuse of the Product Update feature (i.e. using this feature without the primary reason is to promote a legitimate product update) is prohibited and can result in shop suspension or removal.

Shop Updates Feature

Abuse of the Shop Updates feature such as spamming, promoting other marketplaces, or sharing content that violates our Site Content Guidelines may result in shop suspension or removal.

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Product Tag Usage 

Tags are a tool that help customers discover your products. Creative Market strictly prohibits tags that are derogatory, racist, or offensive; tags that do not accurately describe the product; and tags which misuse the name of other Shop Owners or artists.

If a product uses a prohibited tag, the product may be removed from sale until the tag is removed. Repeat offenses or more serious offenses may result in the product removal or shop closure.

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Product Descriptions, Titles, Screenshots, & Properties

The intended use of product descriptions and properties on Creative Market is to provide customers with detailed product information. Therefore, products may not have any properties associated with them that are inaccurate or misleading.

Additionally, product descriptions may not include:

  • Links that direct customers to purchase or download the same product from other marketplaces or websites
  • Custom license terms
  • Information that is willfully inaccurate, deceptive, or dishonest

Products found to be in violation of any of the above guidelines could result in customers being refunded, products being removed, and/or the offending shop being closed.

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Licensing Compliance

Products may only be sold under Creative Market’s licenses. Attempting to make any limitations or extensions to these licenses is prohibited. Creative Market’s licenses supersede any conflicting terms.

Additionally, you may not tell your customers that any specific License is “included” with a product purchase. This can be confusing for customers, because they technically need to choose a license at checkout, and each license allows different rights.

Failure to adhere to Creative Market’s licenses may result in shop suspension or removal.

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Product Files

Including any malware or files unrelated to the product, third-party EULAs or user agreements, or mandatory requests for customer contact information is prohibited.

Violating any of the above guidelines may result in products being drafted or removed by the Creative Market Team.

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Bundles and Packs

Shop Owners may sell bundles or packs made up of their own products or assets. This could be a collection of graphic assets packaged together as one product, or a collection of individually listed items from your shop that are bundled as one product.

However, curating bundles in your shop that include products from multiple Creative Market shops and/or outside contributors is not allowed. To encourage fairness in the marketplace, we’ve decided that Creative Market isn’t the place for these bundles.

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Product Sales and Special Pricing

In accordance with the laws of the United States Fair Trade Commission (FTC), Creative Market expects all Shop Owners (regardless of their location) to make sure their sales and promotional offerings are genuine and truthful. Specifically, Creative Market requires the following:

1. Introductory Prices & Limited Time Sales 

  • Products may not be advertised as having a low introductory price (e.g. early bird price, introductory offer), if the Shop Owner does not plan to increase the price at a later date.
  • Products may not be advertised as being a limited-time product or on a limited-time sale, unless the product or sale will truly only be available for a limited amount of time.
    • If a product is promoted as “on sale,” the Shop Owner must include a published end date, and the sale must end on that date. Products that are perpetually on sale may be removed.

2. Price Reductions

  • If a product’s price is advertised as lower than the normal price (e.g. “formerly $X,” “usually $X,” “regularly $X”), that normal, previous price must be genuine, and cannot mislead customers.
    • For the previous price to be genuine, the product must have been listed at that price on Creative Market for a reasonable period of time, with the Shop Owner intending to get sales at that price point (even if no sales ultimately took place at that price).
    • A previous price is not considered genuine if a Shop Owner listed a product at a high price, just because he/she wanted to “discount” it down from that falsely high price later.
    • For example: A Shop Owner may not do the following:
      • A Shop Owner lists a product on Creative Market for $100. The Shop Owner doesn’t plan on selling this product for $100 (he/she does not believe people will buy the product for $100), but leaves the product up on the site at that price for a few weeks so that later he/she can put the product on sale, saying, “This product is usually $100, but you can get it right now for only $10!”

Products that do not abide by the above guidelines may be removed. Please read the United States Fair Trade Commission guide thoroughly and make sure you understand any applicable laws.

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Third Party Assets

Due to licensing restrictions, third-party assets (including, but not limited to, photos, fonts, and theme frameworks) may not be included in your product files/folders or within layers of your product file(s). Products found to be including third-party assets in the product files will immediately be set to draft.

If your product uses a third-party asset, instead of including the assets themselves as a part of your product download files, please include a clear statement in your product description that informs customers they will need to download the third-party asset prior to using your product. Then, include a link to the third-party asset in your product files. This will allow your customer to purchase or download the needed assets.

Finally, keep in mind that many customers purchase a product with the intent to use it commercially. So, if your product uses a third-party asset, it should ideally be an asset that your customers are able to use in commercial projects.

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See below for further content guidelines in relation to specific areas of the Creative Market site.

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