Leaving Rover or Mad Paws: what happens to your reviews and clients
Two questions come up constantly from sitters thinking about moving off a commission platform. Do my reviews come with me, and can I keep my clients?
The short answers are no, and it depends on what you signed.
We run a competing platform and we benefit if you leave, so take nothing here on trust. Everything below is quoted from the platforms' own terms, help pages and filings, with links.
First, the distinction that matters
There are two very different things people mean by "leaving". One is winding down your account and building elsewhere. The other is taking a client you met on a platform off that platform while still using it. Almost all the trouble sitters get into is the second, and the clauses below are what apply.
What the terms actually say
Mad Paws. The Mad Paws Terms of Service, last updated 17 June 2026, contain this at clause 6:
In consideration of each User enjoying our Services: the Sitter must not provide any Pet Services or similar services to that Pet Owner; and the Pet Owner must not solicit any Pet Services or similar services from that Sitter, except through the ongoing use of Our Services and the Platform.
The clause adds: "You acknowledge that any breach by You of this section would cause harm and damage to Mad Paws." As published, it states no time limit. Clause 13 separately prohibits "any steps with the goal of bypassing these Terms ... or to avoid any payments that need to be made related to the Platform". Both are on the Mad Paws terms page.
Pawshake. Pawshake's Terms and Conditions, last updated 17 January 2025, are blunter. Section 7: "As a host, you contractually agree that the first and all future bookings with a client from Pawshake will be booked via the Pawshake Site or Application. Failure to abide by this policy may result in suspension from the Site." Section 4 separately bars using the site to find someone "and then complete the transaction offline in order to circumvent your obligation to pay for the Service." Both are in the published terms.
Rover. Rover's Terms of Service, effective 17 August 2026, say at clause 4.1 that you agree not to use Rover to arrange the provision and purchase of services with another user and then complete that transaction outside Rover. As published, the clause states no time limit, and the same wording appears in the previous edition of 27 March 2025. Clause 4.2 lets Rover suspend or end your access, at its discretion, for conduct it treats as a breach of the terms. Clause 7.6 adds that Rover is under no obligation to preserve reviews, or to give you the content of reviews about you before or after deactivation. Rover's terms pages block automated requests, so we read the 17 August 2026 text from the Internet Archive's copy on 6 September 2026, and its help centre live the same day. Open the copy you accepted before relying on any summary, including this one.
This is general information, not legal advice. Your contract is the one you agreed to, and it is the only one that binds you.
What the platforms say they will do about it
The consequences these documents actually state are account actions — suspension, removal, deactivation — rather than litigation.
Mad Paws' help centre is direct: "If we discover that you are accepting cash payments or discussing offline bookings, your account may be suspended, or even removed." The trigger includes discussing an offline booking, not only taking money.
Rover described the same problem to investors. In its annual report for the year ended 31 December 2022 — the last it filed as a public company, before Blackstone took it private in February 2024 — Rover listed a risk factor headed "Off-platform bookings and payments have had and may continue to have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition." There it says it identifies and deactivates "serial diverters from the platform", and concedes that "we cannot prevent off-platform transactions entirely." The filing is on SEC EDGAR.
We looked for a case where a platform sued a sitter over off-platform bookings and found none. That is not evidence none exists. It does suggest the realistic risk is losing your account.
Why your reviews are not portable
This comes down to who owned the review, and the answer is: never you.
The review was written by the pet owner. Mad Paws' clause 19 provides that, for content posted to the platform, "You (a) assign to us all rights You may have in such Content, this is effective on posting". Pawshake gets to the same place differently, with users granting "an irrevocable, non-exclusive, fully paid worldwide license" over their content. Assignment in one case, licence in the other. Either way the person who wrote your five-star review handed the rights to the platform, and you were never in the chain.
Mad Paws' clause 18 closes the loop: "if Your Mad Paws Account is cancelled, we do not have an obligation to delete or return to You any Content that You have posted on or to the Platform."
None of this is a trap. It is ordinary marketplace drafting. But it does mean years of accumulated reviews are the platform's asset, not yours to take.
What you can actually take with you
Your own records. Mad Paws advises this itself: deletion is irreversible, and the same help page tells you to "ensure you've saved any important booking history or documents you may need later" beforehand. Take that literally, and include screenshots of your reviews. You cannot move a review, but you can keep a record of what it said and where it appeared.
Your client relationships, as a matter of fact. Mad Paws' audited FY25 annual report puts it this way: "the terms and conditions of use of the Mad Paws marketplace provide that pet owners contract directly with the pet service provider, and that Mad Paws is not liable for any loss or damage to property or the wellbeing of pets." The platform positions itself as the introducer. That does not override clause 6 and is not permission to solicit anyone, but the working relationship is genuinely yours.
Your own data, on request. Under Australian Privacy Principle 12.1, "An APP entity that holds personal information about an individual must, on request, give that individual access to the information." Grounds for refusal exist. Mad Paws publishes a contact route in its privacy policy. This gets you your personal information, not your reviews.
The honest risks of leaving
You may lose search placement. Rover told investors in that same 2022 filing: "our matching algorithm is designed to identify signals of high quality care that are observable from platform transactions, such as repeat booking activity, and to increase the chance that pet care providers exhibiting such signals are featured to pet parents." That is a visibility boost for observable on-platform activity, not a stated penalty for working elsewhere. But if your bookings stop being observable, the boost has nothing to work with.
You lose guarantee cover. The Mad Paws Guarantee applies only to bookings paid through the platform, above a minimum value per service date: "It only applies to bookings made and fully paid through Mad Paws." A cash booking is not covered. Price that against your own insurance.
You lose built-in demand. In FY25 Mad Paws reported 192,000 bookings, $39.5 million in gross marketplace value and $26.1 million paid out to sitters, on $8.9 million of revenue and a $12.3 million group loss. That is funded distribution no new platform hands you on day one, and why Rover paid roughly US$40 million for it in a deal completed on 11 November 2025.
You start your review corpus at zero. Everywhere. Every time.
For a lot of sitters the right answer is to stay, or to run both while a second channel proves itself.
What those platforms genuinely do well
They produce bookings. They spend real money marketing to owners, which is the expensive half of this business. They run a guarantee with published terms, handle payments and disputes, and vet sitters.
Mad Paws' commission is grandfathered by signup date. Its sitter help page states 15% of the Pet Service Fee (including GST) for sitters who joined before 29 June 2017, and 20% for everyone who joined after. If you signed up today, you pay 20%.
If you are one of the sitters still on 15%, you already know it — and it is worth doing the arithmetic rather than treating the lower rate as a reason to stay put. Grandfathered sitters are, almost by definition, the long-standing ones: established client base, steady repeat bookings, higher annual turnover than someone in their first year. That is precisely the profile where a percentage hurts most. A sitter turning over A$36,000 a year pays A$5,400 at 15%, and A$7,200 at 20%. The better your year, the more a commission costs you.
There is a step people skip here, so it is worth being direct about it: the question is not "is a subscription cheaper than my commission rate". Listing on The Pet Sitter is free, and the free plan charges no commission either. Not a trial, not a discounted first year — a free listing where you keep 100% of what you charge. So the honest comparison against 15% is not A$5,400 against a subscription. It is A$5,400 against nothing. The paid plan exists for sitters who want the business tooling on top; it is not the price of admission. You can import your client list on the free plan too — up to the free plan's ten clients — so you can bring your business across and see how it feels before deciding anything.
Which points at the thing that actually matters more than the percentage. A commission is rent on a relationship you already own — you found that client, you did the work, you built the trust, and a slice leaves every time they rebook. What you are buying by leaving is not only the margin. It is running your own business: your clients, your rates, your terms, direct contact, and a client list that belongs to you rather than to a platform that can change its fees, its search ranking or your account status without asking. That is true on our free plan and our paid one alike.
Two caveats on fees. Mad Paws' contract publishes no percentage at all — only that the service fee is "a fixed percentage ... specified in the relevant Booking or such other amount specified on our Platform from time to time" — so the rate sits outside the contract and can change.
Rover sits in between. Its sitter commission is 20%, and it documents an 11% owner booking fee charged on top of your listed rate, with an additional marketplace fee on California bookings (Rover support documentation, re-checked 6 September 2026). The US page states no cap on that fee; the caps Rover does publish sit on other markets' pages — C$65 per booking in Canada on the same 11% fee, and £49 in the United Kingdom and €49 in Germany on the 15% owner fee those markets charge. The 20% and 11% above are Rover's published US terms; the caps belong to the markets they name. Fees can vary by market, so check what your own booking statements actually show rather than assuming the US figure applies unchanged in Australia.
The contrast worth noticing is transparency, not just percentage. Mad Paws' help pages confirm owners pay a booking fee that scales with the length of the booking, but the rate isn't published — owners only see it at checkout. Pawshake puts its rate in the contract itself: section 7 states a 19% Host Service Fee. Every price we charge is on our pricing page.
If you decide to move, a practical order of operations
- Read your own terms first, in full, in the version you accepted.
- Keep your own client list and records from day one. Business hygiene, not a workaround.
- Do not solicit existing platform clients in breach of what you signed.
- Wind down deliberately. Sudden inactivity costs you placement before a new channel produces.
- Treat any new platform as unproven until it has produced bookings for you. Including ours.
Where we fit
We support sitters arriving from elsewhere with a review import: you submit a link or a screenshot, an admin verifies it, and the review displays on your profile with its source platform recorded. One verified imported review earns a badge labelled "Verified on another platform". Be clear on what that is — a verified copy shown with attribution. It does not move the original or restore your star rating. The full detail — every badge and how the import is verified — is in our verification and badges guide.
Make the rest of the trade with your eyes open. We charge sitters a flat annual subscription and take 0% of bookings, with a free plan and published pricing. We are young — we started in Melbourne and now sell worldwide — and our public sitter search is not open yet (it is coming soon), so today we send you no enquiries at all. What we sell you now is the software you run your business on: your profile page is publicly reachable by link and takes bookings; after approval, you choose whether search engines may index it through your search-engine visibility setting. Your booking link is yours to share, and every client you bring stays yours. If you want to look properly, set up a sitter profile and judge us on the tools, on keeping 100% of every booking, and on owning the client relationship — not on enquiries we are not sending.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I take my Rover or Mad Paws reviews with me to another platform?
No, not the reviews themselves. The review was written by the pet owner and the platform's terms take the rights to it — Mad Paws' clause 19 is an assignment of the writer's rights, Pawshake takes an irrevocable licence — so it was never yours to move. What you can keep is your own record, such as a screenshot showing what was said and where.
Is it against the rules to take a client I met on Mad Paws off the platform?
Mad Paws' clause 6 says a sitter "must not provide any Pet Services or similar services to that Pet Owner ... except through the ongoing use of Our Services and the Platform", and as published it states no time limit. Pawshake's section 7 goes further, covering "the first and all future bookings with a client from Pawshake". Read the terms you accepted, in full, before assuming anything about your own situation.
What happens to my profile and reviews if I delete my Mad Paws account?
Deletion is irreversible: Mad Paws states that a deleted account cannot be reactivated and you would need to create a new one. Clause 18 also states that on cancellation Mad Paws has no obligation to delete or return content you posted. Save your booking history and documents first — the platform's own help page advises exactly that.
Can Mad Paws suspend me for accepting cash from a client?
Yes, according to its own help centre: "If we discover that you are accepting cash payments or discussing offline bookings, your account may be suspended, or even removed." The stated trigger includes discussing an offline booking, not only taking payment for one.
Can I be on Mad Paws and another pet sitting platform at the same time?
Nothing we found in the published Mad Paws or Pawshake terms prohibits listing on more than one platform, and Rover told investors in 2022 that "some pet care providers have chosen to cross-list their offerings on other platforms." That is a separate question from the clauses quoted above, which restrict providing services to particular clients. Read your own terms in full before relying on any summary, including this one.
What do I actually lose if I stop taking bookings through a commission platform?
Search placement, guarantee cover and demand. Rover has said its matching algorithm boosts providers showing on-platform signals such as repeat booking activity, the Mad Paws Guarantee applies only to bookings made and fully paid through Mad Paws, and Mad Paws alone paid $26.1 million to sitters across 192,000 bookings in FY25. Weigh that against what the commission costs you before deciding.