What a verified kennel earns

The Verified tier isn't an upgrade in the SaaS sense. It's a promise we co-sign with you to every buyer who finds your kennel through us.

We get this question a lot from kennels considering the Verified upgrade: "What does it actually do for me, in concrete terms?" Here's the full list, in writing, with no marketing fog.

1. The gold WaxSeal, on every surface

The platform's only earned status symbol. Once it's on your kennel record, the seal renders next to your name in five places that buyers actively read:

• The Marketplace listing card on every dog you publish.
• The Breeders directory card.
• Your public kennel profile (/k/<slug>) at headline scale.
• The Dashboard "Kennels to explore" widget that surfaces to every Buyer Pass holder on the platform.
• Anywhere your kennel is referenced in another dog's ownership chain (sire, dam, transferred-from).

The seal is a single recognisable mark. Buyers learn what it means within their first session on the platform. After that, you don't have to introduce yourself.

2. Search-result priority — but not by paying for it

Verified kennels surface above unverified kennels in the Marketplace and Breeders search results when all other ranking signals are equal. Equal is doing a lot of work in that sentence: a relevant unverified kennel that matches the buyer's breed + location filter still beats an unrelated verified kennel. We don't sell ranking. The seal earns you a tiebreaker, not a top-of-list bypass.

We make this rule public on purpose. Buyers can read it, and they trust the rest of the search results more for knowing it.

3. A downloadable badge for your own website

We generate a high-resolution PNG of the WaxSeal in two variants — gold-on-white and gold-on-black — and we host the canonical "Verified by Armstrong K9" link target. Drop the badge on your site, link it back to your platform profile, and any visitor who clicks lands on your verified profile with the seal visible. It's free brand distribution for both of us.

We don't license the seal to non-verified kennels under any circumstance. If someone's claiming to be Armstrong-verified and isn't on our verified list, they're misrepresenting; we'll send a polite cease-and-desist on your behalf.

4. Litter waitlist deposits, with Stripe escrow

Coming later in 2026. Verified kennels will be the first to get the waitlist deposit feature: take a non-refundable $200–$500 deposit on a future litter, held in Stripe escrow, automatically refunded if the litter doesn't land within an agreed window. Removes the cancellation drama from your inbox and gives you a real demand signal before the breeding decision. Verified kennels onboard a quarter ahead of unverified.

5. Live video tour booking — with revenue split

15-minute Daily.co video tours from your kennel profile. The tour booking carries a flat $35 fee (paid by the buyer) that splits 90/10 in your favour — Stripe Connect transfers the seller's share automatically once the tour is paid. A kennel doing four tours a week clears about $4,500 a year just from due-diligence sessions that would have been free phone calls otherwise. Verified kennels get the tour booking widget on their public profile by default. Sellers must complete Stripe Connect onboarding before splits can be paid; until then, your share accrues and is released when you finish onboarding.

6. Buyer Pass referral revenue split

Pilot launching Q2 2026. When a buyer subscribes to Buyer Pass after first landing on your kennel profile or one of your dog listings, you receive 20% of their first 12 months' subscription revenue, paid out via Stripe Connect. It's our way of recognising that verified kennels are the ones actually pulling buyers onto the platform. The pilot is open to verified kennels first.

7. Direct line to admin for transfers and disputes

Verified kennel transfers (when you sell a dog and the ownership record updates) get a real human in the loop instead of a help-desk template. If you're caught in a payment dispute or a buyer-side dispute, a real person at Armstrong K9 mediates the conversation and can release escrow, refund a deposit, or revoke a transfer with cause.

What it costs

The Verified Kennel tier (also called the Elite plan) is $129/month or $1,290/year. The two-year prepay ($2,499) carries an additional Founding Kennel badge on your profile. Cancel anytime — the seal is revoked at the end of your paid period, but no records, transfers, or earnings are clawed back. There is no separate verification fee on top of the subscription.

What it's not

It's not an endorsement of any specific breeding decision. The seal means we verified the seven things in our review process and that those things stayed true. If a verified kennel makes a breeding decision a buyer disagrees with, that's a kennel-buyer conversation, not a failure of verification.

It's also not a permanent mark. If anything in the original review changes materially — a new owner, a new address, a complaint we couldn't reconcile — the seal pauses pending review. Most kennels never hit this; the ones who do tend to be ones whose buyers were going to find out anyway.

If you're a serious kennel and the verification process sounds reasonable to you, you're already most of the way there. The rest is a Stripe checkout and a 48-hour review window. The seal goes live the moment we click confirm.

Start your verification from the Billing page — Verified Kennel tier.