How to vet a social media growth service before you pay: a buyer's checklist

Search for a follower or view service and you will find dozens of near-identical storefronts, most of them promising the same things in the same words. From the outside it is hard to tell a business that will still answer your email next month from a site that was built last week and will vanish with your money. The good news is that you do not need insider knowledge to separate the two. Most of the checks that matter use free, official tools and take a few minutes.

This checklist is written for buyers in the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It walks through who is behind the site, how your payment method protects you, what you should never hand over, how to read terms and a package page, and what the platforms themselves say about inflated numbers. At the end you will find a 10-point scorecard, applied to an illustrative seller, that you can reuse on any service, including ours.

Why a few minutes of checking beats a refund fight

Most problems buyers run into are not dramatic scams. They are smaller and more common: an order that never starts, a support inbox that never replies, a refund policy that turns out not to exist, or a count that falls a fortnight later with nobody to ask about it. Every one of those is easier to prevent than to fix. Once you have paid, your leverage shrinks to whatever your bank or card issuer can do for you, and that process takes time and paperwork.

Vetting also protects your account, not just your wallet. A seller that asks for the wrong things, such as your login, can cause damage that no refund reverses. So treat the steps below as a filter: a service that fails the early checks does not deserve a closer look at its prices.

Step 1: find the company behind the website

A legitimate seller tells you who it is. Look in the footer, the terms of service and the contact page for a registered company name and, ideally, a company number or state of registration. Then check that name in the official register for the country it claims. Each register answers a slightly different question, and none of them is a quality certificate.

United Kingdom: Companies House

The free Companies House search lets you look up a company by name, company number or officer name, view its filing history and document images, and see whether it has been dissolved ^[1]. A company that has filed accounts on time for several years tells you more than one incorporated last month. Keep the limit in mind, though: Companies House states that it does not check the accuracy of the information companies file ^[1]. A record proves a company exists, not that it trades honestly.

United States: state business-entity searches

There is no single national company register in the US; businesses are formed under state law, so you search the state the seller names. New Jersey, for example, offers a Business Entity Name Search where you can look up a registered business by name, keyword or entity ID ^[2]. The state notes that results include matching entities regardless of their status ^[2], so read the status on the record rather than stopping at the first match. Other states run similar tools through their Secretary of State or revenue division.

European Union: VAT numbers in VIES

If an EU-based seller displays a VAT number, you can check it in VIES, the European Commission's search tool. VIES tells you whether a business is registered to trade cross-border within the EU; it searches national VAT databases rather than holding data itself ^[3]. Because of data protection rules, national authorities will not supply the name and address behind a number, and an invalid result can simply mean the number is not activated for intra-EU trade or the registration is not finalised ^[3]. Treat a valid result as one supporting signal, and an invalid one as a question to put to the seller.

Step 2: pay in a way that leaves you options

How you pay decides what happens if the order goes wrong. Cards carry protections that bank transfers, gift cards and cryptocurrency usually do not, which is one reason sellers who insist on those methods deserve extra caution.

• United States: under the Fair Credit Billing Act you can dispute credit card billing errors, including goods or services that were not delivered as agreed. The FTC explains that you write to the issuer's billing-inquiries address within 60 days of the first bill showing the error, and the issuer must acknowledge within 30 days and resolve the dispute within 90 days ^[4].
• United Kingdom: section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act can make your credit card provider jointly responsible when the cash price of an item is more than one hundred pounds and no more than thirty thousand pounds. It does not apply to debit cards ^[5].
• Chargeback (UK and elsewhere): a card-scheme process for debit and credit cards. The Financial Ombudsman notes that banks are not obliged to raise one, that Visa, Mastercard and American Express each have their own rules, and that the time limit is usually around 120 days ^[5].

Whatever the route, the evidence you keep matters more than the method: the order confirmation, the package page as it looked when you bought, and your messages with support. Take screenshots before you pay, not after something goes wrong.

Step 3: keep your login to yourself

No service that adds visible numbers to a public profile or post needs your password. It needs a public link or username, and nothing else. A request for your password, a one-time code or a session cookie is the clearest disqualifier on this list.

The platforms say the same. YouTube's channel security guidance states that YouTube will never ask for your password or other account information by email, message or phone, and recommends 2-step verification with a passkey as the strongest protection against phishing ^[6]. Instagram has explained that people who used third-party growth apps often handed over their username and password, that those apps then used the accounts for inauthentic activity, and that changing the password revokes such access ^[7]. If you have ever typed your login into a growth tool, change your password today.

Step 4: read the terms and the package page

The terms are where marketing language meets commitments. Before paying anywhere, find answers to four questions: what happens to the part of an order that is not delivered, how long a refill period lasts and when it starts, what voids it, and how you contact support with an order number. On foyup these answers sit in the refund policy and the terms of service; on any site, if you cannot find them in two clicks, count that as a failed check.

Then read one package page closely. A useful page shows a fixed price before checkout, a delivery window and a refill period, all in plain view. On our Instagram follower packages, for instance, the expected delivery reads 0–2 hours and the refill periods read 30–365 days, both pulled live from the catalogue. Compare the same items on the TikTok follower page or on any competitor. Vague phrases with no number attached, such as lifetime or premium with nothing behind them, tell you very little.

If refill terms are new to you, our companion guide Refill periods explained walks through what a refill covers and what it does not.

Step 5: know what the platforms say about inflated numbers

An honest checklist has to include this part. Platforms discourage inauthentic activity, and buyers should know that before deciding. TikTok's Community Guidelines say it does not allow the trade of services that artificially boost engagement, and that when it detects inauthentic metrics it will remove fake likes, followers or other inflated signals ^[8]. Instagram announced that it would remove inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts using third-party apps to grow their audience, and that continued use could affect those accounts' experience ^[7].

In practice this means two things. First, counts can fall when a platform runs a cleanup, which is exactly why refill terms matter. Second, a seller that claims its numbers are approved by a platform is telling you something no platform has said. If brand partnerships are part of your plan, also read our guide to disclosure rules in the US, UK and EU, because advertising law applies whatever your follower count.

Red flags that should end the conversation

• Any request for a password, login code or remote access to your account.
• No company name, no registration details and no physical jurisdiction anywhere on the site.
• No published terms, or a refund page that only says all sales are final.
• Payment only by gift card, crypto or a personal bank transfer, with no card option.
• Pressure tactics: countdown timers that reset, stock that is always about to run out, a discount that expires in minutes.
• Claims that no one can honestly make, such as promised placement on Explore or For You, numbers that cannot fall, or endorsement by a platform.
• Reviews that all appeared in the same week, or testimonials with stock photos and no way to verify them.

One flag is a reason to dig deeper. Two or more, especially the first item, are a reason to walk away.

Worked example: a 10-point scorecard for an illustrative seller

Here is the checklist turned into a scorecard you can print. To show it in use, imagine a candle shop in Manchester weighing up a seller we will call Seller A. Seller A, the candle shop and the results below are illustrations, not a real business or customer story. Score one point for each yes.

Seller A scores six. It passes the identity checks, which already puts it ahead of many anonymous storefronts, but it fails on refill terms, transparency and honest claims. A sensible rule of thumb is to buy only from sellers that score eight or more and pass checks 1, 4 and 8 without exception. Not sure which metric your goal needs in the first place? Our guide on choosing followers, likes or views by goal helps you decide before you compare sellers.