Your questions, answered straight.

Nothing to join, and no monthly fee is being charged to anyone today. You keep 100% of your rate — Swaddl adds a 15% platform fee on top of it and the family pays the combined amount. That covers the contract, the invoicing, the Carrot and Maven paperwork, the payment handling, and the support behind it.

Probably, eventually. If and when membership billing starts, doulas who joined in this first group keep a reduced founding rate of $29 a month for as long as they stay — the standard rate will be $49. You'd get plenty of notice first. Nothing is charged automatically without you knowing.

Yes. The 15% is added to every contract that runs through Swaddl, whether Mia matched you, the family used your booking link, or you added the client yourself. Your rate is untouched either way, and what the fee buys is the same: the contract, the benefits-ready invoice, the payment handling, and someone to call when a claim gets rejected. If you'd rather keep a particular engagement entirely off-platform, that's your call — just don't run its contract through Swaddl.

An agency takes its cut and owns the client relationship. Here the client is yours, the rate is yours, and you decide who you take on. The 15% buys the administrative machinery, not your practice.

No. You're an independent contractor. You set your own rates, choose your own clients, and keep your own practice. Swaddl doesn't schedule you, supervise your care, or tell you how to work.

About 30 minutes of your own time, plus a 20–30 minute video call with Mia. Most doulas are live within a week — the waiting is the background check, not you.

Your certification document, your CPR certification, and your liability insurance certificate — each with its expiration date. A photo of yourself. Your legal name and mailing address. Three professional references with both an email and a phone number for each. And, for payment setup, your bank details and Social Security number. There's a printable checklist in the setup guide.

iPhones save photos as HEIC files, which the uploader can't read. The fastest fix is to open the photo and take a screenshot of it, then upload the screenshot — screenshots save as PNG. PDF, JPG, and PNG all work, up to 4 MB.

It's worth doing, and it's less invasive than it sounds. Swaddl only reads whether a block of time is free or busy— never the titles, guests, or details of your events. That's what stops a family from booking you at the exact hour you're at your kid's recital.

Without it you won't appear in automatic matching at all — that's the main way clients arrive. Mia can still send you families by hand, and your own booking link still opens, but it can't offer any call times, so a family who wants to talk first has nothing to pick from.

Yes — it's Google's standard warning for smaller companies, and it's the single most common place doulas stop. Click "Advanced", then "Go to Swaddl". If you'd rather not do it alone, email Mia and she'll stay on the phone with you.

Mia calls each one herself as part of vetting — nothing is automated and no form gets emailed to them. Give them a heads up first. Matched families can see your references too, but only as initials until after an intro call; full names and contact details are revealed at the point a family is deciding. Three is the minimum, five is the maximum, and each needs a name, relationship, email, and phone.

It's free to you and runs entirely online. After your interview you'll get an email directly from Checkr, our screening partner, with a short form to fill in. Most clear within a day or two. If the email never shows up, check spam — and there's a button on your application status page that alerts Mia to re-send it.

You'll be reminded by email well before the date. If a document does lapse, your profile is paused — families can't book you until it's current, because we tell them every doula on the platform is certified and insured. Upload the new document and you're reactivated immediately, with no admin step and no waiting on anyone.

Your photo, name, bio, years of experience, certifications, specialties, languages, the areas you cover, your starting hourly rate, your reviews, and your references (initials only, until after an intro call). Your legal name, home address, credential documents, earnings, and bank details are never shown to families.

Payouts run every Monday. Your week closes Friday 7pm, the family approves over the weekend, and each Monday Swaddl adds up the shifts you marked complete that week and sends you your full rate for every hour of them. You get an email and a notification each time one goes out, showing exactly which shifts it covered.

Bank transfers take a couple of business days to appear after that. If you got the payout email and nothing has landed in your account a few days later, tell Mia — don't sit on it.

The usual reason is a shift you haven't marked complete yet. Monday's payout only includes logged shifts. Open your dashboard and look for visits still waiting to be logged. The other common reason is unfinished payout setup with Stripe. If neither applies, email Mia and she'll look the same day.

The family pays the full contract when they sign, and Swaddl holds that money. It doesn't sit in the family's account and it isn't handed to you up front. As you complete visits, your share is released to you week by week. It means you never have to chase a family for payment, and they never have to wonder whether they're paying ahead into nothing.

Exactly what it says — the contract is signed but her payment is still being finalized on our end. It's not a mistake on your end and nothing is lost. The shift becomes loggable as soon as her payment is settled, and we'll let you know when it is. If it's been more than about a week, tell Mia.

Stripe is the company that actually moves the money — the same one behind most online businesses you've bought from. They ask for a government ID, your date of birth, your bank routing and account numbers, and your Social Security number — or your EIN, if you bill through an LLC or a registered sole proprietorship. Either is fine here, and if you have an EIN it's worth using: Carrot tends to prefer paying a business. Swaddl never sees any of it. It goes straight to Stripe.

No — skip it. Stripe sometimes offers to set up something called "Link" and asks you to save a payment method. You never need to enter a card to get paid. Click Skip and carry on.

The same email address as your Swaddl account. A different one creates a separate Stripe account that isn't connected to your payouts, and it has to be untangled by hand.

You can be matched with families and have intro calls, but no contract can be created until payout setup is finished — the software blocks it, so the money can never get ahead of the paperwork. It takes about ten minutes; do it in one sitting.

Every contract shows the total and your take-home after the 15% before you send it. The Earnings page shows year-to-date earnings already net of the fee, plus what's scheduled and when. The number you see is the number that reaches you.

Expenses go on the contract when you draft it, not afterwards. You can either bill them to the family through Swaddl — those come back to you with no commission taken— or note them as settled directly between you. Add them before you send the contract; there's no way to bolt one on later.

A birth fee is released in one piece once the baby arrives and the birth date is recorded, rather than weekly. For a combined birth-and-postpartum contract, the birth fee works that way and the postpartum hours pay out weekly as usual.

You do. You set a default hourly rate when you set up your profile, and you can set the rate individually on every contract you write. Nobody adjusts it for you.

You do — from the Contracts tab, pick the client, choose the service type, enter the rate, hours, and dates, and the total calculates itself. You preview exactly what the family will see before you send it.

No. Swaddl's standard postpartum and birth agreements are the default, and they're there so you don't have to think about it. If you have your own, you can upload it — Mia reviews it once, and after that it's used for your contracts.

Yes. The family reviews and signs first, then it's your turn to countersign — right inside Swaddl, no DocuSign account needed. You'll be notified when it's your turn. The e-signature service doesn't email you, so watch for the notification from Swaddl rather than waiting on a message from DocuSign.

Not at all — it's a normal part of the process and the software expects it. Their notes come back to you, you edit the contract and resend, and the family sees a summary of what changed. No one starts over.

One invoice for the full contract goes out automatically the moment both signatures are in. You never draft an invoice, and you never chase one. Families with Carrot, Maven, or Progyny get a second copy formatted for their benefit provider.

After a visit, you open it on your schedule and mark it complete. That's what tells Swaddl the care happened and moves the money. A visit you haven't logged isn't in Monday's payout. It's one tap, and it's the single most important habit on the platform.

Nothing is lost — it just waits. You'll get a reminder after a couple of days, and again if it keeps sitting. Log it whenever you get to it and it lands in the next Monday's payout.

Enter the hours you actually worked when you log the visit, and you'll be paid for those. If you don't enter anything, you're paid for the scheduled window.

You can change a shift's time while it's still upcoming. Once a shift has been included in a payout it's locked — the money has already moved. If something's wrong at that point, email Mia and she'll correct it properly rather than you trying to patch it.

You set weekly windows when you're free for a 30-minute call, and families pick from those. No back-and-forth emails. The call is a Google Meet link — nothing to install, no account needed, and you can join from the card on your dashboard or straight from your calendar.

Yes, and in two separate places, so you keep the channels you want. On your Profile you can switch off "Accepting matched clients" (Mia stops sending you new families) and "Accepting direct bookings" (your personal link stops taking new requests) independently.

Use "Need coverage" on your Schedule page. Pick the shift, say briefly why, and send it. It goes to Mia first — she reviews it and broadcasts it to other Swaddl doulas who could take it. You are not left to find your own cover, and you are not broadcasting your business to the whole network on your own.

No. Everyday scheduling between you and your client is yours to handle — move the shift on your calendar and it updates for both of you. "Need coverage" is for when you genuinely can't work the shift at all.

You keep everything you've already earned — that's settled before anything else happens. Under the standard agreement, half of the contract is a non-refundable deposit, and any unworked balance beyond that is returned to the family. You're never asked to give back money for care you delivered.

Under the standard postpartum agreement, hours must be used within 12 weeks of the birth. Unused hours after that expire and aren't refunded. It's worth mentioning this kindly and early rather than at week eleven.

Tell Mia. There's a proper process for it: either another doula takes over and the family's care continues, or the engagement is closed out. Either way you're paid for the work you did, including a visit you've just worked and haven't logged yet — though log anything outstanding as soon as you can, so nothing has to be reconstructed by hand. This is a conversation, not a form.

You're told right away — you'll never find out by noticing a short payout. That one shift is held back from Monday's payout while Mia looks into it; everything else pays normally. Most of these are a misunderstanding about times, and they resolve quickly.

Yes, once there's a real connection — a booked intro call, a confirmed match, or a live contract. Messages are in the Messages tab, and both of you get notified.

She isn't in your conversations and there's no admin screen for reading them — nobody browses your messages. Being straight with you: they are stored, and they can be retrieved if a dispute ever needs the record. Treat them as you'd treat any professional written correspondence.

Not yet. Text messaging is still going through carrier approval, so right now everything reaches you by email, plus a notification bell in the app and a phone notification if you enable it. Nothing depends on a text arriving.

Three ways: Mia matches you with families who fit your profile; families use your personal booking link (swaddl.co/book/your-name) — put it in your email signature and on your website; or you add a client yourself, for someone you're already working with.

No. You accept or decline each one, and declining costs you nothing. A good match matters more than a full calendar.

Your official 1099-NEC comes from Stripe by January 31 — by email, and downloadable from your Stripe payout dashboard. Swaddl's Tax Center also gives you a running summary of your earnings for your own records, though that summary isn't the IRS form itself.

The Tax Center estimates your quarterly federal and self-employment tax based on what you've actually earned, and can email you a reminder a week before each IRS deadline. Turn reminders on at the top of that page. It's an estimate to plan with, not tax advice.

It's a business expense, and the Tax Center totals it for you alongside the other categories doulas commonly miss — mileage, supplies, continuing education. Your accountant will want that number; it's already calculated.

Reply to any Swaddl email, or write to mia@swaddl.co. It reaches Mia — a real person, not a ticket queue. Anything involving money, a contract that won't send, or a benefits problem gets looked at the same day.

Almost certainly not, and almost nothing here is irreversible. Say what you were doing and what you saw. Nobody is going to be annoyed — if a screen confused you, that's something we want to know about and fix.

Don't use email for a genuine emergency. Call 911 for a medical emergency. For an urgent client situation that isn't a medical emergency, see who to contact when you need help.

You're not locked in. Your active contracts are honored and paid out as the work is completed, and your client relationships are yours — they always were. Tell Mia and she'll walk it through with you.