While browsing the internet, we recently came across a new house-sitting platform called Global Pet Sitter—and of course, we were instantly curious.

What really caught our attention was the story behind it. The founders, Jo and Geert, were house sitters themselves on Trusted Housesitters—a platform that caused quite a stir in the house sitting world at the end of last year. Like many others, they decided it was time for a change. But instead of just moving on, they did something most people only talk about: they built their own platform.

Their goal? To take everything that works in house-sitting—and remove everything that doesn’t. The result is Global Pet Sitter: a new, community-driven platform that focuses on transparency, fairness, and affordability.

Right now, they’re even offering a free membership, so naturally, we signed up straight away and had a closer look.

Since then, many of you—our amazing Instagram community—have sent us questions about the platform. And instead of guessing, we wanted to do this properly. So we reached out directly to the founders.

We’re really happy to share their answers with you here—straight from the source.

Geert: My girlfriend and I have been housesitting for over a decade. We love it – it’s how we travel, how we’ve met each other, and many other people. We were THS ambassadors for the longest time, but then the booking fee email came. I remember reading it and feeling genuinely angry – not just at the fees, but at the way it was framed. Like we should be grateful. Within an hour, I had my laptop open and was sketching out what a better platform would look like. The next day, I called Jo and said we should build this together.

Jo: When Geert called me, I didn’t need much convincing. I had the same frustrations, but what sold me was that we could actually build something better and not just complain about it. Most people tweet and move on, while we start a new project. It felt like the right response.

Geert: I’ve used Nomador, MindMyHouse, and THS. THS dominates the market: proper app, solid platform, massive membership. There’s no real competition in that league, and that’s exactly the problem. When there’s no competition, there’s no pressure to stay fair or to respect what matters most: your community.

Jo: What we’re doing differently starts with the obvious: no booking fees, ever. But it goes further than that: since we’re long-term house sitters, we can finally implement all the things we wanted for ourselves for so long. Better filters, no max 5 application caps, private reporting so members can flag concerns that they won’t share in a public review, the list goes on.

And structurally, we’re building this with the community: features get requested and upvoted by members. We listen, discuss how it should work, and build it. We genuinely believe we have the skills to create something equally good, if not better.

Geert: Our long-term target is €100/year, once there’s a healthy balance between sitters and homeowners. Right now, founding membership is free for the first year – that’s for anyone who joins before we hit 3,000 members. After that early phase, we’ll move to paid subscriptions, and the price will scale gradually with the size and activity of the platform rather than jumping straight to full price.

Jo: We’re not trying to get rich off membership fees. Our goal is to keep the lights on and keep building. €100/year is fair for what this offers, and founding members lock in their discount permanently.

Geert: Definitely not. Transparency and fairness are key to us.

Jo: Exactly, hidden costs kill trust. We’ll charge a fair subscription and be done with it.

Geert: Honestly, housesitting exists in a grey area in many countries, and we’re not in a position to give legal advice. Each member is ultimately responsible for understanding the rules wherever they sit.

What we can do is help flag things we’re aware of. One idea that came directly from our community: showing a gentle heads-up on sit assignments when a particular country may have visa requirements worth checking, depending on where you’re from. We think that’s a smart, practical way to alert members.

Jo: We’re not lawyers, and we’re not pretending to be. But we can surface the right info at the right moment. A warning before someone books a 3-month stay in a country with strict visa rules could save a lot of headaches. It’s easy to build, and genuinely useful.

Geert: We require every sitter and homeowner to be ID verified before they can respectively apply to or create sit assignments. We support external reviews from other platforms, so members don’t lose years of built-up reputation. We’ve implemented a blind review system: both sides write their review independently, and you can’t see what the other person wrote until both are submitted. There’ll be a 2-week window to submit your review after a sit, and if one side doesn’t bother, the other person’s review just goes live.

We have also added private reporting for things that members aren’t comfortable sharing in public. After submitting the public review, each party will get the option to leave private feedback to us: things the platform needs to know about but that don’t need to play out publicly. It’s vital information that isn’t collected on other platforms: in time, such information can expose patterns about listings and sitters, which we can then act upon.

Jo: Private reporting is something we’re really proud of. Public reviews pressure people to stay positive. But some things that members are not comfortable sharing in their review do need to reach the platform. Reports are categorised by type and severity; in a way, they cannot be abused. Over time, that data exposes patterns that would otherwise stay hidden. No other platform collects this. On reviews: blind until both submit or 14 days pass, whichever comes first. And they’re not just a star rating, sitters get rated on reliability, pet care, and cleanliness. Owners on communication, hospitality, and listing accuracy. Structured feedback that actually means something.

Geert: Fair question – we’re new, and being skeptical is normal and healthy. What we can say is the following: we’re two developers with over a decade of experience building software. Currently, we’re registered as a company in Luxembourg, building this in the open. Our community can see what we’re working on, vote on features, and hold us accountable. We don’t make promises we can’t back up – no fake insurance, no surprise fees. The best answer I can give is: come watch us build it. The founding member phase is free, so the risk to try is zero; the potential uplift is a lifetime subscription at a fraction of the price, or free entirely.

Jo: We get the skepticism, lots of platforms launch with big promises and go quiet six months later. Look at our roadmap, our Facebook group, and how we respond to feedback. We ship and communicate. We want to be as close to our community as possible; you can’t fake that. Besides, the early adopter phase is free, so there’s zero risk. And if you’re still not convinced, wait a few months and check back – we’ll still be here.

Geert: We don’t offer insurance yet, and we’re not going to rush something this important. We want to research what a proper, transparent insurance product would look like for this community. When we offer it, it’ll be clearly scoped. That’s realistically something for a later stage of the platform – we’re currently self-funded. For now, members should arrange their own coverage.

Jo: Doing insurance badly is worse than not doing it at all. We’d rather point people to products that actually work than slap a badge on our site for false comfort. What we’re thinking: once we have enough members, we’d like to broker a deal with a real insurance agency, use the community size to get a group discount none of us would get individually. We want to bounce it off the community first – and listen to their input.

Geert: Yes, homeowners will be able to set a cap on how many applications they want to receive. By default, it’s unlimited, but if a homeowner prefers to keep it manageable, they can set whatever number works for them. We have some other interesting ideas about this – but we won’t reveal everything yet 🙂

For sitters, this mostly removes the anxiety of racing to apply before a listing fills up. Unless an owner sets the cap very low, there’s no rush.

Jo: No cap by default, that’s deliberate. We don’t want to recreate the scramble where sitters race to apply in the first 5 minutes. Thoughtful applications beat rushed ones. The cap feature isn’t built yet; it’s on our roadmap. Right now, everything is unlimited, which, honestly, is the right default. No artificial scarcity.

Geert: This is something we take seriously. Sitters putting effort into an application and then hearing nothing is a real problem, and just telling homeowners to “be responsive” doesn’t work. Our current thinking is a response score – a visible metric on every profile that reflects how promptly someone replies to others. Not a punitive system, just transparency: it gives sitters a useful signal before they invest time in an application, and gives homeowners an incentive to stay on top of their inbox. It goes both ways – sitters who go quiet on homeowners would see it reflected too.

Jo: Ghosting is the worst part of the current experience. You write a thoughtful application, but get no answer. A response score makes responsiveness visible. We haven’t finalised how exactly it works, and this is exactly the kind of feature where community input matters. If you have strong feelings about it, come tell us in our Facebook group.

Geert: It’s on our radar. Our hesitation is mainly about homeowner experience – if a listing gets 200 favorites, we don’t want it to create extra noise for owners on top of everything else. We’ll find a sensible way to implement it that works for both sides.

Jo: Sitters can already favourite listings, that’s live. The part where homeowners see who has favoured and can reach out is not yet. Probably something like: homeowners see they have favourites and can choose to reach out, but not automatic.

Geert: Growth is our biggest challenge right now, and we’re not pretending otherwise. The supply/demand balance between sitters and homeowners takes time to get right, and we’re focused on that as much as raw member numbers.

A few things we’re doing: the lifetime discount structure is deliberately designed to make early members want to spread the word: every referral stacks your discount, so there’s a real personal incentive to bring people in. That’s been our strongest growth driver so far.

On the homeowner side specifically, we’re going offline: flyers and business cards in vet clinics, groomers, pet shops – places where pet owners actually are. Each flyer has a personalised QR code so we can track what works. We’re also starting Facebook ads, with a focus on homeowner acquisition. Once we hit 3.000 members and introduce paid plans, we can reinvest that revenue to sustain our growth.

Jo: Referrals are our best tool. One of our members referred enough people to get a 100% discount. She’ll never pay a subscription fee. It’s not a gimmick; she believed in it and brought her whole network. We also run a social media challenge, share GPS on your socials for an extra 10% lifetime discount.

Longer term, the bet is on the community itself. If we build something people genuinely love: fair pricing, features they asked for, a platform that treats them with respect – they’ll tell other people. That’s the kind of growth that compounds. We’re not trying to out-spend other platforms on marketing. We’re trying to out-care them on our product.

The first year is free for anyone who joins before we hit 3,000 members. But the more interesting part is what you can stack on top of that.

During this early phase, members earn lifetime discount points: complete your profile, get +5%. Refer someone who joins, another +5%. It keeps stacking. Whatever discount you’ve built up when we hit 3,000 members locks in permanently, so if you’re at 60% by then, your subscription is 60% cheaper for life.

The earlier you join, the more time you have to build that up. And since the platform is free right now, you’re essentially getting paid in future savings just for being part of the early community.

“Community-driven” gets thrown around a lot, so let us be specific about what it means for us.

Every member can request features directly on our roadmap page, while others can upvote them. We actually look at this when we plan. The visa warning idea mentioned earlier? That came from one of our community members.

The Facebook group is where the real conversation happens – we post things that are actively in development, ask for opinions when we are in doubt, and course-correct based on what people tell us. Members take initiative there too; it’s not just us. It’s genuinely two-way.

We also read everything. Every piece of feedback, every complaint, every DM. At this stage, that’s still manageable, and it means product decisions come from real member experience rather than assumptions. That changes as you scale, so we’re making the most of it now.

We are actively developing a mobile app, yes – we hope to launch it within a matter of weeks. Live right now: profiles for sitters, owners, and the “both” role. Sit assignments with up to 14 pet types. Applications with in-app messaging. Blind reviews with 14-day reveal. ID verification through Didit. Private trust reports with categories and severity. Welcome guides. Favourites. A full referral system. The social media challenge. WiFi speed tests for homeowners. Direct messaging. Feature request voting on our roadmap page. After that: response score, visa warnings, homeowner-side favourites, application caps, and whatever else our community asks for. We ship fast.

We want GPS to be the obvious alternative. For homeowners to be confident leaving their home, and sitters to feel respected. A community with real say in where the ship is going. Healthy listings across the world, a mobile app people love to use, and still under €100/year. And honestly, we just want to be able to call GPS our main job. That’s the real milestone.

Geert: To everyone who joined early, referred friends, posted in the group, sent feedback, challenged our thinking – thank you. You’re not just users, you’re the reason this exists. Building something new is hard, and knowing people believe in it from the start makes all the difference.

Jo: Same from me. The early community is everything at this stage. You could have waited to see if we’d stick around – instead, you showed up, spread the word, and helped shape what GPS is becoming. That trust means a lot. We won’t waste it.

You can find links to our personal websites below:

• https://jovweb.dev/
• https://www.geertvancampenhout.com

After chatting with Jo and Geert, one thing became really clear to us: Global Pet Sitter isn’t just another house-sitting platform—it’s built by people who truly understand this lifestyle.

You can feel that this isn’t about scaling fast or maximizing profit, but about creating something fair, transparent, and community-driven. And honestly, that’s something we’ve been missing in the house sitting world lately.

Of course, it’s still early days. The number of listings is growing, and like every new platform, it will take time to reach its full potential. But that’s also exactly where the opportunity lies. Being an early member means you can build your profile now, get visibility, and grow together with the platform.

What we personally really like is the openness. The founders are listening, adapting, and actively involving the community. That gives us a lot of confidence that this platform can develop into something really special over time.

If you’ve been thinking about trying house sitting—or if you’re already experienced but looking for a more affordable and transparent alternative—this might be the perfect moment to give it a go.

You can sign up here:
Global Pet Sitter

Take your time to set up your profile properly, add some great photos, and introduce yourself well—this really makes all the difference when homeowners/sitters are choosing their sitters/sits.

We’ll definitely keep an eye on Global Pet Sitter and share our experiences with you along the way. And who knows… maybe this is the platform we’ll all be talking about in a year from now.