Case study · № 010 · 2025
LEAF'EM · someone to watch your plants
A plant-sitting marketplace: plant parents find and book sitters near them, chat, agree a price, and pay, with the whole request-to-refund flow handled in the app. On the App Store and Google Play.
The problem
When you go away, your plants do not. Finding someone you trust to water and care for them, agreeing what that costs, and handling it safely is exactly the kind of small transaction that usually happens over scattered messages.
Leaf'em put the whole thing in one app: two roles, plant parent and plant sitter, and everything between a request and a completed, paid booking.
The build
- Plant parents search sitters in their area, see rates and services offered, and send a request.
- Live chat, appointment booking, and negotiation in-app, with confirmations, cancellations, refunds, and disputes all handled in one flow.
- Stripe for payments and Socket.io for real-time chat, plus a verification step through a checker API.
- A Flutter app for both roles plus an admin dashboard for oversight.
Decisions that mattered
Keep the whole transaction in the app. The value of a marketplace is that nothing important happens off-platform. Booking, chat, payment, and disputes all live in Leaf'em, so trust does not depend on a side channel.
Real-time chat, not email. People arranging plant care want to talk now. Socket.io made the conversation live, which is what makes booking a stranger feel safe.
Verify before money moves. A checker-API verification step keeps both sides accountable before a payment or a visit happens.
Outcome
Published on both the App Store and Google Play, with the full parent-to-sitter marketplace working end to end. It is my clearest example of a two-sided marketplace where payments, chat, and dispute handling all had to actually work, not just demo.