waivers.tattoo vs StabPad: free, and your inbox is the filing cabinet

StabPad is a free tattoo consent form on a web page, built by one piercer in Australia and given away. The site says so without an asterisk: "Totes free and ALWAYS will be." Shops on Reddit have recommended it since at least September 2023, one of them after 6 years on it. If the price is the whole question, StabPad wins it and you can stop reading here.

The question worth 5 minutes is what happens after the client signs: where the signed form goes, what the form asked before they signed, and what the counter does on the days the site is down. Every quote below comes from StabPad's own pages as they stood on 2026-09-14, or from the shops that use it, and each is linked where it sits.

What free is

One person makes it. The footer of every page reads "Concept, design and coding by Joeltron.com", and the help page answers the question you are asking: "I always release my software 100% free and open source (meaning you can download the source code). I believe that software should be like speech, free." Donations go through PayPal. A shop on r/TattooArtists put it plainly this June: "We know the person who made it. His name is Joeltron and he is a piercer in Australia."

What you get is a form builder with a template in it, and a link. Their promise is "Set your own fields, change requirements, everything!" and the demo form keeps it: your own fields, health questions as tick boxes, the consent text, an emergency contact, a parent's signature for a minor, and a photo of the ID. The form lives at that link. Their help page walks you through opening it on a tablet at the counter, and the shops that use it put the same link on a QR code so the client can sign on their own phone. That is the same move ours makes, and it is the right one.

When the client signs, the form goes out by email, to the shop and to the client. Then it is gone from their side.

Where the signed form lives

Their home page files the signed form under "To your email": "So you will NEVER lose a release form." Their privacy policy says what that means for the file: "No photo IDs, signatures are ever permanently kept on the server." A shop that uses it said the same on Reddit this June: "The release form isn't stored anywhere except where it's sent by email. So like my studio has a copy and my client has a copy."

So the filing cabinet is your inbox. That works until the day it has to work. 41 states set a period for keeping the record, 35 of them 2 or 3 years, and the inspector asks for a client by name and a date. In an inbox that is a search across 2 years of mail, in the same folder as every appointment reminder and every supply order.

And the email has to arrive. The first question on their help page is "Not receiving your release form emails?", with 4 reasons under it: flagged as spam, a full inbox, a typo in the address, and a spam report, which stops their server sending to you until the developer clears it by hand and can "manually remove the report and resend them". The only copy of the record depends on an email landing, and on one person in Australia when it does not.

Ours writes the record on our side the moment the client finishes, before any email goes out. Your dashboard lists every signed waiver, searches by name, email or phone, opens the signed waiver with the ID photo on it, and exports the client list as a CSV that opens in Excel, Numbers or Sheets. The email copy still lands in your inbox. It is the backup, not the file.

The form does not know your state

StabPad's form is whatever you build. The demo asks for a "Postcode" and its attorney-fees clause names "the courts of NSW in Australia", because that is where it was written. It is a template, and a decent one, and what your state's rule wants on the record is yours to look up and type in. 26 states make you check ID and 14 of them want a copy in the file. Texas wants the type of photo ID written down, and each ink color with the maker's catalogue number when there is one. Oregon wants the artist's license number and a history of bleeding disorders. A template written for one shop does not know any of that, and it does not find out when a rule changes.

Ours ships knowing. We read all 51 sets of rules and wrote them into the form, so the questions change with your shop's address. A shop in Oregon gets Oregon's questions. A shop in Texas gets the risks its rule has every client told in writing, printed on the consent: pain, permanence, infection and an allergic reaction to the pigment. Every state has its own page here with the rule and the citation beside it, and nobody at the shop sets it up or maintains it when a rule moves. The form also runs in Spanish, suggests the address as the client types, and prints the consent in the language they read.

This is a plain-language summary, not legal advice. Your local health department has the final word. Ask them, and bring your records.

The days it is down

A piercing shop on r/bodypiercers, on 2026-09-07: "we use stab pad here at my shop, but we are constantly having issues with the site going down. we are a walk-in only shop, so we go through a lot of forms and we NEED access to it at all times when we are open". Another shop, in January 2025, in the middle of recommending it: "however it does occasionally go down."

Free is one person, by email, and a walk-in shop at 2pm on a Saturday is on the clock. That shop's next sentence is the reason it is still there: "a lot of other forms we have looked into require a subscription based on how many forms we go through, and that cost for us would be huge considering our volume." That is the meter, and it is the one thing we refuse to sell. We do not count your waivers: $50 a year per shop, unlimited signed waivers, unlimited artists. The form itself is a static page on a content delivery network, so the counter is not waiting on one server.

Side by side

What free costs

Free is a real price and StabPad is a real form. What it costs you starts after the client signs: the file is your inbox, the state's questions are yours to keep current, and the down days are yours to cover with paper. $50 a year buys that part of the job. Put the code on the counter and try it on a real Saturday. The first waivers are free, and we ask for a card once you have seen it work. Start your shop.