Getting started with Haubot
What Haubot is, who it's for, and the moving parts you'll meet on the way to your first listing or purchase.
Haubot is a global B2B marketplace and trade infrastructure platform. Companies use it to buy, sell and move equipment, components, vehicles, machinery and parts across borders — in aviation, marine, energy, industrial, transport, agriculture and other sectors. It does the things a marketplace usually does (listings, search, photos, prices, messaging) and it adds the pieces most marketplaces leave out: escrow-protected payments, independent inspections, structured documentation, financing support and cross-border logistics.
If you've ever tried to close a cross-border deal on a piece of high-value equipment, you've probably had this conversation: "I'd love to see the inspection report and the title before I commit, and I want a way to pay that doesn't end with me holding a useless wire receipt." Haubot is built around the idea that the documents, the payment, the verification and the delivery should all live with the deal — not be scattered across WhatsApp, email and a freight forwarder you found on Google.
The platform map
Most users only need to know a few moving parts:
- Marketplace — equipment, components and vehicles for sale, rent, auction or as "wanted" requests. Each listing has photos, videos, parameters and an attached document vault.
- Auctions — both Seller Managed and Haubot Managed, with hidden reserves, tier-based deposits and a structured dispute path. See Auction modes.
- TradeHub — a B2B directory plus an open-inquiry board. Find verified providers (dealers, brokers, manufacturers, inspectors, logistics, finance) or post what you need and let providers come to you. See What is Trade Hub.
- SecureTrade — escrow-protected transactions. Payment and obligations move against verified milestones instead of informal trust. See SecureTrade.
- Haubot Inspect — independent on-site inspections, with documented condition reports filed into the listing before money moves. See Haubot Inspect.
- Logistics — cross-border air, sea, rail and road, with customs and handover coordinated on-platform. See Logistics.
- Financing — asset-based financing through independent partners for qualified deals. See Financing.
- UnitVault — the document store attached to each listing. Documents have access levels and can be sealed into hash-verified snapshots. See What is UnitVault.
- Network + Messenger — the social and communication side: posts, follows, direct messages, group chats and a notification system that reaches you on Discord and Telegram if you want.
- TradeCircles — private groups of trusted counterparties, with listings that only show to circle members. See What are TradeCircles.
What's different
A few things that don't usually come together on one platform:
- Escrow + inspection + logistics in one workflow. SecureTrade moves payment against milestones, Haubot Inspect produces the condition report those milestones depend on, and logistics coordination keeps the physical delivery in step with the documentation.
- Multi-sector by design. Search, parameters and filters adapt to the equipment category — drilling rigs, aircraft, dump trucks and excavators have different filter sets, and the platform doesn't pretend they're the same.
- Documents are first-class. Inspection reports, titles, service records and export documents have their own access controls, their own audit log, and can be sealed into a record that proves what was shown to buyers on a specific date.
- Buyers can verify trust independently. Every locked document set has a SHA-256 hash you can compute yourself from the downloaded files. If anything changes later, the hash tells you. See Why hashes prove things.
Account types
You don't need a separate "buyer" or "seller" account — every account can do both. To list equipment or bid in auctions you sign in, complete a business profile (which verifies the legal entity behind your activity) and submit a listing for moderation. To buy or post inquiries you just sign in and start browsing; some restricted documents need an extra access request that the seller approves or denies.
How this Knowledge Base is organised
The sidebar groups articles by feature. Within each section, articles are ordered roughly by what we think you should read first. We're adding content incrementally and prioritising the topics that actually show up in support tickets — if a section says "coming soon", check the parent service page on the marketing site for the canonical overview.