Asked & answered.

No. OPUS can give you a professional storefront at yourname.opusart.co, but you do not have to use it. If you already have a website, you can use OPUS behind it to catalogue your work, sell directly, issue records and manage your sales.

No. The storefront is there if you need it. You can use OPUS purely as the infrastructure behind your existing website, Instagram or other online presence, sending collectors directly to a work, a payment link or its verified record.

Only the ones you want OPUS to hold a record for. Registering is what creates the certificate and the provenance record, so every work you add here has one. What happens next is up to you: set a price and it becomes available to buy, or leave it unpriced and it simply sits in your catalogue as a documented work.

Because Instagram is where collectors discover you. It is not designed to be the infrastructure behind a professional art business. OPUS gives you somewhere to catalogue the work, present it professionally, take payment, create a record and manage what happens after the sale. Instagram can send the collector to the work. OPUS handles everything that happens next.

OPUS does not hold your money or your card details. Payments are processed securely through Stripe and paid directly to you.

The payment is processed, the artwork is marked as sold, and its ownership history updates for the new collector. The record stays with the artwork, not with the person who originally bought it.

That is fine, and it is still worth registering the work. Register it here, then mark it as sold from your dashboard with the buyer’s name and email. Ownership transfers to them, the provenance record updates, and they are emailed a link to the artwork’s record and certificate. OPUS takes no commission on a sale it did not process, so you pay only the one-off registration. Your history stays accurate wherever the sale actually happened.

List the work with a price and your dashboard gives you a buy link and a QR code, sized for a wall label or a fair booth. The collector scans it and pays by card on their own phone, so the sale runs through OPUS exactly as it would online: the record transfers and the certificate issues automatically. There is no card reader to carry. If you take the money another way, cash or a bank transfer, register the work and mark it as sold instead, and the record still updates.

Commission HQ gives you a dedicated place to manage the whole commission, from enquiry to completion, including quotes, deposits, milestones and final payment. More on Commission HQ.

£5 to register an artwork, or unlimited registrations on a monthly plan. When a work sells, OPUS takes 3% (minimum £5) and absorbs the card processing itself, so nothing is added to what the collector pays. See the full fee breakdown.

Because selling the artwork is only part of its life. A verified record gives the work a permanent, accessible history: who created it, what it is, when it was registered, who has owned it and what happened to it after the sale. It gives today's collector confidence, and gives future owners something they can verify.

You can, but a piece of paper is not the record. A printed certificate can be lost, copied or separated from the artwork. An OPUS record is tied to the individual work, can be verified online by anyone, and its history updates as ownership changes.

The record, not the artistic merit. Every certificate carries the artist's own attestation that they made the work, made at a known date. OPUS does not inspect, appraise or authenticate artwork; it records who claimed what, and when, and keeps that record where anyone can check it. More on certificates and provenance.

Not as a certificate. Those are issued only with the creating artist's own attestation, and that rule is what makes every certificate here worth something. If you own a work, you can file a collector record for £15: it appears clearly marked "artist not yet verified" until the artist claims and certifies it, which also switches their royalties on.

If the resale takes place through OPUS, the ownership record is updated and your 4% royalty is paid automatically. More on resale royalties.

No. OPUS uses a straightforward online record system. No blockchain, no NFTs and no crypto wallets are required, and none ever will be.

Your records stay. Every artwork you have registered keeps its permanent record, certificate and provenance history: those belong to the work, not to your subscription, and collectors can verify them forever. Your public pages stay live and your works can still be bought. What pauses are the business tools: Commission HQ, enquiries and your client database wait for you until you return. You can cancel or pause anytime.

Yes. Pause whenever you need to, nothing is deleted and nothing expires. Your records and certificates remain permanent and verifiable throughout. When you are ready to take a commission or manage your clients again, pick up where you left off.