I think barco57 covered the requirements, but I do want to address the other items.

JEANDRET (the parent company) has been hosting Zen Cart for nearly twenty years. We did not apply for Certified status until most of the companies listed on the page that barco57 presented had closed or were no longer listed. Some are still operational. I don’t know why they are no longer listed or whose decision that was. I speak only for myZenCartHost.com

As you saw on the "Apply for Certification" link, I filled out the form and submitted it by pressing send. Where or to whom it went, I don't know.

You will have to ask someone else about duration and renewal. I have not been notified of any expiration date nor have I been contacted to renew any information on the original form. I'd certainly be happy to go through any vetting process needed to maintain my standing.

I note that the Services page states “Compatible Hosting”. I submit that even GoneDaddy is compatible hosting up to a point. I feel that the term certified implies that that host is going to look out for the Zen Cart customer. I doubt there is any instance where you cannot find that true of any of those listed on the host page.

There is no payment made to Zen Cart for the display of our information. I have no control over whether the information is displayed. I note that all hosts listed in Services on the forum are also represented in 2.0.0 in the banners presented out-of-the-box.

All links from my sig, the Services link in the forum, and the banner links of the distro point to an affiliate link that lets me know if any sale results from that link. We set an agreed-upon percentage of each sale to be returned to the development team.

Unfortunately, by the time folks get to the forum, they generally already have hosting somewhere. History has shown very little click-throughs that resulted in sales.

You didn't ask, but that's the main reason we decided to give a free license to our ADA/WCAG widget to the docs site. We've not been able to generate the affiliate revenue that we felt was sufficient so I felt that providing it was one way I could make up for the lack of affiliate return for hosting.

The widget makes it much easier for the entire world to get Zen Cart assistance. And, yes, the link on the docs site is an affiliate link to our widget site. I requested the link for the license, but it was not a requirement in the donation. I have done the same with other free projects and non-profits with which I have connections.

Whern the new bug was first identified, I received a request for help and used code from DrByte to test all of our databases trying to find a commonality between occurances. I'd like to think we were helpful in determing the bug affected only certain versions of ZC. It was helpful to us, yes. But, mainly, it was help for the team.

I can't speak for others, but I do know that the link to Square in both the old and your WebPay version 1.0.4 is an affiliate link like mine that will provide a small amount to go to the development team. That's why we recommend to all new customers wanting to use Square to go through the Services link or the one in the admin and "make a little money for the team".

Keyword - TEAM