Terms of service

1.Definitions

Account

The Substrio account you hold: its apps, members, keys, plan and billing.

Owner

The member who holds the owner role of an account. The owner buys and changes its plan and answers for what the account pays.

Member

A user invited to an account with a role (owner, admin or developer). What a member may do is set by that role.

App

One application hosted on Substrio: its database, functions, files, sites, schedules, versions and settings.

Key

A credential that calls the service for an account: an account key, an app key, or an agent token.

Agent

Software, including an AI agent, that calls the service with a key or a token issued under your account.

Customer data

Everything you or your apps store on or send through the service, including what your end users give your apps.

End user

Any user of an app you host on Substrio, including the users your app signs in.

Service

The Substrio platform: its console, API, CLI, MCP server, SDKs and hosting, and the platform services SendJet (email), AuthJet (sign-in and users) and MapJet (maps and location).

Plan

The plan an account is on (Free, Standard, Pro or Scale), with the allowances and caps the pricing page lists.

Allowance

How much of a metered service a plan includes in a month, or in a day where the plan sets a daily cap.

2.The service

Substrio hosts apps. An app keeps its data, runs its functions and schedules, serves its files and sites, and reaches realtime, search, versions and backups, with email, sign-in and maps as platform services. You, your members and your agents build and run apps through the console, the API, the CLI or MCP.

We may change, add or remove features. When a change removes a feature that paid plans include, we tell account owners before it takes effect.

You must be able to form a binding contract to use the service. Each account is held by one individual or one organization.

3.Accounts, members and keys

You answer for your account and for everything done under it: by its members, with its keys and by its agents. Give each member the role the work needs, and remove members who no longer need access.

Keys are secrets. Keep them out of public code and client bundles, store them as secrets, rotate an app key you no longer trust (tenant.key.rotate) and revoke a key or token that may be exposed. Tell us at once through the console if you believe someone has used your account without your permission.

The information you give us for the account, including the owner's email address, must be accurate and kept current. Notices under these terms go to that address.

4.Agents

An agent acts under your account's keys, for you: what it does with a key or token you or your members issued is done by you, and you answer for it as if you had done it yourself.

An agent token is issued for one member and works within that member's role. We hold actions that change authority or spending for the owner's approval: when an agent changes a plan, we ask the owner to approve it, and the change takes effect only once the owner does. Buying a plan is the owner's alone; an agent never holds a credit card or a bank number, and pays only by sending the owner to the payment page.

Review what you allow an agent to do. An agent that breaks these terms breaks them for your account.

5.Plans, billing and renewals

Plans. Every account starts on Free. The paid plans are Standard ($5 a month), Pro ($9 a month) and Scale ($49 a month). Each plan's space, CPU share, caps and the allowance of each service are on the pricing page, which is part of these terms.

Payment. Paid plans are billed monthly in advance through our payment provider, Stripe. The credit card or bank details you pay with go to Stripe, never to Substrio. A plan starts when Stripe confirms its first payment; a failed or abandoned payment never changes your plan.

Renewal. A paid plan renews each month on the date it started until it is cancelled. You authorize us, through Stripe, to charge the payment method on file at each renewal. If a renewal payment fails, Stripe may retry it; if the subscription ends unpaid, the account returns to Free.

Upgrades. A move to a higher plan, or a change to the apps a plan pays for, is invoiced when you make it and takes effect when the payment is confirmed.

Downgrades. We refuse a move to a lower plan while the account uses more than that plan allows, and name the first limit it breaks. A move to Free takes effect at once, and the paid items it removes are prorated by Stripe.

Add-ons. On Scale, extra space is an add-on at $1/month per extra 10 GB, billed with the plan. Add-on space ends when the subscription ends.

Taxes. Prices do not include taxes. You pay the sales, use, value added and similar taxes that apply to your purchases, except taxes on our income.

Price changes. We may change a plan's price. A new price applies to an existing subscription only from a renewal after we tell the owner about it.

6.Refunds and cancellation

Cancellation. The owner can cancel a paid plan at any time on the account's billing page, at the end of the paid period (the default) or at once. When the subscription ends, the account and every service it paid for return to their free plans, and every app stays enabled.

What ending a plan does to data. Ending a paid plan never deletes data. When an account holds more than its new plan's space, we refuse its writes until its use falls or its space grows; reads go on.

Refunds. Fees for a period already started are not refunded, except for the proration Stripe applies when paid items are removed before the end of their period, and except where the law requires a refund. Credit added to an account is used for the account's purchases and is not redeemable for cash, except where the law requires.

7.Allowances and fair use

Allowances are limits, not meters. A call past a monthly allowance is refused until the month turns, and a call past a daily cap until the day turns. A refused call is never billed. Nothing is charged beyond your plan and the add-ons you choose.

Caps. A plan also caps how many apps, custom domains, members and live connections an account has, and how often a schedule may run. We refuse an action past a cap and name the cap it meets.

Space and CPU. Space and CPU share are each plan's bound. A plan's space is the most an account may store (1 GB on Free, 100 GB on Scale); we refuse a write past it, and reads go on. CPU share is the CPU held for a plan's apps when a server is busy: 1x CPU Slice on Free, 16x CPU Slices on Scale.

Fair use. Allowances shown as unlimited serve the normal traffic of an app. Use that degrades the service for other accounts, or that is not an app's normal traffic, such as mirroring, bulk resale of capacity, or load testing against the platform, may be limited after notice to the owner. Opening more accounts to multiply a plan's allowances is not allowed.

8.Acceptable use

You may not use the service, or let your apps, members, agents or end users use it, to:

1. send spam or any email the recipient did not ask for, or send mail with forged or misleading headers or sender names;
2. host, send or link to malware, phishing pages, or anything built to harm devices or steal credentials;
3. harass, threaten, defraud or impersonate anyone;
4. store or share content that is illegal where you or your end users are, including child sexual abuse material, which we report where the law requires;
5. infringe a copyright, trademark, privacy right or other right of anyone;
6. mine cryptocurrency, or run work whose main purpose is to consume CPU rather than to serve an app;
7. resell or give away raw capacity of the service (storage, CPU, email sending, map tiles or lookups) as a standalone product, rather than as part of an app you build;
8. attack, probe, scan or load test any system you do not own or have written permission to test, including other accounts' apps and the platform itself;
9. get around a limit, a cap, a suspension or a security control, or reach data of an account you do not belong to;
10. interfere with the service or other accounts' use of it.

The service terms add rules for each platform service. We may remove content, refuse a call or suspend an app that breaks these rules, as Suspension and termination describes.

9.Customer data

Ownership. You own your customer data. These terms give us no right to it beyond the license below.

Our license. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive license to host, copy, transmit and process customer data only as needed to run the service for you: to store it, serve it, back it up when you or a promote asks, deliver what you send, and keep the service secure. We do not sell customer data.

Backups. We make a backup of an app when you ask (backup.create) and each time a version is promoted to live, and we restore one when you ask. We store each backup with its app. Keep copies of anything you cannot afford to lose: you have the tools to back up and export, and you decide when to use them.

Export. You can export your data at any time while your account is open: each collection's records as NDJSON, JSON or CSV (data.export), a whole app as one bundle for another Substrio server (app.export), and the app's audit trail (audit.export).

Deletion. When you delete an app, we delete its database, its files and the backups stored with it at once; this cannot be undone. You can delete an account once no apps remain in it; we then remove its members and keys. Records we must keep about the account itself, such as invoices and the platform's audit entries of account actions, are kept as the law and our accounting require.

Your responsibility. You are responsible for your customer data: that you have the right to store and process it on the service, that it is accurate, and that your use of it is lawful.

10.Your end users

Your apps and their end users are yours. You are responsible for your relationship with your end users: the terms and privacy notice you give them, the consent you collect, the support you offer and the requests they make about their data.

End users have no rights under these terms and no account with Substrio through your app. When an end user contacts us about your app, we refer them to you, unless the law requires us to answer them ourselves.

You make sure your end users follow the acceptable use rules where your app lets them store or send content through the service.

11.Privacy and data processing

Customer data. For personal data in your customer data, including your end users' data, you are the controller and Substrio is your processor. We process it only to run the service as these terms describe and on your instructions, which are your use of the service and its settings. We help you answer your end users' requests to access, correct, export or delete their data, mostly through the export and delete operations the service already offers.

Account data. For the data about your account itself (the members' names and email addresses, sign-in records, billing records), Substrio is the controller. We use it to run the account, bill it, keep it secure and send the notices these terms describe.

Sub-processors. We use Stripe for payments. The service terms name the outside sources and providers each platform service uses.

The data protection law that applies to you and your end users, such as the GDPR, may require a written processing agreement. Ask for one through the console.

12.Security

What we do. We serve the API, the console and hosted sites over HTTPS, with certificates we issue and renew. We store passwords hashed, never in clear. Credit card details go to Stripe and never reach us. We limit each key to the account or app it was issued for, within its role.

What you do. You keep your keys secret, give members the least role their work needs, require two-factor sign-in for members where your account allows it, keep your apps' own code and dependencies secure, and set your collections' access rules so that your apps answer only the callers they should.

Incidents. If we confirm a breach of security that exposed customer data, we tell the affected account owners without undue delay, with what we know and what we are doing about it. Report a vulnerability you find in the service to us through the console, and do not test it against other accounts.

13.Availability and maintenance

We work to keep the service available, but Substrio offers no service level agreement and no service credits. The servers we run the service on come with their provider's guaranteed minimum availability, which Why It Costs Less describes; that guarantee is between us and that provider and gives you no claim against us.

We update the service often. Most updates need no interruption; when one does, we try to announce it ahead of time. The service may also be interrupted by failures beyond our control, such as power, network or provider outages.

14.Third-party services

For parts of the service, we rely on services that others run: Stripe for payments, the mailbox providers your email is delivered to, the sign-in providers your end users choose (such as Google or GitHub), the open data sources of MapJet, and the domain registrars and DNS hosts that serve your domains. The terms of those services apply to your use of them, and we are not responsible for their acts or their availability.

Your apps may call outside services of your choosing. Those calls, and the terms of those services, are yours.

15.Service terms

Each platform service has service terms, which add to these and govern that service:

• SendJet terms: sending rules, consent and unsubscribe, the email laws that apply, bounce and complaint thresholds, and your domains.
• AuthJet terms: your end users' accounts and data, credentials, social sign-in providers, and account takeover.
• MapJet terms: map data sources, licenses and attribution, caching, and storing search and location results.

16.Suspension and termination

By you. You can stop using the service at any time: cancel your paid plan, export what you need, delete your apps and then delete your account.

Suspension by us. We may suspend an app, a service's use or an account, in whole or in part, when it breaks these terms, when its payment is overdue, when it threatens the security or stability of the service or of other accounts, or when the law requires it. Where we can, we tell the owner first and give a chance to fix the cause; when the harm is serious or ongoing, such as spam, malware or an attack, we suspend first and tell the owner at once. A suspended app keeps its data and comes back as it was when we resume it.

Termination by us. We may end these terms for an account that breaks them seriously or repeatedly, or that stays suspended for its cause without a fix. Unless the law or the nature of the breach prevents it, we give the owner notice and a reasonable time to export the account's data before we delete it.

What survives. Sections on fees owed, customer data deletion, intellectual property, the warranty disclaimer, limitation of liability, indemnity, governing law and the general terms survive the end of these terms.

17.Intellectual property and feedback

The service, including StaxDB, the console, the SDKs, the CLI, the documentation and the Substrio, SendJet, AuthJet and MapJet names and marks, belongs to us and our licensors. These terms give you the right to use the service as they describe, and no other right in it. You may not copy, modify, reverse engineer or resell the service, except as the law allows despite this term or as a license we publish with a part of it allows.

Your apps, your code and your customer data stay yours.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without any obligation to you.

18.Warranty disclaimer

The service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim every warranty, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement, and any warranty that the service will be uninterrupted, error free or secure, or that data will never be lost. Some laws do not allow these exclusions; where they apply, the exclusions apply only as far as those laws allow.

19.Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows:

1. neither party is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, goodwill or data, even if told they were possible;
2. each party's total liability arising out of or relating to these terms is limited to the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the event that gave rise to the claim, or, on Free, to one hundred US dollars.

These limits do not apply to your payment obligations, to your indemnity below, to a breach of the acceptable use rules, or to liability that the law does not allow to be limited, such as liability for fraud or for death or injury caused by negligence.

20.Indemnity

You will defend us and hold us harmless against any claim, loss, fine or cost (including reasonable legal fees) that arises from your customer data, your apps, your end users' use of your apps, the acts of your members and agents, or your breach of these terms or of the law. We will tell you promptly of a claim, let you control its defense, and help you at your cost; you will not settle a claim that admits fault for us or binds us without our consent.

21.Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. When they change, the date at the top of this page changes with them. A material change is announced to account owners before it takes effect. Continued use of the service after that date means you accept the new terms; if you do not, cancel your plan and stop using the service before then.

22.Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by [GOVERNING LAW], without regard to its conflict of laws rules. The courts of [GOVERNING LAW] have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or relating to these terms, except that either party may seek urgent relief in any court that has jurisdiction.

Before starting a claim, the party with the complaint tells the other in writing and both try in good faith for thirty days to settle it. Nothing in this section takes away a right that the consumer law of your country gives you and that cannot be waived.

23.Notices

We send notices to the owner's email address on the account, or show them in the console. A notice by email counts as received the day after it is sent. You send notices to us through the console. Keep the owner's email address current: a notice sent to it counts as given even if it is not read.

24.General

These terms, the pricing page and the service terms are the whole agreement between you and us about the service, and replace any earlier one. If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest stays in force. A failure to enforce a term is not a waiver of it. You may not transfer these terms without our written consent; we may transfer them to a successor of the service. Neither party is liable for a delay caused by events beyond its reasonable control. Nothing in these terms makes either party the agent, partner or employee of the other.

25.Contact

Questions about these terms reach us from your account in the console. [LEGAL ENTITY] provides the service.