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Terms of service

Last updated: May 27, 2026

Working draft. Have qualified counsel review it for your jurisdiction before publishing.

1. The deal

You sign up. We give you the service described on the marketing page of whichever product you signed up for (Placet, Veneer, Cordon, or Sluice). You pay the monthly subscription. The terms below cover the rest.

2. Your account

You're responsible for what happens under your account. Don't share sign-in links. If your account is compromised, email support@porthatch.app — we'll invalidate active sessions and help you regain control.

You must be 16+ to use the service.

3. Acceptable use

You may not:

  • run the service against people who haven't given you permission to (e.g. uploading email lists to Sluice that you didn't collect with opt-in consent);
  • attempt to access workspaces you don't own;
  • reverse-engineer, scrape, or otherwise abuse the service in ways that materially impact other tenants;
  • use the service to send spam, harass, defraud, or commit any unlawful act.

Sluice-specific: bulk email verification is intended for cleaning your own lists. Using Sluice to verify lists that you sourced without consent is misuse and may result in account termination.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these rules. If we do, we'll tell you why and give you a reasonable window to export your data (see Privacy Policy §6).

4. Your content

You retain ownership of everything you upload, including:

  • Placet: posts you upload for client approval
  • Veneer / Cordon: the Airtable / Notion databases you connect (we proxy them — we don't store the content)
  • Sluice: email lists you upload

By using the service, you grant us a non-exclusive licence to host, process, and display that content to the people you choose to share it with. We don't use your content to train AI models or repackage it into anything we sell to third parties.

5. Service availability

We aim for high availability, but we don't promise a specific uptime in these terms — that's reserved for a separate SLA on the Enterprise plan once it exists. For the standard plans we operate the service in good faith; if it's down for more than 4 consecutive hours within a billing period, email us and we'll credit a pro-rated refund.

Scheduled maintenance gets announced at least 24h in advance. Emergency maintenance for security or stability happens whenever it has to.

6. Billing

  • Subscriptions are charged monthly in advance through Stripe.
  • Trials are 7 days, no card required to start. We send a heads-up email before the trial ends.
  • Sluice credits are prepaid and non-refundable except where required by consumer-protection law in your jurisdiction. "Unknown" verdicts refund automatically per the product spec.
  • You can cancel at any time via /app/settings → "manage subscription". Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.
  • We don't issue partial-month refunds for cancellation alone — your workspace stays open until the period ends.

Failed payments trigger a 7-day past-due window before downgrade. Existing data stays accessible to end clients (the asymmetric gate described in the product docs) but you can't create new things until the payment lands.

7. Termination

Either party can terminate the agreement at any time. If you terminate, you stop being billed; your data enters the 30-day soft-delete window described in the Privacy Policy. If we terminate (only for cause — unpaid bills or rule violations), the same window applies, and we give you a reasonable export opportunity first.

8. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our liability for any claim arising from the service is capped at the fees you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim. We're not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages — lost profits, lost data (beyond reasonable backup operations), business interruption.

This doesn't limit liability for things that can't be limited under applicable law: gross negligence, wilful misconduct, fraud, death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or any liability that can't be excluded under consumer-protection law.

9. Governing law and disputes

Governed by the law of the jurisdiction listed on the imprint / about page. Disputes go to the courts of that jurisdiction unless you have non-waivable rights to use your local courts as a consumer.

10. Changes

We may update these terms. Material changes get a 30-day email notice; your continued use after the effective date counts as acceptance. Non-material changes (typo fixes, clarifications that don't affect your rights) take effect immediately on publication.

11. Contact

support@porthatch.app for anything related to these terms.