Terms of Service

Previous versions of these Terms of Service can be found here.

Last updated: July 30, 2024

When we say “Company”, “we”, “our”, or “us” in this document, we are referring to the Spadework Company.

When we say “Services”, we mean our websites, including spadework.ai, spadework.nl, API services and any product created and maintained by Spadework. That includes Spadework Hello (all versions), whether delivered within a web browser, desktop application, mobile application, integration, or another format.

When we say “You”, “your” or “customer”, we are referring to the people or organizations that have registered an account with one or more of our Services.

We may update these Terms of Service (“Terms”) in the future. Whenever we make a significant change to our policies, we will refresh the date at the top of this page and take any other appropriate steps to notify account holders.

When you use our Services, now or in the future, you are agreeing to the latest Terms. There may be times where we do not exercise or enforce a right or provision of the Terms; however, that does not mean we are waiving that right or provision. These Terms do contain a limitation of our liability.

Account Terms

1. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account and password and for ensuring that any of your users do the same. The Company cannot and will not be liable for any loss or damage from your failure to comply with this security obligation. We recommend all users set up two-factor authentication for added security for the services where this is available. In some of our Services, we may require it.
2. You may not use the Services for any purpose outlined in our Use Restrictions policy, and you may not permit any of your users to do so, either.
3. You are responsible for all content posted to and activity that occurs under your account, including content posted by and activity of any users in your account.
4. You must be a human. Accounts registered by “bots” or other automated methods are not permitted.

Artificial Intelligence

Spadework is not liable for AI-generated content; the customer is solely responsible for the use of this content and must examine them for any potential bias, correctness, and accuracy before utilization. Spadework is not accountable for any damages that arise from the use of AI generated content, especially if the customer has failed to perform the necessary checks. The customer is responsible for using the AI-generated content in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, ensuring that their usage does not infringe upon third-party rights. Due to the probabilistic nature of Artificial Intelligence, Spadework cannot guarantee the correctness, accuracy, or completeness of the AI-generated content. Spadework is not liable for any damages that arise from the use of AI-generated content. We recommend customer should adhere to the guidelines detailed in AI Guidelines.

Spadework may use customer data, including personal data, to train AI models which Spadework may use to improve its services or create new services. Spadework will ensure trained AI models do not leak or store personal data by using techniques such as (when appropriate): Anonymization, Masking, PII Scanning, Output Filtering/Guardrails, Prompt Context Isolation, Monitoring, Access Controls, Canonicalization, Data Segmentation, and Cryptographic methods.

Payment, Refunds, and Plan Changes

1. If you are using a free version of one of our Services, it is really free: we do not ask you for your credit card and — just like for customers who pay for our Services — we do not sell your data.
2. For paid Services that offer a free trial, we explain the length of trial when you sign up. After the trial period, you need to pay in advance to keep using the Service. If you do not pay, we will freeze your account and it will be inaccessible until you make payment. If your account has been frozen for a while, we will queue it up for auto-cancellation.
3. If you are upgrading from a free plan to a paid plan, we will charge your card immediately and your billing cycle starts on the day of upgrade. For other upgrades or downgrades in plan level, the new rate starts from the next billing cycle.
4. All fees are exclusive of all taxes, levies, or duties imposed by taxing authorities. Where required, we will collect those taxes on behalf of the taxing authority and remit those taxes to taxing authorities. See our Taxes policy for more details. Otherwise, you are responsible for payment of all taxes, levies, or duties.
5. Refunds are provided at our sole discretion.

Cancellation and Termination

1. You are solely responsible for properly canceling your account. Within each of our Services, we provide a cancellation link. An email or phone request to cancel your account is not automatically considered cancellation. If you need help canceling your account, you can always contact our Support team.
2. All of your content will be inaccessible from the Services immediately upon account cancellation. Within 30 days, all content will be permanently deleted from active systems and logs. Within 60 days, all content will be permanently deleted from our backups. We cannot recover this information once it has been permanently deleted. If you want to export any data before your account is canceled, contact our Support team.
3. If you cancel the Service before the end of your current paid up month, your cancellation will take effect immediately, and your access from Spadework will be revoked. We do not automatically prorate unused time in the last billing cycle.
4. We have the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of our Services for any reason at any time. Suspension means you and any other users on your account will not be able to access the account or any content in the account. Termination will furthermore result in the deletion of your account or your access to your account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all content in your account. We also reserve the right to refuse the use of the Services to anyone for any reason at any time. We have this clause because statistically speaking, out of the hundreds of thousands of accounts on our Services, there is at least one doing something nefarious. There are some things we staunchly stand against and this clause is how we exercise that stance. For more details, see our Use Restrictions policy.
5. Verbal, physical, written or other abuse (including threats of abuse or retribution) of a Company employee or officer will result in immediate account termination.

Modifications to the Service and Prices

1. We reserve the right at any time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, any part of our Services with or without notice.
2. Sometimes we change the pricing structure for our products. When we do that, we tend to exempt existing customers from those changes. However, we may choose to change the prices for existing customers. If we do so, we will give at least 30 days notice and will notify you via the email address on record. We may also post a notice about changes on our websites or the affected Services themselves.

Uptime, Security, and Privacy

1. Your use of the Services is at your sole risk. We provide these Services on an “as is” and “as available” basis. We do not offer service-level agreements for most of our Services, but do take uptime of our applications seriously.
2. We reserve the right to temporarily disable your account if your usage significantly exceeds the average usage of other customers of the Services. Of course, we’ll reach out to the account owner before taking any action except in rare cases where the level of use may negatively impact the performance of the Service for other customers.
3. We take many measures to protect and secure your data through backups, redundancies, and encryption whenever possible. We enforce encryption for data transmission from the public Internet. There are some edge cases where we may send your data through our internal network unencrypted.
4. When you use our Services, you entrust us with your data. We take that trust to heart. You agree that Spadework may process your data as described in our Privacy Policy and for no other purpose. We as humans can access your data for the following reasons:

• To help you with support requests you make. We’ll ask for express consent before accessing your account.
• On the rare occasions when an error occurs that stops an automated process partway through. We get automated alerts when such errors occur. When we can fix the issue and restart automated processing without looking at any personal data, we do. In rare cases, we have to look at a minimum amount of personal data to fix the issue. In these rare cases, we aim to fix the root cause to prevent the errors from recurring.
• To safeguard Spadework. We’ll look at logs and metadata as part of our work to ensure the security of your data and the Services as a whole. If necessary, we may also access accounts as part of an abuse report investigation
• To the extent necessary to comply with the law or a binding order of a governmental body. We’ll always try to notify you of such requests in advance, unless we are legally prevented from doing so.

5. We use third party vendors and hosting partners to provide the necessary hardware, software, networking, storage, artifical intelligence and related technology required to run the Services.
6. The user declares that they have the right to upload the data to the platform, which may not be used exclusively for the provision of services and the improvement of our machine learning algorithms. The data may also potentially be processed by third parties in accordance with EU data legislation. The user is responsible for removing data from the platform if they no longer have the right to share it and censoring special categories of personal data from ducuments (such as resumes) before uploading these to our platform. Special categories of personal data include health data, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.
7. We continually strive to improve our Services. To that end, we may use aggregated data to understand how our customers use our Services. We may use uploaded data to improve our machine learning algorithms.

Copyright and Content Ownership

1. We reserve the right (but not the obligation) in our sole discretion to refuse or remove any content that is available via the Service or otherwise provided by us.
2. The Company or its licensors own all right, title, and interest in and to the Services, including all intellectual property rights therein, and you obtain no ownership rights in the Services as a result of your use. You may not duplicate, copy, or reuse any portion of the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or visual design elements without express written permission from the Company. You must request permission to use the Company’s logos or any Service logos for promotional purposes. Please email us requests to use logos. We reserve the right to rescind any permissions if you violate these Terms.
3. You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any portion of the Services, use of the Services, or access to the Services without the express written permission of the Company.
4. By utilizing our services, you affirm that you hold the rights to use your company’s name, logo, and any other copyrighted material provided by you. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use these materials as necessary to fulfill your request, specifically for the generation of documents within the scope of services provided by us. We respect your confidentiality and will only display these copyrighted materials to you or to users specified by you as allowed to view these materials. We do not publicly display your copyrighted materials on our website without your explicit consent. You acknowledge that you bear all responsibility and liability for the use of these copyrighted materials and that Spadework is not liable for any misuse.

Features and Bugs

We design our Services with care, based on our own experience and the experiences of customers who share their time and feedback. However, there is no such thing as a service that pleases everybody. We make no guarantees that our Services will meet your specific requirements or expectations.

We also test all of our features extensively before shipping them. As with any software, our Services inevitably have some bugs. We track the bugs reported to us and work through priority ones, especially any related to security or privacy. Not all reported bugs will get fixed and we don’t guarantee completely error-free Services.

Services Adaptations and API Terms

We offer Application Program Interfaces (“API”s) for some of our Services. Any use of the API, including through a third-party product that accesses the Services, is bound by these Terms plus the following specific terms:

1. You expressly understand and agree that we are not liable for any damages or losses resulting from your use of the API or third-party products that access data via the API.
2. Abuse or excessively frequent requests to the Services via the API may result in the temporary or permanent suspension of your account’s access to the API. The Company, in its sole discretion, will determine abuse or excessive usage of the API. If we need to suspend your account’s access, we will attempt to warn the account owner first. If your API usage could or has caused downtime, we may cut off access without prior notice.
3. We are not liable or accountable for any third-party integrations of our services.

Liability

We mention liability throughout these Terms but to put it all in one section:

You expressly understand and agree that the Company shall not be liable, in law or in equity, to you or to any third party for any direct, indirect, incidental, lost profits, special, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages, including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data or other intangible losses (even if the Company has been advised of the possibility of such damages), resulting from: (i) the use or the inability to use the Services; (ii) the cost of procurement of substitute goods and services resulting from any goods, data, information or services purchased or obtained or messages received or transactions entered into through or from the Services; (iii) unauthorized access to or alteration of your transmissions or data; (iv) statements or conduct of any third party on the service; (v) or any other matter relating to these Terms or the Services, whether as a breach of contract, tort (including negligence whether active or passive), or any other theory of liability.

Indemnification

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Spadework (the “Company”), its affiliates, and their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, licensors, and suppliers from and against all claims, liabilities, damages, judgments, awards, losses, costs, expenses, or fees (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or relating to:

1. Your breach of these Terms;
2. Your use of the Services, including, but not limited to, any use of the Service’s content, services, and products other than as expressly authorized in these Terms;
3. Your violation of any applicable laws or regulations, including but not limited to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); or
4. Any claims arising from your content or data, or any access to or use of the Services by you or any third party on your behalf.

This indemnification obligation will survive the termination or expiration of these Terms and your use of the Services.

In other words: choosing to use our Services does mean you are making a bet on us. If the bet does not work out, that’s on you, not us. We do our darnedest to be as safe a bet as possible through careful management of the business; investments in security, infrastructure, and talent; and in general, giving a damn. If you choose to use our Services, thank you for betting on us.

If you have a question about any of these Terms, please contact our Support team.

Attribution

Adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies / CC BY 4.0