Terms of Service

§ 1 Scope, contracting parties

(1) These Terms of Service (hereinafter "Terms") govern all contracts for paid hosting plans of the Stift.io service between the provider (see Impressum, hereinafter "Provider") and the user ("Sponsor").

(2) The contract language is English. A German translation can be made available on request; the English version is authoritative.

(3) Differing terms proposed by the Sponsor are not accepted unless the Provider has agreed to them expressly in text form.

§ 2 Subject matter of the contract

(1) The Provider supplies the Sponsor with a hosting plan of the Stift.io service. The included functionality is determined by the chosen plan (number of encrypted cloud projects, optional features such as project sharing).

(2) The Stift annotation and compositing software itself is free software released under the European Union Public Licence (EUPL-1.2) and is available independently of any hosting plan. The contract covers exclusively the hosting service provided by the Provider, not the software itself.

(3) The infrastructure required to use the service (internet connection, a current browser) is the responsibility of the Sponsor.

§ 3 Conclusion of contract

(1) The presentation of plans on the website does not constitute a binding offer; it is a non-binding invitation to the Sponsor to make an offer.

(2) By selecting a plan, accepting these Terms and the Withdrawal Notice, and completing the checkout flow with the payment service provider, the Sponsor makes a binding contractual offer.

(3) The contract is concluded when the Provider confirms successful receipt of payment. The Sponsor receives confirmation of the contract by email.

§ 4 Prices and payment

(1) All prices shown on the website are gross final prices in Euro and include every applicable component.

(2) The Provider is a small business within the meaning of § 19 UStG (German VAT Act, small-business regulation). No value-added tax is therefore charged and none is shown on invoices.

(3) Payment is processed exclusively through the external payment service provider Mollie B.V., Keizersgracht 313, 1016 EE Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The terms of the payment service provider apply additionally to the checkout flow.

(4) Billing is in advance for the respective billing period (monthly or yearly, depending on the chosen plan).

(5) Invoices within the meaning of § 14 UStG are issued at the Sponsor's request. The Sponsor dashboard offers three modes:

• No invoice (default): after each payment the Sponsor receives only a simple payment confirmation by email. No address details for the Sponsor are stored.
• Request invoices on demand: the Sponsor enters the address details required for the specific invoice. Those details are used only for that invoice and are not stored permanently.
• Issue invoices automatically: the Sponsor stores their address once on the account. After every payment an invoice is then created automatically. This setting can be disabled at any time, in which case the stored address is deleted from the customer record immediately.

§ 5 Term, termination

(1) The contract is concluded for an indefinite period. The minimum term equals the chosen billing period (one month or twelve months).

(2) The Sponsor may cancel the contract at any time, with immediate effect, without giving reasons, via the Sponsor dashboard. Cancellation in text form to the contact details listed in the Impressum is also possible.

(3) On cancellation the unused portion of the current billing period is refunded pro rata. A flat processing fee of € 1.00 is deducted from the refund amount; this fee covers the payment service provider's charges for the chargeback. A detailed explanation is available on the "How fees work" page.

(4) Sponsors who would prefer a full refund without the processing-fee deduction may request one informally by email to the refund address listed in the Sponsor dashboard. In that case the refund is processed manually.

(5) The right to extraordinary termination for cause remains unaffected.

§ 6 Right of withdrawal

Consumers within the meaning of § 13 BGB (German Civil Code) have a statutory right of withdrawal. The details of how to exercise it, and the conditions under which the right of withdrawal expires for digital services that are made available immediately, are set out in the Withdrawal Notice.

§ 7 Availability and maintenance

(1) The Provider strives for the highest possible availability of the service but does not guarantee any specific level of availability (no Service Level Agreement). In particular, in a service operated by a single individual, maintenance windows and short-term outages can occur.

(2) Planned maintenance is announced in advance in the Sponsor dashboard where reasonably possible.

§ 8 Sponsor obligations

(1) The Sponsor undertakes to keep their access credentials (username and password) confidential. Because the password is also the input for the client-side key derivation that encrypts the Sponsor's projects, and is not known to the Provider, password recovery is technically impossible. The Sponsor is required to keep the password safe.

(2) The Sponsor undertakes not to use the service for unlawful purposes, and in particular not to store any content that violates applicable law or third-party rights.

(3) In the event of a serious breach of paragraph (2) the Provider is entitled to terminate the contract for cause.

§ 9 Liability

(1) The Provider is liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for damage arising from injury to life, body or health, and under the provisions of the German Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz).

(2) For ordinary negligence the Provider is liable only for the breach of a material contractual obligation (a so-called "cardinal duty") whose fulfilment is a prerequisite for the proper performance of the contract and on whose observance the Sponsor may regularly rely. In such cases liability is limited to the foreseeable damage typical for this type of contract.

(3) Any liability beyond the foregoing is excluded.

(4) Because content is encrypted and decrypted exclusively client-side in the Sponsor's browser, the Provider has no access to the cleartext content. Liability for loss of data caused by loss of the Sponsor's password is excluded.

§ 10 Data protection and retention

(1) The Privacy Policy applies. Personal data is collected and processed only to the extent necessary to perform the contract.

(2) Issued invoices and credit notes are subject to a statutory retention period of ten years under § 147 AO (German Tax Code, Abgabenordnung). They are therefore retained even after deletion of the Sponsor's account. The right to erasure under Art. 17 GDPR is correspondingly limited by Art. 17(3)(b) GDPR (compliance with a legal obligation).

§ 11 Final provisions

(1) The contractual relationship is governed exclusively by the law of the Federal Republic of Germany, to the exclusion of the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. For consumers this choice of law applies only to the extent that it does not deprive the consumer of the protection afforded by mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which the consumer has their habitual residence.

(2) Should individual provisions of these Terms be or become wholly or partly invalid, the validity of the remaining provisions remains unaffected. The invalid provision is replaced by the applicable statutory rule.

(3) The European Commission provides a platform for online dispute resolution (ODR), available at https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr/. The Provider is neither willing nor obliged to participate in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration body.