Terms of Service

1. Agreement to these terms

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern access to and use of the websites, applications, APIs, and services provided by STELE Technologies (“STELE”, “we”, “us”) — together, the “Service”. By creating an account, clicking to accept, or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you use the Service on behalf of an organisation, you represent that you have authority to bind that organisation, and “you” means that organisation.

If you require a data processing agreement for personal data, our Data Processing Addendum is incorporated into these Terms whenever data protection law applies to Customer Content you submit.

2. The Service

STELE is an intelligent document processing platform. You upload documents; the Service parses them, detects the document type, extracts structured fields using machine-learning models, computes confidence scores, indexes content for semantic search, and provides dashboards, review workflows, chat, forecasting, and APIs over the results. Processing runs on edge infrastructure provided by our subprocessors (see the DPA); documents are processed by models hosted within that infrastructure and are not sent to third-party AI APIs.

3. Eligibility and accounts

• You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract to use the Service.
• You are responsible for your account credentials and for all activity under your account. Notify us immediately at security@stele.example if you suspect unauthorised access.
• You must provide accurate registration and billing information and keep it current.
• We may offer single sign-on or access-gateway authentication for team plans; your organisation’s administrator may control membership of your workspace.

4. Plans, billing, and taxes

The Service is offered in tiers — currently Free (100 pages per month), Pro (1,000 pages per month), and Team (10,000 pages per month) — with features and page budgets described on the pricing page, which forms part of these Terms. “Pages” are counted per processed document page or image at ingestion.

• Payment. Paid subscriptions are billed in advance on a monthly basis through our payment processor, Stripe. You authorise recurring charges to your payment method until you cancel.
• Upgrades and downgrades. Upgrades take effect immediately; the new rate applies from the next billing event. Downgrades and cancellations take effect at the end of the current billing period. Page budgets do not roll over.
• Overage. When a monthly page budget is exhausted, further processing requests return a clearly marked payment-required response rather than incurring silent charges. We do not bill surprise overage.
• Refunds. Except where required by law, fees are non-refundable; we will, however, review in good faith any billing error you report within 30 days at billing@stele.example.
• Taxes. Fees exclude taxes such as GST or VAT, which you are responsible for where applicable.
• Price changes. We may change prices with at least 30 days’ notice; changes apply from your next billing period.

5. Free plan, trials, and beta features

The free plan and any features marked beta, preview, or experimental are provided as-is, may be changed, limited, or withdrawn at any time, and may be subject to additional fair-use limits. They carry no service-level commitment.

6. Customer Content

“Customer Content” means documents, files, data, corrections, and prompts you or your users submit to the Service, and the extracted outputs derived from them for you.

• You own it. As between you and STELE, you retain all rights to Customer Content. We claim no ownership.
• Our licence to process. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive licence to host, reproduce, transmit, and process Customer Content solely to provide, secure, and support the Service, and as instructed through your use of its features.
• No training on your content. We do not use Customer Content to train machine-learning models. Corrections you make are stored in your workspace and used only to improve extractions for your account (few-shot memory).
• Your responsibilities. You are responsible for the lawfulness of Customer Content — including having the right to upload documents containing personal data of others — and for configuring who in your organisation can access your workspace.
• Deletion. Deleting a document from your workspace deletes the stored object, its extraction record, and its vector index entries, subject to short-lived backups described in the Privacy Policy.

7. AI output — accuracy and your obligations

Machine-learning extraction is probabilistic. Outputs may be incomplete, inaccurate, or misclassified, including at high confidence scores. The Service surfaces confidence scores, validation failures, anomaly flags, and a human-review queue precisely so that you can verify results. You agree that:

• you will not treat extracted values, chat answers, or forecasts as professional, legal, financial, medical, or tax advice;
• for any consequential use — payments, regulatory filings, legal obligations, employment decisions — a human will review the output, using the review tools provided or your own controls;
• you remain solely responsible for decisions and actions taken in reliance on the Service’s output.

8. Acceptable use

You agree not to, and not to permit anyone to:

• use the Service to violate law or the rights of others, or to process documents you have no right to process;
• upload malware or content designed to disrupt the Service, or probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service other than through our coordinated disclosure process (security@stele.example);
• resell, sublicense, or provide the Service to third parties as a service bureau without our written agreement;
• circumvent page budgets, rate limits, or feature gates, or share one account across multiple organisations;
• reverse engineer the Service except to the extent a law expressly permits it notwithstanding this clause;
• use the Service to build a competing document-processing product by systematic extraction of its outputs.

We may suspend access immediately where we reasonably believe a violation threatens the Service or others, and will notify you and work with you to restore access where practicable.

9. Privacy and data protection

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect and why. Where you submit personal data governed by data protection law (including the GDPR, UK GDPR, or the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020), the Data Processing Addendum applies: you are the controller, we are the processor, and we process only on your documented instructions.

10. Intellectual property

The Service — including software, models’ orchestration, design, and documentation — is owned by STELE and its licensors and is protected by intellectual-property laws. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service during your subscription in accordance with these Terms. Feedback you choose to send us may be used to improve the Service without obligation to you.

11. Third-party services

The Service is built on infrastructure and payment services provided by third parties — currently Cloudflare, Inc. (compute, storage, AI inference) and Stripe, Inc. (payments). Payment card data is collected and processed by Stripe, not by us. Third-party terms apply to your use of their checkout surfaces.

12. Availability, support, and changes

We operate the Service on globally distributed, serverless infrastructure and target high availability, but the Service is provided without a guaranteed uptime SLA on self-serve plans. We may modify features over time; where a change materially reduces core functionality of your paid plan, we will notify you and you may terminate for convenience and receive a pro-rata refund of prepaid, unused fees. Support is provided by email at support@stele.example.

13. Term, suspension, and termination

• These Terms apply from your first use of the Service and continue until your account is closed.
• You may cancel at any time from the billing page; your workspace remains available until the end of the paid period.
• Either party may terminate for material breach not cured within 30 days of written notice; we may terminate immediately for breaches of Section 8 or non-payment.
• On termination you may export your data using the Service’s export and API features. Thirty days after account closure we delete Customer Content, as described in the Privacy Policy, except where retention is legally required.
• Sections 6 (ownership), 7, 10, and 14–18 survive termination.

14. Disclaimer of warranties

EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY STATED IN THESE TERMS, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, AND WE DISCLAIM ALL OTHER WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY THAT OUTPUTS WILL BE ACCURATE, COMPLETE, OR ERROR-FREE. NOTHING IN THESE TERMS EXCLUDES GUARANTEES OR RIGHTS THAT CANNOT BE EXCLUDED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW, INCLUDING UNDER NEW ZEALAND CONSUMER LAW WHERE IT APPLIES; WHERE YOU ACQUIRE THE SERVICE FOR BUSINESS PURPOSES, YOU AGREE THE NEW ZEALAND CONSUMER GUARANTEES ACT 1993 DOES NOT APPLY.

15. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW: (a) NEITHER PARTY IS LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, OR DATA, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY; AND (b) EACH PARTY’S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID US FOR THE SERVICE IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO LIABILITY, OR NZD 100 IF YOU HAVE PAID NOTHING. THESE LIMITS DO NOT APPLY TO YOUR PAYMENT OBLIGATIONS, EITHER PARTY’S INDEMNITY OBLIGATIONS, INFRINGEMENT OF THE OTHER PARTY’S INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, OR LIABILITY THAT CANNOT BE LIMITED BY LAW.

16. Indemnification

You will defend and indemnify STELE against third-party claims arising from Customer Content or your use of the Service in breach of Sections 6–8. We will defend and indemnify you against third-party claims that the Service, as provided by us and used in accordance with these Terms, infringes their intellectual-property rights — and if such a claim is likely, we may modify the Service, procure rights, or terminate the affected portion with a pro-rata refund. Each party must promptly notify the other of a claim and give reasonable cooperation.

17. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand, and the courts of New Zealand have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes arising out of them — except that either party may seek injunctive relief in any competent court. Before filing, the parties will attempt in good faith to resolve any dispute through negotiation for 30 days from written notice.

18. Changes to these Terms and general provisions

• Changes. We may update these Terms; material changes will be notified by email or in-product at least 30 days before they take effect. Continued use after the effective date is acceptance. If you object, you may terminate and receive a pro-rata refund of prepaid, unused fees.
• Assignment. Neither party may assign these Terms without consent, except to an affiliate or in connection with a merger or sale of substantially all assets, with notice.
• Entire agreement; severability; waiver. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, the DPA, and any order form are the entire agreement; if a provision is unenforceable, the remainder stands; a failure to enforce is not a waiver.
• Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control.
• Export and sanctions. You may not use the Service in violation of applicable export-control or sanctions laws.

19. Contact

STELE Technologies · Legal — legal@stele.example