Terms of Service

1. About these terms

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are an agreement between you and MEDIAMAKR LLC, doing business as PaywallProject (“PaywallProject,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). “You” means the publication, business, or organization that signs up for our services, and the person agreeing on its behalf.

These Terms apply to every plan and service you buy from us, whether you sign up on our website, pay an invoice, or sign a separate agreement. By creating an account, submitting payment, or using our services, you agree to these Terms. If you sign up for an organization, you confirm that you have authority to bind it.

If you have a signed agreement or order form with us, its terms take priority where they differ from these.

2. Our services

Depending on your plan, our services may include:

• Managed plans (Community, Daily, and Regional): a WordPress website we set up, host, maintain, and support, along with the PaywallProject paywall and the built-in tools included in your plan.
• Plugin license: use of the PaywallProject plugin on a WordPress site you host and manage yourself.
• Add-ons and extras such as additional support users, mobile apps, migrations, and custom development, as described on our website or in a quote.

The features included in each plan are listed on our pricing page. We improve our products over time and may add, change, or retire features. If we remove a core feature of your plan, we’ll give you reasonable notice and, where we can, a comparable alternative.

3. Your account

• Give us accurate contact and billing information, and keep it up to date.
• Keep your logins secure and limit administrator access to people you trust. You’re responsible for activity under your accounts.
• Tell us right away at [email protected] if you think an account has been compromised.

To manage your site, we need administrator access to your WordPress site and the connected services you ask us to set up. We use that access only to provide and support our services.

4. Setup and first payment

Your first payment covers the setup and initial build of your paywall and, on managed plans, your website. Work begins once that payment is received. Because setup work starts right away, the first payment is non-refundable.

Setup timelines depend on the scope of your project and on you providing content, access, and decisions when we need them. Delays on your side may delay launch, but billing continues on your plan’s schedule.

5. Billing and renewal

• Plans are billed monthly or annually, in advance, depending on the plan you choose.
• Your plan renews automatically at the end of each billing period, and we charge the payment method on file, unless you cancel as described in Section 6.
• Prices don’t include taxes. You’re responsible for any sales, use, or similar taxes that apply.
• If a payment fails, we’ll let you know and try again. If payment is still outstanding 14 days after the due date, we may suspend services until your account is current.
• Managed plans are a flat price with no revenue share. The self-managed plugin license includes a revenue share on reader payments, as shown on our pricing page at the time you sign up.

6. Cancellation and refunds

You can cancel at any time by emailing [email protected]. To avoid being charged for the next billing period, cancel at least 15 days before your next billing date. Your services continue through the end of the period you’ve paid for.

Apart from the non-refundable first payment, refunds are not guaranteed and are given at our discretion. We don’t offer prorated refunds for unused time, including the unused part of an annual plan.

7. Price changes

We may change our prices. We’ll email you at least 30 days before a price change affects your account, and the new price will apply from your next billing period after that notice. If you don’t want to continue at the new price, you can cancel before it takes effect.

8. Payments from your readers

Reader subscriptions, donations, notices, obituaries, ads, and other payments are processed through your own Stripe account (or another payment provider you connect). That money goes to you, not to us. We don’t hold, control, or guarantee your reader payments.

You are the seller to your readers. You’re responsible for your prices, refunds to your readers, chargebacks and disputes, receipts, taxes on your sales, and your relationship with your payment provider, including following its terms.

9. Third-party services and fees

Our services connect to tools run by other companies, such as Stripe, Google, email providers, hosting and infrastructure partners, and plugin vendors. Your use of those tools is also subject to their terms, and we aren’t responsible for their outages, changes, or decisions.

You’re responsible for fees charged by third parties to your accounts, including payment processing fees and charges caused by bot activity, card testing, or other fraudulent attempts on your payment forms. We recommend fraud prevention tools such as Stripe Radar, CAPTCHA, and rate limiting on all payment forms, and we can help you set them up.

10. Your content and responsibilities

Your content is yours. You keep all rights to your stories, photos, newsletters, subscriber lists, reader data, and everything else you or your readers add to your site (“Your Content”). You give us permission to host, copy, process, back up, and display Your Content only as needed to provide our services to you.

You’re responsible for Your Content and for running your publication, including:

• Having the rights to everything you publish.
• Following the laws that apply to you, such as privacy, email marketing, consumer protection, accessibility, and public notice publication requirements.
• Publishing your own privacy policy and reader terms on your site.
• Reviewing anything submitted by readers or advertisers, such as notices, obituaries, events, comments, and ads, before or after it’s published.

11. Acceptable use

You agree not to use our services to:

• Break the law or help others break it.
• Publish content that infringes someone else’s rights, or that is defamatory, harassing, or exploits minors.
• Send spam or unsolicited bulk email.
• Distribute malware, attack other systems, or try to get around security or usage limits.
• Resell, sublicense, or share our services or software with others without our written permission.
• Use resources in a way that harms the performance of our systems for other customers.

12. Our software and intellectual property

PaywallProject and its products, including our plugins, themes, dashboards, and documentation, are owned by us or our licensors. While your plan is active and paid, we give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use them for your publication. That right ends when your plan ends.

If you send us feedback or ideas, we can use them to improve our products without owing you anything.

13. Data and privacy

• When you connect third-party tools (for example, Stripe, an email provider, or Google), you give us permission to access the data needed to operate, support, and improve your site.
• We handle your readers’ personal data on your behalf and according to your instructions. We don’t sell it, and we don’t use it to market to your readers.
• We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards to protect data in our care. If we learn of a security incident affecting your data, we’ll notify you without undue delay.
• We may use anonymized, aggregated usage data, which doesn’t identify you or your readers, to improve our services.
• Our Data Processing Agreement forms part of these Terms and applies whenever we process personal data on your behalf.
• We keep your business information confidential and only share it with the team members and service providers who need it to serve you, or when required by law.

14. Uptime, maintenance, and backups

On managed plans, we aim for 99.9% uptime each month, not counting scheduled maintenance or events outside our reasonable control. We try to schedule maintenance at low-traffic times and give notice when we expect noticeable downtime.

We keep regular backups of managed sites. Backups are a safety net, not a guarantee, and we can’t promise every file can always be restored.

We’re not responsible for downtime or problems caused by your changes to the site, plugins or code added without our involvement, third-party services, or force majeure events.

15. Support

Support is provided by email on every plan. Some plans also include a shared Slack channel, priority support, or a dedicated account manager, as described on our pricing page. Additional Slack users can be added for an extra monthly fee. Support covers our services and the tools included in your plan. It doesn’t include building new features or custom work, which we quote separately.

16. Custom development

Custom development is quoted separately and may be declined at our discretion. Each quote describes the work, price, and timing. You’re welcome to hire other developers at any time; you’re never required to use our development services. If outside work causes problems on a managed site, we may charge to fix it or ask that it be removed.

17. Moving your site

Your WordPress site is yours to keep, and you’re free to move it at any time. When you cancel, we’ll provide an export of your site files, database, and content on request, as long as your account is paid in full. Please ask within 30 days of your service ending, after which we may delete your data.

Licenses for our proprietary plugins and for third-party plugins and services in our tech stack don’t transfer when you leave. To keep receiving updates and support, you’ll need to buy licenses directly from the vendors, or from us where available.

18. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or end your services if you don’t pay, break these Terms, or use our services in a way that creates legal or security risk for us or others. Where it’s reasonable, we’ll tell you first and give you a chance to fix the problem.

We may also refuse, suspend, or end service if you engage in disruptive, abusive, or harassing behavior toward our staff, contractors, or other customers. This includes threats, offensive language, unreasonable demands, or conduct that interferes with our ability to provide services. In these cases, we may disable access immediately without notice. Any prepaid fees for unused time may be refunded at our discretion.

Sections that by their nature should continue after the end of your services, including fees owed, intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, and indemnification, will continue to apply.

19. Disclaimers

We work hard to keep your site fast, secure, and earning. But except as expressly stated in these Terms, our services are provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don’t guarantee any particular number of subscribers, amount of revenue, search ranking, or results.

20. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent allowed by law, neither of us will be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, or data, even if warned they were possible.

Our total liability for any claim relating to these Terms or our services is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim.

21. Indemnification

You agree to defend and hold us harmless from claims, losses, and costs, including reasonable legal fees, arising from Your Content, your sales to readers and advertisers, or your violation of these Terms or the law.

22. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We’ll email you or post a notice in your dashboard at least 30 days before material changes take effect. If you keep using our services after that, you accept the updated Terms. If you don’t agree, you can cancel before they take effect.

23. General

• Governing law: These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of West Virginia, without regard to its conflict of law rules. Any dispute will be handled in the state or federal courts located in West Virginia, and both of us agree to their jurisdiction.
• Force majeure: Neither of us is responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond reasonable control, such as natural disasters, widespread internet or power outages, or actions of government.
• Assignment: You may not transfer your account without our written consent. We may transfer these Terms as part of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Entire agreement: These Terms, together with any signed order form or quote, are the whole agreement between us about our services.
• Severability and waiver: If part of these Terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies. Not enforcing a term right away doesn’t mean we give up the right to enforce it later.
• Notices: We’ll send notices to the email address on your account. You can send notices to [email protected].

24. Contact us

Questions about these Terms? Email [email protected] or contact us, and a real person on our team will get back to you.