Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of these Terms

Welcome to Sprouting Tracker (“the Service”), operated by On The Grow, LLC (“we”, “us” or “our”). By creating an account, accessing or using the Service, you (“you”) agree to be bound by these Terms of Service (“Terms”). If you do not agree to them, do not use the Service.

1.1 Eligibility. You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract. The Service is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13.

1.2 Authority. If you use the Service on behalf of a business or other entity, you confirm you have authority to bind it, and “you” means both you and that entity.

1.3 Electronic communications. You consent to receive notices and agreements from us electronically, by email or by a notice inside the Service. These satisfy any legal requirement that a communication be in writing.

2. What the Service is

Sprouting Tracker is a record-keeping and reminder application for people growing sprouts at home. It is used to:

• Track a jar or a clay tray from soak through rinsing to harvest
• Schedule rinses against your own clock times and timezone
• Send push reminders when a rinse is due
• Keep a seed inventory and work out what a jar costs
• Record harvest weights, statistics and achievements
• Read reference guides on how each crop is grown

2.1 The Service is a tool, not an authority. Soak hours, rinse counts, harvest windows, seed weights, yield estimates and cost figures are estimates drawn from a reference catalog and from what you enter. They are not agronomic, food safety, nutritional, medical, financial or business advice. They know nothing about your kitchen, your water, your seed lot or your technique. You are responsible for verifying anything you rely on. See our Disclaimer, which forms part of these Terms.

2.2 Food safety is yours. Raw and lightly cooked sprouts are a recognised source of foodborne illness, because the warm, wet conditions that germinate a seed also suit bacteria. Nothing in the Service detects contamination, and a jar the app says is ready is not a jar the app says is safe. Section 11 and the Disclaimer set this out in full, and you should read both before eating anything you grow.

2.3 Changes to the Service. The Service is under active development. We may add, change, suspend or remove any part of it at any time, including features, the interface, workflows, default settings, the crop catalog and the values in it. We may offer features marked as beta or experimental; those are provided as they are, may be withdrawn without notice, and sit outside any commitment in these Terms.

2.4 No reliance on a particular feature. Nothing here obliges us to keep any single feature, and no description of the Service on our marketing pages or in help content is a promise that it will remain available or work the same way.

2.5 Discontinuing the Service. We may discontinue the Service in whole or in part. Where it is practical and lawful, we will give you notice and time to get a copy of your records first. See Sections 9.3 and 14.

3. Your account

3.1 Creating one. You must give accurate information and keep it current. You must confirm your email address before you can sign in. If an account is never confirmed within seven days and holds no records, we delete it. You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for everything done under your account.

3.2 Security. Tell us immediately at info@onthegrow.net if you suspect unauthorised use. We are not liable for loss arising from your failure to safeguard your own credentials.

3.3 One login per person, up to two people per kitchen. Your login is personal and must not be shared. The kitchen your jars belong to may have a second member: the grower who created it can invite one other person by link, and can remove them at any time. Both members see and may change everything recorded in that kitchen, and each of you is responsible for what is recorded under your own login. One subscription covers both members, and only the person who owns the kitchen can start, change or cancel it.

3.4 Reminders are best effort. Push notifications depend on your device, your browser, your operating system, your network and a push service run by your browser vendor, none of which we control. A reminder may arrive late or not at all. Do not rely on the Service as the only thing standing between a jar and a missed rinse.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to, and not to let anyone else:

• Reverse engineer, decompile or try to derive the source code of the Service, except where that restriction is unenforceable by law
• Resell, sublicense, rent or run the Service as a service for others
• Access the Service by automated means, including scraping, crawling or bulk extraction
• Probe or test the security of the Service, or get around any authentication, rate limit, plan limit or access control
• Interfere with the Service or put undue load on its infrastructure
• Use the Service to build or help build a competing product
• Upload malicious code, or use the Service to store or transmit unlawful material
• Misrepresent who you are, or use another person’s account without permission
• Use the Service in breach of any applicable law, including export control and sanctions law

We set limits to keep the Service fair and stable, such as a cap on the number of jars growing at once, saved seed bags, custom crops and messages in a day. Where a limit applies, the Service tells you. You may not try to get around one.

We may investigate suspected breaches and may suspend or end access under Section 14.

5. Your data and privacy

5.1 How we handle it is set out in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.

5.2 Other people’s information. The Service has nowhere to record another person, and you agree not to put anyone else’s personal information into a jar label, a seed note or a message to us. You will not upload sensitive categories of data, including health, biometric, government identification or financial account details.

5.3 De-identified sprouting data. We collect, retain and use de-identified data about how sprouts are grown, covering crops, soak and rinse timings, seed rates, greening, harvest days, yields, the corrections you make to our catalog, and whether a jar was harvested or discarded. This is described in full in Section 6 of the Privacy Policy and in the Disclaimer. It excludes your identity, your labels, your notes and your messages, and it carries no link to your account. We retain it permanently, including after you delete your account, because it is not personal information and cannot be traced back to you. We will not attempt to re-identify it. Part of our business model depends on this data, and your agreement to it is a condition of using the Service.

5.4 This applies whatever you pay. De-identified sprouting data is collected the same way on every plan, including any free trial or free account. What a plan changes is what you can see, not what we learn from the growing itself.

6. Your content

6.1 Ownership. You keep ownership of everything you enter into the Service, including your jar records, seed inventory, labels and notes (“Your Content”).

6.2 The licence you give us. You grant us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, process, transmit and display Your Content solely in order to run the Service for you, and to create the de-identified sprouting data described in Section 5.3. This licence ends when the content is deleted, except for de-identified data, which we keep permanently under Section 5.3, and for copies in routine backups, which are deleted within 90 days.

6.3 Your responsibility. You are solely responsible for Your Content and confirm you have the rights needed to store it and to grant the licence above.

6.4 Prohibited content. You may not upload content that infringes intellectual property, is unlawful or harmful, violates someone’s privacy, or is used for fraud.

6.5 We do not monitor. We have no duty to screen Your Content, but we may remove content that breaches these Terms or the law.

7. Intellectual property

7.1 Ours. The Service, including its software, design, reference crop catalog and documentation, belongs to On The Grow, LLC and is protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret and other laws. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service according to these Terms. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

7.2 Trademarks. “On The Grow”, “OnTheGrow” and “Sprouting Tracker”, and their related logos, are trademarks of On The Grow, LLC, certain of which are registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. You may not use them without our prior written consent.

7.3 Feedback. If you send us feedback, suggestions, corrections to a crop’s timings, or ideas for improvement, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to use and incorporate them without obligation or payment to you.

8. Subscriptions, billing and cancellation

8.1 Plans and fees. Paid plans are billed as subscriptions in U.S. dollars at the price shown at checkout. Our payment processor is Stripe. We do not receive or store your full card details.

8.2 Free trial. We offer a 7-day free trial. The trial gives full access, and its length and end date are shown to you before it starts. Unless you cancel before the trial ends, it converts into a paid subscription and your payment method is charged. We will try to email you a reminder before that happens. The end date is shown to you before the trial starts and in Settings, and the trial ends on that date whether or not the email arrives. You can cancel at any point during a trial and will not be charged.

8.3 Automatic renewal. Paid subscriptions renew automatically at the then-current price until you cancel. There is no contract term and no cancellation fee. You authorise us, through Stripe, to charge your payment method on each renewal date.

8.4 Cancellation. The person who owns the account may cancel at any time from within the Service, through the billing portal in Settings. No phone call and no email are required. Cancelling stops future charges. Your paid access continues to the end of the period you have already paid for, then ends.

8.5 Refunds. Fees already paid are non-refundable, including for unused time in a billing period, except where a refund is required by law or is expressly given in our Refund Policy, which governs refunds and forms part of these Terms. If you think you were billed in error or charged twice, contact us and we will look into it.

8.6 Price changes. We may change prices. We will give you notice before a renewal at a new price, within the timeframe the applicable law requires, and the new price applies only to renewals after that notice. If you do not accept it, cancel before it takes effect.

8.7 Failed payments. If a charge fails, we close access to the Service until it is paid. Update your payment method in the billing portal and access returns once the charge goes through. Stripe retries the charge for a period; if it is still unpaid after that, the subscription ends and you can subscribe again. Either way your records are kept rather than deleted, and you can ask us for a copy of them at any time.

8.8 Taxes. Fees exclude taxes. You are responsible for any applicable taxes other than taxes on our net income.

9. Availability, support and backups

9.1 Availability. We aim to keep the Service running but do not guarantee uninterrupted access. We may perform maintenance and may have outages. There is no service level agreement and no uptime commitment.

9.2 Support. Support is by the in-app contact form and by email at info@onthegrow.net. Response times vary.

9.3 Backups. We keep routine backups for our own operational purposes. They are not a service to you and you should not rely on them. You are responsible for keeping your own copy of anything important.

10. Third-party services

The Service depends on third parties, including our hosting provider, our database and authentication provider, our email provider, the push services run by browser vendors, and our payment processor. It may also link to third-party sites. We do not control any of them and are not responsible for their availability, performance, acts or omissions. An interruption caused by a third-party provider is not a breach of these Terms by us. Your use of a third-party service is governed by that party’s own terms.

11. Disclaimer of warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express, implied or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, and any warranty arising from a course of dealing or usage of trade.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, timely or error-free; that a reminder will be delivered; that defects will be corrected; or that timings, yields or cost figures produced by the Service will be accurate.

WE MAKE NO GUARANTEE OF FOOD SAFETY. The Service cannot detect contamination and does not certify that anything you grow is safe to eat. Sprouts are grown in conditions that suit bacteria as well as seeds, and public health authorities advise that children, older adults, pregnant people and anyone with a weakened immune system should avoid raw sprouts. Following the guidance in the Service does not make a jar safe, and deciding whether to eat what you grow is yours alone.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

12. Limitation of liability

12.1 Excluded damages. To the maximum extent permitted by law, On The Grow, LLC and its members, officers, employees, contractors and agents will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, nor for lost profits, lost revenue, spoiled or lost crops, illness, loss of goodwill, or loss or corruption of data, arising out of or relating to the Service, whether the claim is based in contract, tort, negligence, strict liability or any other theory, and even if we were told the damage was possible.

12.2 Liability cap. Our total aggregate liability for all claims arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms will not exceed the greater of (a) the total amount you paid us in the twelve months immediately before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars ($100).

12.3 Essential purpose. These limits apply even if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose. They are an allocation of risk that is a fundamental part of the bargain between us, and the fees would be materially higher without them.

12.4 Time limit on claims. Any claim arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms must be brought within one (1) year after it arose, or it is permanently barred, except where a longer period is required by law.

12.5 Exceptions. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, gross negligence or wilful misconduct. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

13. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless On The Grow, LLC and its members, officers, employees, contractors and agents against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs and expenses, including reasonable legal fees, arising from or relating to:

• Your use of or access to the Service
• Your breach of these Terms or of any applicable law
• Your breach of any third-party right, including intellectual property and privacy rights
• Your Content
• Anything you grow using the Service, including any claim by a person who ate it

We will notify you of any claim we seek indemnity for, and may take part in the defence at our own expense. You may not settle a claim in a way that puts an obligation on us without our written consent.

14. Term and termination

14.1 By you. You may stop using the Service at any time. You may cancel a paid subscription under Section 8.4, and you may have your account and its data permanently deleted by emailing us, as described in Section 7.2 of the Privacy Policy.

14.2 By us. We may suspend or end your access, with or without notice, if you breach these Terms, if we reasonably suspect fraud, abuse or unlawful use, if the law requires it, or if we discontinue the Service. A suspension may be for a set time or until we lift it. While your account is suspended you cannot sign in and you receive no reminders. Where it is practical and lawful we will give you notice and a chance to get a copy of your records.

14.3 Effect. On termination your right to use the Service ends immediately. Deleting an account ends any subscription it pays for at once, and fees already paid are not refunded. Deleted data cannot be recovered. We may keep data where the law requires it or for legitimate business purposes such as tax records and fraud prevention. De-identified sprouting data under Section 5.3 is unaffected and is kept permanently, because it cannot be linked back to you.

14.4 Survival. Sections 5.3, 6.2, 6.3, 7, 8.5, 9.3, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.3, 15, 16 and 18 survive termination.

15. Governing law and venue

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict of law rules, and by applicable U.S. federal law. Subject to Section 16, any dispute not going to arbitration will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts in Rockwall County, Texas, and you consent to jurisdiction and venue there. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

16. Binding arbitration and class action waiver

PLEASE READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY. IT AFFECTS YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS, INCLUDING YOUR RIGHT TO FILE A LAWSUIT IN COURT AND TO HAVE A JURY TRIAL.

16.1 Talk to us first. Before starting arbitration, you agree to contact us at info@onthegrow.net with a written description of the dispute and what you want, and to give us 60 days to resolve it informally. We will do the same before bringing a claim against you. This step is a condition of starting arbitration.

16.2 Agreement to arbitrate. If it is not resolved, you and we agree that any dispute, claim or controversy arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, rather than in court. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this section.

16.3 Exceptions. Either party may bring an individual claim in small claims court if it qualifies, and either party may seek injunctive or equitable relief in court to protect intellectual property or to stop unauthorised access to the Service.

16.4 Class action waiver. Claims may be brought only in an individual capacity, not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate claims or preside over any representative proceeding, and may award relief only to the individual seeking it. If this waiver is found unenforceable for a particular claim, that claim, and only that claim, proceeds in court under Section 15, and the rest of this Section 16 stays in force.

16.5 Jury trial waiver. You and we waive any right to a jury trial for disputes covered by this section.

16.6 Procedure. Arbitration will be conducted in Rockwall County, Texas, or, if you prefer, by telephone, by videoconference or on written submissions. The arbitrator’s decision is final and binding and may be entered as a judgment in any court of competent jurisdiction. Each party bears its own legal fees unless a statute or the award provides otherwise. If you are a consumer and the AAA Consumer Arbitration Rules apply, we will pay the filing, administration and arbitrator fees to the extent those rules require.

16.7 Your right to opt out. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing info@onthegrow.net with the subject line “Arbitration Opt-Out” and your account email, within 30 days of first accepting these Terms. Opting out affects nothing else in these Terms and will not affect your account or your use of the Service in any way.

16.8 Survival. This section survives termination of your account and of these Terms.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may change these Terms. If a change is material we will give at least 30 days’ notice before it takes effect, by email or by a notice inside the Service, and we will update the “Last updated” date. Changes do not apply retroactively to a dispute that arose before they took effect. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the revised Terms. If you do not accept them, stop using the Service and cancel any subscription.

18. General

18.1 Entire agreement. These Terms, with the Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, Refund Policy and Disclaimer, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service, and replace any earlier agreement or understanding.

18.2 Severability. If any provision is held invalid or unenforceable, it will be limited or removed to the smallest extent necessary and the rest stays in full force.

18.3 No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision, that is not a waiver of it.

18.4 Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganisation or sale of assets. Any prohibited assignment is void.

18.5 Force majeure. Neither party is liable for a delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including acts of nature, war, terrorism, civil unrest, labour disputes, utility or internet failures, and failures of third-party providers.

18.6 Relationship. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, employment or agency relationship between us.

18.7 No third-party beneficiaries. These Terms do not give rights to anyone who is not a party to them.

18.8 Headings. Section headings are for convenience and do not affect interpretation.

19. Contact

If you have any questions about these Terms, write to us: