Terms of service

VeraForge Terms of Service 1. Who we are, and what these terms cover VeraForge Technologies Corp. ("VeraForge", "we", "us", "our") is a corporation incorporated in Ontario, Canada, with its registered office at 10 Four Seasons Place, Suite 1000, Etobicoke, Ontario. We operate the VeraForge platform, which includes The Blueprint, The Anvil, and the infrastructure that serves the websites you publish through them. You operate your own published site. These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are a binding agreement between you and VeraForge. They govern your access to and use of the Platform, and they govern any Site you publish through it. If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the Platform. Two other documents form part of this agreement and are incorporated by reference: the Acceptable Use Policy, which governs what may be published and how the Platform may be used, and the Privacy Policy, which explains what personal information we handle and why. Where a domain registration is involved, the applicable registry agreement also applies to you directly, as described in section 12. 2. Definitions "Platform" means the VeraForge web application and all of its features, including The Blueprint, The Anvil, Anvil AI, the video generation feature, the domain search and registration features, and the publishing infrastructure. Video generation is not yet available. This section describes it so that you know what will happen when it is, and the feature is not part of the Platform until we say it is. "The Blueprint" means the intake and planning product that produces a Foundation. "The Anvil" means the conversational site building product. "Anvil AI" means the artificial intelligence features of the Platform, including generation, rewriting, and guidance. "Site" means a website you create through the Platform, whether published or not. "Published Site" means a Site that you have published and that is served to the public at a VeraForge address or at a custom domain you have connected. "Your Content" means anything you upload, enter, generate through the Platform, or otherwise supply, including text, images, video, business facts, and configuration. "Site Visitor" means a member of the public who visits a Published Site. "Credits" means the prepaid units that meter certain Anvil AI operations, as described in section 5. 3. Acceptance, eligibility, and your account By creating an account or using the Platform, you accept these Terms. If you are using the Platform on behalf of a company or other organisation, you confirm that you have authority to bind that organisation, and "you" means that organisation. You must be at least the age of majority in your province, territory, state, or country of residence to hold an account. The Platform is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly permit account creation by a person under the age of majority. You are responsible for your account credentials and for everything done through your account. Keep your credentials confidential and tell us promptly at support@veraforge.ca if you believe your account has been accessed without your authorisation. You must give accurate account information and keep it current. Where you register a domain through the Platform, the accuracy requirements in section 12 apply and they are stricter, because a registry can suspend or cancel a registration for inaccurate registrant data. 4. Changes to these Terms We may change these Terms. If a change is material, we will give notice at least thirty days before it takes effect, by email to the address on your account or by a prominent notice in the Platform, and the new version will state its effective date. If you do not accept a material change, your remedy is to stop using the Platform and to close your account before the change takes effect. Continuing to use the Platform after the effective date means you accept the new Terms. A domain registration already completed is not affected by a later change to these Terms in respect of that registration, except where a registry or registrar requires the change. 5. Plans, credits, and billing Subscriptions. The Platform is offered on subscription plans, including Anvil Pro and Anvil Elite. Plan features and prices are shown in the Platform before you purchase. Polar is the merchant of record for subscriptions and credits. Subscription and credit purchases are sold by Polar Software Inc. ("Polar") as merchant of record. Polar is the seller of record for those transactions. Polar calculates, collects, and remits applicable sales tax on them, issues the receipt, and handles its own payment disputes. Polar's own terms apply to you in respect of the payment transaction, in addition to these Terms. VeraForge does not store your full payment card details. Credits. Certain Anvil AI operations consume Credits. The Platform states the cost of a metered operation before it runs. Guidance and help features are never metered. Credits are consumed when the operation runs, whether or not you use the result. Credits do not expire while your account is active and in good standing. Credits have no cash value, are not transferable, and are not redeemable for money. Renewal of subscriptions. Subscriptions renew automatically for successive periods at the then current price for your plan unless you cancel before the renewal date. You can cancel at any time from the billing area of the Platform. Cancellation stops the next renewal; it does not shorten the period you have already paid for, and your plan remains active until that period ends. Refunds on subscriptions and credits. If you cancel an annual subscription within fourteen days of the start of a new subscription period, and you have not published a Site during that period, we will direct Polar to refund that period in full. Outside that window, subscription fees for the current period are not refundable, and monthly plans are not refundable, but you may cancel at any time to prevent further charges. Credits already consumed are not refundable. Unconsumed credits are not refundable, because a credit purchase is a purchase of a right to run operations rather than a deposit. Nothing in this section limits any non-waivable right you have under consumer protection law in your jurisdiction, including any statutory cooling off right. Price changes. We may change subscription prices. A price change takes effect at your next renewal and we will give at least thirty days notice before that renewal. Domain prices are dealt with in section 12. Failed payments. If a payment fails, we may retry it and we may suspend paid features until payment succeeds. We will tell you before suspending. A suspension for non-payment does not delete Your Content, subject to section 18. 6. The Platform, and what we provide We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to access and use the Platform during your subscription, for the purpose of creating and operating Sites. We may change, add, or remove Platform features. If we remove or materially degrade a feature that is central to a plan you are paying for, and that materially reduces the value of your plan, you may cancel and we will refund the unused portion of your current period on a pro rata basis. The Platform is offered as a service. We do not deliver software to you for installation, and you do not receive a copy of the Platform. 7. Anvil AI, and the limits of generated output Anvil AI produces text, layout suggestions, images, and other output at your direction. The following apply to all such output. You own your output and you are responsible for it. As between you and VeraForge, output you generate through Anvil AI and incorporate into Your Content is yours, subject to section 9. You are responsible for reviewing it before you publish it. Anvil AI does not invent business facts. The Platform is designed so that business facts, such as your phone number, business hours, service area, prices, credentials, and years in operation, enter a Site only from facts you have supplied and confirmed. This is a design property of the Platform and we apply it deliberately. It is not a guarantee about every word of generated output, and it does not relieve you of the review duty in this section. Output can still be wrong. Artificial intelligence output can be inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, or unsuitable for your purpose. It may produce text that resembles material it was trained on. You must review and verify generated output before you publish it, and you are solely responsible for what appears on your Published Site. Claims about your business are yours. If you publish a performance claim, a comparison, a testimonial, a review, a rating, a credential, an award, or a statistic, you are the person making that claim. You must be able to substantiate it. Canadian competition law requires that a performance claim be based on an adequate and proper test made before the claim is made. VeraForge does not verify your claims and does not warrant them. No professional advice. Anvil AI does not give legal, accounting, tax, medical, or other professional advice, and output that reads like advice is not advice. 8. Video generation This section describes video generation, which is not yet available on the Platform. Nothing in it applies until the feature is released. The Platform includes a video generation feature that creates video from inputs you supply, such as a script, a selected presenter, and settings you choose. This feature is provided using HeyGen, a third party service operated by HeyGen Inc. To generate a video, we transmit the inputs you supply to HeyGen, which processes them and returns the generated video. HeyGen processes those inputs on servers located outside Canada, including in the United States. Personal information transmitted for this purpose is subject to the laws of the jurisdiction where it is processed, including lawful access by authorities in that jurisdiction. Our Privacy Policy describes what is transmitted and how long the resulting video is retained. VeraForge is the controller of the information transmitted for this purpose and HeyGen acts as our processor. The request is made through an account VeraForge holds, so HeyGen does not receive your identity as a separate customer of theirs. We may inspect a script or an asset before we transmit it, and we may refuse to transmit it, in order to meet the provider's content rules and to enforce our Acceptable Use Policy. A submission that breaches those rules can put this feature at risk for every user of the Platform, which is why we screen. You must have the right to supply everything you submit to this feature. In particular, you must not submit the likeness, voice, name, or other personal attributes of any person without that person's consent, and you must not submit a script that infringes another person's rights. If you supply a likeness or voice of a real person, including your own, you are responsible for obtaining and keeping evidence of that person's consent. Generated video is Your Content, and the review duty in section 7 applies to it. HeyGen's own terms govern its service, and its availability, quality, and continued operation are outside our control. 9. Your Content, and the rights you give us You keep all rights you have in Your Content. We do not claim ownership of it. You grant VeraForge a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty free licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt, transmit, and display Your Content, solely to the extent necessary to operate the Platform and to publish and serve your Site. This licence exists so that we can render your Site, generate previews, produce backups, and transmit content to the third party services described in these Terms. It ends when you delete the content or close your account, except for copies retained in backups for the period stated in our Privacy Policy, and except where we must retain something to comply with law. You confirm that you have the rights necessary to supply Your Content and to grant that licence, and that Your Content does not infringe the rights of any other person. We may use aggregated and de-identified information about how the Platform is used to operate, secure, and improve it. We do not use the contents of your Sites to train artificial intelligence models offered to other customers. 10. Published Sites and publishing infrastructure Addresses. A Published Site is served at a subdomain of veranet.ca assigned to your Site, and, if you connect one, at a custom domain. Where you have connected a custom domain and it is active, the veranet.ca address redirects to the custom domain, so that your Site has a single canonical address. Published Sites carry no client side scripts of our making. Pages we serve for a Published Site contain no client side JavaScript authored by VeraForge. We do not place an analytics script, an advertising script, or a tracking script on the pages we serve. This is a property of how we render and serve those pages. Third party embeds are an exception you control. If you add an embedded feature to your Site, such as a scheduling widget, a map, a store, or a media player, that embed is loaded from the third party you have chosen. The embedded content runs in its own frame under that third party's control, it may set cookies or collect information from Site Visitors, and it is governed by that third party's terms and privacy policy rather than by ours. You choose whether to add an embed, and you are responsible for any disclosure or consent your Site Visitors are owed as a result. Our statement about client side scripts describes the pages we serve, not the contents of a frame you have chosen to embed. Publishing is your decision. You decide what to publish and when. Publishing makes your Site available to the public. Moderation applies at publication and it is unconditional. Every publication is subject to the moderation controls described in the Acceptable Use Policy. Those controls apply to every account and every plan without exception, and no acknowledgement, setting, or account status disables them. This is deliberate: it protects Site Visitors and it protects the Network. Availability. We aim to keep Published Sites available, and we do not promise uninterrupted availability. We may take a Site offline temporarily for maintenance, security, or legal reasons, and we will restore it as soon as we reasonably can. 11. Connecting a domain you already own You may connect a domain you have registered elsewhere. Connecting a domain you already own is included with the Anvil Pro and Anvil Elite plans and is not sold separately. When you connect a domain you own, your agreement with your own registrar continues to govern that domain, including its renewal, expiry, and transfer. We do not renew it, we are not notified when it expires, and we cannot recover it for you. If it lapses, your Site stops being served at that address and resumes being served at its veranet.ca address. You are responsible for the DNS changes at your registrar. We tell you what records to create and we provide a check so you can confirm that they have taken effect. 12. Registering a domain through the Platform We are a reseller, not a registry and not the accredited registrar. We resell domain registration through an accredited registrar. The registry for the relevant extension operates the registry database and sets the rules for that extension. We do not adjudicate rights in a domain name and we do not decide disputes about who is entitled to one. Stripe is the merchant of record for domain purchases. A domain purchase is sold by Stripe, Inc. as merchant of record and seller of record. Stripe calculates, collects, and remits applicable sales tax on that purchase, issues the receipt, and takes primary responsibility for payment disputes on it. Because Stripe is the seller, the currency and the tax shown to you at checkout may be presented according to your location. Prices are authored in Canadian dollars. The registry agreement binds you directly. Registering a domain makes you the registrant, and the registry's own agreement applies to you directly. Before you pay, we display the applicable registry agreement in full and we record your acceptance of it, including the version of the agreement you accepted and the time of acceptance. For a .ca domain, that agreement is the CIRA Registrant Agreement. .ca domains and Canadian Presence Requirements. CIRA requires every .ca registrant to meet its Canadian Presence Requirements. When you register a .ca domain you must select the legal type that applies to you and confirm that it is accurate. CIRA may verify your eligibility and may suspend or cancel a registration where the requirement is not met. That decision is CIRA's, not ours. Accuracy of registrant information is your obligation. You must give accurate registrant information and keep it current. A registry may suspend, cancel, or transfer a registration for inaccurate or unverifiable registrant data. Tell us at support@veraforge.ca if your registrant details change. WHOIS and public directories. Some registrant information is published in a public directory according to the registry's rules and your display preference where the registry offers one. Our Privacy Policy explains what is collected and what may be published. Domains do not renew automatically. A domain registered through the Platform does not renew automatically. We do not store a payment method for renewal and we do not schedule a renewal charge. Before a domain expires we will send a notice to the email address on your account, and you decide whether to renew it. Keeping that address current is your responsibility. Renewal price. A renewal is charged at the price shown at the time you renew. We do not discount a first period and raise a renewal. Expiry. If a domain is not renewed before it expires, it expires. Renewal through the Platform is not available for a domain that has expired. What happens to an expired name after that point is determined by the registry's rules for that extension and by the registrar, not by us. If you want to know the current status of a specific expired name, write to support@veraforge.ca and we will tell you what we find. Refunds on domains. A domain registration fee is not refundable once the registration has been submitted to the registry, because the fee is paid to the registry operator at that moment and the registration cannot be reversed. If a payment succeeds and the registration does not complete, we will refund that payment in full. Transfers away. You may transfer a domain you have registered through the Platform to another registrar, subject to the registry's rules and any applicable lock period. We will not obstruct a valid transfer request. Disputes about a domain name. A dispute about who is entitled to a domain name is decided under the registry's dispute policy, not by us. For a .ca domain, that is CIRA's Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. For a generic extension such as .com, .net, or .org, that is ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. By registering a domain you submit to the applicable policy. We will comply with a decision or order issued under it, and with any lawful order from a registry, registrar, or court, and we may lock, transfer, or cancel a registration to do so. Chargebacks. If you initiate a chargeback on a domain purchase, the registration may be cancelled and the name may be lost. Contact us at support@veraforge.ca before initiating a chargeback so that we can resolve the issue. 13. Payments between you and your own customers You may add a payment button to your Site that links to a payment page you have created with your own payment provider. We never handle your customers' money. A payment made by a Site Visitor to you goes to you through your own payment provider. VeraForge does not receive, hold, route, escrow, disburse, or refund any part of it. We do not process card details for that transaction, we do not act as a payment facilitator, payment processor, marketplace, or agent for it, and we are not a party to the contract between you and your customer. You are the seller. The transaction between you and your customer is yours. You are responsible for the goods or services you sell, for delivering them, for your own refund and cancellation terms, for collecting and remitting your own taxes, for any licence or registration your business requires, and for every consumer disclosure your customer is owed. You must publish your own refund terms and a contact route by which your customer can reach you, and you must honour them. Disputes go to you. A dispute about a payment, a refund, a chargeback, or the goods or services sold runs between you, your customer, and your own payment provider. VeraForge has no obligation in that dispute and no ability to resolve it. If a Site Visitor contacts us about a transaction with you, we may pass their message to you and we may take action under the Acceptable Use Policy where the complaint indicates a breach of it. Your provider's terms apply to you. Your payment provider's terms govern your use of it. We do not warrant its availability, its fees, or its conduct, and we do not control it. The same applies to any embedded store, checkout, booking, or ordering feature you add to your Site. Where that feature is operated by a third party you have chosen, the money, the order, and the customer relationship are between you, your customer, and that third party. 14. Acceptable use The Acceptable Use Policy forms part of these Terms. A breach of it is a breach of these Terms. You must not use the Platform to publish content that is unlawful, that infringes another person's rights, that is deceptive, or that falls within the prohibited categories set out in the Acceptable Use Policy. You must not attempt to circumvent moderation, rate limits, entitlement checks, or any other control in the Platform. You must not resell, sublicense, or provide the Platform to a third party as your own service without our written agreement. You are responsible for the conduct of anyone you allow to use your account. 15. Communications and consent Service messages. We send messages that are necessary to operate your account and your Sites, such as billing notices, security alerts, domain expiry notices, and messages that respond to something you asked us to do. These are not commercial electronic messages requiring consent under Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation, and you cannot opt out of them while you hold an account, because they carry information you need. Commercial messages. We will send you a commercial electronic message, such as a product announcement or an offer, only where we have your consent or where the law otherwise permits it. Creating an account and purchasing from us gives us an existing business relationship on which implied consent may rest for the period the law allows. Every commercial message we send identifies VeraForge, gives our contact information, and includes a working unsubscribe mechanism that we will honour within ten business days. You may withdraw consent at any time by using that mechanism or by writing to privacy@veraforge.ca. Messages your Site sends. If your Site collects an email address or a phone number, or sends any message to a Site Visitor, you are the sender and Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation and equivalent laws apply to you. Obtaining consent, identifying yourself, and providing an unsubscribe mechanism are your obligations, not ours. 16. Privacy Our Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, who we disclose it to, where it is processed, and how long we keep it. It forms part of these Terms. Where your Site collects personal information from Site Visitors, you are responsible for that information as its controller. You must have a privacy notice appropriate to what you collect, you must handle access and correction requests from your Site Visitors, and you must comply with the privacy law that applies to you. 17. Intellectual property The Platform, its software, its design, its templates, its arrangements, and the VeraForge name and logo are owned by VeraForge or licensed to us. Nothing in these Terms transfers any of that to you. You may not copy, modify, reverse engineer, decompile, scrape, or create derivative works from the Platform, except to the extent that restriction is prohibited by law. If you believe content on a Published Site infringes your copyright, write to legal@veraforge.ca identifying the work, the location of the content, your contact information, and stating that you have a good faith belief the use is not authorised. Canada's notice and notice regime under sections 41.25 to 41.27 of the Copyright Act applies to us. Where your notice meets the requirements of that regime, we will forward it to the person who published the content and retain the records the Act requires. We do not remove content because a notice has been sent; a notice is not a finding that anything infringes. 18. Suspension, termination, and getting your data out You may leave at any time. You may stop using the Platform at any time and may close your account from the Platform or by writing to support@veraforge.ca. Closing your account cancels your subscription; refunds are governed by section 5. We may suspend or terminate. We may suspend or terminate your access, remove content, or take a Site offline if you materially breach these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, if we are required to by law or by a lawful order, if your account is used in a way that threatens the security or integrity of the Platform, or if payment fails and is not cured. Where the circumstances allow it, we will give notice and a chance to fix the problem first. Where the breach is severe, such as content that is unlawful on its face, we may act immediately. Export before you go. For thirty days after your account is closed or terminated, you may request an export of Your Content by writing to support@veraforge.ca, and we will provide it in a commonly used machine readable format at no charge. After that period, Your Content is deleted according to the schedule in our Privacy Policy and cannot be recovered. Some records are kept longer where law requires it, and our Privacy Policy states which and for how long. Domains survive termination of the account. If you have registered a domain through the Platform, that registration is yours as registrant and it does not end because your account ends. You may transfer it to another registrar. Termination of your account does end our provision of renewal notices for it. What survives. Sections 9, 13, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23 survive termination, together with any provision that by its nature should survive. 19. Warranties and disclaimers We provide the Platform with reasonable skill and care. Except as expressly stated in these Terms, and to the maximum extent permitted by law, the Platform is provided "as is" and "as available", and we disclaim all other warranties, conditions, and representations, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Platform will be uninterrupted or error free, that generated output will be accurate or suitable, that a Published Site will achieve any particular result, ranking, traffic, or revenue, or that a third party service we integrate with will remain available. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties. In those jurisdictions, this section applies to the maximum extent that law permits, and nothing in these Terms excludes a right you have that cannot lawfully be excluded. 20. Limitation of liability To the maximum extent permitted by law, VeraForge is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, lost goodwill, or business interruption, however caused and on any theory of liability, even if we have been advised of the possibility. To the maximum extent permitted by law, VeraForge's aggregate liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Platform will not exceed the greater of one hundred Canadian dollars and the total amount you paid to VeraForge in the twelve months immediately before the event giving rise to the claim. VeraForge is not liable for any loss arising from a transaction between you and your customer, from a third party service you have chosen to embed or connect, from a registry or registrar decision about a domain, or from your failure to renew a domain. Nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud, for fraudulent misrepresentation, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be limited. 21. Indemnity You will indemnify and hold harmless VeraForge and its officers, directors, and employees from any claim, demand, loss, liability, and reasonable legal cost arising out of Your Content, your Published Site, your use of the Platform in breach of these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, a transaction between you and your customer, or your breach of any law. We will notify you of any claim to which this section applies, and you may control its defence, provided that you do not settle it in a way that imposes an obligation on VeraForge without our written agreement. 22. Governing law and disputes These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply in it, without regard to conflict of laws rules. You and VeraForge submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the Province of Ontario, sitting in Toronto, for any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Platform. Nothing in this section prevents either party from seeking injunctive relief in any court of competent jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident in a jurisdiction whose law gives you the right to bring proceedings in your own courts or under your own law, this section does not remove that right. Before starting proceedings, please write to legal@veraforge.ca describing the dispute. Most issues can be resolved that way, and we will engage with you in good faith for thirty days. A dispute about entitlement to a domain name is dealt with under section 12 and not under this section. 23. General Entire agreement. These Terms, the Acceptable Use Policy, and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and VeraForge about the Platform, and they replace any prior agreement or understanding about it. Severability. If a provision is held unenforceable, it is modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, or severed if it cannot be, and the rest of these Terms continue in force. No waiver. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written agreement. We may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, on notice to you. Force majeure. Neither party is liable for a failure to perform caused by an event beyond its reasonable control, excluding an obligation to pay money. Notices. We may give notice by email to the address on your account or by a notice in the Platform. You may give notice to us at legal@veraforge.ca or by mail to 10 Four Seasons Place, Suite 1000, Etobicoke, Ontario. Language. These Terms are drawn up in English. Les parties ont demande que ces conditions soient redigees en anglais. Contact. VeraForge Technologies Corp., 10 Four Seasons Place, Suite 1000, Etobicoke, Ontario. General enquiries: support@veraforge.ca. Legal: legal@veraforge.ca. Privacy: privacy@veraforge.ca. Telephone: (437) 830-4226.