Terms of Service

These terms are a contract between Hive Asset Group, LLC, a Minnesota limited liability company, and the company or person that creates a Porchlight account ("you"). By creating an account, or by using Porchlight, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you sign up for a company, you confirm that you can bind that company to these terms.

Porchlight is business software. It is for companies that provide pet sitting, dog walking, boarding and similar pet care services. It is not for personal or household use. These terms also include the Acceptable Use Policy, the Data Processing Addendum and the SMS Terms.

You must give accurate information when you sign up and keep it up to date. You are responsible for everything that happens under your account, including what your staff and clients do. Keep passwords secret. Tell us right away at hello@porchlight.pet if you think someone has gained access without permission.

You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract. Staff and clients you invite use Porchlight under your account and under your direction. You decide who gets access and what role they have.

New companies get a 30-day free trial. No card is required to start. If you tell us at signup that you are switching from Time To Pet, the trial is 90 days. A referral can add 30 days. The offers are described in full in the section on switch and referral offers below.

A trial is for evaluating Porchlight, and each company gets one. We may decline or end a trial that looks like abuse, for example repeated sign-ups to avoid paying. When the trial ends you need to pick a paid plan to keep using Porchlight. If you do not, your account becomes read-only. Settings and data export stay available.

Porchlight has two paid plans: Solo, at $35 a month or $350 a year, and Team, at $79 a month or $790 a year. Current plans, prices and what each includes are on our pricing page. Prices are in US dollars and do not include taxes, which we add where required.

Auto-renewal. Paid plans renew automatically at the end of each billing period (monthly or yearly, whichever you chose) until you cancel. By starting a paid plan you authorize us, and our payment processor Stripe, to charge your payment method on file at the start of each period for the then-current price, plus any taxes, until you cancel. You can see your plan, your next renewal date and your payment method in your billing settings.

If a payment fails, we will tell you and try again. There is a short grace period, currently 7 days. If the payment still does not go through, your account becomes read-only until you update your payment method. Settings and data export stay available.

We may change prices or plan features. We will give you at least 30 days' notice by email before a change applies to you, and it takes effect at your next renewal after that notice. If you do not agree, you can cancel before it takes effect. Price changes do not apply to a locked price (see below).

You can cancel at any time from your billing settings, or by emailing hello@porchlight.pet. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the billing period you have already paid for. You keep full access until then, and you will not be charged again. We do not cancel partway through a period.

You can cancel during the free trial. No card is on file during a trial, so nothing is charged.

Fees are non-refundable except where required by law. We do not give refunds or credits for partial billing periods, unused time, unused features, or because you forgot to cancel. If you cancel, you keep access until the end of the period you paid for.

This section covers what you pay Porchlight. Refunds to your own clients are between you and them. See the section on payment processing and the platform fee for how refunds you issue through Porchlight work.

These terms apply to our offers. If an offer here conflicts with something said in marketing, these terms win.

• Switch free: tell us at signup that you are leaving Time To Pet and your trial is 90 days instead of 30. No card, and we do not ask for proof.
• Price lock for life: companies that switch from Time To Pet, and the first 100 companies to join, keep the price of their plan for as long as the subscription stays active. If you cancel and come back later, the current price applies.
• Referrals: when a company you referred starts its first paid subscription, you get one free month. The company you referred gets an extra 30 days at signup. You cannot refer yourself, and we may decline referrals that look like abuse.

A locked price applies to the plan you were on when the lock was recorded, at the price you were paying then. It lasts only as long as your subscription stays active on that same plan. If you move to a different plan, the price for the new plan applies, and a lock does not carry over to a plan you did not lock. If you cancel, let the subscription lapse or stop paying, the lock ends and the current price applies if you return. The lock covers the subscription price only. It does not cover the platform fee, Stripe's fees, taxes or other charges.

Offers have no cash value, cannot be sold or transferred, and may be changed or ended for new customers at any time. We may ask for reasonable information to confirm an offer applies and may decline or reverse an offer if we believe it was obtained by misstatement or abuse.

Porchlight lets you take payments from your clients (pet parents) by card or bank account. These payments are processed by Stripe through your own Stripe account, which you connect to Porchlight. Your use of Stripe is subject to Stripe's own terms.

Stripe charges its standard processing fees to your Stripe account. Those fees are set by Stripe and are separate from anything Porchlight charges.

On each client payment taken through Porchlight, Hive Asset Group, LLC also charges a platform fee of 0.3% of the payment amount, rounded to the nearest cent. The fee is collected automatically by Stripe at the time of the payment, as an application fee, and is not billed to you separately. The current rate is shown on our pricing page and in your payment settings, and it is recorded on each payment in your Payments report.

There is no platform fee on payments you do not take through Porchlight, including cash, check and other payments you record by hand.

When you refund a payment through Porchlight, the Porchlight platform fee on that payment is returned along with the refund. How Stripe treats its own fees on a refund is set by Stripe.

You are responsible for disputes and chargebacks on payments made to your Stripe account. A change to the platform fee rate applies to payments made after the change takes effect.

Client payments are direct charges on your connected Stripe account. That means you, not Porchlight, are the seller of record for what your clients buy from you. When you connect Stripe, you also agree to the Stripe Connected Account Agreement and the Stripe Services Agreement. Stripe, not Porchlight, decides whether to approve, limit or close your Stripe account, holds your funds and pays them out. Porchlight is not a bank or a money transmitter and never holds your clients' money.

You own your data. That includes your company records, your clients' and staff members' information, pet records, visit notes, photos, videos, invoices and messages that you or your clients put into Porchlight ("Customer Data"). We do not claim ownership of Customer Data. You give us a limited right to host, process, display and transmit it only as needed to run Porchlight for you, to keep it secure, to support you, and to meet legal obligations.

You can export your data at any time, including during a trial, after you cancel, and while your account is read-only. The export includes every table as CSV and JSON, with a manifest of your photos and videos. We will not hold your data back to keep you as a customer.

With respect to personal information in Customer Data, you are the business (controller) and Porchlight is your service provider (processor). The Data Processing Addendum and our Privacy Policy explain how we handle it. We may use data about how Porchlight is used that does not identify you or anyone else (for example, counts and performance data) to run and improve the service.

You decide what to collect and how to use it. You are responsible for having every notice, consent and permission the law requires for the information you put into Porchlight and for what you do with it. In particular:

• Text messages. You must have each recipient's consent before Porchlight sends them a text message for you, and you must honor opt-outs. Do not add a phone number unless the person has agreed to receive texts from your company. See the SMS Terms.
• Location tracking of staff. The field app can record GPS location at check-in and check-out and along a walk route. You must tell your staff before you turn this on, and get any consent your state requires. You can turn GPS recording off in your settings. Only record location during working visits.
• Sensitive home information. Lockbox codes, alarm codes and entry instructions are sensitive. Collect only what you need, share it only with staff who need it for a visit, and follow your own promises to your clients.
• Photos and video. Only upload content you have the right to use. Do not record people where they expect privacy.
• Your own clients' terms. Your agreements, prices, cancellation rules and pet care services are between you and your clients. Porchlight is not a party to them and does not provide pet care.
• Records and tax. You are responsible for your own bookkeeping, payroll, sales tax, tax filings and licensing. Porchlight's reports and calculations are tools, not tax, legal or accounting advice.

You must follow our Acceptable Use Policy. In short: use Porchlight lawfully, do not attack or overload it, do not send spam or unwanted texts, and do not use it to harm people or animals. We may suspend access that breaks the policy, and we will try to tell you first when it is safe and practical to do so.

Porchlight offers signed outgoing webhooks and a hooks API so you can connect it to tools like Zapier or your own systems. See the developer page. Keep API keys and webhook secrets private. You are responsible for what is done with them and for the security of any system you send data to. Once data leaves Porchlight through a webhook, the receiving service's terms and privacy practices apply, not ours.

Do not use the API to get around plan limits or rate limits, to build a competing product from our service, or to put an unreasonable load on Porchlight. We may limit or turn off API access that does. Features marked as beta or coming soon are provided as is and may change.

Porchlight works with services run by others, including Stripe for payments, and optional services such as QuickBooks when that connection is available. Their terms govern your use of them, and we are not responsible for them. A list of the companies that process data for us is on the Subprocessors page.

We work to keep Porchlight available and the field app usable even without a signal, but we do not promise uninterrupted or error-free service. There is no service level agreement (SLA) and no uptime guarantee. We may perform maintenance, and outages can happen, including those caused by our providers or the internet. Current status is on the status page.

Do not rely on Porchlight as your only record of anything critical. Keep your own backups through the export feature. Support is by email at hello@porchlight.pet.

Porchlight, including its software, design, name and logo, belongs to Hive Asset Group, LLC and its licensors. While you have an active account, we give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use it for your business under these terms. You may not copy it, resell it, reverse engineer it or remove notices from it, except where the law lets you. If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them without owing you anything.

Porchlight is provided "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not promise that Porchlight will meet your needs or that messages, notifications, location data, payments or reports will always be delivered, accurate or on time.

Porchlight is a software tool. We do not provide pet care, veterinary advice or home security services, and we do not screen, supervise or guarantee any business, sitter, client or pet. Vaccination checks, reminders and alerts help you keep records but do not replace your own judgment or a veterinarian's advice. AI-assisted drafts, if you use them, are suggestions that you review before anything is sent.

To the fullest extent the law allows, Hive Asset Group, LLC and its members, officers, employees and suppliers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data or loss of goodwill, even if we were told they were possible.

Our total liability for all claims relating to Porchlight or these terms is limited to the fees you paid to us for Porchlight in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim. This limit does not apply where the law does not allow it to be limited. Some places do not allow certain limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

You will defend and compensate Hive Asset Group, LLC against claims, losses and costs (including reasonable attorneys' fees) brought by a third party that come from: your Customer Data; your breach of these terms or the Acceptable Use Policy; your failure to get consents or give notices required by law (including for text messages and location tracking); or your services to your clients. We will tell you about the claim promptly and let you control the defense, and you may not settle in a way that binds us without our written consent.

You can stop using Porchlight and cancel at any time (see Cancellation above). We may suspend or end your account if you break these terms, if you do not pay, if your use creates a security or legal risk, or if we stop offering Porchlight.

Sections that by their nature should survive termination will survive, including those on fees owed, data deletion, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity and governing law.

After your subscription ends, your account stays read-only for a 30-day export window so you can download your data. After that window, we will delete or de-identify your Customer Data within 30 days, except for what we must keep to meet legal, tax, fraud-prevention or dispute obligations (for example, billing records and the audit log of our own transactions with you). Copies in backups are removed as the backups expire under our providers' schedules.

You can ask us to delete your data sooner by writing to hello@porchlight.pet. Export first, because deletion cannot be undone.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Minnesota, without regard to its conflict of laws rules.

Please contact us at hello@porchlight.pet first. Most problems can be solved informally. If we cannot resolve a dispute within 30 days, either of us may bring it in small claims court if it qualifies. Otherwise, the state and federal courts located in Minnesota have exclusive jurisdiction, and you and we consent to their jurisdiction and venue. To the extent the law allows, claims must be brought individually and not as a class or representative action, and any claim must be filed within one year after it arose.

We may update these terms. When we make a material change, we will update the date at the top of this page and email the account owner at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless the change is required by law or security reasons. If you keep using Porchlight after the change takes effect, you accept the new terms. If you do not agree, you can cancel before then.

These terms, with the policies they refer to, are the whole agreement between you and us about Porchlight. If a part is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. Not enforcing a part is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these terms without our consent. We may assign them as part of a merger or sale of the business. Neither of us is liable for delays caused by events beyond our reasonable control. Notices to you may be sent to the email on your account.

Hive Asset Group, LLC
Email: hello@porchlight.pet