Pixel & Tonic Terms of Use

Last Updated: October 9, 2018

Introduction #

Hi, we’re Pixel & Tonic. We also go by “P&T” or the more familiar “we,” “us” or “our.” We make a few different products, including Craft CMS and Craft Commerce, and we also host the Craft Plugin Store and this website. We may offer trial, beta, or other free versions of our products or services (referred to as “Free Services”). Different terms apply to your use of the Free Services than to paid licenses (referred to as “Paid Services”). Any references to the generic term “Services” refers to both Free Services and Paid Services.

To keep our Services streamlined and efficient, all the legal terms that govern how you use the Services are found within these Terms. These Terms are important! By signing up for a Craft Console account, or otherwise using the Services, you’re agreeing to be legally bound by these Terms. We tried to make these Terms as digestible as possible, but we understand that these aren’t exactly bedtime reading (unless you’re into that sort of thing).

The Top 10 #

All of these points are covered below in excruciating detail. For those of you with a short attention span, we’ve distilled the most critical points into a handy list below.

  1. Be kind, and follow our Code of Conduct in all interactions with the P&T community (or “Community” for short) and P&T staff.
  2. You are responsible for the use of your Craft Console account and assume all liability for it. For example, if you share it with a third party and they use it to transfer a license without your permission, that’s on you. You’re also responsible for everything else you do within the Services, including your User Content (we define this below).
  3. If you use your Craft Console on behalf of a client, you’re also agreeing to these terms on behalf of that client.
  4. Never disclose or make available to third parties without permission any customer data that you receive as part of using these Services and products.
  5. Do not use any of our IP in the official name of your products or services. For example, “Craft SEO Plugin” is bad. “Acme SEO for Craft” is good. Also, do not incorporate any of our logos into any of your logos.
  6. We offer a 30-day refund on our products and plugins purchased through the Plugin Store. We do not offer refunds for any services or consulting.
  7. We do our best to pay out earnings within one business day to developers selling plugins in the plugin store. But sometimes payouts can take up to 45 days, or we may withhold payment until we owe you at least $10 USD.
  8. Don’t break any laws, and respect our stuff. Use the Craftnet API responsibly. Do not use any content scrapers or other unauthorized methods to take information from any of our properties. Do not attempt to circumvent any security verification or license checks, etc. We include a longer list of no-no’s below, but you get the idea.
  9. Developer Support is available to paid Craft CMS and Craft Commerce licenses only. Please read about what is included and what isn’t.
  10. We do our best to settle any disagreements between you and us in a kind, friendly way. If you have an issue, please let us know about it by emailing legal@craftcms.com. In the very unfortunate event that we get into any legal tussle, everything will be settled by U.S. law, in the State of Oregon, in Deschutes or Multnomah County, Oregon, by binding arbitration. By agreeing to arbitration, you’re also agreeing that you can’t sue P&T as part of a class action lawsuit. May it never, ever, ever come to that. If you don’t want to agree to this, you can opt out within 30 days after first accepting these Terms by emailing legal@craftcms.com.

Changes to the Terms #

We’re constantly improving our Services, so we need to stay nimble. We may occasionally change these Terms, as well as our products and Services. If any of these changes could impact the Services or your legal rights in an important way, we’ll let you know either by posting the modified Terms on our website or by communicating with you directly.

At the very least, we agree to post a notice of the changes in the footer of our website. If you keep using our Services after this time, we’ll assume the changes are cool with you.

Craft Console Accounts #

A Craft Console account is powerful. You can sign up for a Craft Console at http://console.craftcms.com. A Craft Console account will let you do a lot of things, like manage and transfer your license purchases, distribute plugins in the Plugin Store, and more things to come. When you create a Craft Console account, you agree to the following:

  1. You are 18 years old. If not, you can’t have a Craft Console account. Sorry :(
  2. You understand that you are responsible for all use of your Craft Console account. This includes, but is not limited to, purchases, payments, services associated with your Craft Console, and use of your Craft Console in the Craftnet API, whether or not you’re aware of what happens. Please keep your access credentials secret.
  3. We may remove or suspend a Craft Console account for any reason without notice if we suspect that you are using your Craft Console or the Services in a way that puts us or other users at risk.
  4. If you are using your Craft Console account on behalf of a third party (like a client whose website you’re designing), you are agreeing to these terms on behalf of yourself, your employer, /and/ the client or other end-user. You promise that you have the authority to agree to these terms on behalf of these third parties.

Our Intellectual Property #

P&T (or our licensors) own the intellectual property rights to the Services, including the features and functionality, graphics, website content, data, and the software/code powering the Services (“Materials”). As described below, you own all rights to any layouts or other output created through the Services.

Pixel & Tonic®, Craft®, Craft CMS®, and other trademarks and logos that we use with the Services are trademarks of P&T. You may not use any of these trademarks without express written permission from P&T.

Limited License #

So long as you comply with these Terms of Use, you may use the Services (including downloading the applicable Service product). When you purchase Paid Services, your license to use that particular version of the Paid Service is perpetual. Paid Services include one year of updates and support. After that year expires, you must purchase a license renewal to obtain support or additional updates. Read more about what you get with Paid Services.

License Restrictions #

Your right to use the Services comes with strings attached. Specifically, you may not do anything listed below (unless we have a separate contract saying otherwise):

  • Copy, modify or create derivative works based on the Services or Materials.
  • Access or use the Services or Materials for the purpose of developing a similar or competing product.
  • Reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile, or decode the source code of the Services or Materials;
  • Bypass or breach any security device or protection used by the Services.
  • Use any automated methods to scrape or copy the Materials or any data through the Services.
  • Steal from us or anyone else doing business through the Services.
  • Change or remove any copyright, trademark or other IP notices from any Materials.
  • Do anything that could impact how others use the Services.
  • Break the law (duh).

Your Intellectual Property #

There is a very good chance that we will have access to content you provide as you use our Service. We call this “User Content,” and it includes things like:

  • Comments, feedback and other content posted to the Craft Online Community.
  • Your trademarks and logos.
  • Layouts, templates, and other designs you create by using the Services.
  • Content and data related to sites created through use of the Services (we only access this if you submit to P&T for technical support purposes). This is referred to as “Site Content.”
  • Any other data, graphics, text, or other content you provide, upload, or transmit in connection with the Services (except plugins).

User Content does not include plugins you may develop and distribute via the Plugin Store, which are discussed separately below.

User Content is yours – P&T does not claim any ownership rights to User Content.

By posting or providing any User Content, you promise that:

  • You have permission to post/provide the User Content.
  • User Content follows our  Code of Conduct and does not violate these Terms.
  • User Content won’t contain any viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content.
  • User Content does not contain any Prohibited Data (defined below).

You grant us the right and permission to use your User Content as needed to provide Services to you and to promote your use of our Services in accordance with the section below. Some of your User Content may contain personal data; P&T’s use of personal data is subject to our Privacy Statement.

You are responsible for all of your User Content. We are not in the business of policing your User Content. However, we retain the right to block, delete, and remove any User Content that we think violates our  Code of Conduct or these Terms.

If you purchase a third-party Plugin, you are agreeing to share your purchase information with the third-party developer, as described in our Privacy Statement.

We understand that the Services may be used to design sites for a variety of industries. P&T does not host Site Content on its servers once they go into production, except as described in the Privacy Statement. That being said, you acknowledge that the Services are not designed for processing the following categories of information: (a) sensitive personal data, including health-related data; (b) data that is classified and or used on the U.S. Munitions list, including software and technical data; (b) articles, services and related technical data designated as defense articles or defense services; and (d) ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) related data, (each of the foregoing, “Prohibited Data”). You promise that you will not provide P&T with any Prohibited Data. If you breach this promise, you are responsible for all damages arising out of the Prohibited Data, even if caused by P&T.

We may promote publicly identifiable Craft installs #

We do not use Craftnet license information when deciding what sites to promote.

If your site is publicly identifiable as using Craft, we may use your User Content (i.e., your site) to showcase what is possible with Craft. This may be a tweet, blog post, or other use. We will never disclose any personal information, code, or customer information if we showcase your Craft install.

We determine whether a site is publicly identifiable in the following ways:

  1. You have publicly said something about it (blog post, Tweet, etc.).
  2. Third-party tools like Built With, Wappalyzer, or whatruns identify your site as Craft using the information Craft sends in the HTML “Powered by Header.” This is a common HTML code level methodology to identify software. This is enabled by default in Craft CMS.
  3. If you disable the “powered by” header, we assume you do not want it known that the site is on Craft and we won’t promote it. You can disable it by in your General Config file.

You can request that we remove any promotional use of your User Content at your request by emailing us legal@craftcms.com .

Third-Party Services #

As a user, you may enable services, products, software (like plugins), or applications developed by a third party or yourself (“Third Party Services”). If you use any Third Party Services, you understand that:

  • We do not vet, endorse, or control any Third Party Services.
  • Any use of a Third Party Service is at your own risk, and we will not be responsible or liable to anyone for Third Party Services.
  • Your use is solely between you and the third party offering the Third Party Service. Your use will be governed by the third party’s terms and policies.
  • Some Third Party Services may request or require access to your (yours, your visitors’, or customers’) data. If you grant access, your data will handled in accordance with the third party’s privacy policy and practices. We do not have control over how a Third Party Service may use your data. You should carefully review Third Party Services’ data collection, retention, and use policies and practices before enabling Third Party Services.
  • Third Party Services may not work appropriately with your site, and we may not be able to provide support for issues caused by any Third Party Services.

In rare cases, we may at our discretion suspend, disable, or remove Third Party Services.

Payment Terms #

You can try any product before buying, no credit card required. We do not require a purchase of any Paid Service until the site goes into production. This means you can try Craft or any plugin in our Plugin Store for free in developer and staging environments and pay only when the site is ready to go live. This greatly reduces the risk to you and to us.

All payments associated with Paid Services are due as soon as you upgrade your license or when the site goes into production, whichever happens first. If you don’t pay on time, we reserve the right to revoke your license or access to any Paid Service.

We have a 30-day refund policy for Craft licenses and plugin licenses sold through the Plugin Store. Please email sales@craftcms.com with your order number to request a refund. Updates to Paid Services are purchased on an annual basis. You may opt in to automatic annual renewals for convenience.

Payout terms applicable to developers are described in the Developer Terms section below.

Support #

Paid services come with Developer Support. We will make reasonable efforts to keep the Services operational. However, certain technical difficulties or maintenance may result in occasional temporary interruptions.

Because the Free Services are, well, free, we don’t offer any support or guarantees for them. (But we hope you like them.)

We do not provide any support for Third Party Services. If the third-party developer of a plugin offers support, this is between you and the developer.

Developer Terms #

Once you have a Craft Console, you can choose to enable Developer Features that will allow you to freely distribute or sell your plugins in the Plugin Store. The following terms apply to you, the developer, if you sell or distribute your plugin through the Plugin Store:

  • You promise that your plugin does not infringe or violate and third party’s rights, including intellectual property or publicity/privacy rights.
  • The functionality your plugin provides must comply with the Craft License .
  • Your plugin must use the MIT License or the Craft License . We do not support any other license types.
  • Plugins must live in a public GitHub repo.
  • Plugins may not require non-stable Composer dependencies.
  • Your plugin must not transmit any data back to you as the vendor without express permission from the site owner.
  • You agree that all customer data acquired through the Plugin Store or through plugin support will adhere to our Privacy Statement.
  • We do not require exclusivity, but you may not charge more for your plugins in the Plugin Store than other places of distribution.
  • Plugin handles should not be so generically named that they could be confused for a core service (forms, components, etc.).
  • You may not use our trademarks in the name of your plugin or otherwise name your plugin in a way that implies a formal partnership with P&T. This extends to all promotional and educational materials as well.
    • Example, “Craft SEO” is not an acceptable plugin name. “AcmeSEO, for Craft” is 100% ok. This is better for all involved as it keeps your IP separate from ours. Your IP, for Craft is the starting template we recommend.
    • This approach should be followed in all promotional language, website, URLs, and educational material.
    • Exception: GitHub and developer tools where proper developer naming conventions are way more important than making lawyers happy.
    • We may remove your plugin from the Plugin Store or suspend promotion of the plugin if you violate any of these Terms.
  • No “bait & switch” plugins. Free plugins will always be required to offer a free tier. Paid and free versions are just fine (that’s what we do), but you can’t switch a currently free plugin to “paid only” in a way that would impact production installations. You can end-of-life a free plugin and offer a commercial alternative. You can submit a Commercial version of the free edition as a separate plugin.
  • P&T will provide a way to collect customer VAT ID, but you are responsible for reporting and paying your own VAT as required by your country of residence.
  • You hereby grant P&T all rights necessary to distribute your plugin. This includes the right to use your logo, copy, customer testimonials, and similar for promotional use, and the right to distribute, publicly display and publicly perform your plugin, solely in connection with making your plugin available via the Plugin Store. You do not grant P&T ownership rights to your plugin of any kind.
  • Your plugins will use the Craftnet licensing validation system. This means that:
    • Your plugins will be available for free trial use in environments that appear to be for development, testing, or staging.
    • All licenses are perpetual for the tier that was purchased.
    • You must set an optional annual Renewal Price for a licensee’s continued access to updates. Please note, this is not a “subscription.” Licensees are not required to pay a plugin’s annual renewal fee unless they wish to update the plugin or upgrade the plugin to a new edition.
  • P&T isn’t liable if our license validation fails; our goal is to enable customers to easily support ongoing development costs that help keep plugins stable, current, and forward thinking. We also try to stop and prevent bootlegging activity.
  • You agree that P&T will deduct a 20% commission on the retail price of commercial plugins. Here are the details:
    • Taxes are added to the retail price.
    • P&T covers the transactional cost of the purchase (i.e., Stripe fees) in its 20% commission.
    • Example: Acme Tasks is $10. Tax is 10%. Customer pays $11 for the plugin. $1 goes toward taxes, $8 goes to you, $2 goes to P&T, and P&T pays any transactional costs from the $2.
    • You must have a Stripe account linked to your Craft Console to receive payments. Your use of Stripe services may be subject to additional terms and conditions as determined by Stripe.
    • We do our best to pay out revenue within one business day to plugin developers selling plugins in the Plugin Store. However, payouts can take up to 45 days.
  • You agree to provide a 30-day refund policy on all purchases. Here is how it works:
    • P&T will refund customers and apply a negative credit to your Craft Console account for up to -$100 USD.
    • Payouts from plugin sales will apply to any negative balance first.
    • Refunds in excess of $100 USD will be invoiced to you with a 30-day payment term.
    • Invoices that are 15 days past due will result in immediate Plugin Store suspension.
  • You may remove your plugin from the Store at any time. Please note that removing the plugin does not delete the plugin from existing installations. It simply stops the plugin from being distributed in the Plugin Store. 
  • P&T, at its sole discretion, may remove any plugin from the Plugin Store for any reason without notice. We realize this is heavy handed but it is critical that we are able to respond to any security issues quickly which may mean removing a plugin without notice.

Other Services #

P&T offers consulting, custom development, and other professional services to customers upon request. Those professional services are separately negotiated and subject to a different contract, not these Terms.

Copyright Infringement Notice Procedure #

P&T respects intellectual property rights. If you believe your copyrighted work has been copied or posted on or through the Services in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, then please contact us at legal@pixelandtonic.com and provide the following information:

  • A description of the copyrighted work that you believe has been infringed;
  • A description of what the allegedly infringing work is;
  • A description of the location where the allegedly infringing work is located on the Services;
  • An address and phone number where you can be contacted, including an email address;
  • A statement that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law;
  • A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright; and
  • A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in the notice is accurate and that the signatory is the copyright owner or is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.

Consult your legal advisor before filing an infringement notice, because there can be penalties for false claims.

Confidentiality #

By accessing and using the Services, you may encounter confidential information owned by P&T, like information relating to P&T’s technology, trade secrets, know-how, business operations, plans, strategies, customers, and pricing, and personal data (“Confidential Information”), in each case whether or not marked, designated or otherwise identified as “confidential.” You promise that you will: (a) not access or use Confidential Information other than as necessary to use the Services; (b) not disclose or permit access to Confidential Information to any third party; and (c) protect the Confidential Information using at least the degree of care you use to protect your own confidential information (not less than a reasonable degree of protection).

Communications #

By using the Services, you agree to receive electronic communications from us, whether through the Services or by email. You agree that any notice, agreement, disclosure or other communication that we send you electronically will satisfy any legal notice requirements. All calls, emails and other communications between you and P&T may be recorded.

Termination and Suspension #

You may stop using the Services at any time. We don’t offer refunds for Paid Services after the 30-day refund period expires.

We may terminate your use of the Paid Services if you fail to pay any undisputed amount within 60 days after being due, or if we reasonably believe you’re violating any aspect of these Terms.

With regards to Free Services, we may disable or suspend access, remove, or change Free Services at any time for any reason, without liability to you or anyone else.

We also reserve the right to block users from accessing or posting content to the Services by using any technology available, such as blacklisting certain IP addresses or device numbers.

Legalese Ahead #

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for your patience. It’s about to get more “legalese” from here down. These terms ensure that we can provide our Services on a cost-effective basis while protecting us from claims and risks that we don’t anticipate (and didn’t price into our Services).

We are also required by law to “differentiate” the some of the following legalese from normal text, which is why it is in bold. Yes, it is ugly but bold beats ALL CAPS.

Warranty Disclaimer #

Except for any express warranties provided in these Terms or a separate written agreement between you and P&T, the services are provided “as is,” “as available,” and without warranties of any kind. You use the Services at your own sole risk. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including, but not limited to, implied warranties of title, quality, performance, merchantability, suitability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Services will provide continuous, prompt, secure, or error-free service.

We do not control the Third Party Services available through the Services, including plugins. All Third Party Services, including plugins, are provided “as is.” The developer or owner of the Third Party Services is responsible for their respective products/plugins, not P&T.

Limitation of Liability and Damages #

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, P&T, its officers, directors, employees, agents, services providers and licensors will not be liable to you or anyone else for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, including but not limited to the cost of obtaining substitute products or services, damages for lost profits, goodwill, use, data or other intangible losses (regardless of whether we have been advised of the possibility of such damages), however caused, whether based on upon contract, negligence, strict liability in tort, warranty or any other legal theory.

In no event will P&T’s total liability to you arising out of or in connection with the Services exceed the higher of (a) $500 or (b) amounts paid by you in the 12 months preceding the event causing the claim. You also acknowledge that P&T will have no liability to any third parties, including site owners, for any claim related to the Services.

The exclusions and limitations of damages set forth above are fundamental elements of the basis of the bargain between P&T and you.

Indemnity #

You agree to defend and indemnify P&T, its licensors and service providers, and their respective officers, directors, employees, contractors, agents, licensors, suppliers, successors and assigns from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, judgments, awards, losses, costs, expenses or fees (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or relating to your violation of these Terms, your use of the Services, or your User Content or plugins.

Arbitration Agreement and Class Action Waiver #

The parties acknowledge that mediation may help them settle their dispute, and any party may propose mediation whenever appropriate through Arbitration Service of Portland or any mediator selected by the parties. In the event that the parties do not opt for mediation or if mediation does not resolve the dispute, all disputes arising out of or related to these Terms of Use or any aspect of your relationship with P&T, whether based in contract, tort, statute, fraud, misrepresentation or any other legal theory, will be resolved through final and binding arbitration before a single arbitrator instead of in a court by a judge or jury. You agree that P&T and you are each waiving the right to trial by a jury. You agree that any arbitration will take place on an individual basis. You hereby waive the ability to participate in a class action. The parties agree that the arbitrator will have exclusive authority to resolve any disputes relating to the interpretation, applicability, enforceability or formation of this arbitration agreement.

You and P&T each retain the right to: (i) bring an individual action in small claims court and (ii) seek injunctive or other equitable relief in a court of competent jurisdiction to prevent the actual or threatened infringement or misappropriation of a party’s trade secrets or intellectual property rights.

You will also have the right to litigate any other dispute that would otherwise be subject to this arbitration agreement if you opt out of the arbitration agreement by sending an email to legal@pixelandtonic.com or a letter to [postal address] within 30 days after the date you first agree to these Terms. If you don’t provide P&T with a timely opt-out notice, this arbitration agreement applies.

The arbitration will be administered by the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules (currently available at www.adr.org/arb_med or by calling the AAA at 1-800-778-7879). The arbitrator will conduct hearings, if any, by teleconference or video conference, rather than by personal appearances, unless the arbitrator determines that an in-person hearing is appropriate. Any in-person appearances will be held at a location within the State of Oregon, in Deschutes or Multnomah County, Oregon. You are responsible to pay any AAA filing, administrative and arbitrator fees if your claim exceeds $5,000. If your claim for damages does not exceed $5,000, P&T will pay all such fees unless the arbitrator finds that either the substance of your claim or the relief you seek is frivolous or brought for an improper purpose. The arbitrator’s decision will follow the terms of this Agreement (including the Limitation of Liability provision) and will be final and binding. The arbitrator will have authority to award temporary, interim or permanent injunctive relief, but only to the extent necessary to provide relief warranted by the individual claim before the arbitrator. The award rendered by the arbitrator may be confirmed and enforced in any court having jurisdiction.

Miscellaneous #

  • Survival. The terms that by their nature may survive termination shall remain in effect and survive the termination of these Terms of Use, including without limitation, Content Submitted, Ownership, Indemnity, Warranty Disclaimer, Limitation of Liabilities and Damages and Miscellaneous.
  • Assignment. These Terms of Use are personal to you, the user. You may not assign these Terms of Use or any rights and licenses in these Terms of Use to another party. These Terms of Use may be assigned by P&T without restriction.
  • Export. You agree that you will comply with all applicable import, re-import, export, and re-export control laws and regulations, including the Export Administration Regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, and country-specific economic sanctions programs implemented by the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
  • No Third-Party Beneficiaries: These Terms create no third-party beneficiary rights. You specifically agree that site owners are not third-party beneficiaries.
  • Limitations on Claims. Any cause of action or claim you may have with respect to P&T or the Services (including without limitation the purchase of products and services) must be commenced within one year after the claim or cause of action arises.
  • No Waiver. Our failure to exercise or enforce any right or provision of the Terms of Use will not constitute a waiver of that or any other right or provision. Neither the course of conduct between the parties nor trade practice shall modify any of the terms in these Terms of Use.
  • Entire Agreement. These Terms of Use constitute the entire agreement between you and us and govern your use of the Services. These Terms of Use supersede any prior agreements, communications, representations, or understandings between you and us, including without limitation any prior versions of these Terms of Use.

Contact Information #

You made it! If you have questions or concerns about our Terms, please email us at hello@craftcms.com.

Install Craft CMS
View the Demo