Terms of Use

Effective [EFFECTIVE DATE]

Welcome to Chickadee. These terms are the agreement between you and Chickadee Software LLC, an Ohio limited liability company (“Chickadee,” “we,” “us”). They cover the Chickadee iPhone app, our website at chickadeeapp.co, and app.chickadeeapp.co (together, the “Service”).

By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you don’t agree, please don’t use Chickadee.

Please read section 13 (Limitation of liability) and section 15 (Governing law and disputes) carefully. They limit what you can recover from us and say where disputes are decided.

1. Who can use Chickadee

You must be at least 18 years old, and able to form a binding contract, to create an account. Chickadee is made for adults to keep a journal about their lives and families. Children don’t use Chickadee and may not have accounts, even if they’re the subject of your posts.

You may not use Chickadee if we’ve previously closed your account for breaking these terms, or if the law doesn’t allow you to.

2. Your account

• Give us a real email address you can access, and keep your password to yourself.
• You’re responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us right away at support@chickadeeapp.co if you think someone else has used it.
• One account is for one person. Don’t share it or sell it.

3. Households and Circles

Chickadee lets you choose, post by post, who sees what:

• Just me: only you.
• Household: you and the one other adult you share your household with, such as a partner or co-parent.
• Circle: your household plus other households you’ve connected with by invite, such as grandparents or close friends.

There’s no public feed. Still, anything you share with your household or Circle can be seen, and potentially saved or screenshotted, by the people in it. You’re responsible for choosing who you invite and what you share with them. When you remove someone or change a post’s setting, they lose access in Chickadee the next time their app syncs, but we can’t recall copies they’ve already saved outside the app.

When you share a household, the family records you set up together, such as your kids’ profiles and milestones, belong to the household. If one of you leaves or deletes their account, the other keeps them.

4. Your content

You own what you post. Your words, photos, videos, voice notes and everything else you add (“your content”) remain yours.

To run Chickadee, we need your permission to handle your content. You give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, process, resize, back up and display your content, only as needed to operate, secure and improve the Service for you, and to show it to the people you’ve chosen to share it with. This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies we must keep by law (see the Privacy Policy) or that are already in the hands of people you shared with.

We don’t use your content for advertising, we don’t sell it, and we don’t use it to train AI.

You promise that you have the right to post your content, and that posting it doesn’t violate anyone else’s rights or the law. If you post about other people, including other adults, please respect their privacy.

5. What you can’t do

Don’t use Chickadee to:

• Post anything illegal, or that infringes someone else’s copyright, privacy or other rights.
• Harass, threaten, bully or impersonate anyone.
• Post sexually explicit content, or content that promotes violence, self-harm or hatred.
• Post information about people who haven’t agreed to it, in a way meant to harm or expose them.
• Send spam, or use invites to reach people who don’t know you.
• Upload malware, probe or attack our systems, get around limits or security measures, or access accounts or data that aren’t yours.
• Scrape, copy or resell the Service, or reverse engineer the app except where the law allows it.

Zero tolerance for child sexual abuse material

Chickadee has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and any content that sexualizes or exploits a child. If we become aware of apparent CSAM, we will remove access to it, close the account, preserve the content and account information as the law requires, and report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and, where appropriate, law enforcement.

Reporting

You can report a post or a person from inside the app, or email support@chickadeeapp.co. If a child may be in immediate danger, call 911 or your local emergency number first. Removing someone from your Circle also stops them seeing your posts.

We don’t review every post, and we’re not responsible for content other people share with you. But we may review reported content, and we may remove content or restrict accounts that we believe break these terms.

6. Free and Premium

Chickadee is free to use. The free version includes unlimited posts, photos up to a total limit, all three sharing settings, a Circle of a limited number of households, downloading your journal, and more. Premium adds features such as every Premium prompt, video, custom prompts, a recap every month, exporting books as a print-ready PDF, unlimited photos and a larger Circle. The current features and limits are shown in the app, and we may change them over time.

One Premium subscription covers your household, up to two adults.

Chickadee doesn’t print or ship physical books.

7. Subscriptions, trials and billing

• Billed by Apple. Premium is sold as an auto-renewing subscription through the Apple App Store and charged to your Apple ID. Apple’s terms and payment policies also apply. We don’t receive or store your payment details.
• Prices. Premium is currently $59.99 per year or $7.99 per month (US prices; local prices may differ). We may sometimes offer a discounted first year or another offer. The price and terms shown to you at the moment you buy are the ones that apply.
• Free trial. The yearly plan may come with a 14-day free trial. Unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends, it converts to a paid yearly subscription and you’ll be charged. Trials are offered once.
• Renewal. Your subscription renews automatically for the same period at the then-current price unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends. If we change the price, Apple will notify you as its rules require.
• Cancelling. Cancel any time in your Apple ID settings (Settings, your name, Subscriptions). Cancelling stops the next renewal; you keep Premium until the end of the period you’ve paid for. Deleting the app or your Chickadee account does not cancel your subscription.
• Refunds. Apple handles all payments and refunds. To ask for a refund, use Apple’s “Report a Problem” page.
• If Premium ends. Your account goes back to the free version. Nothing you’ve posted is deleted. Premium-only features, and adding more than the free limits allow, become unavailable until you subscribe again.

8. Your data, and leaving

You can download a copy of your journal, free, at any time from Account, then Your data. You can delete your account at any time from Account, then Delete account. Deletion is permanent and happens right away. The Privacy Policy explains what happens to your information.

9. If we suspend or close your account

We may suspend or close your account, or remove content, if you break these terms, if the law requires it, or if your use puts other people or the Service at risk. Where it’s appropriate and safe, we’ll tell you why and give you a chance to download your journal first. In cases involving child safety or illegal content, we may act without notice and preserve information as the law requires.

We may also stop offering Chickadee. If we do, we’ll give you reasonable notice and time to download your journal.

10. Our app and brand

The Chickadee app, website, design, prompts, name and logo belong to Chickadee Software LLC and are protected by law. We give you a personal, non-transferable, revocable license to use the app on Apple devices you own or control, under these terms and Apple’s Licensed Application End User License Agreement. Using Chickadee doesn’t give you any rights to our name or brand.

If you send us feedback or ideas, we may use them without owing you anything.

11. Apple

These terms are between you and Chickadee, not Apple. Apple isn’t responsible for the app or its content, has no obligation to provide maintenance or support, and isn’t responsible for any claims relating to the app (including product liability, legal or regulatory compliance, or intellectual property claims). If the app fails to meet any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple may refund the purchase price, if any; to the extent the law allows, Apple has no other warranty obligation. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you. You confirm that you’re not located in a country subject to a U.S. government embargo and aren’t on any U.S. government list of prohibited or restricted parties.

12. Disclaimers

We work hard to keep Chickadee running and your journal safe, but we provide the Service “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, title and non-infringement. We don’t promise that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that content will never be lost. Please keep your own copy of anything important, using the free download.

Prompts, milestones and age ranges in Chickadee are for journaling only. They aren’t medical, developmental or parenting advice. Talk to a qualified professional about your child’s health or development.

13. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Chickadee and its owners, employees and suppliers won’t be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits or goodwill, arising from or relating to the Service, even if we were told they were possible.

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid for Premium in the 12 months before the claim arose, or $50.

Some places don’t allow these limits, so some of them may not apply to you. Nothing in these terms limits liability that can’t be limited by law.

14. Indemnity

If someone brings a claim against us because of content you posted, your use of the Service, or your breaking of these terms or the law, you agree to cover our reasonable costs and losses from that claim, including reasonable legal fees, to the extent the law allows.

15. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Ohio, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. If a dispute comes up, please email us first. Most problems can be sorted out that way. If we can’t resolve it, you and we agree that any lawsuit will be brought only in the state or federal courts located in Ohio, and both of us consent to those courts’ jurisdiction. If you live outside the United States, you may also have rights under the laws of where you live that these terms can’t take away.

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as Chickadee changes. We’ll post the new version here with a new effective date. If a change is significant, we’ll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect. If you keep using Chickadee after a change takes effect, you accept the new terms. If you don’t agree, you can download your journal and delete your account.

17. The rest

• These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service.
• If any part of these terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t enforce a part of these terms right away, we haven’t given up the right to enforce it later.
• You can’t transfer these terms to anyone else. We may transfer them as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets.
• Sections that by their nature should survive the end of these terms (such as ownership, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity and governing law) do.

18. Contact us

Chickadee Software LLC, Ohio, United States

Email: support@chickadeeapp.co