Terms of Service

Effective date: July 20, 2026
Last updated: July 20, 2026

Hot Takes (hottakes.app, the “Service”) is provided by Gouliard Software LLC (“we,” “us,” “our”). Contact: the support form.

By creating an account, installing the Hot Takes SDK, or submitting a capture as a Reviewer, you agree to these Terms.

1. What Hot Takes Is

Hot Takes is a feedback-collection tool for stakeholders reviewing native iOS app prototypes distributed as beta builds. It has two kinds of users:

• Account Holders — people who sign up at hottakes.app, create Projects, embed the Hot Takes SDK in their own prototype app, and invite teammates and Reviewers.
• Reviewers — people an Account Holder invites (directly or via a shared project) to give feedback inside a specific prototype. Reviewers enroll with an email address and a one-time code; they do not create a Hot Takes account or set a password.

Hot Takes does not host, build, or distribute prototype apps. Distribution remains through your own beta-distribution channel, entirely outside our control.

2. Accounts

• Account Holders authenticate via email/password (or other methods we may add) through our authentication provider (Supabase Auth).
• You are responsible for keeping your login credentials confidential and for all activity under your account.
• You must provide accurate information and keep your contact email current — it's how we reach you about billing, security, and policy changes.

3. Reviewers and Captures

• A Reviewer enrolls inside a specific prototype by entering their email and a 6-digit one-time code sent to that address, then (on first enrollment) a display name. That verification binds the Reviewer's identity to their device and to the specific Project for future captures — no password is created or stored for Reviewers.
• A capture is either an annotated screenshot (with an optional typed note and an optional voice clip up to 2 minutes) or a screen recording of the prototype with live microphone audio narrated into the video's audio track. Reviewers should assume anything visible on their screen during a recording, and anything said while the mic is live, is captured and sent to the Account Holder's team.
• Reviewers submit captures at the invitation of, and for the benefit of, the Account Holder who controls that Project. We act as the Account Holder's data processor for Reviewer captures; the Account Holder is responsible for having a lawful basis to collect feedback from the people they invite.
• An Account Holder can remove a Reviewer from a Project, which revokes that Reviewer's device access to that Project going forward.

4. Acceptable Use

You may not use Hot Takes to:

• Upload or transmit unlawful, infringing, defamatory, or malicious content.
• Attempt to access another Account Holder's Projects, captures, or data without authorization.
• Reverse-engineer, scrape, or abuse the API or SDK outside documented use, including circumventing rate limits or plan caps.
• Use a Reviewer's enrollment to harvest personal data for purposes unrelated to the invited Project's feedback loop.
• Interfere with the Service's operation (e.g., attempting denial-of-service, injecting malicious code via captures/notes).

Hot Takes is for collecting stakeholder feedback on prototypes you are building. It is not general-purpose file storage, media hosting, a backup service, or a way to move large files between people. Using it for those purposes is not what the plans are priced for.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate this section, or that are being used for something other than the purpose above, with or without notice, at our discretion. Termination deletes the account's Projects and every capture in them, and that cannot be undone: see section 6 for how to export your data before you need it.

5. Plans, Payment, and Cancellation

Hot Takes offers the following plans (current caps — see the pricing page for the live table, which is the source of truth if it ever differs from this document):

• Payment processing. Paid plans are billed through Stripe. We never receive or store your card number — Stripe handles that. Stripe's own privacy policy and terms govern the payment step.
• Billing cycle. Paid plans are billed monthly. You can cancel anytime through the Stripe customer portal, linked from your account page.
• Failed payments. If a renewal payment fails, your workspace drops to the Free plan immediately (not after a grace period or retry window). Your data is not deleted — see Section 6 — but Free-plan caps apply right away, and content over the Free caps is retained but hidden behind an upgrade prompt until you fix payment or your workspace is otherwise under the Free limits.
• Enterprise. Enterprise plans are manually provisioned after you contact us; pricing and terms for Enterprise are set individually and may be governed by a separate order form or agreement that supersedes conflicting terms here for that account.
• Refunds. Fees are non-refundable except where required by law.

6. Data Retention and Deletion

• Retention windows (from creation date, tied to the Project owner's plan at time of aging): Free plan captures age out after 15 days; Starter after 30 days; Pro after 365 days; Enterprise captures do not expire on a schedule.
• Grace period. When a capture ages out, it's removed from the gallery but its underlying files are kept for a further 30-day grace window. If you upgrade during that window, aged-out captures within it are restored automatically. After the grace window, media is permanently and irreversibly deleted.
• Self-serve account deletion. You can delete your Hot Takes account from your account settings. Deleting your account permanently deletes every Project you own, all captures and media in those Projects, and your account record; it removes your membership from Projects you don't own (those Projects and their data are unaffected). You must cancel any active paid subscription before you can delete your account — this stops your subscription first through the billing portal, then delete.
• Deletion is immediate and not reversible once processed. We are not able to recover deleted accounts or Projects.

7. Beta / Early-Access Status

Hot Takes is a new product under active development. Features, limits, and pricing may change. The beta-distributed prototypes you interact with as a Reviewer are themselves pre-release software controlled by the Account Holder, not by us — issues with the prototype app itself are between you and the Account Holder who invited you.

8. Intellectual Property

• You retain ownership of the content you or your Reviewers submit (screenshots, recordings, notes, voice clips). You grant us a limited license to store, process, and display that content back to you and your invited teammates solely to operate the Service.
• We retain all rights to the Hot Takes name, SDK, web app, and branding.

9. Disclaimer of Warranties

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that captures will always be delivered or preserved (though we design against data loss).

10. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Gouliard Software LLC will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of data, revenue, or business, arising from your use of the Service. Our total liability for any claim relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of one hundred dollars ($100) or the amount you paid us for the Service in the twelve months preceding the claim.

11. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its rules, held in San Francisco, California, on an individual basis. You and we each waive any right to participate in a class action or class arbitration. Either party may instead bring a qualifying individual claim in small claims court.

12. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes, we'll make reasonable efforts to notify Account Holders (e.g., by email or an in-app notice) before the change takes effect. Continued use of the Service after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance.

13. Contact

Questions about these Terms: use the support form.