Terms of Service

One agreement, two apps, four websites

Thread Bible Study and Emberside are made by Wayfarers Digital LLC, and these terms are the agreement between you and us. In them, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Wayfarers Digital LLC, and “the service” means everything listed here.

They cover the two apps, anything you buy from us, and these websites:

wayfarersdigital.com · threadbiblestudy.com · embersideapp.com · discipleshiptogether.com

They do not cover our other products, which are separate and carry their own arrangements. They sit alongside the Privacy Policy, which says what we do with your information and forms part of this agreement.

Plain English, for the same reason the privacy policy is: an agreement nobody reads protects nobody. Using either app, visiting those sites, or buying a plan means you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the service.

Who this agreement is with

For a church plan, the customer is the church, not the person who happens to pay. Seats belong to the church. If you buy a plan on a church’s behalf, you confirm that you are authorised to enter this agreement for that church and to bind it, and that everything you tell us about it is accurate. We have no way to verify that, so we rely on it, and the section headed If you cause us a loss applies if it turns out not to be true.

The person who pays becomes the church’s first administrator, because somebody has to set it up. The church can name other administrators and can remove that one. If you leave the church, the plan stays with the church.

If you are simply using an app, whether your church has a plan or not, this agreement is with you as an individual, and you must be old enough to enter it where you live.

What a seat gives, and what a seat is

One plan covers both apps. A church buys a number of seats and gives out one code. Anybody who joins with that code holds a seat and gets Thread and Emberside in full, whether or not they are in a small group. There is no version where a church takes one app and not the other.

A seat is a cap, not a meter. You buy a number and your people take them up over the year. The invoice does not wait for a head count and does not grow as people join. We may allow a small number of people above the number you bought, so that a church is not cut off the moment it goes one over. That is an allowance we choose to give and not something you have bought, and we can stop giving it at any time.

You can add seats at any time; the extra is billed when you add it. You can lower the number at renewal.

If you renew with fewer seats than you have people, you choose who keeps one. Administrators and group leaders keep theirs. You have thirty days from the day the number drops to decide about everybody else, and nobody loses anything in that time. If the thirty days pass and the church is still over, the most recently joined lose their seats — as many as the church is over by, and no more.

Thread’s Bible reader is free to anybody who installs it, is not part of the paid plan, and nothing in this agreement about seats or subscriptions applies to it. We can change what it includes or stop offering it.

Paying, renewing, and cancelling

A plan is an annual subscription that renews automatically on the anniversary of the day you bought it, at the price then in force for the number of seats you hold, until you cancel. Payment is by card through Stripe. Nothing is sold inside either app.

You can cancel at any time, and you keep what you paid for. Cancelling stops the next renewal and does not end the term you are in: the plan runs to the end of the term you have already paid for, and then stops.

Payments for the current term are not refunded. If you cancel in month three of a term you have paid for, the plan continues to month twelve and is not refunded in part. If something has gone genuinely wrong, write to us and we will listen, but that is us choosing to help rather than something this agreement promises.

If we change the price, the new price applies from your next renewal and not before, and we will tell you by email before it takes effect. If a payment fails we will try again and tell you; if it keeps failing, the plan ends and the next section applies. Prices exclude any tax that applies, and you are responsible for any such tax unless you have given us a valid exemption.

What happens when a plan ends

When a church’s plan ends, whether by cancelling or by non-payment, everybody who held a seat under it loses the paid parts of both apps — including the church’s administrators and its group leaders. Nobody keeps a seat because of the job they do.

Nobody is removed from a group, and no group is closed. A church’s groups carry on under the free limits, so the people in them go on talking, praying and meeting. What stops is Thread and the parts of Emberside the plan pays for.

Ending a plan does not delete anything. Prayer requests, messages, gatherings and reading history stay where they are, and come back if the church buys again. Deleting your account is a separate act that you choose, and the Privacy Policy says exactly what it removes.

Your account

One account works in both apps. Emberside is for people aged sixteen and over, and neither app is directed at children under thirteen. Keep your sign-in to yourself: you are responsible for everything done under your account, and you should tell us at once if you think somebody else has it.

Give us accurate information, and keep your email address current, because it is how we reach you about your plan and how you get back in if you are locked out.

What you write stays yours

You own what you write. Your reflections, prayer requests, messages, notes and pictures belong to you, and buying a plan does not give a church ownership of what its people write.

You give us only the permission we need to run the service for you: to store what you write, and to show it to the people you wrote it for. Nothing more. We do not sell it, we do not use it to train anything, we do not show it to anyone outside the group you wrote it for, and we do not read it except where we have to in order to fix a fault you have reported, to meet a legal obligation, or to act on the rules in the next section.

You are responsible for what you post, and you confirm you have the right to post it. Remember that a group is a group: what you post to a group is visible to that group, and we cannot unsay it for you.

Using it decently

These apps are for study, prayer and the care of a group. Do not use them to harass, threaten, defame, impersonate or abuse anybody, and do not post anything unlawful.

No sexual material of any kind. Not pornography, not nudity, not sexually explicit writing, and not sexually suggestive content. This is a whole ban and not a judgement about adults: these are shared spaces that a church has put its name to, and there is no place in them for any of it.

We act on child sexual abuse material without exception. Pictures uploaded to Emberside are checked against known-image services, and anything found is reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the account is closed. There is nothing to appeal.

This is not a marketplace. Do not use the service to advertise, buy, sell, solicit, promote or run a business, to raise money for anything outside the group, or to send unsolicited messages of any kind. A group arranging its own life is not what this means: sharing the cost of a retreat, organising meals for somebody who is ill, or collecting for one of its own members is ordinary church life and is fine.

Do not try to break into the service, read other people’s data, get round a paywall or a seat limit, scrape it, resell access to it, or copy the lesson library and publish it. Do not upload anything designed to damage the service or the people using it.

The lessons, the software, the names and the logos are ours, and nothing in this agreement transfers them to you. Scripture is not ours; the translations we carry are public domain and you may do with them whatever their own terms allow.

We can remove content and close accounts that break these rules. Where it is a plain case of abuse we will act at once; otherwise we will tell you what the problem is first. We are not obliged to monitor what people post, and the fact that something has stayed up does not mean we have approved it.

Ending this agreement

You can stop using the apps whenever you like, cancel a plan whenever you like, and delete your account whenever you like.

We can end this agreement, or suspend an account, if these terms are broken, if a plan goes unpaid, or if we have to for a legal reason. Unless somebody has done something plainly abusive, we will tell you first and give you a chance to put it right. If we ever close the service altogether, we will give reasonable notice and refund the unused part of a term that has been paid for.

The sections about what you write, what we promise, the limits on what we owe you, what you owe us, and the law that governs this agreement all survive it ending.

What we promise, and what we do not

We build these apps carefully and we run them in good faith. Beyond that, the service is provided as it is and as it happens to be available, and we make no warranties about it of any kind, whether stated or implied. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement.

In particular, we do not promise that the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or free of faults, that any fault will be fixed, that it will meet your requirements, or that anything stored in it will never be lost. Keep your own copy of anything you could not bear to lose.

Emberside tells a leader when somebody has gone quiet in a group. That is a prompt to reach out, and nothing more. It is not a safeguarding system, a welfare check, a medical or mental-health tool, an emergency service, or a substitute for pastoral care or professional help. It only knows what happens inside the app: it cannot tell you that somebody has gone quiet in church, that anybody is unwell, at risk, or in danger, and it must never be relied on for any of that. If you are worried about somebody, contact them, and contact the emergency services if it is urgent.

Nothing in either app is medical, legal, financial or professional advice.

Limits on what we owe you

To the fullest extent the law allows:

We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, and we are not liable for lost profits, lost revenue, lost goodwill, lost or corrupted data, business interruption, or the cost of substitute services, whether or not we were told such losses were possible and whatever the claim is founded on.

Our total liability for everything arising out of or relating to this agreement or the service is capped at the amount you paid us for the subscription term in which the claim arose. That is the fees for that one term, not for any earlier or later one, and not both terms where a claim happens to fall near a renewal. If you have paid us nothing, our total liability is capped at one hundred United States dollars.

All claims arising in a single subscription term share that one cap between them; a second claim does not open a second cap. Any claim must be brought within one year of the thing it is about, or it is waived, unless the law where you live does not allow that.

Some places do not allow some of these exclusions or limits. Where that is so, they apply as far as that place allows and no further, and nothing here limits liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

If you cause us a loss

You will defend, indemnify and hold harmless Wayfarers Digital LLC, and its members, officers, employees and contractors, from and against any claim, demand, investigation, loss, liability, damage, fine, cost or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising out of or relating to:

what you post or send through the service; your use of the service; your breach of this agreement or of the Privacy Policy; your violation of any law or of anybody else’s rights, including intellectual property and privacy rights; and, if you bought a plan for a church, your having done so without the authority to bind that church.

We will tell you about any such claim, and you will not settle anything in a way that admits fault on our part or imposes any obligation on us without our written agreement. We may take over the defence of any claim at our own cost, and you will cooperate with us if we do.

Things that are true of any agreement

This is the whole agreement between you and us about the service, together with the Privacy Policy, and it replaces anything said before it. Nothing a person says to you in an email or a conversation changes it unless we put it in writing and sign it.

If a court finds part of this agreement unenforceable, that part is narrowed to the least extent that makes it enforceable, staying as close as it can to what it was meant to do, and then applies as narrowed. If it cannot be made enforceable at all, it is struck out and the agreement is read as though it had never been included. Either way, every other part stays in full force.

If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given it up. We give up a right only by saying so in writing, and giving it up once does not give it up for good: letting one breach pass does not stop us acting on the next one, or on that same one later.

You may not transfer this agreement to anybody else without our written agreement. We may transfer it, in whole or in part, to a company that buys or merges with our business, and we will tell you if that happens.

We are not liable for things outside our reasonable control, including outages at a supplier we depend on, network failures, natural disasters, war, or acts of government.

You and we are independent. This agreement does not make either of us the other’s partner, agent, employee or joint venturer, and it gives rights to nobody but you and us.

Notices from us reach you at the email address on your account, and count as given the day we send them, so keep it current. Notices to us go to the address at the end of this page.

Changes to these terms

We will change these terms from time to time. The date at the top says when they last changed. If a change matters to you, for example to price or to what a plan includes, we will tell you by email before it takes effect, and for a church plan a change will not take effect mid-term: it applies from your next renewal.

Carrying on using the service after a change takes effect means you accept it. If you do not, cancel, and the section on ending this agreement says what happens.

Law, and how to reach us

This agreement, and any dispute arising out of it or the service, is governed by the law of the State of Ohio, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The state and federal courts sitting in Ohio have exclusive jurisdiction, and you and we each agree to them and give up any objection that they are an inconvenient forum. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Write to support@wayfarersdigital.com about anything in these terms or about your plan, and to privacy@wayfarersdigital.com about your information. We are Wayfarers Digital LLC.