Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the Terms) are a binding agreement between [Registered company name], trading as Polartrace (Polartrace, we, us), and the organisation or person that creates a Polartrace account (you, the Customer). They govern your use of the Polartrace service: the marketing site at https://polartrace.io, the console at https://console.polartrace.io and at your workspace subdomain (<workspace>.polartrace.io) once you set one up, the Polartrace agents and collector endpoints, the API, and our documentation and support (together, the Service).

By creating an account, clicking to accept, or using the Service, you accept these Terms, our Privacy Policy and our Refund Policy, which are part of this agreement. If you accept on behalf of a company or other organisation, you confirm that you have authority to bind it. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

The Service is offered to businesses and professional users. You must be at least 18 years old to use it. If you and Polartrace have signed a separate written agreement (for example an Enterprise order form or a data processing agreement), that agreement prevails over these Terms where the two conflict.

Signing up creates a user account and a workspace (also called an organisation) that holds your services, telemetry, monitors, team members and billing. You must provide accurate information, verify your email address, and keep it current. A workspace can claim a subdomain of the form <workspace>.polartrace.io; subdomains are allocated first come, first served, must not infringe anyone’s rights, and may be reclaimed if they do.

You may invite any number of users to a workspace on every plan. Users act under roles you assign. You are responsible for everyone who accesses your workspace, for what they do in it, and for keeping credentials, API keys and agent keys confidential. Tell us at support@polartrace.io as soon as you suspect unauthorised access. We may lock an account after repeated failed sign-in attempts to protect it.

Each workspace has an owner. The owner can manage billing, roles and members, and can ask us to close the workspace. Where these Terms say something applies to you, it applies to your workspace and to every user in it.

Polartrace is an observability platform for application and infrastructure telemetry: distributed traces, request logs, host metrics, Kubernetes monitoring, and monitors that send alerts by email and, on plans that include it, to Slack. Data is collected by Polartrace agents for Node.js and Python, which are built on OpenTelemetry, and by a Kubernetes agent that you set up from the console. The agents are open source under the MIT licence; that licence, not these Terms, governs the agent source code.

Features, limits and retention periods vary by plan and are listed on the pricing page. We improve the Service continuously and may add, change or retire features. If a change materially reduces the core functionality of a paid plan, we will tell you at least 30 days in advance by email. Features labelled beta, preview or experimental are provided as is, may change or be withdrawn at any time, and are excluded from any commitments in these Terms.

We may suspend all or part of the Service temporarily for maintenance, to protect security, or when required by law. We aim to give notice of planned maintenance by email. We do not currently publish an uptime service level agreement.

Plans

The Free plan includes 5 GB of telemetry per month. When a Free workspace reaches that allowance, ingest pauses until the next month; the Free plan is never billed. Paid self-serve plans are billed monthly or annually. Enterprise plans are agreed in writing. Current prices, included allowances and overage rates are published on the pricing page and are the prices that apply to you. We do not currently offer free trials of paid plans.

Paddle is the merchant of record

Payments for Polartrace are processed by Paddle, which acts as merchant of record. When you buy a plan you complete Paddle’s checkout, Paddle charges your payment method, issues your invoices and receipts, and calculates and remits any sales tax or VAT that applies to you. Your payment transaction is also subject to Paddle’s buyer terms. Prices are in US dollars unless Paddle’s checkout shows otherwise; taxes are added where required. You are responsible for keeping a valid payment method and accurate billing details, including any tax ID, on file.

Two usage meters

Every paid plan includes an allowance of data and hosts each month, and meters usage above it:

• Data is the number of gigabytes of telemetry ingested into your workspace during the calendar month, across traces, logs and metrics.
• Billable hosts are the 95th percentile of the number of distinct reporting hosts on each day of the calendar month. A one-day spike from a deploy or autoscaling event does not set your host count.

Usage above your allowance is charged at the per-GB and per-host overage rates published for your plan. Annual subscribers pay the annual overage rates. Overage is calculated when the month closes and invoiced through Paddle to your payment method on file. Usage invoices under US$1 are not charged. The first overage invoice a workspace would ever receive is waived automatically, once. Paid plans never pause ingest because you exceed your allowance; if you would rather not be billed for overage, set a spend cap.

Usage alerts and spend caps

We email your workspace when usage reaches 80%, 100% and 150% of its allowance. On paid plans you can set a monthly spend cap for overage in the console; when your projected overage reaches the cap, ingest pauses for the rest of the month instead of being billed, and resumes at the start of the next month or when you raise the cap. Changes to the cap take effect within a few minutes. You are responsible for the consequences of paused ingest, such as gaps in your data or monitors that cannot evaluate.

Renewal, plan changes and price changes

Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each monthly or annual term until cancelled. You can change plans in the console; a change takes effect as shown at the time you confirm it. We may change prices or allowances. We will give at least 30 days’ notice by email, and the change applies from your next renewal after the notice period; if you do not agree, cancel before that renewal. Fees for a term that has started are not refundable except as set out in the Refund Policy.

Failed payments

If a renewal or usage charge fails, Paddle retries it and emails you. If the charge cannot be collected, your subscription expires and section 5 applies. You remain liable for unpaid fees for Service you have used.

You can cancel a paid subscription at any time from the billing page in the console. Cancellation takes effect immediately, not at the end of the billing period, and no refund is issued automatically. If you are within the refund window in the Refund Policy, request a refund and we will process it.

When a subscription is cancelled, lapses because payment could not be collected, or otherwise expires:

• Your agents can keep sending data for a 7-day grace period, so a missed renewal does not immediately blind you.
• Your telemetry is kept for 30 days after expiry. During that window the console only lets you manage billing; subscribing again restores full access with your data intact.
• After the 30-day window, telemetry is deleted and cannot be recovered. Account, workspace and billing records are handled as described in the Privacy Policy.

Free workspaces are not affected by expiry; their data is kept for the Free plan’s retention period on a rolling basis. To close a workspace entirely, the owner can email support@polartrace.io from the account email address.

You own your data. Everything you send to Polartrace through agents, integrations or the API, and everything derived from it in your workspace (Customer Data), belongs to you. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide licence to host, process, transmit, display and back up Customer Data only as needed to provide the Service to you, to keep it secure, to comply with law, and to enforce these Terms. We do not sell Customer Data and do not use it for advertising.

We may use aggregated, de-identified statistics about how the Service is used (for example ingest volume by region or agent version) to operate, plan and improve the Service, provided they cannot be used to identify you or any individual.

Customer Data may contain personal data about your own users, customers or employees. For that data you are the controller and Polartrace is your processor, acting on your instructions as set out in these Terms and the Privacy Policy. If you are subject to the GDPR, the UK GDPR or a similar law that requires a written data processing agreement, ask us for one at support@polartrace.io and we will put it in place before you send personal data.

You are responsible for what you send. The Node.js agent replaces passwords, tokens, API keys, authorisation headers, cookies and card fields with [REDACTED] before data leaves your servers and scrubs literal values from PostgreSQL statements; the Python agent redacts credential-like fields in request bodies and span attributes. Neither can recognise every sensitive value. You must not send data you have no right to send, and you must not send payment card numbers, government identifiers, health records or other special categories of data unless we have agreed to it in writing.

Telemetry is retained for the period that applies to your plan (currently 3 to 30 days on self-serve plans, as shown on the pricing page) and is then deleted on a rolling basis. You can read and search your data in the console for as long as it is retained. We do not currently provide bulk exports.

You agree not to, and not to allow anyone else to:

• use the Service to break the law, infringe anyone’s rights, or send data you are not permitted to send;
• probe, scan or test the vulnerability of the Service, bypass rate limits, quotas or access controls, or interfere with other customers’ workspaces;
• send malicious code, or deliberately send volumes or shapes of data intended to disrupt the Service or evade metering;
• reverse engineer, copy or create derivative works of the Service other than the open-source agents under their own licence;
• resell, sublicense or offer the Service to third parties as a service bureau or as part of a competing product, or use it to build a competing product;
• share one user’s credentials between people, or use automated means to create accounts;
• remove or obscure any proprietary notice, or use the Polartrace name or logo without our written permission.

If you find a security vulnerability, please report it to support@polartrace.io before disclosing it publicly. Good-faith research that respects other customers’ data is welcome.

Polartrace and its licensors own the Service, including its software, console, documentation, designs and trademarks. These Terms give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service during your subscription in line with these Terms; they do not transfer any ownership. The agents are licensed separately under the MIT licence published in their repositories. Third-party names such as Datadog are the trademarks of their owners and are used only to identify those products.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, you allow us to use them without restriction or payment; we will never identify you as the source without your permission.

The Service relies on third parties to operate, and can connect to services you choose. Paddle processes payments under its own terms. If you sign in with Google, Google’s terms apply to your Google account. If you connect Slack for alert delivery, Slack’s terms apply to that workspace and you are responsible for the channels you route alerts to. Package registries such as npm and PyPI distribute the agents under their own terms. We are not responsible for third-party services, and their availability may affect the Service.

Support is provided by email at support@polartrace.io. The support level for each plan, including any target response time, is shown on the pricing page. Response times are targets rather than guarantees. Support covers the Service itself; it does not cover your own applications, infrastructure or code, although we will often help where we can.

We protect the Service with measures appropriate to the data it handles, including encryption of data in transit, hashed password storage, HTTP-only session cookies, account lockout after repeated failed sign-ins, role-based access control within workspaces, an audit log of administrative actions, and workspace-scoped API and agent keys. The Privacy Policy describes these measures and our sub-processors in more detail.

Security is shared. You are responsible for the systems you install agents on, for the secrets you configure, for who you invite to your workspace, and for the data you choose to send. We will notify you without undue delay if we become aware of a security incident affecting your Customer Data.

Each of us will keep the other’s confidential information confidential, use it only for the purposes of this agreement, and protect it with at least reasonable care. Customer Data is your confidential information. Non-public information about the Service, its pricing negotiations and roadmap is ours. Confidential information does not include information that is public through no fault of the recipient, already known to the recipient, independently developed, or lawfully received from a third party. Either of us may disclose confidential information when required by law, after giving the other reasonable notice where permitted.

We warrant that the Service will perform materially as described in our documentation and that we will not materially reduce its security during your subscription. Your sole remedy if we breach this warranty is that we will use reasonable efforts to correct the problem, and if we cannot, you may terminate the affected subscription and receive a pro-rata refund of prepaid fees for the remaining term.

Except for that warranty, the Service is provided as is and as available. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all other warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or will detect every fault in your systems. Observability data can be delayed, sampled or incomplete; you must not rely on the Service as your only safeguard for safety-critical or financial decisions.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither party is liable to the other for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data or goodwill, however caused, even if advised of the possibility.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, each party’s total liability arising out of or relating to this agreement, in aggregate, is limited to the greater of (a) the fees you paid to Polartrace for the Service in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim and (b) US$100.

These limits do not apply to a party’s indemnification obligations, to your obligation to pay fees, to breaches of the acceptable-use section, to either party’s infringement of the other’s intellectual property, or to liability that cannot be limited by law, such as for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

We will defend you against any third-party claim that the Service, used as permitted by these Terms, infringes that third party’s intellectual property rights, and pay the damages and costs finally awarded or agreed in settlement. This does not cover claims arising from Customer Data, from your modifications, or from combining the Service with things we did not supply. If a claim arises we may modify the Service, obtain a licence, or terminate the affected part and refund prepaid fees for the remaining term.

You will defend us against any third-party claim arising from Customer Data, from your use of the Service in breach of these Terms or applicable law, or from your own products and services, and pay the damages and costs finally awarded or agreed in settlement.

The indemnified party must notify the other promptly, allow it to control the defence and settlement, and cooperate reasonably. No settlement may impose obligations on the indemnified party without its consent.

You may stop using the Service, cancel a subscription, or ask us to close your workspace at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms and do not fix the breach within 15 days of our notice, immediately if the breach threatens the security or integrity of the Service or other customers, if fees are unpaid 15 days after we notify you, or if we are required to by law. We may also terminate a Free workspace that has been inactive for more than 12 months after emailing you 30 days beforehand.

We may stop offering the Service altogether on at least 90 days’ notice, in which case we will refund prepaid fees for the period after the Service ends.

On termination your right to use the Service ends, section 5 applies to your data, and any sections that by their nature should survive (including your data, confidentiality, warranties, liability, indemnification and governing law) survive.

We will not use your name or logo in marketing materials, customer lists or case studies without your written permission, which you may withdraw at any time.

These Terms are governed by [the laws of <country>], without regard to conflict-of-law rules. If a dispute arises, each of us will first try to resolve it in good faith by contacting the other in writing and, if needed, by a call between representatives with authority to settle. If we cannot resolve it within 30 days, the dispute will be brought exclusively in [the courts of <city>, <country>], and each party submits to that jurisdiction. Nothing in this section prevents either party from seeking urgent injunctive relief in any competent court. If you are a consumer in a jurisdiction whose mandatory law grants you additional rights, those rights are not affected.

We may update these Terms. For material changes we will email the workspace owner at least 30 days before they take effect and post the new version with a new effective date at https://polartrace.io/terms. Changes required by law, or that make the Terms more favourable to you, may take effect sooner. Using the Service after a change takes effect means you accept it; if you do not, cancel before then.

• Entire agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Refund Policy, the pricing page, and any written agreement between us make up the whole agreement and replace any earlier terms, proposals or representations.
• Notices. We send notices to the owner’s account email address and, for the whole workspace, to its administrators. Send notices to us at support@polartrace.io or by post to [Registered company name], [Registered office address].
• Assignment. You may not assign this agreement without our consent, except to a successor to your whole business. We may assign it to an affiliate or a successor to our business on notice to you.
• Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control, except for payment obligations.
• Export and sanctions. You confirm that you are not located in, and will not use the Service from or for the benefit of, a country or person subject to sanctions or export restrictions that prohibit it.
• Severability and waiver. If a provision is unenforceable it will be enforced to the maximum extent permitted and the rest remains in force. A failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of it.
• Relationship. We are independent contractors. Nothing here creates a partnership, agency or employment relationship.

[Registered company name], trading as Polartrace
[Registered office address]
support@polartrace.io