Terms of Use

These Terms of Use ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Code There ("we", "us"), a company based in Ontario, Canada, for the Plain Text API website, customer portal and API (together, the "Service"). By creating an account, using an API key, or otherwise using the Service you agree to these Terms. If you use the Service for an organisation, you confirm you may bind it. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. The Service

Plain Text API extracts plain text from documents, web pages and data files, converts files from one format to another, can store results temporarily and return a download link, and can process jobs in the background and notify a webhook. Which features, limits and formats apply to you depends on your plan.

2. Accounts and API keys

• You must provide accurate information and keep your login and API keys secret. You are responsible for everything done with your keys.
• Tell us promptly if you think a key has been exposed. You can rotate or revoke keys in the portal.
• One person or organisation may not create multiple free accounts to avoid plan limits.
• We may suspend or close accounts that breach these Terms or put the Service at risk.
• You can close your account yourself at any time on the Security page of the customer portal. See section 13.

3. Acceptable use

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

• submit, convert, store or distribute content that is illegal, or that you do not have the right to use, copy, convert or share, including material that infringes copyright, trademark or other rights;
• submit child sexual abuse material, content that exploits or endangers minors, malware, or content used for fraud, harassment or unlawful surveillance;
• use the Service to access systems or data without permission, probe internal networks, bypass our network address restrictions, or attempt to defeat security or rate limits;
• interfere with the Service, overload it, or use it to attack others;
• resell or provide the Service to third parties as a competing standalone service, or reverse engineer it, except where the law allows;
• fetch web pages in breach of the terms, access controls or robots rules of the site, or in a way that harms that site. You are responsible for the pages you ask us to retrieve.

We may block requests, remove hosted files and suspend access without notice when we believe a breach is occurring.

4. Your content and our licence to process it

You keep all rights to the files, text and URLs you submit and to the output we produce from them ("Your Content"). You give us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide licence to host, copy, transform and transmit Your Content only as needed to provide the Service to you (for example to convert a file, store a hosted result for the retention period, and deliver it to your webhook), and to comply with law and enforce these Terms. We do not use Your Content to train machine learning models.

You confirm that you own Your Content or have all permissions, licences and consents needed to submit it, to have it converted, and (where you use hosted links or webhooks) to have copies stored and sent to the destinations you choose, and that doing so does not infringe anyone's rights or break any law.

5. Copyright complaints and takedown

We respect intellectual property rights and respond to notices of alleged infringement under Canada's Copyright Act (notice and notice) and, to the extent it applies, the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

To report content that is stored or linked through the Service, send a notice to [email protected] with the subject "Copyright notice" that includes: (a) your name and contact details; (b) a description of the copyrighted work; (c) the URL of the hosted file or other information that lets us find it; (d) a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorised by the owner, its agent or the law; (e) a statement, under penalty of perjury where applicable, that the information is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act for the owner; and (f) your physical or electronic signature.

When we receive a complete notice we may remove or disable access to the content, forward the notice to the account holder, and keep a record of it. If you believe content was removed by mistake, you may send a counter-notice with your contact details, the location of the removed content, a statement that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or misidentification, and consent to the jurisdiction described in section 17. We may restore content after a counter-notice if the complainant does not take legal action within the period the law allows. We will close the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe.

Because we convert and temporarily host files that our customers send, we do not review that content in advance and we are not the publisher of it.

6. Plans, billing and renewals

• Paid plans are billed in advance, monthly or yearly, through Stripe. By subscribing you authorise us and Stripe to charge your payment method on each renewal until you cancel.
• Prices exclude taxes unless stated. You are responsible for applicable taxes. We may change prices or plan limits with at least 30 days' notice; the change applies from your next renewal.
• Changing plans. An upgrade takes effect straight away: you pay the difference for the rest of the current period, after credit for the time you have already paid for, and any unused monthly allowance of your previous plan is added to the new plan until the end of that calendar month. A downgrade, or a switch between monthly and yearly billing, takes effect when your current paid period ends and nothing is charged for it in the meantime. Usage already counted this month stays counted.
• You can cancel at any time in the portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period, and you keep access until then. Except where the law requires otherwise, fees already paid are not refundable and we do not give pro-rated refunds for unused time.
• If a payment fails we may retry it, restrict paid features and move your account to the free plan.
• Usage limits (per minute, day and month), file size limits, hosted file allowances and webhook allowances are part of your plan. When you reach a limit the API returns an error until the limit resets or you upgrade.

6A. Free plan

The free plan is provided to let you evaluate the Service. It may be changed or withdrawn, and it carries no service commitments.

7. Hosted files and links

• Hosted files are temporary. We delete them automatically after the retention period shown in your account or documentation. Do not rely on them for storage or backup. Download what you need.
• A link gives access to anyone who has it until it expires. You are responsible for deciding who receives a link and for not hosting content that should stay confidential.
• We may delete hosted files earlier, for example to enforce these Terms or respond to a legal request.

8. Webhooks and background jobs

• You are responsible for the webhook endpoints you provide, for verifying our signature, and for the security of the data they receive. We send results to the URL you give us and are not responsible for what happens after delivery.
• We retry failed deliveries a limited number of times. Delivery is not guaranteed. You can always fetch a job's result from the API while it is retained.
• Background jobs that are interrupted by maintenance or an outage may fail and need to be submitted again. Failed jobs are not counted against your request quota.

9. Accuracy and no professional advice

Extraction and conversion depend on the quality and structure of the input. Scanned images without a text layer are not read (we do not provide OCR), and layout, fonts, formatting, tables and special characters may change during conversion. Encrypted or damaged files may fail. You are responsible for checking the output before relying on it, especially for legal, medical, financial or other important uses. Output is not professional advice.

10. Availability and changes to the Service

We work to keep the Service available, but it is provided without any promise that it will be uninterrupted or error free, and no uptime commitment applies unless we agree one in writing. We may change, add or remove features, formats and limits, and we will give reasonable notice of changes that significantly reduce paid functionality.

11. Third-party services and content

The Service relies on third parties such as Stripe and Cloudflare, and may retrieve content from websites you specify. We are not responsible for those third parties or their content. All third-party product, file format and company names and trademarks mentioned in the Service (including Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, Adobe PDF, OpenDocument, Stripe and Cloudflare) belong to their respective owners. They are used only to identify the file types and services involved. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by them, and no licence to use their marks is granted through the Service. The "Plain Text API" name and logo are used by Code There.

12. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information and your content. It forms part of these Terms.

13. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time from the Security page of the customer portal. Deleting your account takes effect immediately: your keys stop working, any paid subscription is cancelled with no refund for the unused part of the period, and your data is deleted as described in the Privacy Policy. This cannot be undone. We may suspend or terminate access immediately if you breach these Terms, if we must to comply with law, or if your use creates risk or cost for us or others. We may also end the Service or a plan on 30 days' notice, in which case we will refund prepaid fees for the period after the end date. When an account ends we delete or anonymise its data as described in the Privacy Policy. Sections that by their nature should survive (for example 4, 5, 9, 14 to 17) continue after termination.

14. Warranty disclaimer

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available". We disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy and that the Service will meet your requirements or be error free. Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these exclusions, so they may not apply to you in full.

15. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we and our suppliers will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill or business opportunity, arising from or related to the Service, even if advised of the possibility. Our total liability for all claims relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim and 100 Canadian dollars. These limits do not exclude liability that cannot be excluded by law.

16. Indemnity

You will defend and indemnify us, our affiliates and personnel against claims, damages, losses and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from Your Content, from your use of the Service in breach of these Terms or the law, or from your infringement or violation of another person's rights, including claims by copyright owners or by the operators of websites you ask us to retrieve.

17. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there, without regard to conflict of law rules. The courts of Ontario have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes, except that either of us may seek urgent injunctive relief in any competent court and nothing here limits consumer rights that cannot be waived under the law of your place of residence. Before starting a claim, please contact us so we can try to resolve it informally.

18. General

These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between us about the Service. If a provision is found unenforceable the rest remains in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not transfer your rights without our consent; we may transfer ours in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets. We may update these Terms; when changes are material we will notify you by email or in the portal at least 14 days beforehand, and continued use after they take effect means you accept them.

19. Contact

Code There, Ontario, Canada. Email: [email protected].