Terms of Service.

Who we are and what this covers

When we say we, our, or us, we mean DB.GARDEN LLC, an Oregon limited liability company at 4912 Hampton Ct, Lake Oswego, OR 97035, United States.

When we say the Service, we mean the db.garden website at db.garden, the application at app.db.garden, and the client pages you publish from it, whether you reach them in a browser or on a phone.

When we say you or your, we mean the person or the business that holds a db.garden account. When we say your clients, we mean the homeowners and other people you design for, who see a project you have published but who do not have a db.garden account of their own.

We may update these terms. When we make a significant change we will change the date at the top of this page and email the address on your account. Using the Service after that means you accept the current terms. If there are times when we do not enforce a right or a provision here, that is not us waiving it.

Account terms

1. You are responsible for keeping your account and your password secure, and for making sure anyone else on your account does the same. We cannot be liable for any loss that follows from a failure to do that.
2. You are responsible for everything posted to your account and everything done under it, including by other people you have given seats to.
3. You must be a human. Accounts registered by bots or by other automated means are not allowed.
4. You must be able to form a binding contract, and you must not be barred from receiving services under the laws of the United States or of any other applicable jurisdiction.
5. One free trial per customer. If you have trialed db.garden before, billing starts as soon as you subscribe again.
6. You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you enter about your clients, and for having the right to enter it. There is more on that below in Your clients' information.

What you may not use db.garden for

When you use the Service, you agree not to:

• Collect or extract information or data from accounts that are not yours, including client pages that were not published to you.
• Work around, switch off, or otherwise interfere with the security-related parts of the Service, or probe it for weaknesses except under a security disclosure we have agreed to in writing.
• Trick, defraud, or mislead us or anyone else using the Service, including by filing false reports or by impersonating another person.
• Upload or transmit viruses or any other malware, or any information collection mechanism such as tracking pixels or web bugs.
• Interfere with the Service, disrupt it, or place an undue burden on it or on the networks it connects to. Scraping the plant catalog in bulk sits here.
• Harass, intimidate, or threaten anyone, including anyone working on the Service.
• Use the Service in any way that breaks an applicable law or regulation, or that infringes someone else's rights.
• Resell access to the Service, or share a single seat between several people. Seats are per person.

Accounts found in breach of any of the above may be canceled without notice. If you want to report a breach by someone else, email [email protected] with enough detail to find it, including links or screenshots. We will not tell the reported account who reported them.

Payment, plans, and taxes

1. db.garden has no free tier. Every plan begins with a 14-day trial, and a payment card is required to start it. Nothing is charged while the trial runs.
2. Prices are shown on the pricing page and are in US dollars. Solo is $49 per month, or $468 per year. Studio is $39 per seat per month with a two-seat minimum, or $384 per seat per year. Firm plans are quoted individually. A promotional rate applies only for the period stated when you take it, after which the standard rate applies.
3. Payments are handled by Stripe, and no card details reach our servers at all. We store no card number, no last four digits, and no record of individual transactions. What we keep is the identifier Stripe uses for your customer record, plus your current subscription state, which is what tells the product your account is active. Your invoices and the card on file are read from Stripe each time you open your billing page, and are not kept afterwards.
4. Changing your plan or your seat count takes effect immediately, in both directions, and Stripe prorates the difference. Moving up adds the balance to your next invoice. Moving down puts a credit on it.
5. All fees are exclusive of taxes, levies, and duties. Where we are required to collect a tax we will add it and pass it on to the authority. Otherwise you are responsible for paying it.
6. If a payment fails, we email you and your access continues for a grace period of 7 days while we retry. If it has not gone through by the end of that period, the account moves to read-only and your published client pages stop being reachable. Nothing is deleted. Pay the outstanding amount and everything comes back.

Automatic renewal and how to cancel

This section exists to be unambiguous about the thing customers most often get caught by, so we would rather over-explain it.

• A card is required to start the trial. We collect it at signup through Stripe. You are not charged during the trial.
• The trial runs for 14 days. On day 15 the subscription starts by itself, with no further action from you, and we charge the plan, seat count, and billing period you chose at signup, at the price shown at the time.
• It renews automatically. A monthly plan renews every month and an annual plan renews every year, at the then-current price for your plan, until you cancel. There is no fixed end date.
• You can cancel at any time, in two clicks, on your own. Open Billing in your account and choose to cancel. No phone call, no email exchange, and no retention conversation. If you would rather we did it for you, email [email protected] from the address on the account and we will.
• Cancel before day 15 and you are never charged. Cancel after that and the cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for. You keep full access until then.
• We will tell you before we charge you. We email you during the trial, including a reminder two days before it ends. Every charge appears in your billing page straight away, with an invoice you can download. If we ever change the price of your plan, we will give you at least 30 days notice first.

Refunds

Bad refund policies are infuriating. You feel like the company is trying to rip you off, and we never want you to feel that way. The 14-day trial is there so that you can decide before you pay anything. After that, if something is wrong, write to [email protected] and we will work it out.

Cases where we would refund in full:

• You were just charged for the next month and you meant to cancel. We will refund it.
• You forgot to cancel some months ago and have not used the account since. We will refund those months.

Cases where we would look at a partial refund or a credit:

• You forgot to cancel a year ago but there has been activity on the account since. We will look at the usage and work out a fair share.
• We had extended downtime, or you wrote to support and it took us days to answer.

To be plain about the default, since this is where the fine print usually hides: canceling part way through a period does not automatically generate a pro-rata refund of that period. You keep access to the end of it instead. Everything on the edges is case-by-case, so tell us what happened.

Cancellation and termination

1. You are responsible for canceling your own account, and we give you a no-questions-asked way to do it inside the app. An unread email to us is not by itself a cancellation, though a request to [email protected] from the account address will always be honored.
2. We do not delete your work when you cancel. Your projects, plant palettes, budgets, and uploads stay exactly as you left them. The account becomes read-only, and every client page you have published stops being reachable by the people you sent it to. Subscribe again and all of it comes back, in place.
3. If you want your data actually erased rather than kept, ask us and we will erase it. See the Privacy Policy for how that works and how long it takes. Erasure cannot be undone, so we will confirm with you first.
4. Export your work before you cancel if you want a copy outside db.garden. Reading and exporting need an active subscription.
5. We can suspend or end an account, and refuse the Service to anyone, where there has been a breach of these terms, non-payment, or conduct that puts other customers or the Service at risk. Except where the breach is serious or where the law requires otherwise, we will tell you why and give you a chance to put it right first.
6. Verbal, physical, written, or other abuse, including threats, aimed at anyone working on the Service will end the account immediately.

Your clients' information

This part has no equivalent in most software terms, and it is the most important section on this page, so please read it.

Most of the personal information inside db.garden is not yours and it is not ours. It belongs to your clients. For a project you may store a client's name, email address, phone numbers, and the street address of the property, along with the design, the prices you quoted, and the comments they leave on the page you share with them. Those people never signed up for db.garden and never agreed to anything with us.

So the roles split in two, and they are not the same role:

• For your own account information, meaning your name, your login, your billing details, and how you use the app, we decide what happens to it. In data protection language we are the controller.
• For your clients' information, you decide what is collected and why, and we only handle it to run the Service for you and on your instructions. In data protection language you are the controller and we are the processor. We do not use it for our own purposes, we do not market to your clients, and we never sell it.

Which means, concretely, that these are yours to do:

• Have the right to enter a client's details before you enter them, and tell that client that you use software to design and to share their project.
• Handle any request a client makes about their own information. If one of them asks us directly, we will point them back to you, because you are the one who holds the relationship and we cannot verify who they are.
• Send client pages only to the people they are for. A published page is reachable by anyone holding its link, and the link is a long random code that cannot be guessed, but it is still a link. Treat it like one.

If your firm needs a formal data processing agreement, ask us at [email protected] and we will put one in place.

Artificial intelligence features

Some parts of db.garden use AI models that run at other companies, so text and images from your account leave our servers to reach them. You should know exactly what and when.

• What is sent. When you ask for plant suggestions or use another AI feature, we send the relevant project text, which can include the notes and site descriptions you typed, along with any photographs of the property you uploaded for that feature.
• Who receives it. Anthropic, as a sub-processor under contract to us. Every AI feature that is switched on today is routed to Anthropic, so that is where the project text and any photographs go. OpenAI is configured only for a design-rendering feature that is not switched on. Both are listed in the Privacy Policy alongside everyone else who handles data for us.
• What they may do with it. We use their business offerings, under terms that do not permit your content to be used to train their general models.
• Nothing goes out on its own. AI features only run when you ask for them. Nothing in your account is sent to a model in the background.
• The output is a suggestion, not advice. AI systems get things wrong with total confidence. A suggested plant may be unsuited to the site, unavailable locally, invasive in your region, or toxic. You are the professional. Check it before it reaches a client or goes in the ground, and do not treat it as horticultural, engineering, or legal advice.

Because a client's property and their notes can be part of this, tell your clients that AI tools are used in your process if that is something they would want to know.

Changes to the service and to prices

1. We may change or discontinue parts of the Service. Sometimes a feature turns out to be technically impossible to keep, and sometimes we redesign something because we think it can be better. Where a change removes something you rely on, we will give notice and, wherever we can, a way to get your work out.
2. We may change our prices. If we change the price of a plan you are already on, we will give you at least 30 days notice by email to the address on your account before the new price applies, so that you can cancel first if you would rather.

Uptime, security, and privacy

1. You use the Service at your own risk. We provide it on an as-is and as-available basis. We do not offer a service level agreement, and we do take uptime seriously.
2. We may temporarily limit an account whose usage is far beyond the normal pattern. Except where the load is actively degrading the Service for other customers, we will contact you before we do anything.
3. We take measures to protect your data, including encryption in transit, encryption of backups, and limited and audited access to production systems. There is more detail on the security page. No system is perfect, and if we ever have a breach that affects you, we will tell you.

4. When you use db.garden you trust us with your data and with your clients' data. We take that seriously. You agree that we may handle it as described in the Privacy Policy and for no other purpose. A person here may look at the contents of your account only in these cases:

   • To help with a support request you have made. We ask for your consent before opening your account.
   • When an automated process fails part way through. We would rather fix the cause than look at the data, and in the rare case where we have to look, we look at the least amount that will do.
   • To keep the Service safe. We read logs and metadata as part of normal security work, and we may look at an account while investigating a report of abuse.
   • Where the law requires it. We are a US business with our infrastructure in the United States, and we only hand over or preserve customer data when compelled by a valid legal order. Our policy is to tell the affected customer first, unless we are legally prohibited from doing so.
5. We use other companies to host and to run parts of the Service. Every one of them that handles personal data is listed in the Privacy Policy.
6. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, we act as a service provider and not as a business or a third party with respect to the information you put into the Service. We use it only for the purpose you signed up for and as described in these terms and in the Privacy Policy. We do not retain, use, disclose, or sell it for any other commercial purpose.

Who owns what

1. Your content stays yours. The designs you draw, the palettes you build, the photographs, logos, and site plans you upload, and everything you write in the app remain entirely yours. You give us the limited license we need to store it, display it back to you, and publish the client pages you choose to publish. That license ends when the content is deleted, except for copies sitting in backups until they age out.
2. You are responsible for having the rights to what you upload. Do not upload a photograph you do not have permission to use.
3. We do not screen content in advance, and we reserve the right, but not the obligation, to remove content from the Service.
4. We own the Service itself, including the software, the interface, and the design. Using db.garden does not give you any ownership in it. You may not copy or reuse the code or the visual design without our written permission, and you must ask before using our name or logo for promotion.
5. All content in the Service must comply with US copyright law. If you believe something in db.garden infringes your copyright, email [email protected] with the work, where the material is, your contact details, and a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorized. We will act on it.

The plant catalog

The plant catalog, its descriptions, its growing data, and its photography are ours or are used by us under license from others. A large part of the photography comes from public collections such as Wikimedia Commons, under open licenses that mostly require the photographer to be credited. We hold the license terms and the credit for each image, and we are working through showing them beside the photographs. Until that is finished, ask us for the credit on any particular image and we will send it.

You may use the catalog inside db.garden for your own design work, including in the presentations and client pages you produce with it. You may not extract, copy, or redistribute the catalog as a dataset, or use it to build a competing product. If you want to reuse an individual photograph outside db.garden, check its credit line first, because the license belongs to the photographer and not to us.

Plant data is compiled from many sources and describes how a plant generally behaves. It is not a guarantee about a particular specimen or a particular site. Hardiness, mature size, toxicity, and invasiveness vary by region and by year, and local restrictions on planting are yours to check.

Features and bugs

We design db.garden carefully, based on our own experience and on what designers tell us. Even so, there is no such thing as software that suits everybody, and we make no promise that it will meet your specific requirements.

We test before we ship. As with any software, db.garden will still have bugs. We track what gets reported to us and work through the important ones first, especially anything touching security or privacy. Not every reported bug gets fixed, and we do not promise error-free software.

Liability

We mention liability in a few places above. Here it is in one place.

You expressly understand and agree that DB.GARDEN LLC shall not be liable, in law or in equity, to you or to any third party for any direct, indirect, incidental, lost profits, special, consequential, punitive, or exemplary damages, including damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data, or other intangible losses, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages, resulting from: (i) the use of or the inability to use the Service; (ii) the cost of obtaining substitute goods or services; (iii) unauthorized access to or alteration of your transmissions or data; (iv) statements or conduct of any third party on the Service; (v) any reliance on plant data or on AI-generated suggestions; or (vi) any other matter relating to these terms or to the Service, whether as a breach of contract, tort including negligence, or any other theory of liability.

Where liability cannot be excluded, our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose.

In other words: choosing db.garden means making a bet on us. If the bet does not work out, that is on you and not on us. We do our level best to be a safe bet, by running the business carefully and by investing in security and infrastructure. If you choose to use db.garden, thank you for betting on us.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Oregon, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any dispute arising from them must be brought in the state courts located in Clackamas County, Oregon, or in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, and both of us consent to the jurisdiction of those courts. If you are a consumer rather than a business, this does not take away any right you have to bring a claim in the courts of the place where you live.

Before starting anything formal, please email us. Nearly everything is faster to settle in an inbox than in a courtroom.

Questions

If any part of these terms is unclear, write to [email protected] and a person will answer. We would much rather explain something now than have you find out later.

Notices in writing, including a notice of cancellation, can be sent to DB.GARDEN LLC, 4912 Hampton Ct, Lake Oswego, OR 97035, United States. Canceling in your account or by email is faster, and both work.