Terms of service

Butter is operated by [legal entity name], of [registered address]. “We” and “us” mean that company. “You” means the church or organisation whose account it is, and everyone you invite into it.

Creating an account means agreeing to these terms. If you are agreeing on behalf of a church, you are confirming you may do so.

Butter writes and sends newsletters to a list of people you hold. You keep a roster, you write an email, and we deliver it and report what happened to it.

• The people on your roster are your contacts, not ours. We hold them to send your mail, and for nothing else. We do not sell them, rent them, market to them, or use them to train anything.
• You are responsible for having permission to email everyone you upload. That means people who asked to hear from your church — not a purchased list, not a directory scraped from somewhere, and not addresses collected for another purpose entirely.
• You can take your list out at any time, and you can ask us to delete it.

One church sending badly damages delivery for every church we send for, so a few things are not negotiable:

• Every newsletter carries an unsubscribe link and a one-click unsubscribe header. You cannot switch these off, and we act on them immediately.
• An address that hard-bounces is stopped automatically. A complaint unsubscribes that person. Neither is something we will reverse on request.
• No misleading subject lines or sender names, and nothing unlawful, harassing, or designed to deceive the person reading it.
• We may pause sending on an account that puts other churches’ delivery at risk. We will tell you why, and we will not do it quietly.

• The trial runs 14 days with no card. Everything works during it, including sending.
• The price follows one number: how many billable contacts are on your list. Adding a card during the trial charges nothing and does not shorten it — the first payment falls on the day the trial was always going to end.
• A billable contact is a unique subscribed address. People who unsubscribed, bounced, or were archived do not count, and stop counting the moment they leave. We never bill for someone who unsubscribed.
• Growing your list never stops you sending. It changes the price at renewal, and the count on the day of renewal sets that price. We do not bill backwards for days already served at a lower price.
• Billing is monthly and in US dollars. Cancelling stops the next payment; it does not refund the period you have already paid for, and everything keeps working until that period ends.
• If a payment fails, the account keeps working in full for 14 days while it is sorted out. After that it becomes read-only: your drafts, templates, roster and archives are all still there, and adding a working card restores everything.

Everyone you invite into your workspace can do everything in it, including sending. Invite accordingly. You are responsible for what the people you invite do, and for keeping sign-in details to yourselves.

You can cancel at any time from Settings. We can end an account that breaks the sending rules above, or that goes unpaid past the grace period described here. If we end an account for a reason that is not your fault, we will refund the unused part of the period you paid for.

We work hard to deliver every newsletter, but no email service can guarantee that a message reaches an inbox — that decision belongs to the receiving mail provider. Butter is provided as it is, without warranties beyond those the law does not let us exclude.

Our liability to you is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. We are not liable for lost income, lost goodwill, or indirect losses. Nothing here limits liability for death, personal injury, or fraud. [review against local law before publishing]

If we change these terms in a way that matters, we will email the billing contact on the account at least 30 days before it takes effect. Carrying on using Butter after that means accepting the change; if you would rather not, cancel and we will refund the unused part of your period.

These terms are governed by the law of [jurisdiction], and disputes go to its courts.