Terms Of Service

Herald is operated by The Speaking Realm, LLC, a limited liability company organized in Idaho. Where these terms say we or us, that is who they mean.

Using this site means you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not publish a card.

Publishing a card is a one time purchase. It activates a permanent web address that serves your contact details to anyone who scans your code.

Editing a published card is free, without limit, for as long as the service operates. Your card is never placed behind a recurring charge: what you paid once is the whole price of it, permanently.

Additional cards, and making your logo the whole card, which includes removing the Herald badge, are separate one time purchases at the prices shown at checkout. Once the logo design is paid for on a card, switching that card between your colors and your logo is free in both directions, for good.

Team accounts are the one thing billed as a subscription, per seat and per year, and it is described in full on the pricing page. It is a separate arrangement: it never changes an individual card somebody already bought, and a team's seats being unpaid never switches off a card that was paid for personally.

Everything is bought on the website. The iPhone and Android apps are free, sell nothing, and contain no purchases.

Set It Up For You is a one time purchase at the price shown on its page and at checkout. It covers setting up your account and card and the published card itself, so you do not also pay to publish it. The higher price includes your logo as the whole card, which also removes the Herald badge.

Buying it authorizes us to create a Herald account with the email address you give us, and to create, design, publish and later edit a card on that account on your behalf, using the details and pictures you send. That card is marked as managed by Herald so that we can do this. Every change we make is recorded.

We never set, see or know your password. We email you a link, and you choose your own password from it. We never sign in as you.

Edits after that are free, for as long as the service operates. Email us the change and we make it within two business days. We accept a change only when it comes from the email address on the account; anything else, we answer by asking you to write from that address. Questions are answered free, by email.

You can edit the card yourself at any time, in the same builder anybody else uses, and you can ask us to stop managing your card whenever you like. We stop, and the card and its code stay yours, unchanged.

The 30 day refund promise in Refunds applies to it exactly as it does to a card. A full refund takes the card down with it, and its code is kept and never given to anybody else.

A team's year renews automatically on the date shown in the team's Billing section, and keeps renewing until an admin stops it. Only the admin who set the team up can pay for it or stop it.

Before a team's year renews automatically, we email the team's admins twice, 35 days and 7 days before the charge, with the date, the amount, the seat count and how to stop it. We also email admins before a year that will not renew comes to an end, and each member whose team card would switch off, a week before it does.

A renewal charges the seats on the subscription at that moment, and the seat count follows the roster: somebody joining raises it, somebody leaving lowers it, and the difference goes on the team's next invoice rather than being charged the moment it changes. Nobody is charged for joining or leaving on the day it happens.

Stopping the renewal takes nothing down early. Everything stays live until the end of the year already paid for. After that date, the cards the team's seats paid for switch off and keep their codes, which are never given to anybody else. A card somebody bought themselves is untouched by any of this: it stays live, stays theirs, and keeps the same code.

The same happens if a team is deleted, and to a team whose free first year ends without a year being paid for.

You keep ownership of everything you put on a card. You give us only the permission needed to store it and serve it to people who scan your code, which is the entire product.

You are responsible for what your card says. Do not publish someone else's contact details without their agreement, and do not publish anything unlawful, deceptive, or designed to impersonate another person or business.

We may remove a card that breaks this rule. Where we do, we will tell you why and refund the purchase.

A published card is public by design. Anyone holding the address or the code can read every detail on it, and search engines may index the page. Put nothing on a card that you would not hand to a stranger, because that is exactly what a business card is.

The address contains a random component and is not guessable, but it is not a secret either. Treat it as published.

If a card does not do what this site says it does, write to us within 30 days of purchase and we will refund it in full.

A refunded card comes down with the refund. Its code stops resolving, including on anything already printed, and it is not switched back on afterwards. Publishing it again brings it back, with a new code, at the usual price. We would rather fix the problem than refund it, so tell us what went wrong either way.

The same happens if a payment is charged back through your bank: the money leaves us when the dispute opens, so the card comes down then. If the dispute is resolved in our favor the card goes back up on its own, with its original code, and nothing you printed stops working.

A team's year carries the same promise for the same 30 days: if Herald does not do what this site says it does, write to us within 30 days of the charge and we will refund the year in full, and the team's coverage comes down with it.

After that window the year is not refunded. Stopping the renewal, deleting the team, or taking people off it leaves everything running to the end of the year you paid for, which is why nothing comes down early. Taking somebody off part way through a year leaves a credit against your next invoice rather than money back, and a team that does not renew is not paid it out.

We work to keep published cards reachable at all times, but no service is perfect and we do not promise uninterrupted availability.

If we ever have to shut Herald down, we will give at least ninety days notice to the email on your account and provide an export of your card data before the codes stop resolving.

You can delete your account at any time from the account page. Deletion removes your drafts, your captured contacts, your scan history and your login.

It asks what to do with cards you already published, and both answers are real. Take them down, and their codes stop working immediately, including any already printed. Leave them up, and they carry on serving exactly what they held at that moment: frozen, owned by nobody, uneditable by anybody including us, and with their scan records no longer visible to anyone.

Contacts that other people already saved to their phones stay on their devices. Those are copies we cannot reach, which is a property of how phone contacts work everywhere.

Herald's iPhone and Android apps are a way for you to reach your own cards. They are free, and nothing is sold inside them. A card is bought on the website and then appears in the app on its own.

The apps do not change the promise the product rests on: the person who scans your card still installs nothing, still signs up for nothing, and never needs to know whether you installed anything.

Home screen widgets and wallet passes show a card you already own. A wallet pass carries your card's link rather than a copy of your details, so its code always opens your latest details and stops working if you revoke the card. On a card that uses your logo, you choose whether the pass shows the logo or your colors.

Herald is provided as it is. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, including business opportunities missed because a card was unreachable.

Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the amount you paid us.

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects what you bought, we will email the address on your account before it takes effect.

The date at the top of this page always reflects the current version.