Terms of service

Effective 2026-10-07 · Version 2026-10-07.2

These Terms are the agreement between the shop that uses the hosted Amp-Hour service and [Legal entity], doing business as Amp-Hour ("we", "us"). "The shop" or "you" means the business that created or was given an Amp-Hour shop and the people it lets sign in. They are written in plain English on purpose, and they mean what they say.

1. The service
2. Accounts and shop administrators
3. Acceptable use
4. Your data
5. Fees, trials and billing
6. Availability and support
7. Intellectual property
8. Confidentiality
9. Disclaimer of warranties
10. Limitation of liability
11. Indemnity
12. Termination and data return
13. Governing law and disputes
14. Changes to these Terms
15. Contact

1. The service

Amp-Hour is web-based shop software for plating, anodizing and coating job shops: job travelers, tank chemistry, certificates of compliance, wastewater and hazardous-waste records, quoting, invoicing and the other modules described at amphour.io. These Terms cover the hosted service at amphour.io.

Running the software on your own computer, as described in the installation guide, is not use of the hosted service and is covered by the license that comes with that software, not by these Terms.

By creating a shop, or by accepting an invitation to one, you agree to these Terms and to the Privacy Policy. If you create a shop for a business, you confirm that you are authorized to bind that business, and these Terms apply to the business. You must be at least 18 years old to create a shop. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

2. Accounts and shop administrators

Logins. Each person who uses Amp-Hour has their own login: an email address and a password of at least 12 characters that is not a commonly used password. Keep your password and any two-factor recovery codes to yourself, and tell us at once at support@amphour.io if you think a login has been used by someone else. One exception to one-login-per-person: the shop-floor terminal and the time-clock kiosk may run under one shared staff login, as described on the pricing page, with employees identified by badge.

The shop owner. The account that creates a shop is its owner. The owner can transfer ownership to another member and is the only person who can delete the shop. The owner and the shop's administrators decide who has access: they invite people under Settings > Team, give each person a role (administrator, manager, office, QC or operator), and remove people who leave. Only an administrator can grant the administrator or manager role; managers may add office, QC, operator and portal logins. Customers can be given portal logins that see only their own jobs, shipments, certificates and invoices.

Customer portal. Under Settings > Customer portal the shop decides which of its customers get portal logins and what the portal shows them (jobs and shipments always; invoices, quotes, certificates and quote requests as switched on). A portal user sees only that customer's records. The shop is responsible for giving portal access only to people entitled to see that customer's information and for removing it when they should no longer have it.

Responsibility. The shop is responsible for everything done through its logins, including by former employees until their access is removed. Remove people the day they leave. The shop can require two-factor authentication for its administrators and managers under Settings > Shop; we recommend it.

Staff logins and plans. Each plan includes a number of staff logins (people who sign in and are not customer-portal users). The application does not let a shop invite more staff than its plan allows; to add more, change plans under Settings > Billing.

3. Acceptable use

Use the service for your shop's own business, lawfully. Do not:

• try to read, change or delete another shop's data, or sign in to any account that is not yours;
• probe, scan or load-test the service except as permitted by our vulnerability disclosure policy;
• upload malware or anything designed to interfere with the service or with other shops' use of it;
• share a login between people (other than the terminal and kiosk exception above), or otherwise avoid the staff login limit of your plan;
• resell the service, or offer it to third parties as your own;
• enter data you have no right to hold or to give us, or data that is unlawful where you are;
• send invitations to people who have no connection with your shop, or use the service to send unsolicited messages;
• use the messaging feature to harass anyone, or upload attachments you have no right to store (the application accepts images, PDFs, text, CSV and office documents only, up to 10 MB each, within the allowance in section 6);
• use a promotion code you were not given, share one in a way its terms do not allow, or create accounts to obtain more than one trial;
• use the service in violation of United States export control or sanctions laws.

If a shop does any of these, we may suspend the account or the shop while we sort it out, and may terminate under section 12.

4. Your data

The shop owns its data. Everything your shop enters (customers, parts, jobs, chemistry, certificates, compliance records, invoices, employee records, attachments, messages between its staff, customer-owned stock records) belongs to the shop. We claim no rights in it beyond what is needed to run the service: store it, display it to the people you authorize, back it up and restore it.

We process it on your behalf. For the data your shop enters, the shop is the controller and we are the processor. We act on your instructions as given through the software, we access shop data only as described in the Privacy Policy, we do not sell it, use it for advertising or use it to train models, and every time our staff enter your shop for support the event is written to your shop's security log. We will sign a data processing agreement on request.

Your responsibilities. The shop is responsible for having the right to enter the information it enters, in particular information about its employees (names, badge numbers, hours, training records) and about its customers' people (names, email addresses, phone numbers), and for giving them whatever notice the law where the shop operates requires. The shop is responsible for the accuracy of what it enters and for any confidentiality or export-control obligations it owes its customers for drawings and specifications it uploads.

Backups and your own copies. We back up every shop's database daily and keep those copies for 30 days, as described on the security page. The shop can download its whole database or any table at any time from Settings > Data. Records your shop must keep by law or by its customers' contracts (certificates, wastewater and waste records, training records) are your records; keep your own copies on the schedule those obligations require.

5. Fees, trials and billing

Prices. Plans are priced per shop per month in US dollars, as published at amphour.io/#pricing: at the effective date, Starter $149 with 5 staff logins, Professional $349 with 25, and Business $699 with unlimited staff logins. Every plan has every module. Sales tax or VAT is added where we are required to collect it. We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice by email to the shop owner; the new price applies from the first renewal after the notice period.

Trial. Every new shop gets a 14-day trial of the full service, run at the Professional plan, with no card required. One trial shop per account: an account whose shop is on a trial cannot create another shop until that shop is on a paid plan. When the trial ends without a plan being chosen, the shop becomes read-only: everything can still be viewed and exported, nothing can be added or changed, until a plan is chosen under Settings > Billing.

Promotion codes. A code printed on a flyer or sent by email lengthens the trial to the number of days the code states, counted from the day the shop signed up. One code per shop, entered at sign-up or under Settings > Billing while the shop is on trial. Codes have no cash value, cannot be exchanged for a discount on a paid plan unless the offer says so, may carry an expiry date or a limit on the number of shops that can use them, and we may withdraw a code that has been shared beyond its intended audience. A trial lengthened by a code ends the same way as any other trial.

Billing. Subscriptions are billed monthly in advance by card through Stripe, Inc. Your card details go directly to Stripe; we never see or store the card number. Stripe's terms apply to the payment itself. Receipts come from Stripe by email.

Failed payments. If a payment fails we tell you in the application and by email, and Stripe retries the card. While a payment is outstanding the shop keeps working; if it is not paid after the retries the shop becomes read-only until it is.

Changing or cancelling. You can change plans or cancel at any time under Settings > Billing. A cancellation takes effect at the end of the billing period already paid for; the shop stays fully usable until then and becomes read-only afterwards. We do not refund partial months.

Annual billing and purchase orders are available by arrangement at support@amphour.io. Terms agreed in such an order form take precedence over this section for that shop.

6. Availability and support

Availability. We work to keep the service available at all times, but we do not currently promise a specific level of uptime. Planned maintenance that interrupts the service is done outside United States business hours whenever possible, with notice in the application or by email at least 24 hours ahead, except for urgent security fixes.

Support. Support is by email at support@amphour.io and is included in every plan. Starter shops are answered within one business day; Professional and Business shops are answered the same business day and may also telephone; the Business plan includes onboarding and import help. A business day is Monday to Friday, United States Eastern time, excluding United States federal holidays.

Fair use. The service is sized for job shops, not for bulk data processing. The application applies limits that an ordinary shop will not meet: CSV imports of up to 5,000 rows per upload, attachments of up to 10 MB each within 2 GB per shop, and request rates that stop automated flooding. If your shop needs more, write to support@amphour.io and we will arrange it. We may restrict a login or a shop whose use is degrading the service for others while we talk to you.

Changes to the service. We improve the software continuously and may add, change or retire features. If we retire a feature your shop depends on, we give at least 30 days' notice and a way to export the data it held.

7. Intellectual property

We own the Amp-Hour software, the service and the amphour.io site, including their design, documentation and trademarks. For the term of your subscription, we grant your shop a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the hosted service for its internal business. You may not copy, modify, sublicense or reverse engineer the hosted service, or remove notices from it.

Your shop keeps all rights in its name, logo and data. You allow us to display your logo and shop name inside your own shop's pages and documents, which is what the Appearance settings are for. We do not name customers publicly without their permission.

If you send us suggestions about the software, we may use them without any obligation to you, and we will not say they came from you without asking.

8. Confidentiality

Each side will keep the other's non-public information confidential, use it only for this agreement, and protect it with at least the care it uses for its own information of the same kind. Shop data is the shop's confidential information. Our non-public information includes pricing agreed with your shop and anything we tell you about security that is not on our public pages.

This does not cover information that is public through no fault of the receiving side, that it already had, that it received lawfully from someone else, or that it developed independently. Either side may disclose information when the law requires it, after telling the other side where the law allows, and only to the extent required.

These obligations last for three years after the agreement ends, and for shop data for as long as we hold any of it.

9. Disclaimer of warranties

The service is provided as is and as available. To the extent the law allows, we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We do not promise that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free.

The software supports your compliance work; it does not replace it. Certificates of compliance issued through Amp-Hour are your shop's certificates: your people check the readings and sign them. Figures the software computes from what you enter (chemical additions, amp-hour shares of a shared tank load, job costing, metal surcharges, customer-stock balances) are arithmetic on your numbers, not a guarantee of a result in the tank or on the invoice. Your obligations under Nadcap, AS9100, ISO 9001 and your customers' specifications; under 40 CFR Part 433, your local pretreatment permit and its reporting; under RCRA for hazardous waste accumulation and manifests; and under OSHA for hazard communication, remain your shop's obligations. The chemistry addition and replenishment figures the software shows are arithmetic on the readings, tank volumes and targets you entered; check them before adding anything to a tank. Permit limits, report dates and accumulation start dates are what your shop entered.

Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these disclaimers. Where that is so, they apply only to the extent permitted.

10. Limitation of liability

Neither side is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, consequential, special or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost business or business interruption, however caused and under any theory of liability, even if told they were possible.

Our total liability to your shop for everything arising out of or related to the service and these Terms is limited to the fees your shop paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim.

These limits do not apply to either side's obligations under section 11, to a breach of section 8, or to liability that cannot be limited by law, such as liability for fraud, gross negligence or willful misconduct, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

11. Indemnity

By the shop. Your shop will defend us against, and pay any resulting damages, costs and reasonable legal fees for, any third-party claim arising from the data your shop entered, from your shop's use of the service in breach of these Terms, or from claims by your shop's employees or customers about information your shop entered about them.

By us. We will defend your shop against, and pay any resulting damages, costs and reasonable legal fees for, any third-party claim that the hosted service as we provide it infringes a United States patent, copyright or trademark. If such a claim is made or seems likely, we may fix or replace the affected part, or, if that is not reasonably possible, terminate the affected service and refund any fees paid in advance for the period after termination. This does not cover claims arising from your data, from combinations with things we did not supply, or from use in breach of these Terms.

Procedure. The side seeking defense must tell the other promptly, give it control of the defense and any settlement (no settlement may admit fault on behalf of the other side without its consent), and cooperate reasonably at the defending side's expense.

12. Termination and data return

By the shop. You can stop using the service at any time: cancel the subscription under Settings > Billing (section 5), or the owner can delete the shop under Settings > Shop, which removes the shop and its database immediately. Download a backup first; deletion cannot be undone, and the shop's data leaves our backups within 30 days.

By us. We may suspend or terminate a shop if its subscription is unpaid after notice; if the shop materially breaches these Terms and does not cure within 14 days of notice (immediately for a breach of section 3 that threatens the security of the service or of other shops, or when the law requires it); or if we discontinue the hosted service altogether, in which case we give at least 90 days' notice and the export described below.

Data return. After a subscription ends, for whatever reason other than the owner deleting the shop, the shop is read-only and its administrators can still sign in and export every table as CSV or the whole database as one SQLite file from Settings > Data for at least 30 days. After the retention period in the Privacy Policy the shop's data is deleted. If you need help with an export in that period, ask and we will help.

Sections 4 (ownership of your data), 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13 and this section survive termination.

13. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wisconsin, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute that the parties cannot resolve themselves will be brought in the state or federal courts located in [County], Wisconsin, and both sides consent to their jurisdiction. Either side may instead bring a qualifying claim in small claims court where it lives or does business.

Before either side starts a lawsuit, it will write to the other describing the dispute and what would resolve it, and the two sides will spend at least 30 days trying to resolve it in good faith. Nothing here stops either side from seeking an injunction to protect its confidential information or intellectual property.

14. Changes to these Terms

When we change these Terms we change the version and effective date at the top. For a change that reduces your rights or increases your obligations, we email the owner of every shop at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you do not agree, cancel before the effective date and section 12 applies. Continuing to use the service after the effective date means you accept the new Terms. Earlier versions are available on request.

15. Contact

support@amphour.io
[Legal entity], [Mailing address], Wisconsin, United States