Terms of Service & EULA

1. Who these terms are with

These terms are an agreement between you and Mikonak Digital (“we”, “us”, and “our”), a sole proprietorship (eenmanszaak) registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KVK) under number 42183792, with VAT identification number (btw-id) NL005570532B26, at Luitje Broekemastraat 72, 1447 GD Purmerend, the Netherlands. InkSpine is a trade name of Mikonak Digital and the software and service described on inkspine.app. For questions about these terms, support, or a purchase, email support@inkspine.app.

Two parties are involved in a Core purchase. Paddle is the merchant of record and the seller: it takes the payment, handles tax and sends the receipt, and the sale itself is made under Paddle’s checkout terms. Mikonak Digital is the developer and licensor of the software: these terms are the licence for using InkSpine, and they say what we are responsible for. They do not replace Paddle’s checkout terms for the payment, and nothing in either set of terms limits the rights you have by law.

If you use InkSpine, join its beta programme, or buy InkSpine Core, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the beta or make a purchase.

2. Your licence to InkSpine

Subject to these terms, we grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive and non-transferable licence to install and use InkSpine for your own writing work, on up to three of your devices at a time (you can move a licence between devices from Preferences → Account). The software is licensed, not sold; InkSpine and its licensors keep all intellectual-property rights in the app, its design, and its code.

We may end a Core licence only if: (a) the purchase is refunded in full; (b) the payment is reversed by a chargeback; or (c) you share or sell the key, or otherwise breach §2 in a serious way, and, where the breach can be put right, you have not put it right within 14 days of our email asking you to. If you dispute the payment with your card issuer, we suspend Core while the dispute is open and switch it back on if the dispute is decided in your favour; that is different from a refund or a lost dispute, which end the licence. Ending or suspending a licence never touches your files: your projects stay on your computer as ordinary files you can read outside InkSpine, and the free version keeps working.

You may not copy, rent, resell, sublicense, distribute or publicly make available the software, or reuse its code, design or other InkSpine content to build a competing product. Your own writing and your exports are never covered by this. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble InkSpine, or otherwise attempt to derive its source code, except to the extent applicable law permits despite this restriction. You may not bypass licence controls, probe or disrupt our services, or use InkSpine unlawfully. Nothing here stops you from making lawful backups, exercising rights that cannot legally be limited, or using your own manuscript files outside InkSpine.

3. Your writing stays yours

You keep ownership of your manuscript and other content. You are responsible for ensuring you have the rights to write, upload, export, share, or publish that content. InkSpine does not claim ownership of it.

InkSpine is designed around local files, but software and storage can fail. Keep your own current backups (§10 explains why) and review any export before relying on it. You remain responsible for the final content of a manuscript and for whether a publisher, retailer, printer, or distributor accepts an exported file.

4. Beta programme

Beta builds are experimental and may contain defects, change substantially, become unavailable, or expire. We do not promise uptime, support, compatibility, feature continuity, or data retention for beta access. Do not rely on a beta build as the only copy of important work.

We may suspend or end beta access where reasonably necessary to protect users, the service, or InkSpine. Beta expiry is separate from a released InkSpine Core licence: it does not mean a purchased release of Core expires.

5. The free version

InkSpine has a permanent free version. It is not a time-limited demo: you can write in it for as long as you like, with no limit on how much you write, how many chapters you write, or how many project folders you keep.

Some features are limited on the free version — for example how many characters, locations, lore entries, factions or story arcs a project may hold, how many books a project may contain, how far back you can open a chapter’s saved versions, and which file formats you can export to. The current limits are listed on our pricing page. We may change them, but a change will never make writing you have already done unreadable or uneditable.

If you go over a limit — because limits changed, or because you had Core and it ended — the affected items stay on your computer and stay visible and readable in the app, and you can delete them. What you lose is the ability to add more while you are over a limit, and the use of the items past the limit in features that draw on them. Nothing is deleted and nothing is hidden.

6. Free trial

We may offer a free trial of InkSpine Core. To start one you give us an email address and we send you a trial key. A trial gives you the full Core feature set, including export, for a fixed period stated when the key is issued. It is free, it does not renew, and it does not require payment details.

A trial is limited to one per email address and one per device. When it ends, InkSpine continues to work as the free version described above — your writing, your project folders, and everything you created during the trial stay on your computer and stay readable. Files you exported during the trial remain yours to keep and use.

Trials are offered at our discretion and we may stop offering them, change the length, or decline to issue one. How we handle the email address you give us is covered in our privacy policy.

7. InkSpine Core

InkSpine Core is a one-time purchase at the price shown at checkout. Depending on where you are, that price already includes VAT or sales tax or has it added, and it may be shown in your local currency; checkout shows your total before you pay. It is not a subscription. Once activated, the purchased version remains usable for local writing, local data, and Core export without recurring online validation (apart from the two confirmations described below).

A Core purchase includes 12 months of optional feature updates from purchase (new features and improvements). Every InkSpine release has a licence date: the day the feature release it belongs to was published. A fix release has the licence date of the release it fixes. A fix release corrects problems in an earlier version and adds no new features. Any other release is a feature release. Your Core licence covers every version whose licence date is on or before the last day of your update period, which Preferences → Account shows. Apart from the confirmations described below, those versions keep working exactly as before, with Core, for as long as you like, on your registered devices, with no further payment.

A version with a later licence date is a different release and is not part of your licence. It opens on the Free tier: it still opens, edits and saves every project, and nothing you wrote is deleted or changed. You can keep using that version on Free, or ask InkSpine to email a download link for the last version your update period covers, to the address your licence was bought with; the link works for 72 hours. Your licence is not affected by any of this.

You can extend your update period at any time by buying an update renewal at the price shown at checkout: it adds 12 months of updates, counted from the day you buy it, or from the end of your current period if that has not ended yet. A renewal is a separate one-time purchase and never renews automatically. After a renewal, versions released up to the new date are covered.

During the first 150 days after you buy Core, InkSpine confirms your licence with our server twice: once between day 17 and day 30, and once between day 121 and day 150. InkSpine does this by itself whenever it is online, and it works offline in between. If a confirmation has not been made by its date, InkSpine opens on the Free tier until it next reaches our server; nothing you wrote is deleted or changed, and your licence is not affected. After the second confirmation InkSpine does not need to connect again. If a confirmation shows that your purchase was refunded or reversed, Core stops on that device.

The 12 months are not a limit on the fixes the law requires. After your update period ends, we do not promise new features, but we will still provide the fixes the law requires so that the version you bought keeps working as described for as long as you can reasonably expect, including fixes for serious security problems. Whether a newer operating system will run an older version is outside our control; we will say on inkspine.app when a version stops being supported on a platform.

Fixes for a version you are covered for are published as fix releases of that version: they carry its licence date, so they run with Core.

8. Payments and refunds

Paddle acts as Merchant of Record for Core purchases. It processes payment, taxes, receipts, and payment-related refunds under its checkout terms. These terms and our refund policy govern the licence and our own money-back guarantee; Paddle’s terms govern the payment. Both apply side by side, and neither limits your legal rights. Keep your Paddle order reference when contacting support.

Core is delivered digitally straight after purchase. Our refund policy is part of these terms, and is also published at inkspine.app/refunds.

9. Optional online services

We may later offer optional online services, such as syncing or writing assistance. Their price and terms will be shown before you buy them. Not buying them, or cancelling them, never affects Core, your local projects or your exports.

10. Your files and backups

InkSpine stores your work as ordinary files in a project folder you choose on your own computer. It does not hold a copy of your work anywhere else. The saved versions inside a project and the Project Archive export are conveniences that live on the same computer; they are not a backup service. Please keep your own backup of anything you cannot afford to lose, on a separate disk or service. We cannot recover files from your computer for you.

11. Disclaimers and limits of liability

If you are a consumer, you have the legal rights for digital content that does not work as described, and nothing in these terms limits them. Beyond those rights, we do not promise that InkSpine will be free of errors, work with every device or service, or lead to a particular publishing result. If you buy as a business, InkSpine is provided as is, to the extent the law allows.

If you are a consumer: we are liable for damage that is a foreseeable result of our breach of these terms or our negligence, and not for damage that you could have avoided by following §10, such as the loss of work that a current backup would have kept. If you buy as a business: our total liability for all claims together is limited to the amount paid for your Core licence or the service concerned, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profits, or loss of data. Neither limit applies to damage caused by our intent or deliberate recklessness (opzet of bewuste roekeloosheid), to death or personal injury, or to any liability the law does not let us limit.

We are not liable for loss caused by your computer, storage, sync or backup service, operating system, or other software outside InkSpine.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability or consumer protections that cannot legally be excluded or limited, including liability for fraud, wilful misconduct, or death or personal injury caused by negligence where that exclusion is not allowed.

12. Events outside our control

We are not responsible for a delay or failure in our online services (licence activation, key emails, downloads, updates) caused by events outside our reasonable control, including outages at our payment, hosting, email or domain providers. This does not end a licence already activated, or affect your legal rights.

13. Changes, law, and disputes

We may update these terms for legal, security, service or product reasons. Each version has a version number and date, and every version stays available at inkspine.app/terms/ followed by its version number; the current terms page lists them all. The version in force when you bought Core keeps governing that purchase. For a material change to a service you pay for, we email you at least 30 days before it takes effect; if you do not accept it, you may end that service and get back any prepaid amount for the period not yet used. A change never turns a purchased Core licence into a subscription and never affects your local files or Core export.

If something goes wrong, please tell us in writing first - by email to support@inkspine.app or by post to the address in §1 - describing the problem, and give us a reasonable time to put it right (normally 30 days). This is a request, not a condition: it does not shorten any legal time limit or take away any legal remedy.

These terms are governed by Dutch law, except where mandatory law in your country of residence gives you greater protection. Courts with jurisdiction under applicable law remain available to you. If you buy as a business, the Rechtbank Noord-Holland (the district court of North Holland, the Netherlands) has exclusive jurisdiction. These terms are written in English; a translation, if offered, is for convenience and the English text prevails.