Terms of Service

shoutouts is operated by GOSHOUTOUTS, a sole proprietorship of Keith Falcon (“we”, “us”). These terms cover your use of goshoutouts.com and everything on it. By creating a card, signing one, or opening one, you agree to them.

A card involves up to three kinds of people, with different terms:

• Organizers create a card, invite others, and may pay for a plan. Organizers have an account.
• Contributors sign a card using a link. Contributors have no account and we ask for no email address (except on team cards limited to a workspace’s own people, where a work email is checked against its roster and never kept) — but by adding a message you accept the parts of these terms about content.
• Recipients receive the finished card. If you are only receiving a card, almost nothing here applies to you.

A fourth role exists for teams: workspace admins run a shared workspace with a roster of colleagues, cards opened automatically from it, and a subscription. Section 8 is about them.

Sign-in is by emailed link or with Google — there is no password. Anyone with access to your email can reach your cards, so keep it secure. You must be old enough to enter a contract where you live, and you are responsible for the cards you create and the people you invite to them.

Cards are reached by long, unguessable links rather than passwords. There are two, and they do different things: the signing link lets someone add a message, and the reveal link shows the finished card. Anyone who has a link can use it.

Share them deliberately. Posting a signing link somewhere public means the public can sign. We can’t un-share a link that has already been forwarded, though an organizer can remove messages and delivery closes signing.

A workspace also has a digest link listing every card currently open for signing. It works the same way: no account, anyone holding it can sign. An admin messaging it to the team is the intended use; the same care about where it ends up applies.

You keep ownership of what you write and upload. You give us a licence to store, display, and deliver it for the purpose of running the card — showing it on the signing page, putting it in the reveal, and emailing the recipient a link. That licence lasts as long as we keep the card (see section 9) and exists only so the product can work.

By posting, you confirm that:

• the content is yours, or you have permission to share it;
• anyone recognisable in a photo, video, or recording is fine with it being shared this way — this matters most for images of children;
• you’re not posting it to harass, threaten, or humiliate.

Don’t use shoutouts to post or send:

• content you have no right to share, including someone else’s copyrighted work;
• harassment, threats, hate speech, or content meant to demean someone;
• sexual content involving minors, or any sexual content about a real person who hasn’t consented;
• malware, spam, scams, or attempts to break into other people’s cards;
• anything illegal where you or the recipient are.

Organizers moderate their own cards and can remove any message. Separately, we may remove content or close an account that breaks these rules. We don’t review messages before they’re posted, and we don’t promise to catch everything.

Plans for individual cards are one-time purchases for a single card, not subscriptions — nothing recurring, nothing to cancel. (Workspaces are the exception; see section 8.) Standard is $7.99 and Plus is $14.99. Upgrading from Standard to Plus later costs the difference, so you never pay twice for the same thing.

Payments are handled by Stripe. We never see or store your card details. Prices are in US dollars and exclude any tax that may apply where you are.

Refunds. Because a paid card unlocks its features immediately, purchases are generally final. That said: if the card failed to deliver, the features you paid for didn’t work, or you were charged twice, email goshoutouts@proton.me within 30 days and we’ll refund you. We’d rather sort it out directly than have you dispute the charge with your bank.

A workspace is for a team: a roster of people, cards opened automatically ahead of their birthdays and work anniversaries, a weekly digest of what’s open for signing, and more than one admin. Every card in a workspace has every Plus feature.

Subscriptions. Workspaces are billed monthly or yearly, by roster size: Team (up to 50 people) is $29.99 a month or $299.90 a year; Org (up to 150 people) is $49.99 a month or $499.90 a year; Business (up to 250 people) is $89.99 a month or $899.90 a year. A year costs ten months. New workspaces get a 14-day trial with no card on file; if you don’t subscribe, the workspace simply stops opening new cards and nothing is charged. The workspace owner can cancel at any time from the Billing page and keeps access until the end of the period already paid for; deleting the workspace cancels it immediately. Payments are handled by Stripe, as above.

Your roster is your responsibility. To put someone on a roster you give us their name and, optionally, their email address, birthday, start date, and a photo. You must have the right to share those — typically because you are their employer or acting for one — and it’s your job to tell them, to keep the roster accurate, and to remove people who leave. Our Privacy Policy says what we do with roster information, and people on a roster can ask you or us to be removed.

Admins. Anyone you invite as an admin can see and manage every card in the workspace, including its messages, and can invite others. Invitations only take effect when the person accepts them. Ownership — and with it the subscription — can be handed to another admin, but only when they accept too.

Automatic cards are opened from roster dates and delivered by email to the address on the roster at the time you set. You can turn this off, choose which occasions and years earn a card, and delete any card before it goes out.

Deleting a workspace is something only the owner can do. It cancels the subscription and permanently deletes the roster, every card, and every message in it. There is no undo.

Cards are kept for a period that depends on the plan, measured from the delivery date, or from creation if no date was set:

• Free — 60 days
• Standard — 365 days
• Plus — kept indefinitely, for as long as we run the service

After that a card is archived and its link stops working. Recipients who want to keep a card should save what matters to them. We may delete archived cards permanently.

Workspace cards are kept indefinitely by default. A workspace can instead set a retention period, after which its delivered cards are permanently deleted rather than archived — messages, photos and recordings included. Cards still collecting signatures are never deleted by retention.

If something on shoutouts infringes your copyright, email goshoutouts@proton.me with: the work concerned, the card link where it appears, your contact details, a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn’t authorised, and a statement under penalty of perjury that your notice is accurate and you are the owner or authorised to act for them.

We remove infringing material we’re properly notified about, and we may close accounts that repeatedly infringe. If your content was removed and you think that was wrong, write to the same address.

We’re a small operation and the service is provided “as is”. We don’t promise it will always be available, that emails will always arrive (spam filters are outside our control), or that it will be free of bugs. We may change or discontinue features. If we ever shut down entirely we’ll try to give reasonable notice so people can save their cards.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we aren’t liable for indirect or consequential losses, or for content that other people post. Our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us for the card in question, or $50 if you paid us nothing.

Nothing here excludes liability that can’t legally be excluded, and some places don’t allow these limits — in which case they apply to you only as far as that law permits.

You can stop using shoutouts whenever you like and ask us to delete your account and cards. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, and will tell you why unless there’s a legal reason not to.

We may update these terms. The date at the top always says when. Meaningful changes will be flagged to organizers by email or in the app. Cards you already paid for keep the terms they were bought under where those differ materially.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

Questions, takedowns, refunds, and anything else: goshoutouts@proton.me. Our Privacy Policy explains what we do with personal information.