Terms
The short
version.
Be decent to the person you are paired with. Do not try to break the service. We will not make canceling difficult.
The agreement
These terms are between you and Dante Corso, trading as Emberknot (“Emberknot”, “we”, “us”), a sole proprietor, reachable at dantecorso@icloud.com. Creating an account means you accept them. If you do not, do not create one — and if you already have, you can delete it from within the app at any time.
They cover the iPhone app, the Android app, the Apple Watch app and this website.
Your account
You need an account to use Emberknot, and you must be at least 18. You are responsible for what you send from your account. One account can be paired with exactly one other account at a time.
What you can do with the app
You get a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use Emberknot on devices you own, for as long as these terms are kept. The app itself, its name and its design stay ours. You may not copy it, resell it, rent it out, take it apart to recreate it, or strip the parts of it that check whether you have paid.
Your content stays yours
Notes, photos, drawings, voice notes and everything else you put into Emberknot belong to you. We store and transmit it so the app works, and for no other purpose — it is not used to train anything, not shown to anyone outside your pairing, and not sold. Voice notes are never transcribed, and audio is never analysed for any purpose beyond playing it back to the person you sent it to.
So that we can do that, you give us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, process, copy and display your content solely to show it to the person you are paired with and to operate the service — including keeping backups, delivering notifications, producing a data export you ask for, and keeping a copy of content that has been reported to us, as the safety page describes. The licence ends when the content is deleted, except for those reported copies and anything the law requires us to keep. You promise that you have the right to send what you send.
Subscription
Emberknot+ is optional and comes in two plans: Emberknot+ Monthly, US$5.99 per month, and, where offered in your version of the app, Emberknot+ Yearly, US$49.99 per year, in the United States (other countries pay the store's local price), billed through the App Store or Google Play. Both are auto-renewing subscriptions: the monthly plan renews every month and the yearly plan renews every year, until cancelled. Payment is charged to your App Store or Google Play account when you confirm the purchase and at the start of each renewal period. Eligible new subscribers to either plan start with a 3-day free trial, after which the plan they chose renews as above. To avoid being charged, on iPhone cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the trial or period; on Android, cancel before the trial or period ends. Either way it is done in your phone's subscription settings. Cancelling Emberknot+ does not end your free access.
Switching plans. You can move between monthly and yearly in your phone's subscription settings, or from the Emberknot+ screen on Android. The store handles the change and any proration: on iPhone, moving to yearly starts the yearly plan straight away and refunds the unused part of the month, and moving to monthly takes effect at your next renewal date; on Android, Google Play switches you straight away and credits the time you have already paid for. You are never charged for both plans for the same period.
One subscription covers both people in a pairing. Paid access belongs to the shared space the two of you have together, not to either account on its own: whichever of you subscribes, both of you receive Emberknot+, and there is no second charge.
If you disconnect, the partner who did not buy it loses Emberknot+ immediately. Disconnecting does not cancel anything at the store: the buyer's App Store or Google Play subscription keeps renewing, and keeps charging the buyer, until the buyer cancels it in App Store or Google Play settings. A refund or a chargeback of the subscription removes Emberknot+ for both of you.
Cancel from your own device's subscription settings — Settings → your name → Subscriptions on iOS, or the Play Store account menu on Android. We cannot cancel it for you, and we cannot make you keep it.
Prices outside the United States are each store's local equivalent, set by the store. If we ever raise the price, existing subscribers are told before it applies, and the increase does not take effect without the consent each store requires.
What Emberknot+ includes
The free tier lets two people use Emberknot every day, with limits: four tap kinds (Thinking of you, Miss you, Goodnight and Good morning) with emoji, words and drawings, notes (five a day each), moods, arrivals, reactions, the shared timeline, Today's question, one sealed open-when letter at a time, one active countdown, one place each, Date Night with the four starter wheels plus one of your own (twelve ideas each), Cup Pong, a first photo and a first voice note, and four themes. Report, block, disconnect and delete your account are free forever and will never be placed behind a payment.
Emberknot+ adds the other four tap kinds (Love you, Hug, Proud of you and Got you), photos, voice notes, Questions, Games (twenty-two of them, from Chess to Rummy), up to twenty sealed open-when letters at once, Date Night without the free limits (up to fifty wheels of forty ideas), up to twelve places each, unlimited countdowns, the Atlas, and the surfaces that work without opening the app — Home Screen widgets, Lock Screen widgets, the Dynamic Island, Live Activities, the Apple Watch app and its complications, Control Center and the Action button — plus forty-nine more themes (including the holiday themes) and the alternate app icons.
If you stop paying
Nothing you made is deleted. Widgets and complications stop updating and go quiet, premium themes revert to a free one, and you can no longer send the Emberknot+ tap kinds, photos, voice notes, questions or game moves. Your existing countdowns, places and wheels stay exactly where they are — you simply cannot add more past the free limits until you subscribe again. Every tap, note, photo and memory remains in the app, and removing any of it is something only you can do.
Zero tolerance
There is no acceptable amount of the following on Emberknot, and no warning before we act on it:
- Sexual exploitation or abuse of anyone, and anything that sexualises a minor — see our child safety standards.
- Abuse, threats of violence, or coercion.
- Intimate images of anyone shared, or threatened to be shared, without their consent.
- Harassment, stalking or intimidation — including, and especially, of the person you are paired with.
Report and block are in the app and free for everyone. Every report is reviewed by a person and acted on within 24 hours. Content that breaks this section is removed, the accounts involved are suspended or closed, and where the law requires it, or someone is in danger, we report to the authorities.
Acceptable use
- Do not use Emberknot to harass, threaten, or coerce anyone — including, and especially, the person you are paired with.
- Do not send content that is illegal, or that you do not have the right to send.
- Do not attempt to access another pairing's data, or to overwhelm the service.
- Do not automate the app to manufacture taps or streaks.
Accounts used for harassment are terminated. Blocking and reporting are built into the app, and reports are reviewed by a person within 24 hours.
Copyright
If you believe something on Emberknot infringes your copyright, email dantecorso@icloud.com with: the work you believe is infringed; where the material appears, in enough detail for us to find it; your contact details; a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised by the owner, its agent or the law; a statement that your notice is accurate and that you own the right or are authorised to act for its owner; and your physical or electronic signature. We remove material shown to infringe and close the accounts of repeat infringers.
Availability
Emberknot is new software: on the App Store for iPhone, and still in closed testing on Android. It may be unavailable, it may lose data, and features described on this site may change. Nothing here is a guarantee that a specific feature will ship in a specific form.
Ending it
You can delete your account at any time from within the app, and doing so removes your data as described in the privacy policy and on the account deletion page. Deleting your account does not cancel an Emberknot+ subscription — cancel it in the store. We can suspend or terminate an account that breaks the zero-tolerance or acceptable-use terms above.
What we do not promise
Emberknot is provided as it is. We do not promise it will be uninterrupted, that it will never lose a message, or that it will suit a particular purpose you have in mind for it. Do not use it as the only copy of something you cannot lose, and do not use it as a way to reach someone in an emergency — it is a private app for two people, not a safety service.
Liability
We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, for lost profits, or for content that fails to arrive or is lost. Where we are liable, our total liability is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim — which for anyone on the free tier is nothing.
None of that removes rights you have by law. We do not exclude liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded. If you are a consumer, the rights the law where you live gives you apply in full, and nothing above reduces them.
Changes to these terms
If these terms change in a way that matters to you, the change is announced in the app before it takes effect rather than published quietly to a page nobody re-reads, and the version number and date at the top of this page change with it. Continuing to use Emberknot after that means you accept the new version. If you do not, delete your account — and if you had just been charged, write to us.
The app stores
These terms are between you and us, not between you and Apple or Google. Apple and Google are not responsible for Emberknot, for supporting it, or for any claim about it.
Refunds are handled by whichever store you bought through, under that store's policy. We cannot issue them and we cannot overrule them, but if something has gone wrong, tell us and we will help you make the case.
If you got Emberknot from the App Store
Apple's Standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement applies to the iPhone and Apple Watch app in addition to these terms. Where the two conflict about your licence to use the app, Apple's agreement governs. These terms also say:
- Licence. Your licence to the iOS app is non-transferable and limited to Apple-branded devices you own or control, as the App Store's Usage Rules allow.
- Support. We alone are responsible for maintaining and supporting the app. Apple has no obligation to provide any maintenance or support for it.
- Warranty. To the extent any warranty applies by law, if the app fails to conform to it you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price (if any) you paid for the app. To the maximum extent the law allows, Apple has no other warranty obligation for the app, and any other claim, loss or cost from a failure to conform to a warranty is our responsibility, not Apple's.
- Product claims. We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claim by you or a third party about the app or your use of it, including product-liability claims, claims that the app fails to meet a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims under consumer-protection, privacy or similar law.
- Intellectual property. If a third party claims that the app, or your possession and use of it, infringes their intellectual property rights, we, not Apple, are solely responsible for investigating, defending, settling and discharging that claim.
- Export and sanctions. You confirm that you are not located in a country subject to a US Government embargo or designated by the US Government as a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you are not on any US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties. You will comply with the export-control and sanctions laws that apply to you.
- Third-party terms. You must comply with the terms of any third party whose service you use with the app, such as your mobile carrier.
- Developer contact. Questions, complaints and claims about the app go to the developer, Dante Corso, trading as Emberknot, at dantecorso@icloud.com.
- Third-party beneficiary. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms, and once you accept them Apple has the right (and is deemed to have accepted the right) to enforce them against you.
Which law applies
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and disputes go to the courts there. If you are a consumer somewhere else, this does not take away the protection of your own country's mandatory consumer law, or your right to bring a claim where you live.
If a court finds any part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still stands.
Contact
Emberknot is run by Dante Corso, trading as Emberknot. Questions about these terms, your subscription or your account, and anything involving harassment or another person's conduct: dantecorso@icloud.com. Report and block are in the app too, and neither tells the other person you used them.
