Terms of service
These terms govern your use of firstepapp.com and of the Firstep application — the website, the web app, and the mobile app.
They are between you and us as an individual user. The commercial arrangement is separate: your school signs a subscription agreement with us covering pricing, billing, service levels and data processing, and nothing here changes or replaces it. If the two ever conflict about the service your school buys, that agreement wins.
1. Who these terms are with
This site is operated by Bryan St. Clair, trading as Firstep, in California, United States ("Firstep", "we", "us"). By using this site you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the site.
2. What this site is
An informational website about the Firstep product, plus a form for requesting early access. Information here is provided for general purposes and may describe functionality that is still being built. We say so on the pages themselves where that is the case.
3. Using the Firstep application
Your school runs Firstep and decides who has an account, what is recorded in it, and who at the school can see what. We provide the software. In data-protection terms your school is the controller and we are its processor — which means that if you want something in your child's record corrected or removed, your school is the first place to ask, and we act on their instruction.
By using the application you agree to these, all of which the software already assumes:
- Your account is yours. Do not share your password or your check-in PIN, and tell your school if you think somebody else has used it.
- What you enter about a child is accurate, and you tell the school when it changes — allergies, medications, emergency contacts, and who may collect them.
- You do not try to reach records that are not yours: another family's children, another school, or anything the app does not offer you.
- Photographs and messages you can see through the app are for you. Other families' children appear in room photographs, and those are not yours to publish or share outside the app.
- Staff posting photographs do so on their school's behalf and under the consents that school has collected.
- You do not use the application to break any applicable law.
We may suspend an account that is being used in a way that puts children's information at risk, and we will tell the school when we do.
4. Photographs and consent
There are two separate permissions, and they are not the same thing:
- Inside the app. A child may appear in photographs and updates seen by other families with a child in the same room. This is part of registering, because a shared room feed is what the product is.
- Outside the app. A child's photograph may be used on the school's website, its social media, or its printed material. This one is optional, asked separately, and off unless you say yes.
The second is the school's decision to act on rather than ours — we hold the answer and show it to them. Ask your school to change it and they can. Our application privacy policy sets out what is done with photographs and how long they are kept.
5. Pricing shown here
The pricing published on this site reflects our current intended rates and is offered in good faith. It is an invitation to discuss, not a binding offer. Actual pricing, billing terms, and any pilot arrangement are set out in the subscription agreement you sign with us. We may change published pricing at any time; a change does not affect a rate already agreed in a signed agreement for its stated term.
6. Acceptable use of this website
Section 3 covers the application. On this site, you agree not to:
- Submit false information through the contact form, or submit on someone else's behalf without their knowledge
- Use the form to send unsolicited commercial messages
- Attempt to gain unauthorized access to the site, its server, or any account
- Scrape, crawl, or copy the site in a way that degrades it for others, or circumvent rate limiting
- Use the site to break any applicable law
7. Our content
The text, design, logos, and images on this site belong to Firstep and are protected by copyright and trademark law. You may read, link to, and share pages normally. You may not republish substantial portions as your own, or use the Firstep name or logo to imply an endorsement or partnership that does not exist.
8. Links to other sites
Where we link elsewhere, we do not control that site and are not responsible for its content or its privacy practices.
9. Availability
We aim to keep the site and the application up, and do not guarantee uninterrupted availability of either. We may change, suspend, or withdraw any part of this website at any time. Availability commitments for the application, where your school has any, are in its subscription agreement rather than here.
10. No warranty
This site and the application are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the information here is complete, current, or error-free.
One thing worth saying plainly rather than leaving to a disclaimer: Firstep records what a school and its families put into it. It is not a substitute for a school's own judgment about a child's safety, and an allergy note, a medication instruction or a collection arrangement in the app is a record of what somebody entered, not a guarantee that it is right or current.
11. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Firstep will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising out of your use of this website or the application. Where your school has a subscription agreement with us, the liability terms in that agreement govern the service it buys. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.
12. Privacy
Two documents, because they cover different things and both form part of these terms. The website privacy policy explains what we collect through this site. The application privacy policy explains what the application holds about you and your child, what is encrypted, who it is shared with, and how long it is kept.
13. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms. The date at the top shows when they last changed, and continued use of the site or the application after a change means you accept the updated version. A change that materially affects how the application handles a child's information is put to families to agree to when they next sign in on the web, rather than only being posted here.
14. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict of law rules. The courts of California will have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.
15. Contact
Questions about these terms: info@firstepapp.com.