Terms of Service

1. The agreement

By creating an account or using the Avela app or website (together, the "Service"), you agree to these Terms of Service and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

2. Eligibility: 18 and over

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or use Avela. The Service is designed for parents and caregivers, not for children. By using the Service you confirm that you are 18 or older and that any child data you enter relates to a child you are the parent or legal guardian of, or are authorized to care for.

3. Your account

• Keep your sign-in email secure. Anyone with access to your email can request a sign-in code for your account.
• You are responsible for activity that happens under your account.
• Give us accurate information, and keep it up to date.
• Tell us at hello@withavela.com right away if you suspect someone else has accessed your account.

4. Not medical advice

5. Emergencies

6. Subscriptions and billing

Avela requires an Avela Pro membership after onboarding; there is no free version of the app. Pro is bought through Apple in-app purchase, in one of two forms:

• Weekly subscription: $6.99 per week after a 7-day free trial. The trial converts to a paid weekly subscription unless you cancel before it ends. The subscription then renews automatically every week until you cancel in your Apple ID subscription settings at least 24 hours before the current period ends.
• Lifetime: a one-time purchase of $59.99. Paid once, no renewal.
• One membership per family. Both parents on a family share one Pro membership; only one of you needs to buy it.
• Price at purchase. The price and billing period are displayed in the app at the moment of purchase, before you confirm. Prices are in US dollars and may be shown in your local currency by Apple.
• Apple processes the payment. Purchases are governed by Apple's billing terms. We never see your payment card details. Where available, Google Play billing terms apply.
• Cancel any time, in your Apple ID settings. Deleting the app does not cancel a subscription. After cancellation you keep Pro access until the end of the period you paid for. Your data is not deleted when a subscription ends.
• Refunds are handled by Apple under its policies, since Apple processes the payment.
• Changes. Pro features and pricing may change as the Service evolves; material changes to a paid plan take effect at your next renewal and never affect a lifetime purchase already made.

7. Acceptable use

Use Avela for what it is: a companion for raising your own family. You agree not to:

• use the Service for anyone under 18, or enter data about children you have no parental or caregiving relationship with;
• attempt to make the AI coach produce harmful, unlawful, or abusive content, or to bypass its safety guardrails;
• upload content that is unlawful, infringing, or harmful to others;
• probe, scan, overload, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service or other users' data;
• reverse engineer the Service, scrape it, or resell access to it;
• impersonate another person or misrepresent your relationship to a child or family.

8. Family sharing

Avela is built for two parents as equal users, with optional caregivers. By inviting someone to your family, you understand and agree that data is shared as the app is designed to share it:

• Between connected parents: child profiles, child-related daily tasks, journal entries about your child, milestones, and the family calendar are visible to both parents.
• Private to each parent: your conversations with the Avela coach and your personal (parent-only) tasks are not shared with anyone, including your co-parent.
• Caregivers get view-only access to the family calendar. They cannot edit family data and do not see chats, journals, or relationship content.
• Only invite people you trust with your family's information. Removing a family member ends their access to shared data going forward.

9. Your content

Your journals, photos, and chats remain yours. You own the content you create in Avela.

So that the Service can function, you grant us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, process, and display your content, solely to operate, secure, and improve the Service for you and your family. This includes processing chat messages and family context through our AI provider as described in the Privacy Policy. The license ends when you delete the content or your account, except for limited copies in backups during their normal rotation or where the law requires retention.

We do not use your content for advertising. Our AI provider is Anthropic, and your content is not used to train Anthropic's models.

10. Termination

• By you: delete your account at any time in Settings → Delete Account. A 7-day grace period applies, then your data is deleted as described in the Privacy Policy.
• By us: we may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms, create risk for other users or for us, or where the law requires. Where reasonable, we will warn you first and give you a chance to export your data.
• Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including Your content license wind-down, Disclaimers, Limitation of liability, and Governing law) survive.

11. Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure.

The Avela coach is an AI system. It can be wrong, incomplete, or out of date, even when it sounds confident. Use your own judgment, and rely on qualified professionals for decisions about health and safety. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranty exclusions, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

12. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Avela and its team will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data, or goodwill, arising out of or related to your use of the Service.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability for all claims arising out of or related to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us for the Service in the 12 months before the claim arose, and (b) USD $50.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including, where applicable, consumer rights under the laws of your place of residence (for example, statutory consumer guarantees in Australia and consumer protections in the UK, the EU, and Canada).

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of British Columbia, Canada, and the federal laws of Canada applicable there, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Courts located in British Columbia have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes that cannot be resolved informally, except where the consumer-protection law of your place of residence gives you the right to bring claims locally.

Note: the governing-law venue is provisional pending counsel review.

14. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the Service evolves. If a change is material, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect, and the "Last updated" date above will change. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the updated terms. If you do not agree, stop using the Service and delete your account.

15. Contact

Questions about these terms: hello@withavela.com. For help using the app, see our Support page.