Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are an agreement between Citizen Sites (“we,” “us”) and the church or organization that signs up for an account (the “Customer”), as well as anyone who uses the Customer’s Citizen Sites experience (an “End User”).

Citizen Sites is a hosted software platform that includes a public church website, member portal, page editor, online giving, calendar, registrations, check-in, serving teams, forms, prayer, watch portal, and integrations with services like Google Workspace, Google Calendar, Stripe Connect, Planning Center, and YouTube. We host the software, provide updates, and operate the supporting infrastructure described in our Privacy Policy.

To create an account you must be at least 18 years old and authorized to bind your church or organization to these Terms. You agree to keep your account credentials confidential and to notify us at info@buildcitizensites.com if you suspect unauthorized access. You are responsible for activity under your account.

The Customer church controls its own data, settings, page content, member directory, and integrations. End Users (members, donors, volunteers, visitors) interact with Citizen Sites through the Customer’s configuration. The Customer is responsible for its End Users’ access, permissions, and the lawful collection of their personal information.

Children & parental consent. When a Customer uses Citizen Sites for child check-in or any feature that collects personal information from or about minors, the Customer is solely responsible for obtaining and documenting any parental or guardian consent required by applicable law (including, in the United States, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act). Citizen Sites acts only as a data processor on the Customer’s instructions for that information.

You own the content your church creates or uploads to Citizen Sites — pages, blocks, text, images, recordings, fonts, member records, gifts, and form submissions (“Customer Content”).

You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, display, and process Customer Content solely as needed to provide and operate the service for you. We will not sell, license, or use Customer Content for advertising or to train AI models.

You agree not to use Citizen Sites to:

• Violate any law, regulation, or third-party right.
• Send spam, mass unsolicited messages, or use the platform to harass, defraud, or threaten anyone.
• Upload malware, attempt to bypass our security controls, scrape at scale, or interfere with other Customers’ sites.
• Process card or banking data outside of the Stripe integration we provide.
• Resell, white-label, or sublicense the platform without our written agreement.
• Operate a site that promotes hate, violence, or content that materially harms minors.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these rules, with or without notice depending on severity.

Citizen Sites is sold on a subscription basis. The current plan, billing cadence, and fees are presented at signup and inside your billing portal. Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled.

Refunds. Fees are non-refundable. If you believe your situation warrants a refund, write to us through our contact form and we’ll review case-by-case. Any refund we issue is a goodwill gesture made at our sole discretion and does not create a refund obligation under these Terms.

We may change pricing for new billing periods with reasonable advance notice. If you don’t agree to the new price, you can cancel before it takes effect.

Stripe’s payment processing fees and Stripe Connect platform fees, where applicable, are separate from our subscription fee and are governed by Stripe.

The One Plan supports up to 200 active members using the platform, combined across the public site, member portal, and Citizen Send. This is a hard cap. We may suspend, throttle, or require a plan upgrade for accounts that exceed 200 active members.

If your congregation is larger, or you expect to grow past 200 active members during your subscription, contact us through our contact form before you exceed the limit so we can size additional seats and place you on the right plan.

When a Customer enables online giving, the Customer becomes a Stripe Connected Account and the merchant of record for gifts received. Use of Stripe is also governed by Stripe’s Connected Account Agreement and Services Agreement. The Customer is responsible for the truthful representation of its tax-exempt status, donor receipts required by law, and chargeback handling.

Customers can use a Citizen Sites subdomain or attach a custom domain. When we register or transfer a domain on your behalf, we act as a reseller through our domains partner; the registrant of record is your church and the Customer is bound by the registrar’s policies in addition to these Terms.

From time to time we run a beta program (the “Founders’ 20” cohort or equivalent). Beta features may be incomplete, change without notice, or have reduced service-level commitments. Beta Customers receive whatever benefits are explicitly documented in their welcome email or signed letter, and any one-time program fee described there.

Beta Customers agree to provide good-faith feedback and understand that the platform is being actively developed during the beta period.

Citizen Sites integrates with Google Workspace, Google Calendar, Stripe, Planning Center, YouTube, Resend, AWS SES, Vercel, Firebase, and other third-party services. Your use of those services through the integrations is subject to their own terms and privacy policies. We’re not responsible for outages, errors, or policy changes by third-party services.

Citizen Send is a free companion mobile experience operated on a separate Firebase project. Use of Citizen Send is also governed by these Terms (where they apply) and by any platform store rules (Apple App Store, Google Play). Linking a Citizen Send account to a Citizen Sites tenant is optional and reversible.

Citizen Sites, the Citizen Send name, our logos, templates, code, and documentation are owned by us. We grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the service for your church’s lawful purposes during your subscription. You don’t get any other rights or any obligation that we deliver source code.

If you send us suggestions, ideas, bug reports, or feature requests, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license to use them to improve the platform without obligation to compensate or credit you.

You may cancel at any time from your billing portal. We may suspend or terminate the service for non-payment, material breach of these Terms, security risk, fraud, or extended inactivity. On termination we’ll preserve your data for a 30-day grace period (longer if law requires) and then delete it on a rolling schedule per the Privacy Policy.

Data export. You can request a copy of your Customer Content at any time by writing to us through our contact form. We’ll provide an export in a reasonable format within a reasonable time. We do not currently offer a self-serve export.

The service is provided “as is” and “as available.” We do our best to keep the platform reliable, but we don’t guarantee uninterrupted service, error-free operation, or that the platform will meet every specific requirement of your church. To the fullest extent allowed by law, we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

To the maximum extent allowed by law, neither party will be liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, or business interruption, even if we’ve been advised of the possibility. Our total aggregate liability for any claim arising out of or relating to the service is limited to the fees you paid us in the 12 months immediately before the event giving rise to the claim.

You agree to defend and indemnify Citizen Sites against third-party claims arising from your Customer Content, your use of the service in violation of these Terms or applicable law, or your handling of End User data.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Arizona, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Any dispute will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Arizona, and both parties consent to that jurisdiction. Nothing here prevents either side from seeking injunctive relief in any court of competent jurisdiction to protect intellectual property or confidential information.

We’ll update the “Last updated” date when these Terms change. For material changes we’ll send Customers an email at least 30 days before the change takes effect. Your continued use after the effective date counts as acceptance.

Questions about these Terms? We’d rather hear from you than have you guess.