Terms of Use

1. Who we are

ProofMate is provided by Ben Adam, a sole trader based in New Zealand, trading as ProofMate. In these terms, we, us and ProofMate mean that supplier, and you means the person or business using ProofMate.

You can reach us at support@proofmate.nz at any time. There is no phone queue and no ticket robot.

2. Agreeing to these terms

By creating an account, joining a workspace, or using ProofMate in any way, you agree to these terms, to the Acceptable Use Policy and to the Privacy Policy. Together those three documents are the whole agreement between us about ProofMate. If you do not agree to them, do not use ProofMate.

If you are agreeing on behalf of a business, you confirm you are authorised to bind that business, and "you" means both you and that business.

You must be at least 16 years old to hold a ProofMate account.

3. What some words mean

Workspace

A single business inside ProofMate, with its own clients, jobs, proofs, team members and plan. One account can belong to several workspaces.

Your content

Everything you or your team put into a workspace: artwork, proofs, photos, job details, notes, and the contact details of your own clients.

Your clients

The people and businesses you send proofs to. They are your customers, not ours, and we have no separate relationship with them.

A proof

A version of artwork or a mockup that you send to a client for review through a private link.

An approval

A client's recorded answer to a proof, stored with the version it applies to, the time it was given and basic technical details of the device that gave it.

4. Your account

Give us accurate details and keep your email address current — it is how we send confirmations, password resets and notices about your workspace.

You are responsible for what happens under your account and for keeping your password to yourself. Do not share a login: invite the person to your workspace instead, so that their actions are recorded as theirs. We strongly recommend turning on two-factor authentication in your profile.

Tell us promptly at support@proofmate.nz if you think someone has got into your account.

5. Workspaces and your team

The workspace owner controls the workspace. Owners can invite and remove team members, set what each role can do, change the plan, and close the workspace. If you invite someone to your workspace, you are giving them access to the client information and files in it, and you are responsible for that decision.

Team members other than the owner have access only while their membership stays active. Removing someone ends their access immediately but keeps the record of what they did, because approvals and job history need to stay intact.

Where a workspace is owned by a business, that business — not the individual who happened to create the account — owns the content in it. If there is a dispute inside a business about who controls a workspace, we will keep the workspace as it is and take no side until you tell us in writing that it is resolved.

6. Your content stays yours

You keep all ownership of your content. We do not claim any rights in your artwork, your files or your client lists.

So that ProofMate can actually work, you give us permission to store, copy, back up, resize, convert, display and transmit your content — but only for the purpose of running ProofMate for you. That includes generating previews and dithered versions, and showing a proof to a client you have sent a link to. This permission ends when the content is deleted, apart from copies in backups that age out normally.

We do not sell your content, use it for advertising, or use it to train machine learning or artificial intelligence models.

You confirm that, for everything you put into ProofMate:

• you own it or have the right to use it and to send it to your clients; and
• you have the right to hold and use your clients' contact details for the purpose of proofing their work; and
• it does not breach the Acceptable Use Policy.

You are responsible for keeping your own copies of your artwork and production files. ProofMate is a proofing tool, not your archive or your backup.

7. How you may use ProofMate

Use ProofMate for its intended purpose: preparing proofs, getting them reviewed, and running the jobs that come out of that. The Acceptable Use Policy sets out what is not allowed, including illegal, infringing, abusive and adult content, and it forms part of these terms.

You also agree not to:

• try to get into another workspace's data, or any part of the system you have not been given access to;
• probe, scan or attack the service, or attempt to get around its limits, security or rate controls;
• use scripts or automated tools to bulk-create accounts, bulk-upload, or scrape the service;
• resell or white-label ProofMate as if it were your own product, without our written agreement;
• use the emailing features to send anything other than proofs and messages about the job at hand. Using ProofMate to send bulk marketing would breach the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 as well as these terms.

Plan limits on clients and storage are part of these terms. Reaching a limit never deletes or hides anything you have already put in — you are simply asked to move up a plan before adding more.

8. What a proof link and an approval actually do

Proof links are private and unguessable, but they are links: anyone your client forwards one to can open it. Do not put anything in a proof that you would not want a client to be able to share.

An approval recorded in ProofMate is a reliable record that a particular version was approved at a particular time from a particular device. That is what we provide, and we stand behind the record.

It is not a legal opinion, a signed contract, or a guarantee that your client has authority to approve, that the artwork is free of errors, or that the finished item will be accepted. What you agree with your client, and who carries the cost if a proof was approved with a mistake in it, is between you and your client. ProofMate is not a party to that.

Colour is a particular caution. Screens differ, and a proof shown on a phone is not a colour-match to a finished item. Do not rely on ProofMate for colour accuracy.

9. Plans, prices and invoicing

The current plans, prices and limits are on the pricing page. Plans are priced per workspace, not per person, and paid monthly in advance.

• Prices are in NZD.
• ProofMate is not registered for GST, so no GST is charged and our invoices are not GST invoices. If that changes we will tell you before it affects what you pay.
• Paid plans are invoiced. No card details are stored in ProofMate.
• The free plan is genuinely free. There is nothing to pay and nothing to cancel.

Invoices are due on the terms shown on the invoice. If an invoice is not paid, we will contact you first — we will not silently cut you off. If it stays unpaid after that, we may move the workspace to the free plan or suspend access to paid features until it is settled. Your data is not deleted because of an unpaid invoice.

Early access pricing. Where a plan is offered at a founding price, that price is held for as long as your subscription stays continuously active on that plan. If you cancel and come back later, or move to a different plan, the standard price applies.

We may change standard prices. If a change increases what you pay, we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email, and you can cancel before it takes effect rather than accept it.

10. Cancellation and refunds

This is the part people most need to be able to find, so it is written plainly.

Cancelling

• You can cancel a paid plan at any time, with no cancellation fee and no minimum term. Move your workspace to the free plan on the Plan & usage screen, or email support@proofmate.nz and we will do it for you.
• Cancelling takes effect at the end of the month you have already paid for. You keep the paid plan and its limits until then.
• After that, the workspace moves to the free plan. Nothing is deleted at that moment. If the workspace holds more clients or files than the free plan allows, everything already there stays readable and downloadable — you are only stopped from adding more until you are back inside the free limits or back on a paid plan.
• Cancelling a plan is not the same as closing a workspace. If you want the workspace and its data erased, ask us — see deletion in the Privacy Policy.

Refunds

• We do not refund part-months. Because a plan is paid monthly in advance and you keep full access to the end of the month, cancelling part-way through a month does not produce a refund for the unused days.
• We do refund our own mistakes. If we invoiced you the wrong amount, charged you twice, billed you for a plan you did not ask for, or kept billing after you told us to stop, tell us and we will refund it in full. No argument, no time limit games.
• We do refund if we let you down badly. If ProofMate is unavailable or broken for a long enough stretch that the month was not worth paying for, email us and we will refund or credit that month. We would rather do that than have you feel cheated.
• Refunds go back by bank transfer to the account that paid, normally within 10 working days of us agreeing to the refund.
• To ask for a refund, email support@proofmate.nz with the workspace name and the invoice concerned.

None of this limits any right you have under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 if you are acquiring ProofMate as a consumer rather than in trade — see clause 13.

11. Availability, support and changes

We work hard to keep ProofMate up, but we do not promise a specific uptime percentage and there is no service level agreement. ProofMate may be unavailable for maintenance, or because of a fault, or because something outside our control has gone wrong.

Where we can, we will do planned maintenance outside New Zealand business hours and tell you first if it will take a while.

Support is by email at support@proofmate.nz, normally 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, New Zealand time. See contact and support for what to expect.

We will keep improving ProofMate, which means features will change. We may add, alter or retire features. If we are going to remove or materially reduce something your paid plan relies on, we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email, and you can cancel rather than accept it. We will not remove your ability to get your own data out.

12. Suspension and ending the agreement

You can stop using ProofMate at any time. See clause 10 for what cancelling does.

We may suspend or restrict access to a workspace or an account if:

• it is breaching the Acceptable Use Policy;
• it is putting the service, our other customers, or someone's safety at risk;
• we are required to by law; or
• an invoice is well overdue and unanswered.

Wherever it is safe and lawful to do so, we will tell you what the problem is and give you a chance to fix it before we suspend anything. For serious or illegal content we may have to act immediately — that is set out in the Acceptable Use Policy.

We may end this agreement and close an account by giving you 30 days' notice, or immediately if you have seriously breached these terms. If we close a paid workspace for any reason other than your breach, we will refund the unused part of what you have paid.

Before an account or workspace is erased you will be given a reasonable chance to export your data, unless the law prevents us from doing that. What happens to the data afterwards is described in the Privacy Policy.

13. Guarantees, and the limits of our liability

If you are a consumer. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes your rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, the Fair Trading Act 1986 or any other New Zealand law that cannot be contracted out of. Where those Acts give you a right, you have it, regardless of what else this clause says.

If you are in business. ProofMate is supplied to businesses for business purposes. Where you acquire ProofMate in trade, you agree that the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 does not apply (as permitted by section 43(2) of that Act) and that sections 9, 12A and 13 of the Fair Trading Act 1986 do not apply (as permitted by section 5D of that Act). We both agree it is fair and reasonable to be bound by that, given ProofMate's price and that you are free to trial it on the free plan before committing.

Supplied as it is. Apart from what is said in these terms and what the law requires, ProofMate is supplied as it is. We do not promise it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit for a particular purpose you have in mind, and we do not promise that it will prevent disputes with your clients.

What we are not liable for. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profit, lost revenue, lost business, lost goodwill, wasted materials or production costs, or the cost of remaking a job — including where a proof was approved with an error in it, or where a client says they did not approve something.

The cap. To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for everything connected with ProofMate is limited to the greater of the amount you actually paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or NZ$100. On the free plan, that means NZ$100.

What you are responsible for. You agree to cover us for any claim brought against us because of your content or your use of ProofMate — for example a claim that artwork you uploaded infringed someone's copyright, or a complaint from one of your own clients about how you handled their information.

Nothing in this clause excludes liability for fraud, or for anything that cannot legally be excluded.

14. Privacy

How we handle personal information is set out in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms.

Two things are worth saying here as well. First, the personal information you put into your workspace about your own clients is yours — under section 11 of the Privacy Act 2020 we hold it as your agent, and you remain the agency responsible for it. Second, that means you need to handle it lawfully: collect it fairly, tell your clients what you are doing with it, and answer them if they ask to see or correct it. We will help you do that; we cannot do it for you.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The effective date at the top of this page always tells you which version is current.

For minor changes — clearer wording, a new feature described, a corrected typo — we will simply update the page. For a change that materially reduces your rights or increases your obligations, we will email account holders at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you do not want to accept it, cancel before it starts. Continuing to use ProofMate after a change takes effect means you accept the updated terms.

16. General

Notices. We will send you notices by email to the address on your account, or show them in ProofMate. Send us notices at support@proofmate.nz.

Transfer. You may not transfer this agreement without our written consent. We may transfer it if ProofMate is sold or restructured, provided the new provider takes on these same obligations to you. We will tell you if that happens.

If a clause fails. If part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still applies.

Not waived by being lenient. If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.

Nothing implied beyond this. These terms, the Acceptable Use Policy and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement, and replace anything said beforehand.

17. New Zealand law and sorting out problems

These terms are governed by New Zealand law, and the New Zealand courts have non-exclusive jurisdiction. Depending on the amount, the Disputes Tribunal may be the quickest and cheapest place to resolve a disagreement.

Before any of that, please just email us. Almost everything gets fixed that way. Email support@proofmate.nz, tell us what has gone wrong and what you would like done about it, and we will work through it with you in good faith.

A privacy complaint has its own path, described in the Privacy Policy, and you can always take it to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.