Terms of Service

1. Agreement to These Terms

By creating an account on certleaf.com ("the Platform"), you ("Issuer", "you") enter into a binding legal agreement with the operator of CertLeaf ("CertLeaf", "we", "us", "our"), based in Bangalore, Karnataka, India.

If you do not agree to these Terms, do not create an account or use the Platform.

Use of the Platform is also governed by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference.

These Terms apply to all users of the Platform including Issuers, Recipients, and Public Verifiers, to the extent relevant to each.

2. Definitions

3. Eligibility and Account Registration

3.1 Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and capable of entering into a legally binding contract under the Indian Contract Act, 1872. By registering, you represent and warrant that you meet these requirements.

If you are registering on behalf of a company or organisation, you represent that you have the authority to bind that entity to these Terms and that references to "you" include that entity.

3.2 Account Creation

You may register using email and password or Google OAuth. You are responsible for:

• Providing accurate and current registration information.
• Maintaining the confidentiality of your credentials.
• All activity that occurs under your account, whether authorised by you or not.

You must notify us immediately at [email protected] if you become aware of unauthorised access to your account.

3.3 One Account Per Person

Each account represents a single individual or a single legal entity. You may not create multiple accounts to circumvent credit limits, welcome bonuses, or any usage restriction.

3.4 Welcome Bonus

Upon first registration, your account is credited with a one-time welcome bonus (currently 20 credits) to allow you to evaluate the Platform. This bonus:

• Is granted once per individual or entity regardless of registration method.
• Has no cash value and cannot be refunded.
• May be changed or discontinued at our discretion with reasonable notice.

4. Credits and Billing

4.1 Credit Model

Access to certificate issuance is gated on a prepaid credit balance. Credits are consumed at the point of issuance:

Credits are consumed per certificate generated, regardless of whether the Recipient downloads or opens the certificate.

4.2 Purchasing Credits

Credits are purchased in fixed packages. Prices may be displayed and charged in a currency selected from your country as inferred by Cloudflare using current reference exchange rates. Indian Rupees (INR) are used when localization is unavailable. Current pricing is displayed on the /billing page and is subject to change. All purchases are processed via Razorpay.

By initiating a purchase you:

• Authorise the charge to your selected payment method for the stated amount.
• Confirm you are the authorised holder of that payment method.
• Acknowledge that credits are non-monetary, non-refundable (except as stated in Section 4.4), and have no cash value.

4.3 Taxes

Prices displayed are inclusive or exclusive of GST as stated at checkout. Where applicable, GST and other statutory levies will be added. Razorpay issues the tax invoice; CertLeaf does not issue a separate invoice.

4.4 Refund Policy

Credits are generally non-refundable once purchased. Exceptions:

• Technical failure: If a certificate generation fails due to a confirmed server-side error and the credit deduction occurred, we will restore the consumed credits within 7 business days of a reported and verified incident.
• Purchase error: If you were charged an incorrect amount due to a platform bug, contact us within 30 days. We will investigate and, if confirmed, process a Razorpay refund to the original payment method within 7 business days.
• Account closure before credit use: We offer no refund for unused credits upon voluntary account closure. If we close your account for our convenience (not for cause), unused credits will be refunded on a pro-rata basis using the effective rate of your most recent purchase.

We do not refund credits consumed for validly generated certificates, even if the Recipient's email bounced, the Recipient did not download the certificate, or you made an error in the certificate content.

4.5 Credit Ledger

Your credit balance is derived from a ledger of all credit-affecting transactions on your account (purchases, issuances, bonuses, refunds). You can view this ledger on the /billing page. In the event of a discrepancy, the server-side ledger is the authoritative record.

4.6 No Expiry

Credits do not expire while your account remains active.

5. Certificate Issuance

5.1 Issuer Responsibility for Content

You are solely responsible for:

• The accuracy, legality, and appropriateness of all content in your templates and certificates.
• Ensuring you have the right to issue the certificate you are generating.
• Ensuring any logos, signature images, or base images you upload are either owned by you or used with appropriate rights.
• Any consequences arising from certificates issued with incorrect details.

CertLeaf does not review, validate, or endorse the content of any certificate.

5.2 Prohibition on Fraudulent Certificates

You must not use the Platform to issue certificates that:

• Falsely represent a credential, qualification, course, or identity.
• Impersonate any individual, company, institution, or government body.
• Contain defamatory, obscene, or illegal content.
• Facilitate fraud, deception, or identity manipulation.

We may suspend or terminate accounts where fraudulent certificate issuance is detected or reported, and may report such activity to relevant authorities.

5.3 Output Formats

You may request PDF and/or PNG output at issuance. Credits are charged per certificate, not per output format. PDF output is enabled by default. Format availability may change with reasonable notice.

5.4 Verifiable Certificates

When you issue a Verifiable Certificate:

• A permanent public URL (/verify/{slug}) is created and embedded as a QR code.
• The URL is permanently accessible to anyone who holds it, without authentication.
• The URL exposes the Recipient's name, certificate type, issue date, and expiry date to any person who visits it.
• Verifiable certificates cannot be edited or deleted after issuance, because doing so would break verification URLs already distributed to third parties.

You must inform Recipients that their name and certificate details will be publicly accessible via the verification URL before issuing a Verifiable Certificate to them.

5.5 Certificate Availability

Generated certificate files (PDF/PNG) are stored in private cloud storage. Download links are short-lived signed URLs (15-minute TTL by default). The underlying files are retained for the lifetime of the certificate record. We make reasonable efforts to maintain availability but do not guarantee permanent availability of download links.

6. Templates

Templates you create, including base images, field layouts, and signature images uploaded by you, remain your property. By uploading this content you grant CertLeaf a limited, non-exclusive licence to store, process, and render it solely for the purpose of generating certificates on your instruction.

Templates are private to your account. There is no template sharing or marketplace in the current version.

You must not upload template content that:

• Infringes any third party's intellectual property rights.
• Contains malware, executable code, or malicious payloads.
• Is obscene, defamatory, or otherwise unlawful.

7. Bulk Processing

7.1 CSV Uploads

Bulk issuance is processed via CSV upload. You are responsible for:

• Ensuring the CSV contains accurate data for each Recipient before submission.
• Ensuring your credit balance is sufficient for the full batch. Jobs submitted with insufficient credits will partially complete and stop when your balance reaches zero.
• Sanitising your CSV data for content accuracy. We are not liable for certificates generated with incorrect data supplied in your CSV.

7.2 Processing Time

Bulk jobs are processed asynchronously by a background worker. Processing time depends on job size and server load. We do not guarantee a specific completion time for any bulk job.

7.3 Partial Failure

Individual rows in a bulk job may fail (e.g., due to malformed data in a row) without causing the entire job to fail. Failed rows are counted and reported on the job status page. Credits are not charged for rows that fail to produce a certificate.

7.4 No Cancellation

Once submitted, a bulk job cannot be cancelled through the UI in the current version. Do not submit a bulk job unless you intend the full batch to be processed.

8. Recipient Data - Issuer Obligations

When you enter, upload, or collect via form any personal data about Recipients (names, email addresses, custom fields), you:

• Are acting as a Data Fiduciary under the DPDPA 2023 in respect of that data.
• Represent that you have a lawful basis for collecting and processing that data.
• Represent that you have notified Recipients, where required, that their data will be used to generate and deliver a certificate, and that their name and details may be publicly displayed on a verification page (for Verifiable Certificates).
• Agree to use Recipient data only for the purpose of issuing certificates to those Recipients.
• Are responsible for any claims brought by Recipients arising from your collection or use of their data.

CertLeaf processes Recipient data as a Data Processor on your instruction. Our data processing obligations are described in the Privacy Policy.

9. Intellectual Property

9.1 Platform IP

All content, design, code, and other materials constituting the Platform, excluding Issuer-uploaded assets and generated certificates, are owned by or licensed to CertLeaf. Nothing in these Terms grants you any right to copy, modify, distribute, or create derivative works from Platform materials.

9.2 Your Content

You retain all rights to content you upload (base images, signatures, logos, template designs). You retain all rights to certificates generated using your content. CertLeaf claims no ownership over your certificates.

9.3 Feedback

If you provide feedback, suggestions, or feature requests, you grant CertLeaf a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to use and incorporate that feedback without any obligation to you.

10. Prohibited Conduct

You must not:

• Use the Platform to issue fraudulent, misleading, or defamatory certificates.
• Attempt to reverse-engineer, decompile, or extract the Platform's source code.
• Probe, scan, or test the security of the Platform without our written authorisation.
• Attempt to bypass credit deduction mechanisms, RLS policies, or rate limits.
• Use the Platform to scrape, index, or harvest data.
• Impersonate another person or entity in your account profile or certificates.
• Attempt to access another Issuer's data or enumerate verification slugs.
• Submit any content that violates applicable law including the Information Technology Act, 2000, the DPDPA 2023, or any applicable intellectual property law.

Violation of these restrictions may result in immediate account suspension or termination without refund.

11. Availability and Service Levels

We provide the Platform on a commercially reasonable basis. We do not warrant:

• Uninterrupted or error-free availability.
• That any particular uptime percentage will be maintained.
• That bulk jobs will complete within a specified time.
• That emails will be delivered to all recipients (delivery depends on email providers and recipient mail servers outside our control).

We will make reasonable efforts to give notice of planned maintenance. Emergency maintenance may occur without notice.

12. Disclaimer of Warranties

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Platform is provided "as is" and "as available" without any warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.

We do not warrant that:

• Certificates generated on the Platform will be accepted by any third party as valid credentials.
• The Platform is free from bugs, errors, or security vulnerabilities.
• Data stored on the Platform will never be lost, corrupted, or compromised.

Certificate acceptance by third parties is entirely outside our control. CertLeaf is a tool for generating and presenting certificates; we make no representation as to their legal or institutional recognition.

13. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law:

• CertLeaf's total aggregate liability to you for any and all claims arising from or relating to the Platform shall not exceed the total amount of credits purchased by you in the 3 months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, converted to INR at the rates applicable at the time of purchase.
• We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive loss including lost profits, loss of data, reputational harm, or business interruption, even if we were advised of the possibility of such loss.
• We are not liable for any loss arising from: (a) your reliance on a certificate's third-party acceptance; (b) email non-delivery; (c) bulk job processing delays; (d) abuse of Public Forms on your account; (e) actions or omissions of third-party processors (Supabase, Razorpay, Brevo).

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be excluded under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 or any other mandatory Indian law.

14. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless CertLeaf and its personnel from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from:

• Your violation of these Terms.
• Your use of the Platform in a manner that infringes any third party's rights.
• Certificates you issue containing false, fraudulent, or defamatory content.
• Your failure to comply with your obligations as a Data Fiduciary for Recipient data.
• Any claim brought by a Recipient relating to certificates you issued.

15. Account Suspension and Termination

15.1 By You

You may close your account at any time from the Settings page or by emailing [email protected]. Unused credits are forfeited on voluntary closure (see Section 4.4).

15.2 By Us - For Cause

We may suspend or terminate your account immediately and without notice if we reasonably believe you have:

• Violated Section 5.2 (fraudulent certificates) or Section 10 (prohibited conduct).
• Engaged in abusive or fraudulent payment behaviour.
• Caused harm to Recipients, third parties, or the Platform.

In such cases, no refund of unused credits will be made.

15.3 By Us - For Convenience

We may terminate your account for any other reason with 30 days' written notice. In this case, unused credits will be refunded as stated in Section 4.4.

15.4 Effect of Termination

On termination:

• Your access to the Platform is revoked.
• Non-verifiable certificate files and account data are scheduled for deletion within 30 days.
• Verifiable certificate records and their public /verify/{slug} URLs remain active to preserve the integrity of verification links already distributed to Recipients and third parties, unless we determine there is a legal obligation to remove them.

16. Changes to the Platform and Pricing

We may at any time:

• Change, suspend, or discontinue any feature of the Platform.
• Change credit pricing for new purchases. Pricing changes do not affect credits already purchased.
• Retire output formats, email templates, or integration methods with 30 days' notice.

Material changes that adversely affect your use of the Platform will be communicated via email and/or an in-app notice at least 30 days before taking effect.

17. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will:

• Post the updated Terms on this page.
• Update the "Last updated" date.
• Send email notice to registered Issuers at least 7 days before material changes take effect.

Your continued use of the Platform after the effective date of a revision constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree to the revised Terms, you must stop using the Platform and may close your account.

18. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of India, including the Information Technology Act, 2000, the DPDPA 2023, and the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

Any dispute, controversy, or claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Platform shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent courts located in Bangalore, Karnataka, India.

Before initiating formal proceedings, you agree to attempt in good faith to resolve any dispute informally by contacting us at [email protected]. We will attempt to respond within 14 days.

19. Miscellaneous

19.1 Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and CertLeaf regarding the Platform and supersede all prior agreements, representations, or understandings.

19.2 Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in full force.

19.3 No Waiver

Our failure to enforce any right or provision does not constitute a waiver of that right or provision.

19.4 Assignment

You may not assign or transfer any rights or obligations under these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign our rights and obligations freely, including in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, with 30 days' notice to you.

19.5 Force Majeure

We are not liable for any delay or failure to perform our obligations where such failure results from circumstances beyond our reasonable control including but not limited to: acts of God, internet infrastructure failures, government action, or failure of third-party services (Razorpay, Brevo).

19.6 Contact

All notices to CertLeaf under these Terms must be sent to:

[email protected]
Bangalore, Karnataka, India.