# Terms of Service Revision: terms-2026-09-29 Effective: 29 September 2026 These Terms govern Horcrux accounts, stores, platform subscriptions, and the public website. Professional review is optional and does not control platform availability. ## 1. Operator and contact Horcrux is a Dropout Studio venture operated from Dhaka, Bangladesh. “Horcrux”, “we”, and “us” refer to that operation. Legal notices may be sent to horcrux@dropoutstudio.co. The final legal entity name, status, registered notice address, and registration identifiers must be inserted only after they are verified and approved for production. ## 2. Horcrux’s role and merchant responsibility Horcrux supplies software for independent merchants. The merchant—not Horcrux—is the seller of record, chooses its products and policies, contracts with shoppers, fulfils orders, handles customer service, refunds and disputes, and remains responsible for consumer, tax, licensing, product-safety, advertising, and other duties that apply to its business. Each merchant connects its own approved SSLCommerz merchant account and courier accounts. Shopper payments settle directly to the merchant. Horcrux does not hold merchant funds, act as a bank, payment institution, courier, marketplace seller, or legal adviser, or independently verify a business unless an explicit verification process says otherwise. ## 3. Accounts and authority An account belongs to one identifiable person and requires accurate information, a verified email, and reasonable protection of credentials. Shared logins are not allowed. A person acting for a store confirms that they have authority to bind that business. Staff access is permissioned and tenant-specific; the Primary Owner controls protected ownership actions. ## 4. Stores, plans, and service changes Any verified account may create a store without platform approval by providing a store name and accepting the current platform agreement. Every new store starts on Starter, the permanent free plan. Staff membership requires an invitation to the individual’s exact verified email address. Each store has its own plan. Essential is BDT 3,690 per month and is available only as a post-creation upgrade after Horcrux verifies the invoice payment. Pending or rejected upgrade payments leave the store on Starter. Both plans have no Horcrux transaction fee. Store creation does not replace required product, delivery, payment, published-policy, or other checkout setup. Optional business-profile completion is not a checkout requirement. We may improve, replace, or discontinue features without rewriting accepted orders, verified payments, invoices, or other immutable evidence. Material changes adversely affecting an active paid service will be communicated through the dashboard or verified account email when reasonably practicable. ## 5. Platform fees, billing, cancellation, and refunds Essential is billed monthly in Bangladeshi Taka at the exact amount on the issued invoice. An authorized merchant submits the manual bank-transfer reference or bKash payment reference, date, method and payer information; Horcrux verifies the payment before activating or renewing Essential. Horcrux does not auto-charge or auto-renew. Shopper-payment provider and courier fees remain separate. An Essential renewal has 15 days’ grace. Early and in-grace verification preserves the renewal calendar; verification at or after grace expiry starts a fresh monthly period. Unpaid courtesy access after grace does not accumulate monthly arrears. Billing nonpayment never automatically shuts down checkout. Horcrux may explicitly move an overdue store to Starter using a selected working set and Starter limits. Authorized billing staff may move a store to Starter immediately after satisfying Starter compatibility and confirming the change. No founder approval, payment, or period-end wait is required. Unused paid time ends without a refund, subject to mandatory statutory rights. Unpaid renewal invoices close on downgrade and cannot later reactivate Essential. A payment submitted before its invoice closed remains available for manual review and any externally resolved exception is recorded; it is not automatically treated as a new service settlement. A Starter transition keeps up to ten selected active products, the Primary Owner plus up to two selected supported staff, and one eligible courier connection for new bookings. Other active products are archived and unselected staff and couriers are restricted within that store. Premium theme configuration, custom storefront source, memberships, credentials and history are preserved. Existing shipment operations remain available where required. Restoring resources requires an explicit authorized action; upgrading does not automatically restore them. Starter’s 100-order monthly allowance applies immediately after downgrade, including usage already consumed in the store’s current Dhaka usage month. Plan changes never reset order usage. Independent security, closure, compliance, inventory, delivery, payment and policy restrictions continue to apply. ## 6. Acceptable use and prohibited commerce You must use Horcrux lawfully, honestly, and without misleading shoppers or interfering with the platform, another account, or security controls. You may not upload unlawful material, misuse personal data, impersonate another person, probe unauthorized systems, distribute malware, manipulate payments, or use Horcrux to facilitate fraud. You may not use Horcrux to sell, facilitate, or promote alcohol, pork, gambling, interest-based lending or financing, pornography or adult content, or equivalent clearly prohibited categories. A report or automated signal opens a case only. An authorized human must confirm a clear violation and record the evidence and reason; unclear cases remain active while reviewed. ## 7. Merchant content and platform licence The merchant retains ownership of its product, brand, customer, and policy content. The merchant grants Horcrux a limited, non-exclusive licence to host, reproduce, transform, cache, and display that content only as needed to provide, secure, support, and improve the contracted service. The merchant confirms it has the rights and lawful basis needed for everything it submits. After full payment under a separate professional-services agreement, a merchant may own its storefront-specific source, repository, delivered assets, and documentation. Horcrux retains its backend, platform runtime, private APIs, infrastructure, and built-in themes; third-party components retain their licences. ## 8. Horcrux intellectual property Horcrux software, built-in theme source, designs, documentation, and branding are owned by or licensed to us. The service grants only the limited right to use the platform during authorized access. You may not sell, copy, scrape, reverse engineer, bypass access controls, or create a competing derivative from protected platform material except where applicable law does not permit that restriction. ## 9. Copyright and trademark reports Send a report to horcrux@dropoutstudio.co with the subject “Copyright report” or “Trademark report”. Include your identity and authority, the protected work or mark, the exact store URL and material reported, a good-faith explanation, supporting registration or ownership evidence where available, and a reachable contact address. We may ask for clarification, preserve evidence, notify the affected merchant, and take proportionate action after human review. ## 10. Storefront policies and orders Each merchant owns its storefront Terms, Privacy, Returns and refunds, Shipping and delivery, and Business information and contact pages. Horcrux provides structured tools, not legal promises. Checkout records the exact public policy bundle accepted for an order. Transactional acceptance does not mean Horcrux has verified the seller’s identity or claims. ## 11. Third-party services Cloudflare, Resend, optional Google authentication, merchant-selected SSLCommerz, couriers, domain providers, and other connected services have separate terms and availability. Horcrux is not responsible for a third party’s independent systems, decisions, fees, settlement, delivery, or lawful processing, but remains responsible for its own contractual commitments and its subprocessors under the DPA. ## 12. Suspension, remediation, and termination We may restrict the smallest affected capability to protect shoppers, merchants, the platform, or legal compliance. A confirmed prohibited-commerce violation suspends only the affected storefront and checkout; dashboard and export access remain available for remediation and appeal. Nonpayment never deletes store data. Voluntary store closure is recoverable for 30 days before the documented purge process begins. ## 13. Security and responsible reporting Do not exploit, disclose, or retain data obtained through a suspected vulnerability. Report security concerns privately to horcrux@dropoutstudio.co with enough detail to reproduce the issue safely. We may rate-limit, revoke sessions, or contain affected commerce while preserving evidence. ## 14. Service standard and warranties We will provide the service with reasonable care and skill. Internet, provider, and preview services can be interrupted and are not guaranteed to be error-free. Nothing in these Terms excludes warranties or remedies that applicable law does not allow us to exclude. No public uptime, support-response, recovery, or incident-update statement creates an SLA unless a signed agreement expressly says so. ## 15. Liability Neither party excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded. The final exclusions, liability cap, allocation for merchant products and shopper claims, and treatment of data, confidentiality, fraud, wilful misconduct, and intellectual-property claims must be checked against current Bangladesh law before this revision can become effective. Independent professional review may be obtained when useful but is not a release requirement. ## 16. Complaints, governing law, and disputes Send a platform complaint to horcrux@dropoutstudio.co with the account or store reference, relevant dates, the issue, and the resolution requested—never send passwords, payment credentials, or unnecessary personal data. Bangladesh law governs these Terms, subject to mandatory consumer rights and lawful jurisdiction. ## 17. Changes and acceptance We publish a revision identifier and dates for each document. Store creation records explicit acceptance of the current Terms and incorporated DPA and acknowledgement of the Privacy Notice. A Primary Owner must accept a materially updated current bundle before checkout can continue; dashboard, remediation, and export remain available. Continued use alone is not recorded as acceptance where explicit acceptance is required. ## 18. General If a provision is unenforceable, the remainder continues to the extent lawful. Delay in enforcement is not a waiver. You may not transfer these Terms or an account without our written approval; authorized Primary Owner transfer remains governed by the platform controls. These Terms, the incorporated DPA, and an applicable signed order form form the platform agreement. ## 19. Feedback and public roadmap Feedback, suggestions, and reviews are private. A feature-request submitter may separately ask Horcrux to consider the idea for anonymous public curation. That choice does not publish the raw submission, identity, contact details, or merchant context; an authorized moderator writes and controls any public request. Horcrux may edit, combine, hide, decline, or remove requests, and may change roadmap states as product evidence changes. Support counts are directional input only. A request, lifecycle label, update, or date is not a promise, contract, delivery commitment, or estimate. ## 20. Custom storefronts Custom storefronts are a rolling Essential access offering. Horcrux may reject, quarantine, disable, or fall back from source or artifacts that violate compatibility, security, acceptable-use, or platform contracts. A downgrade to Starter restores the official built-in storefront without deleting merchant-owned source or export rights. Custom storefronts may use only the documented, versioned storefront interface. Custom checkout, server execution, embedded secrets, privileged APIs, and deployment configuration are not permitted. ## 21. Starter plan policy Starter is the permanent free plan for Bangladesh commerce. It includes 10 active products, 100 successfully placed non-test orders per tenant-anchored monthly usage period, three active members including the Primary Owner, one eligible courier connection, the Starter built-in theme only, no fixed trial expiry, a 0% Horcrux transaction fee, and no processed-sales-value cap. A successfully placed order counts once even if it is later cancelled or returned, and plan changes do not reset usage. Each Primary Owner/business may have one active, transacting free Starter store. Paid stores and memberships in another merchant’s store do not consume that allowance. Creation, recreation, ownership transfer, downgrade, reactivation, or plan cycling cannot be used to multiply the allowance. Every new store starts on Starter, subject to the current eligibility and continuity checks. Starter retains exactly 1,000,000,000 bytes of merchant storefront, catalog, and branding media. The allowance counts retained physical objects once across references and counts distinct derivatives by their actual bytes; core order records, internal backups, and system-generated export archives are outside it. At capacity, Horcrux blocks only quota-increasing uploads and does not silently delete media or restrict existing records, checkout, or exports. Starter permits 100 successful original-image uploads or replacements per monthly usage period, plus a one-time 100-upload bonus in the genuine first period. The first period therefore allows 200 successful uploads, then later periods allow 100 without rollover. The existing file, type, dimension, metadata, and security checks still apply. Deletion does not refund upload usage, and a replacement counts as a new operation. When an eligible business first reaches the normal 100-order allowance, Horcrux grants a one-time buffer of up to 50 extra orders in that same usage period. This is not a recurring 150-order plan, is not transferable, and unused buffer expires at period end. Informational warnings appear at 80% and 90%; later periods return to the normal 100-order allowance. Starter includes basic, non-priority email help for setup blockers and product problems through horcrux@dropoutstudio.co. It does not include done-for-you setup, customization, scheduled calls, dedicated onboarding or account management, guaranteed response or resolution times, or 24/7 staffing. Critical incidents remain triaged by severity, and correspondence cannot authenticate or authorize a protected account change. A Starter storefront may enter a reversible inactivity pause after 180 consecutive days without meaningful authenticated, store-specific activity or a new order, only after at least 30 days’ advance notice and after unresolved orders, returns, refunds, disputes, or required commerce obligations make a pause safe. Activity resets the clock. The pause does not delete merchant records or media and preserves dashboard, export, security, privacy, reconciliation, retention, and required after-sales access; reactivation remains subject to current free-store eligibility. Horcrux may apply bounded, scoped abuse and cost protections to expensive optional operations such as image processing and storage, email sends and resends, optional AI, analytics ingestion and queries, and recurring background work. Provider usage and merchant entitlements remain separate. These controls are not billing caps and do not reduce ordinary selling, checkout, security, transactional notices, or exports. Affected existing merchants receive at least 30 days’ notice before a new restrictive commercial Starter rule becomes effective, with durable version, notice, and effective-date records. Historical evidence remains intact. A future 90-day review will assess genuine production usage under the new policy; it has not been completed and does not automatically change prices or limits.