Terms of Use

Welcome to Commontide. These Terms of Use (“Terms”) govern your use of the Commontide website and service at commontide.app (“the Service”). By using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

Commontide is operated by an individual proprietor based in Greenville, South Carolina, USA (“we,” “us,” or “Commontide”). You can reach us at m@shadowandlife.com.

By creating an account, signing in, or otherwise using the Service, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you are using the Service on behalf of a church, household, small group, or other organization, you represent that you have authority to accept these Terms on its behalf.

The minimum age to create your own Commontide account depends on your location: 16 in the EU, EEA, and United Kingdom; 14 in China; 13 everywhere else including the United States. Children below those thresholds may use Commontide through a parent or guardian's household account — see Section 3.4. If you are between the minimum age and the age of legal majority in your jurisdiction, you confirm that a parent or guardian is aware of your use of the Service.

Commontide is a digital companion for praying the Daily Office — Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline — according to the 2019 Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church in North America. The Service generates day-by-day liturgies that incorporate the appointed psalms, scripture readings, collects, and seasonal propers.

The Service is a tool to support prayer. It is not itself a sacrament, ordinance, or act of the Church, and it does not constitute pastoral care, ordained ministry, spiritual direction, counseling, or any form of professional advice. See Section 8.

We may add, modify, or remove features at any time. We will use reasonable effort to communicate significant changes, but we do not guarantee that any particular feature will remain available.

3.1 Individual Accounts

You may create a personal account to save preferences, prayer intentions, and other content. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials secure and for activity that occurs under your account.

3.2 Organizational and Church Accounts

We may, in the future, offer accounts for churches, parishes, religious communities, households, or small groups (“Organizational Accounts”). An Organizational Account allows a designated administrator to enable Service features for a defined group of members.

If you administer an Organizational Account, you are responsible for the conduct of members you invite, for ensuring those members agree to these Terms, and for accurate representations about the organization you serve.

3.3 Account Information

You agree to provide accurate information when creating an account and to keep that information current. You may delete your account at any time in the app (Settings → Household & Profiles → Privacy & Security → Delete account) or by contacting us.

3.4 Child Profiles and Household Accounts

A parent or legal guardian who holds a Commontide account may add child profiles to their household for children in their care. The parent establishes and controls these profiles and is responsible for all activity under them. Children do not need to meet the minimum account-holder age to be added as a child profile within a parent's household.

Deletion of your account cascades all child profiles and household data attached to it. Individual child profiles may be deleted at any time from Settings → Household & Profiles. See the Privacy Policy Section 10 for full details on what is collected and your rights over child profile data.

The Service exists to serve the Church’s prayer. You may use the liturgical and scriptural content within the Service for:

• Personal devotion
• Household and family prayer
• Small group prayer (Bible studies, prayer groups, religious communities)
• Congregational worship in a parish or mission setting

You may not:

• Scrape, crawl, harvest, or systematically download content from the Service
• Republish, redistribute, mirror, or rehost content from the Service in any medium (print, digital, broadcast, or otherwise)
• Sell, sublicense, or otherwise commercialize content from the Service or the Service itself
• Use the Service to train machine-learning models or build derivative datasets
• Misrepresent the Service or its content as your own work
• Attempt to access another user’s account, circumvent access controls, or interfere with the Service’s operation
• Use the Service in a way that violates applicable law, harasses others, or promotes harm

These restrictions on content reuse exist because the liturgical and scriptural texts in the Service are licensed from third parties under terms that permit liturgical use but not redistribution. See Section 5.

Objectionable content and abusive users — zero tolerance. Prayer requests you share with your household or a group are visible to other people, and are therefore user-generated content. Content that is harassing, hateful, sexually explicit, violent, or otherwise objectionable is not permitted. You can report any shared prayer and block another person from within the app (tap a prayer, then “report” or “block”). We review reports and act on them in a timely way, and we may remove offending content and suspend or remove the accounts of people who post it.

We may suspend or terminate access for conduct that violates this section. See Section 10.

5.1 Third-Party Licensed Content

The Service incorporates content licensed from third parties. All rights in that content belong to the respective rights holders, and your use is permitted only within the scope these Terms allow.

• The Book of Common Prayer (2019) is used by license from Anglican House Publishers (anglicanhousepublishers.org). All rights reserved by the Anglican Church in North America.
• The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, is used by license from Crossway. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.
• The New Coverdale Psalter is included as part of the BCP 2019 license from Anglican House Publishers.

We will display the attributions and copyright notices required by these licenses. Nothing in these Terms grants you any right in third-party content beyond the limited liturgical use described in Section 4.

5.2 Our Materials

The Service’s design, code, layout, original commentary, navigation, and other elements that are not third-party licensed content are owned by Commontide. You may not copy or reuse these materials except as needed for ordinary use of the Service.

5.3 User Content

If you submit content to the Service — prayer intentions, notes, group messages, profile information, or other materials (“User Content”) — you keep your ownership of it. You grant Commontide a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, display, transmit, and process that content as needed to operate the Service for you and (where applicable) for the group or organization you have shared it with. This license ends when you delete the content or close your account, except where retention is required by law or where the content has been shared with others who have not deleted their copies.

You are responsible for User Content you submit. Do not submit content you do not have the right to share.

5.4 Reporting Concerns

If you believe content on the Service infringes your rights, please contact us at m@shadowandlife.com with a description of the work and the location on the Service.

The Service is currently offered free of charge. We may, in the future, introduce paid features, subscriptions, or tiers — for individuals, households, small groups, churches, or other organizations. Nothing in these Terms commits us to launching, maintaining, or pricing any particular paid offering. We are committed that facilitating prayer individually and within a family should be free and is part of our core mission to keep it that way.

If and when paid features become available:

• Pricing, billing terms, renewal terms, and refund policies will be presented at the point of purchase, and those terms will form part of these Terms for users who subscribe.
• Free features that exist at the time a paid tier launches will, where reasonable, remain available in some form. We reserve the right to change which features are free and which are paid, with reasonable notice to active users.
• Organizational subscriptions may allow an administrator to enable Service features for a defined number of members or seats. The administrator is responsible for managing those seats and for any payment obligations the organization undertakes.

We will give reasonable notice before any feature you currently rely on becomes paid-only.

We may accept voluntary donations to support the Service. Donations are gifts. They do not purchase any service, feature, or future benefit, and they are not refundable except where required by law or where we determine, in our discretion, that a refund is appropriate. Commontide is not, at present, a recognized tax-exempt organization, and donations should not be treated as tax-deductible charitable contributions unless we expressly state otherwise in connection with a particular donation channel.

Commontide is a digital aid for prayer. It is not:

• A substitute for the gathered worship of the Church
• A substitute for the sacraments or for ordained ministry
• A substitute for pastoral care, spiritual direction, or counseling
• A source of medical, mental health, legal, or financial advice

If you are in spiritual distress or facing a crisis, please contact your priest, pastor, or another trusted minister. If you are in a mental health or medical emergency, please contact local emergency services or a crisis line in your area.

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available.” To the fullest extent allowed by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or free of harmful components, or that any defect will be corrected.

To the fullest extent allowed by law, Commontide and its operator will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenues, data, or goodwill, arising out of or related to your use of the Service. Our total liability for any claim arising out of or related to the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you have paid us for the Service in the twelve months preceding the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars ($100).

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain disclaimers or limitations of liability. In those jurisdictions, our liability is limited to the smallest extent permitted by law.

You may stop using the Service at any time and may delete your account in the app (Settings → Household & Profiles → Privacy & Security → Delete account) or by contacting us.

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service, with or without notice, if you violate these Terms, if your conduct creates risk for us or for other users, if we are required to do so by law, or if we discontinue the Service. Where reasonable, we will give notice and an opportunity to address the issue before terminating an account in good standing.

Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including intellectual property terms, disclaimers, limitation of liability, governing law, and dispute resolution — will survive.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of South Carolina, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

We hope any dispute can be resolved by an honest conversation. Before filing any formal claim, please contact us at m@shadowandlife.com and describe the issue. We will make a good-faith effort to resolve it within thirty days.

If the dispute is not resolved, the courts located in Greenville County, South Carolina will have exclusive jurisdiction over any claim arising out of or related to these Terms or the Service, and you and we each consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. Each party waives any right to a jury trial in any such proceeding to the extent permitted by law.

Nothing in this section prevents either party from seeking injunctive or equitable relief in any court of competent jurisdiction to protect its intellectual property or confidential information.

We may revise these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will update the “Last updated” date above and, for material changes, will provide reasonable notice — typically by posting a notice within the Service or by email to account holders. Your continued use of the Service after revised Terms take effect means you accept the revised Terms. If you do not agree, please stop using the Service and close your account.

Questions about these Terms can be sent to:

Commontide
Greenville, SC 29601, USA
m@shadowandlife.com

For information about how we handle personal data, please see our Privacy Policy.