Terms of Service

These terms govern your use of Family Greenhouse. We’ve kept them readable. If anything is unclear, email hello@familygreenhouse.net and we’ll explain.

The agreement

By creating an account or using the service, you agree to these terms. If you don’t agree, don’t use the service. When these terms change materially we publish the new version here with a new effective date at the top, and the full revision history is public in our repository. Anything that changes what a subscriber is charged is emailed to the household’s admins first, at least 14 days before it takes effect. Continued use after the new effective date is acceptance of the new terms.

Who may use the service

You must be at least 13 years old to create an account or accept a household invitation. If you are under the age of legal majority where you live, use the service only with permission from a parent or legal guardian. A parent or guardian who believes a child under 13 created an account can email support@familygreenhouse.net to have it deleted.

What you can expect from us

• The service, as described. We try to keep the app available, accurate, and free of basic bugs. We don’t promise zero downtime; see Limitations below.
• Your data, treated with care. See our Privacy Policy for the specifics.
• No mid-period cuts to what you paid for. We do not reduce a paid plan’s features or usage limits during a period you have already paid for. Free-plan limits can change, and have. Bug fixes and improvements ship continuously.
• A free tier, and paid plans you choose. Family Greenhouse accepts free Seedling accounts for one home, up to 3 people and 20 plants. Paid Garden and Greenhouse plans are also available; nothing is charged unless a household admin buys one.

What we expect from you

• Don’t abuse the service. No spam-running through the API, no scraping, no attempts to break authentication or DDoS the service.
• Don’t upload illegal content. Plant photos are fine. Anything that violates law or third-party rights is not.
• Be honest about who you are. Use a real email. Don’t impersonate someone else.
• Respect your housemates. When you invite others to a household, they can see and edit shared plant data. Don’t invite people who shouldn’t see it.

Account termination

You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Account → Delete my account. If you are the only member of a household with a paid subscription, deleting your account cancels that subscription straight away, so it is never left billing a household nobody can reach. We can suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms; we’ll try to give you a chance to fix the issue first unless the violation is serious (e.g. abuse of other users).

Plan status

Free account registration is open. Paid Garden and Greenhouse plans are available on the web, billed monthly. Yearly billing and the one-time Garden lifetime purchase are no longer sold; households already on one keep it, at the price and on the terms they bought it at. Purchases, upgrades, and plan changes are made by a household admin in Settings → Billing, and a household’s first paid subscription starts with a 14-day free trial. Paid plans are not sold inside the mobile apps. If you believe a billing event affected you, email us so it can be investigated and resolved directly.

Free trials

A household’s first paid subscription starts with a 14-day free trial. Checkout collects a card before the trial begins, and nothing is charged while it runs; the billing page shows the date the trial ends. The trial is once per household: if your household has already used it, starting a subscription again charges the card at checkout, with no trial.

When the 14 days are up, the first payment is taken automatically and the subscription starts. To stop that, cancel before the trial ends — see Cancelling below. Cancelling during a trial costs nothing: the household keeps the paid features until the trial’s last day, then moves to the free Seedling plan.

Automatic renewal

Subscriptions renew automatically until they are cancelled. A monthly plan renews every month — counting from the end of the free trial, or from the day of purchase where no trial applied — and each renewal is charged to the card on file without asking again.

The amount charged is the price of the plan your subscription is on — the price it was started at, not whatever is advertised later. Households still on a yearly plan renew once a year at the price they bought. The withdrawn Garden lifetime purchase never renews: it was a single payment, and there is nothing to cancel.

If a payment for a subscription fails — the first one after a free trial, or any renewal — the household keeps its plan and every paid feature while our payment provider retries the card automatically, and the billing page says the payment failed. Updating the card from Settings → Billing → Manage subscription settles it, and the plan carries on as before. If the last retry fails, our payment provider cancels the subscription and the household moves to the free Seedling plan, exactly as it would after you cancel it yourself; nothing is deleted.

Cancelling

A household admin can cancel at any time from Settings → Billing → Manage subscription, which opens our payment provider’s billing portal. Changing or cancelling a live subscription happens there, and cancelling there is what stops the next charge. Cancelling is not available inside the mobile apps.

Cancelling does not cut you off on the spot. It takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for: until that date the household keeps the plan, its caps, and every paid feature, and the billing page shows the date. After it, the household moves to the free Seedling plan.

Moving to the free plan deletes nothing. Every plant, photo, member, and record of care stays, and stays readable and editable; tasks keep being created and reminders keep arriving. What changes is that you cannot add plants or members while the household is over a free-plan cap, the monthly plant-identification allowance returns to the free plan’s, the AI care assistant needs Garden or above, API keys need Greenhouse, and plant-sitter links return to the free plan’s limit of one live link of up to seven days, with the task list but not the printable plant-care brief.

Price changes

We can change what a plan costs. A new price applies to new subscriptions; a subscription that is already running keeps the price it started at, and we do not move a live subscription onto a different price. If that ever has to change, we will email the household’s admins at least 14 days before the new price takes effect, in time to cancel — and the price does not move until that has been done.

One-time purchases

Not everything is a subscription. A one-time purchase is charged once and does not renew, so there is nothing recurring to cancel. A household admin buys it and it belongs to the household, not to the person who paid.

Where we sell a pack of plant identifications, it is a purchase of this kind. Its identifications sit on top of your plan’s monthly allowance and are drawn on only once that allowance is spent; they carry over from month to month and expire 12 months after the purchase. Cancelling a subscription or dropping to the free plan does not take them away — they stay with the household and can still be spent there. If the household itself is erased, when its last member deletes their account, anything unused goes with it. The withdrawn Garden lifetime purchase is the other kind: a single payment that does not expire and keeps its plan permanently.

Refunds

Cancelling stops the next charge; it does not return a charge already made. The household keeps its plan, and every paid feature, until the end of the period it has already paid for, and then moves to the free Seedling plan. Because a household’s first paid subscription starts with a 14-day free trial, the first charge is avoidable — cancel before the trial ends and nothing is taken, and the billing page shows that date.

Beyond that we do not publish a refund window, and nothing in the service issues a refund on its own. If a charge looks wrong — a duplicate, an amount you do not recognise, a renewal after you cancelled — email support@familygreenhouse.net with the date and the amount, and we will investigate it and put right what we got wrong. Anything else is considered case by case. We would rather you asked than assumed the answer is no.

One-time purchases are treated the same way. A pack of plant identifications is charged once and its identifications expire 12 months after the purchase; cancelling a subscription neither refunds them nor takes them away, and if the household itself is erased, when its last member deletes their account, anything unused goes with it. The withdrawn Garden lifetime purchase was a single payment that keeps its plan permanently.

None of this removes a right the law where you live already gives you. Where local law grants a right to cancel a purchase and be repaid, that right applies whatever this section says.

Limitations

The service is provided “as is.” We aim for high availability but do not promise zero downtime, zero data loss, or that every feature will work in every browser at every moment. Our liability is limited to the amount you’ve paid us in the previous 12 months.

We don’t give plant-care advice as a regulated service — the suggestions come from public botanical databases plus simple heuristics. If a plant matters to you (heirloom, expensive, sentimental), don’t rely on our reminders alone.

Disputes

If something goes wrong, please email us first. We’ll try to resolve it directly. Formal disputes are governed by the laws of the State of California, USA, and resolved in San Francisco County courts.

Changes to these terms

A material change is published here with a new effective date, and the revision history is public in our repository. Notice is given by that effective date and, where a change affects what you are charged, by email to the household’s admins; we do not have an in-app announcement today. Minor edits (typos, clarifications, additional examples) are made directly and reflected in the effective date at the top.

We’re a small team with no in-house counsel today. These terms are best-effort plain-language and may not cover every edge case the way a fully lawyered document would. Email us for anything ambiguous.