Terms of Service

Agreement to Terms

By accessing or using STOA Tools (the "Service"), operated by STOA Digital Solutions (stoa.agency) ("we," "our," or "us"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree with any part of these terms, you should not use the Service.

These terms apply to all visitors, registered users, and paying subscribers. Additional terms may apply to specific features like the AI Advisor subscription, existing Consultant accounts, or partner referrals.

Account Terms

• You must be at least 16 years old to create an account.
• You must provide accurate and complete information when creating your account.
• You must provide accurate business information during onboarding. Our recommendations are only as good as the data you give us. Intentionally providing false information may result in poor recommendations and is grounds for account suspension.
• You are responsible for keeping your password secure. We recommend using a unique password that you do not use on other sites.
• You are responsible for all activity that happens under your account.
• One person or business may not maintain more than one free account.
• You must notify us immediately if you discover any unauthorized use of your account.

Payment Terms

STOA Tools is free to use. The only paid feature is the AI Advisor, a subscription that lets you chat with our AI advisor. For the AI Advisor:

• Price and billing cycle: The AI Advisor costs $5 a month and is billed monthly. All payments are processed securely through Stripe.
• Retired plans: The Plus, Pro, Consultant and Lifetime plans are retired. If you had one, you keep the AI Advisor at no charge until your paid term ends, and you will not be charged again. Every other feature is now free.
• Money-back guarantee: The AI Advisor includes a 7-day money-back guarantee. If you are not satisfied within the first 7 days of your subscription, contact us for a full refund.
• Price changes: We may change subscription prices from time to time. If we do, we will give you at least 30 days notice before the new price takes effect. You can cancel before the change if you do not agree.
• Refunds (after 7 days): You can cancel your subscription at any time. When you cancel, your paid features remain active until the end of your current billing period. We do not offer pro-rated refunds for partial months, but we may make exceptions on a case-by-case basis.
• Failed payments: If a payment fails, we will retry a few times and notify you by email. If payment continues to fail, your subscription will be downgraded to the free plan.
• Taxes: Prices displayed may not include applicable sales tax. You are responsible for any taxes associated with your subscription.

Acceptable Use

You agree to use STOA Tools responsibly. Specifically, you must not:

• Use the Service for any illegal purpose or to violate any laws
• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service, other accounts, or our computer systems
• Scrape, crawl, or use automated tools to extract data from the Service without our written permission
• Upload or transmit viruses, malware, or any other harmful code
• Impersonate another person or misrepresent your identity or affiliation
• Interfere with or disrupt the Service, servers, or networks connected to the Service
• Use the AI Advisor to generate content that is illegal, harmful, misleading, or that violates anyone's rights
• Resell, redistribute, or sublicense access to the Service without our written permission
• Submit fake reviews, ratings, or feedback about tools listed on the platform

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these rules, with or without notice.

AI-Powered Features

Our AI Advisor, tool comparisons, and assessments are powered by third-party language models accessed through OpenRouter. When you use these features:

• Your messages and a summary of your business profile are sent to AI model providers (including Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI) to generate responses.
• AI-generated recommendations are informational only and not professional advice. Always verify recommendations with your own research before making purchasing decisions.
• We log usage data (model used, token counts, response time, estimated cost) for billing, quality improvement, and to enforce plan-based usage limits.
• AI conversations are stored in your account and can be deleted by you at any time from your dashboard.
• We do not use your conversations to train AI models. Third-party providers' own data policies apply to their processing of your messages.
• Monthly usage limits apply based on your subscription tier. If you reach your limit, AI features will be unavailable until the next billing cycle.

Consultant Account Terms

If you have an existing Consultant account, you may create and manage client profiles that include personal and business information about third parties. The following additional terms apply:

• Your responsibility: You are responsible for obtaining appropriate consent from your clients before entering their information into STOA Tools. We act as a data processor for this client data — you are the data controller.
• Client data scope: Client profiles may include company name, contact name, contact email, industry, company size, revenue range, pain points, notes, and their current software stack with satisfaction ratings.
• White-label reports: Assessment reports generated for your clients may be branded with your company information (logo, colors, contact details). You are responsible for the accuracy of any branding information you provide.
• Client data deletion: When your Consultant access ends, client profile data will be retained for 30 days and then permanently deleted unless you request earlier deletion.

Intellectual Property

Our Content

The STOA Tools platform, including its design, text, graphics, logos, tool ratings, assessments, AI-generated recommendations, and software, is owned by STOA Digital Solutions and protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws.

You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from our content without our written permission, except for personal, non-commercial use (like saving an assessment PDF for your own business).

Your Content

When you submit content to STOA Tools (such as tool reviews, AI conversations, assessment responses, onboarding data, tool satisfaction ratings, or feedback), you retain ownership of that content. However, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, display, and process that content as needed to provide the Service.

We may use anonymized and aggregated versions of this data to improve our recommendation algorithms and create industry benchmarks. Individual data is never shared publicly.

Derived Insights

By using our AI features, you agree that anonymized, aggregated insights derived from your interactions may be used to improve our services and shared in aggregate form with third parties. You retain full ownership of your conversations and submitted content. STOA owns the anonymized, derived insights that are created through statistical aggregation across many users. No derived insight can be traced back to any individual user. You can opt out of future knowledge extraction at any time in your dashboard settings.

Third-Party Tool Information

Tool names, logos, and trademarks displayed on STOA Tools belong to their respective owners. We display this information for informational purposes. Listing a tool on our platform does not imply endorsement by or affiliation with the tool maker, unless specifically noted.

Disclaimers and Limitations

Recommendations Are Not Guarantees

STOA Tools provides software recommendations, AI-generated advice, and tech stack assessments as informational resources. These are not guarantees that a particular tool will work for your specific situation. We encourage you to do your own research and take advantage of free trials before committing to any software.

AI-generated recommendations are produced by third-party language models and may contain inaccuracies. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of any AI-generated content. Software pricing, features, and availability shown on our platform may change without notice as they are maintained by third-party tool vendors.

Service Availability

We strive to keep STOA Tools available 24/7, but we cannot guarantee uninterrupted access. The Service may be temporarily unavailable due to maintenance, updates, or circumstances beyond our control.

Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, STOA Digital Solutions shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages resulting from your use of the Service. This includes, but is not limited to, lost profits, data loss, business interruption, or costs of procuring substitute services.

Our total liability for any claims relating to the Service shall not exceed the amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim, or $100, whichever is greater.

No Paid Placement and No Commissions

No tool pays for placement, a sponsored listing, or a higher rating on STOA Tools, and we do not run a vendor portal.

STOA takes no commissions from any software company. We do not use affiliate links: every link to a tool goes to the vendor's own website.

Termination

You can delete your account at any time from your account settings or by contacting us. When you delete your account:

• Your personal data will be removed within 30 days, as described in our Privacy Policy
• If you have an active paid subscription, it will be cancelled and you will retain access through the end of your billing period
• Generated reports (assessments, training guides) that you have already downloaded are yours to keep

We may also terminate or suspend your account if you violate these terms or engage in activities that harm other users or the platform.

Governing Law

These Terms of Service are governed by the laws of the United States. Any disputes arising from these terms or your use of the Service will be resolved in accordance with applicable federal and state law.

Changes to These Terms

We may update these terms from time to time. When we make significant changes, we will notify you by email (if you have an account) or by posting a notice on the website. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect means you accept the updated terms.

Contact Us

Questions about these terms? Reach out:

• Email: hello@stoa.agency
• STOA Digital Solutions, United States