Terms of service

Certinance is a UK-based provider of certificate management, expiry tracking and compliance document management software ("Certinance", "we", "us"). Contact info@certinance.co.uk for general enquiries, support@certinance.co.uk for support, and privacy@certinance.co.uk for privacy matters. Our website is https://www.certinance.co.uk.

These Terms govern business use of Certinance and incorporate Schedule 1 (Data Processing Schedule) for the processing described there. If Schedule 1 conflicts with these Terms on an obligation that UK data-protection law requires, Schedule 1 controls to that extent. Our Privacy Notice explains our processing as an independent controller; it is not replaced by Schedule 1.

Paid subscriptions are offered only to businesses established in the United Kingdom. The individual acting for a customer confirms that they are at least 18, act wholly or mainly for business purposes and are authorised to act for that customer. Consumers and businesses established outside the UK are not eligible to buy paid subscriptions at this time. We may request reasonable evidence of eligibility before allowing a purchase.

Certinance is an administrative workspace for certificate and compliance-document metadata, renewal dates, authorised user access, private PDF uploads and storage, PDF version history, and authenticated downloads and exports. It does not issue, certify, verify or endorse documents, assess whether a customer complies with a law or contract, or provide legal, regulatory or other professional advice. It does not guarantee that a certificate remains valid or that a renewal obligation will be satisfied.

Customers are responsible for checking the accuracy and suitability of source documents and information, determining their regulatory and contractual obligations, taking timely renewal action and obtaining specialist advice when needed. We remain responsible for our own obligations under these Terms and applicable law.

Certinance provides automated email reminders for eligible documents with recorded expiry dates, subject to the organisation's notification settings, selected recipients, subscription eligibility and applicable service limits.

Email reminders are supplementary notifications and are not guaranteed to arrive at any particular time. Customers remain responsible for monitoring expiry dates and maintaining their own compliance arrangements.

Where available, automated document extraction assists with identifying information from uploaded documents. Extracted information may be incomplete or inaccurate and must be checked and confirmed by the customer before reliance.

Certinance does not independently verify the authenticity, validity or regulatory compliance of uploaded certificates or documents.

The customer must provide accurate account and business information, protect credentials, assign appropriate roles, promptly remove access when no longer required, and report suspected account compromise as soon as reasonably practicable. Customers should maintain appropriate independent copies of business-critical records and continuity arrangements for important audits and deadlines. They must not rely on uninterrupted access to Certinance for time-critical compliance requirements.

We may temporarily restrict access where reasonably necessary to protect systems, investigate misuse, comply with law or enforce subscription entitlements. We will explain material restrictions when lawful and reasonably practicable. Suspension alone does not authorise deletion of customer documents.

A free trial lasts 14 days after activation, requires no payment card and does not automatically convert to a paid subscription. We may restrict repeated trials to prevent abuse. Following expiry, editing and uploads cease, and eligible records are available read-only during the applicable retention period, subject to verified user access and service availability.

The present monthly plans are:

The monthly subscription fee is payable in advance when a customer deliberately completes checkout. Subscriptions renew monthly until cancelled. We are not currently VAT registered and do not add VAT while this remains the case. The amount and any legally applicable tax will be shown before the customer confirms payment. We do not currently offer annual subscriptions.

Plan limits apply to the organisation. If a change of plan would place the organisation over a lower limit, data will not be deleted for that reason; affected changes may be restricted until the usage is brought within the relevant entitlement. Any offered upgrade, downgrade or proration terms will be stated in the checkout or billing flow before the customer authorises them. No unoffered plan-change facility is promised.

We may change subscription prices for future billing periods by giving at least 30 days' advance notice, where reasonably practicable, to the organisation Owner. An existing customer may cancel before a price increase takes effect. A price change does not retroactively alter fees already paid for the current billing period.

An authorised Owner may cancel using the available Stripe Customer Portal, or by contacting support@certinance.co.uk if the Portal is unavailable. We will take reasonable steps to verify the requester's authority and confirm the cancellation outcome. An ordinary cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid billing period; paid access continues until then, subject to other lawful restrictions.

A failed or overdue payment may cause loss of write access in accordance with subscription status. We will not treat non-payment alone as permission to delete customer documents immediately.

We do not automatically refund unused portions of a paid billing period following ordinary cancellation. This does not remove any remedy or refund required by law, or prevent us from agreeing an exception, including for duplicate or incorrect charges.

Customers retain ownership and other rights in their uploaded information. They give us a limited, non-exclusive permission to receive, host, process, secure, version, display and deliver that information solely to provide and protect the service, fulfil their documented instructions and comply with law.

Customers must have rights and lawful authority to upload the information. They must not upload malicious, unlawful or unnecessary personal information, or special-category or criminal-offence information unless appropriate arrangements and safeguards have been expressly agreed.

Uploaded versions must be PDFs of no more than 10 MiB each. Customer PDFs are stored privately through Cloudinary and made available through authorised, time-limited downloads. We may temporarily pause new uploads where necessary for security, capacity or reliability. We will not intentionally remove legitimate download access without a valid reason.

File type, size and integrity controls do not constitute malware scanning: PDFs are not currently malware-scanned. Customers should upload only documents they reasonably trust and maintain appropriate endpoint protection.

The parties will comply with applicable data-protection law. For personal data within customer-controlled certificate records and PDFs, the customer generally acts as controller and Certinance as processor, as described in Schedule 1. Certinance acts as an independent controller for account administration, security, billing and its own business functions, which are explained in the Privacy Notice.

Schedule 1 forms part of these Terms when a customer uses Certinance to process personal data for which it is controller. Each party retains its own statutory obligations.

We will use reasonable care and skill in providing Certinance and maintain the safeguards stated in Schedule 1. No uninterrupted availability, guaranteed uptime percentage, response deadline or recovery time is promised unless we separately agree it in writing. We will use reasonable efforts to provide appropriate information about material service interruptions and changes, when practicable.

Customers must not misuse the service, bypass security controls, access another customer's workspace, interfere with systems, distribute malware, infringe third-party rights or use Certinance unlawfully. Legal rights to reverse engineer or otherwise inspect software that cannot lawfully be excluded are preserved.

Certinance and its licensors retain rights in the service and branding. Customers receive a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the service during their entitlement, subject to these Terms. Customer documents remain the customer's content.

Each party must protect the other's non-public confidential information using reasonable care, use it for the agreement only, and disclose it only to people and providers who reasonably need it and are bound by suitable confidentiality obligations. Confidentiality does not cover information demonstrably public without breach, lawfully known without restriction, independently developed, or lawfully obtained from a third party without a duty of confidence. Legally compelled disclosure is permitted, with advance notice where lawful and practicable.

These contractual confidentiality duties continue for three years after the agreement ends. Trade secrets remain protected while legally qualifying as trade secrets. Personal data remains subject to applicable data-protection law regardless of that period.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or restricts liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, death or personal injury resulting from negligence, or any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or restricted. Neither party is relieved of mandatory statutory data-protection obligations.

General liability cap: Subject to the preceding paragraph and the requirements of applicable law, Certinance's total aggregate liability to a customer arising from or connected with the agreement, whether in contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise, will not exceed the equivalent of 12 monthly subscription fees at the rate applicable to that customer's plan immediately before the event giving rise to the first relevant claim. This figure is a single aggregate limit across related and unrelated claims under the agreement, rather than a fresh cap for each event. Fees for optional or separately contracted services, if ever introduced, are not included without express agreement.

Free trial: Where a claim arises during the 14-day free trial before any paid plan takes effect, the total aggregate general liability cap is £228 (equivalent to 12 monthly Starter subscription fees). This cap is subject to the same legally non-excludable liabilities, statutory protections and reasonableness requirements described above. Where a trial later becomes a paid subscription, allocation of claims to the applicable period depends on when the event giving rise to the claim occurred.

To the extent legally permissible, neither party is liable to the other for lost anticipated profit, lost anticipated savings or lost business opportunity, or for indirect or consequential loss. This does not automatically characterise foreseeable direct loss, loss of hosted data or reasonable recovery costs as indirect; whether a loss is excluded depends on its nature and applicable law. The customer must take reasonable steps to mitigate reasonably avoidable loss.

The financial cap and exclusions apply only so far as enforceable under applicable law, including any statutory reasonableness requirement. They do not limit claims by people who are not parties, regulatory powers or liabilities that cannot legally be capped.

After a trial or paid entitlement ends, customer records normally move to read-only access for up to 90 days, subject to lawful exceptions and verified access. Customers can prepare an export manifest and download authorised PDF versions individually during available access; the service does not currently promise a single bundled ZIP export. Customers should export important records promptly.

Customers may request earlier verified return or deletion by emailing privacy@certinance.co.uk. We will verify identity and authority, assess lawful retention or preservation obligations, and arrange deletion or return in accordance with Schedule 1 and the agreed operating process. Authorised organisation Owners and Admins may permanently delete individual eligible documents, including associated Cloudinary PDF versions, through the application with explicit confirmation and role checks. Whole-workspace closure and bulk data deletion remain subject to a controlled manual procedure; no automatic 90-day organisation-deletion executor or scheduler is enabled. We do not claim that every item is automatically erased on the 90th day or that provider backups disappear immediately. The 90-day period is an operational retention target, not an assertion of automatic execution; an applicable legal obligation to delete or return data still applies.

Billing, fraud prevention, legal or security records may be retained separately only for a valid purpose and in accordance with applicable law.

We may update these Terms for legal, security or service reasons. We will take reasonable steps to notify affected paid customers in advance of materially adverse changes and explain when they take effect. An update will not retrospectively impose a material new financial obligation for an already-paid period. If a materially adverse change is unacceptable, the customer may cancel before it takes effect, subject to any non-waivable legal rights.

These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. Subject to mandatory law and jurisdiction rules, courts in England and Wales have jurisdiction. Before litigation, either party should first contact the other using the published contact details and allow a reasonable opportunity to resolve the issue, unless urgent action is required. This does not prevent a party from exercising statutory rights or seeking urgent relief.

Version: dps-v2
Parties: the customer identified in its Certinance organisation account (controller) and the provider of the Certinance service (processor), insofar as Certinance processes customer-controlled personal data.

This Schedule applies to personal data that Certinance processes on the customer's behalf within certificate records, PDF files, document metadata, versions and related access records. The service description, configuration, customer's submissions and authorised workspace actions constitute documented instructions. The customer retains the right to issue further lawful, reasonable written instructions within the contracted service scope. Certinance will process this data only on those documented instructions (including for international transfers), except where required otherwise by applicable UK law; where permitted, Certinance will tell the customer before such processing. Certinance will promptly inform the customer if it believes an instruction infringes applicable data-protection law, unless prohibited.

• Subject matter: provision and protection of the Certinance document-management service.
• Duration: trial or paid entitlement and subsequent return, retention and deletion steps required by the agreement and applicable law.
• Nature/purposes: receive, store, organise, version, retrieve, secure, provide controlled access, export, return and delete customer-directed certificate data; and, when an authorised user requests it, analyse selectable PDF text locally in that user's browser to suggest metadata for the user to review and confirm.
• Extraction limits: the extraction feature does not use hosted OCR or AI, does not send source text or unconfirmed output to an extraction provider, and does not persist that source text or unconfirmed output. It may be incomplete or inaccurate, cannot read image-only or protected PDFs, and does not verify authenticity, validity or compliance.
• Data subjects: customer personnel, contractors, suppliers, contacts, insured persons and others recorded in customer certificates.
• Types of data: names, business contact details, positions, document and certificate identifiers, dates, access logs, signatures and other personal information that the customer places in a PDF. Sensitive categories are not intended without prior agreement and safeguards.
• Customer's rights/obligations: determine lawful basis and processing purposes, provide notices, respond as controller to data subjects, issue lawful instructions, check and confirm extracted suggestions before relying on them, and make decisions about what data is uploaded or retained.

Certinance will ensure persons authorised to handle customer-controlled personal data are under contractual or statutory duties of confidentiality and will implement risk-appropriate technical and organisational measures under Article 32 UK GDPR. Currently described controls include authenticated user access, tenant isolation, role checks, Firestore rules, Cloudflare Worker authorisation, protected configuration secrets, private Cloudinary PDFs, short-lived download permissions, size/type controls, SHA-256 transfer integrity checks, rate limits and relevant audit records. PDF uploads are not malware-scanned; file validations are not a guarantee that a PDF is harmless. Security measures will be reviewed and adapted when warranted by the risks and service changes.

The customer grants general written authorisation for Certinance to engage the subprocessors disclosed in the Subprocessor Register made available with these Terms for the services described there. Certinance will impose data-protection obligations that provide materially equivalent protections through its contractual arrangements and remains responsible to the customer for its subprocessors' performance to the extent required by UK GDPR.

Certinance will maintain an accessible subprocessor register identifying provider, processing role and available relevant location/transfer information. We will take reasonable steps to give affected customers advance notice of additions or replacements that process customer-controlled personal data, ordinarily at least 30 days before the change, unless an urgent security or continuity reason requires otherwise. Customers may raise a reasoned data-protection objection before a notified change; we will consider reasonable alternatives and, if the objection cannot be resolved, the customer may terminate the affected service and request data return subject to applicable law. This paragraph does not promise that a third-party provider itself grants a 30-day notice period.

The Subprocessor Register supplied with this Schedule identifies the relevant service providers, their roles and further information about applicable processing and transfers.

Certinance will not initiate a restricted transfer of customer personal data without an applicable adequacy regulation or other valid transfer mechanism and any required risk assessment. We may use service providers or their subprocessors outside the UK; UK-only customer eligibility does not imply UK-only processing. Applicable transfer safeguards, roles and locations are addressed through the Subprocessor Register and relevant provider notices and agreements. The customer authorises transfers that are necessary to provide the service only where consistent with the documented processing instructions and applicable law.

Taking account of the nature of processing and information reasonably available, Certinance will assist the customer by appropriate technical and organisational means to respond to lawful data-subject requests. We will promptly pass on requests about customer-controlled content received directly where it is appropriate and lawful to do so, and will not independently determine the controller's response unless required by law.

After becoming aware of a personal-data breach affecting customer-controlled data, Certinance will notify the affected customer without undue delay using available verified contact details and provide reasonably available information concerning the nature of the breach, affected categories, likely consequences, measures taken or planned and a means of follow-up. Incomplete initial information may be supplemented as it becomes available. We will provide reasonable assistance with the customer's security assessment, required notifications, data-protection impact assessments and prior regulator consultation, taking account of the processing and available information. We do not transfer the controller's statutory decisions to Certinance.

At the end of the contract, the customer may choose return or deletion of customer-controlled personal data. Certinance will provide available export and authenticated PDF-version download facilities for return, and will delete existing processor copies following the end-of-service procedure unless applicable UK law requires continued storage. The usual service design includes up to 90 days of read-only access after entitlement expiry for export, unless a lawful earlier deletion request or other applicable requirement changes that period. A documented customer choice and any lawful extensions or legal holds will be recorded.

Authorised Owners and Admins can request individual document deletion through the application, subject to entitlement, access control, legal-hold and retention checks. Whole-workspace closure and comprehensive account-level deletion use an authorised manual procedure, including identity/authority verification, relevant legal-hold assessment and completion evidence. This Schedule does not promise automatic execution on day 90 or instantaneous erasure from independently managed provider backups. Manual operation does not waive the underlying legal obligation to return or delete data without undue delay when required. Certinance will communicate material constraints or delays and complete verified deletion steps. Residual backups will be handled according to applicable contractual and lawful retention controls; restored copies remain subject to deletion duties.

Certinance will make available information reasonably necessary to demonstrate compliance with this Schedule and Article 28 and permit and contribute to audits, including inspections, conducted by the customer or an auditor mandated by the customer as required by law. The parties will seek reasonable arrangements as to timing, confidentiality, security, scope and avoiding unnecessary access to other customers' information. Requests for suitable existing documentation or independent reports should normally precede disruptive on-site inspection, without restricting audit rights that law requires. Reasonable direct third-party audit costs may be allocated by advance agreement, but a lack of agreement will not remove mandatory audit rights.

Liability under this Schedule is governed by the main Terms only insofar as legally permitted; nothing reduces mandatory UK GDPR duties, data subjects' rights or regulatory powers. Where mandatory data-protection terms conflict with a provision of the main Terms, this Schedule controls to the extent needed. Material amendments to this Schedule will be communicated to affected customers in accordance with the main Terms and applicable law.