Terms of Service

1. Scope

These terms apply to every account on Node-L and to every paid plan. Terms of a user that differ from these do not apply, even if we do not object to them.

You are a consumer when you use Node-L for purposes that are mainly outside your trade, business or profession. Several rules below apply to consumers only, and say so.

2. What Node-L is

Node-L is a platform for language exercises. Teachers create exercises (called nodes) in five node types, publish them, gather them in courses and see their students' results. Students play nodes, join courses and follow their progress. Some features use artificial intelligence (section 12).

3. Accounts and roles

• You need an account to play nodes and save progress, create nodes, join or run courses and use any AI feature. Browsing public nodes and trying their samples needs no account.
• You sign up with an email address, a username and a password, and confirm the address through the link we send. You can sign in only with a confirmed address.
• An account holds the Student role, the Teacher role or both. A role can be added in the settings; roles are not removed.
• Give true information and keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account unless you could not have prevented it. Tell us at once if you think someone else uses it.
• One account per person. An account cannot be transferred.
• Account deletion happens on request: write to us through the contact page from the email address of your account. What happens to your content is in section 13 and in the privacy policy.

4. Free use and AI try-outs

• Creating and publishing nodes of the three free node types (Standard Exercise, Reading & Comprehension, Vocabulary Training), running courses, and playing nodes of all five types is free.
• A free account can try some AI features a limited number of times (try-outs). The number for each feature is shown in the product. Try-outs do not renew. Free AI use is also capped per day; the cap resets at midnight UTC.
• When a paid plan starts, the try-outs of that side of the account (teacher or student) that are still unused are used up, and they do not come back when the plan ends.
• We may change what the free use includes.

5. Paid plans and prices

Paid plans can be bought once online payment opens on Node-L. Until then this section and sections 6 to 12 describe them as they will be sold.

• Plus is the teacher plan. It needs the Teacher role. It adds the two Plus node types (Listening & Comprehension and Paraphrase & Short Essay), AI help when creating content, text-to-speech recordings, and AI grading of your students' essays.
• School is a teacher plan of its own. It needs the Teacher role and includes everything in Plus. It replaces Plus on the same account; an account never holds both. A School can invite teachers to its seats by username and share its nodes with them. The plan includes seats for two teachers; more seats can be added, in the same billing cycle as the School plan. A teacher on a seat needs their own Plus for the Plus features.
• Master is the student plan. It needs the Student role and adds the AI learning features: Ask AI, explanations of answers, vocabulary lists, and the performance and comparison views.

Every plan is offered monthly and annually. The prices are shown on the pricing page and at checkout. They are in euros and include VAT where it applies. Checkout may show the price converted into your own currency, with the conversion fee of our payment provider included; you can switch to euros there. We always charge the euro price.

A business customer from another EU country who gives a valid VAT identification number at checkout pays the price without VAT (reverse charge); the invoice says so.

6. How a paid contract is made

• You choose a plan and a billing cycle on Node-L and are taken to the checkout page of our payment provider, Stripe.
• There you enter your billing address and your payment details, and you can correct every entry before you confirm. Before the final button you confirm these terms and that the service starts at once.
• The contract is concluded when you press the final button. Stripe sends you a receipt and the invoice by email.
• The contract language is English. We store these terms; the version that applies to you remains available on this page, and you can save or print it.

7. The 7-day Master trial

• A student account can try Master free for 7 days, once per account.
• The trial needs a payment card. Unless you cancel before the trial ends, the first payment for the plan and cycle you chose is taken on day 8, and the subscription continues as in section 8.
• You get a reminder by email a few days before the trial ends, with the date and the price.
• The trial includes an AI allowance for the trial period (section 12).
• The 14-day right of withdrawal starts when the trial starts (section 11).

8. Billing cycles and renewal

• Monthly: you pay in advance for one month. The subscription renews every month until it is cancelled. The price of the current month is fixed. If we change the list price, the new price applies from the first renewal at least 30 days after we have told you by email; the email names the new price and how to cancel before it applies.
• Annual: you pay in advance for one year, at a price that is fixed for that year. An annual plan does not renew by itself. About 30 days before the year ends we email you an offer for a new year at the price that applies then. If you accept, a new year starts when the current one ends. If you do not, your account returns to the free use at the end of the year.
• When a plan ends, nothing you created is deleted. The paid features stop.

9. Changing plans

• From Plus to School: the change takes effect at once, in the same billing cycle, and your renewal date stays the same. You are credited the unused part of the Plus period and charged the School price for the rest of the period.
• From School to Plus: the change takes effect at the end of the paid period. Until then the School plan continues.
• Switching between monthly and annual billing takes effect at the end of the current paid period. Until then your current billing cycle continues.
• Fewer School seats takes effect at the end of the paid period, and never below the number of seats in use.

10. Cancellation and failed payments

• You can cancel a plan at any time: in your settings, in the customer portal linked from there, or with the cancel-contracts button at the bottom of every page. A cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period; until then the plan stays active. We confirm every cancellation by email.
• A trial cancelled before it ends costs nothing.
• Apart from the refunds in section 11, payments for a period that has started are not refunded.
• If a payment fails, our payment provider tries again over the following days and you keep the plan while it does. If the payment still fails, the plan ends at once; there is no further grace period.
• Your right to end the contract for good cause is not affected.

11. Right of withdrawal

Consumers have a right to withdraw from a paid contract within 14 days. The withdrawal information explains it and contains a model form.

Beyond the law: if you withdraw or cancel within 14 days of your first purchase (for a trial, of the start of the trial), we refund everything you have paid, even though the service started at once at your request.

12. AI features and the AI allowance

• The AI features send the text they need (for example an exercise, an answer or an essay) to an AI provider and show you what it returns. AI output is produced automatically. It can be wrong or incomplete. An AI grade, explanation or correction is a learning aid, not a professional or official assessment.
• Teachers check AI suggestions before they publish them. Students should treat an AI answer as a suggestion and ask their teacher when in doubt.
• Each paid plan includes an AI allowance for each month, on annual plans too.
• The product shows how much of the allowance you have used. When it is used up, the AI features that draw on it pause until the next monthly allowance starts; everything else keeps working. The AI grading of students' essays draws on the allowance of the teacher who owns the essay node.
• School seats add no AI allowance.

13. Content you create

• Nodes, courses, answers, essays and other content you create remain yours.
• You allow SKS, free of charge and for as long as the content is on Node-L, to store, copy, process and show it to the extent needed to run Node-L: to the people you share it with (everyone, for a public node; the students of your courses; the teachers of your School and their students, for a shared node) and to the AI provider when you or your students use an AI feature on it.
• You may publish only content that you have the right to publish and that does not infringe the rights of others. Do not put personal data of other people into content unless that is necessary and allowed.
• We do not check content before it is published. We remove or block content that is unlawful once we know about it, and may remove content that breaks these terms. You can report content through the Report an error button while you play a node, or through the contact page.
• You can delete your nodes and courses; the product tells you first what a deletion removes. If your account is deleted on your request, the nodes and courses you published stay available under an anonymous name, because other people's courses and results depend on them; delete them first if you want them gone.

14. School sharing

• A School shares a node with a teacher on one of its seats. The teacher can then use it in their own courses.
• A share ends when the teacher leaves the School or is removed, when the School unshares the node, or when the School plan ends. Students who have already opened a shared node keep it; nobody new gets it.

15. Acceptable use

Do not:

• break the law or other people's rights through Node-L;
• publish content that is hateful, harassing, sexually explicit or otherwise harmful, in particular to minors;
• misuse the contact features to send spam or to harass anyone;
• try to get around limits, the AI allowance or access rules, or use another person's account;
• attack, overload or scan Node-L, or read it automatically beyond what a normal browser does;
• resell access to Node-L without our agreement.

If you break these rules we may remove content, suspend an account or, in a serious case, end the contract. We take your interests into account and warn you first where that is reasonable.

16. Availability

We work to keep Node-L available, but we cannot promise it is always reachable or free of errors. We may interrupt it for maintenance, updates and security work. Keep your own copies of content that matters to you.

17. Liability

• We are liable without limit for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the Product Liability Act, and where we have given a guarantee.
• For slight negligence we are liable only for the breach of an obligation whose fulfilment makes the contract possible in the first place and on which you may regularly rely (an essential obligation), and then only for the damage that is typical and foreseeable for a contract of this kind.
• Otherwise our liability for slight negligence is excluded. These limits also apply to our employees and agents.

18. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms for a valid reason, for example a change in the law or a new feature. We tell you by email at least 30 days before a change takes effect. A change to what a running paid plan includes or costs applies to you only with your agreement, or, for a price, as described in section 8. If you do not agree to a change, you can cancel before it takes effect.

19. Applicable law and jurisdiction

• German law applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. If you are a consumer, the mandatory consumer protection of the country where you live remains in force.
• If you are a merchant, a legal person under public law or a special fund under public law, the courts of Fürth, Germany, have jurisdiction.

20. Contact

Email: support@node-l.com. Contact form: node-l.com/contact.