rate.email
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Draft under legal review, effective date to be set.

Terms of Service

Effective date: [CONFIRM: EFFECTIVE DATE]

1. Parties

These terms are between:

  • The operator: @lbajsarowicz Łukasz Bajsarowicz, a Polish sole trader (jednoosobowa działalność gospodarcza), NIP 9111960653, REGON 021046365, address for correspondence ul. Hoża 86, lok. 410, 00-682 Warszawa, Poland ("rate.email", "we", "us"). Business registered since 2017-01-04, status Aktywny (active), per CEIDG.
  • The customer: the business or individual who registers for an API key or account ("customer", "you").

rate.email is a personal project of the operator. It is not affiliated with any employer, agency, or other company the operator works with or for.

2. Service description

rate.email is an HTTP API that rates an email address for deliverability and abuse risk. The customer submits an email address (or, in privacy mode, a hashed local part and a plaintext domain) and receives a score with reason codes. The service does not send email on the customer's behalf and does not itself decide whether to accept or reject a submission; the customer's own system enforces that decision.

3. Accounts and API keys

  • An account requires a valid email address and, for paid tiers, billing information collected by Polar.sh.
  • Two key types exist: secret keys (sk_), used server-to-server only, and publishable keys (pk_), safe to embed in browser-facing code. The customer is responsible for keeping secret keys out of any client-facing code, repository, or log.
  • The customer must not share, sell, or sublicense an API key to a third party outside its own organisation without our written consent.
  • We may rotate or revoke a key that appears compromised, and will notify the customer where practical.

4. Packages, credits, and billing

  • A free tier and prepaid credit packages are available. Prepaid credits do not expire.
  • Auto-reload of credits is optional and only activates on the customer's explicit opt-in. The customer may cancel auto-reload at any time from the dashboard, effective before the next reload trigger.
  • All payments, invoicing, and tax handling are processed by Polar.sh acting as merchant of record. rate.email never receives or stores full payment card data. Refunds are handled per Polar's own terms and refund process; see section 11.
  • Prices and available packages may change; changes apply to new purchases, not retroactively to already-issued credits.

5. Acceptable use

The customer must not use the service to:

  • Harvest, enumerate, or bulk-validate email addresses it does not already hold a lawful basis to process.
  • Discriminate against, deny service to, or take adverse action against any individual on the basis of protected characteristics inferred or implied from a rating result.
  • Exceed the rate limits and daily quota attached to its key or tier, or attempt to circumvent quota enforcement.
  • Reverse engineer, scrape, or attempt to reconstruct the underlying blocklist, scoring model, or third-party data sources through repeated queries.
  • Use the service in a way that violates GDPR, Polish law, or any other law applicable to the customer's own use of the data.

We may suspend or terminate access for a violation of this section, per section 9.

6. Publishable keys are advisory only

A publishable key (pk_) integration gives instant feedback in the browser, but a client-side check can always be bypassed by disabling JavaScript, intercepting the request, or submitting the form directly to the customer's backend. The customer must re-check the address server-side with a secret key before creating an account, accepting an order, or taking any decision that depends on the rating. rate.email is not responsible for a decision the customer's system took based solely on an unenforced client-side result.

7. Availability

We aim for high availability but do not offer a service level agreement (SLA) for the free tier. [CONFIRM: whether a paid-tier SLA with defined uptime commitment and credits exists or is planned; if none exists yet, state clearly that all tiers are currently offered without an SLA]. Planned maintenance is announced in advance where practical; the service may be interrupted without notice for security reasons.

8. Liability

This is a business-to-business (B2B) service. To the maximum extent permitted under Polish law (in particular the Polish Civil Code, Kodeks cywilny):

  • Our total liability for any claim arising from the service is limited to the amount the customer paid us in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or [CONFIRM: a minimum fixed amount, e.g. PLN equivalent, if a cap below actual fees paid is intended for free-tier customers who paid nothing].
  • We are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, including lost profits or lost data, except where such exclusion is not permitted by mandatory Polish law.
  • Nothing in this section excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded under Polish law, including liability for intentional harm (szkoda wyrządzona umyślnie) under Article 473 §2 of the Civil Code.

[CONFIRM: this liability section should be reviewed by a Polish-qualified lawyer before publication; caps on liability toward consumers are restricted under Polish consumer protection law, see section 10.]

9. Suspension and termination

  • Either party may terminate the account at any time; unused prepaid credits are handled per Polar's refund terms (section 11).
  • We may suspend or terminate an account immediately for a violation of section 5, for non-payment, or where required by law.
  • On termination, we delete or anonymise account data per the retention table in the privacy policy, and delete the customer's cached results per the same schedule.

10. Governing law, venue, and consumer note

  • These terms are governed by the laws of Poland.
  • Any dispute is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts having territorial jurisdiction over the operator's registered address, [CONFIRM: Warszawa, subject to confirmation of the correct court venue for a sole trader with this registered address].
  • This service is offered business-to-business. If an individual uses the service outside any trade, business, craft, or profession (i.e. as a consumer under Polish law, Article 22¹ of the Civil Code), mandatory Polish consumer protection law applies notwithstanding anything else in these terms, including statutory withdrawal rights and restrictions on liability caps and venue clauses toward consumers. [CONFIRM: whether the service is in practice ever consumer-facing; if genuinely never, state that more directly and have a lawyer confirm the consumer carve-out is still needed as a legal backstop.]

11. Polar as merchant of record

Polar.sh is the merchant of record for all paid transactions. Polar issues invoices, collects payment, and handles refunds according to its own published terms and refund policy. [CONFIRM: link to Polar's current terms of service and refund policy, to be inserted here]. Any billing dispute is first handled through Polar's customer portal; rate.email will assist in good faith but does not itself process refunds or hold payment data.

12. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms to reflect changes in the service or in applicable law. Material changes are announced on the website or by email to account holders at least [CONFIRM: notice period, e.g. 30 days] before taking effect. Continued use of the service after that date constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

13. Effective date

[CONFIRM: EFFECTIVE DATE, to be set on first publication after legal review]