Legal
Gathertell Terms of Service
Last updated: July 28, 2026
These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and BuzDigital LLC, doing business as Gathertell ("Gathertell," "we," "us," or "our"). They govern your use of the Gathertell apps, websites, and services (together, the "Service").
Please read these Terms carefully. They include an arbitration agreement and a class action waiver in Section 15. That section affects how disputes between you and Gathertell are resolved. You can opt out of arbitration within 30 days of accepting these Terms. Section 15 explains how.
If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the Service.
1. What Gathertell Is
Gathertell helps families keep the stories behind their photos and videos. With the Service you can:
- Upload photos and videos, or import them from services like Google Photos.
- Record voice and video narrations about your memories.
- Get transcripts of your recordings.
- Organize everything into shared albums.
- Invite family members to view, contribute to, or help manage albums.
- Turn albums and recordings into narrated films you can watch, download, and share.
- Create share links so people outside the app can view a film or album.
- Capture stories at gatherings and family events.
We describe the features available on each plan inside the app. Features may change over time as we improve the Service.
2. Who May Use Gathertell
You must be 13 or older to create a Gathertell account. If you are under 13, you may not create an account or use the Service. If we learn that an account holder is under 13, we will close the account and delete its data as described in our Privacy Policy.
Children in your content. Gathertell is built for family memories, and family memories often include children. Photos, videos, and recordings that feature children are uploaded by adult family members, not by the children themselves. If you upload content that features a child, or record a child speaking, you are responsible for having the right to do so. That means you are the child's parent or guardian, or you have permission from the child's parent or guardian. Section 6 covers this in more detail.
Account accuracy and security. You agree to give us accurate account information and to keep your password secure. You are responsible for activity that happens under your account. Tell us right away at support@gathertell.com if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.
3. Your Content Stays Yours
"Your Content" means everything you upload or create in the Service: photos, videos, voice and video recordings, transcripts of your recordings, captions, comments, music files you upload, family information you enter, and films generated from your material.
You own Your Content. These Terms do not transfer ownership of anything you upload or create to Gathertell.
The license you give us. To run the Service, we need your permission to handle Your Content in specific ways. You grant Gathertell a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, transmit, and back up Your Content; to process it into the formats the Service needs (for example, making thumbnails, compressing video, normalizing audio, transcribing recordings, and rendering films); and to display it to you and to the people you choose to share it with. We may use the service providers named in our Privacy Policy to do these things on our behalf, under the same limits.
That is the whole purpose of the license: operating the Service for you and your family. We do not use the license to sell Your Content, to advertise with it, or to show it to people you did not choose. The license ends when Your Content is deleted from the Service, except that it continues as needed for copies shared with others before deletion (for example, a film another family member downloaded), for content that remains in another user's album because you contributed it there, and for limited periods in routine backups.
Feedback. If you send us suggestions or feedback, we may use them without obligation to you.
4. How Family Sharing Works
Sharing is at the heart of Gathertell, so it is worth being clear about who can see what.
- Albums have members. When you join an album, the other members of that album can see the content in it, including photos, videos, recordings, and your display name.
- Owners control membership. The album owner decides who is invited, what role each member has (such as viewer, contributor, or editor), and who is removed.
- Contributions stay in the album. If you add content to someone else's album, the album's members can see it under the owner's membership decisions. You can delete content you contributed, and you can ask us for help removing your contributions from another person's album.
- Share links reach outside the app. An album owner or authorized member can create a share link for a film or an album. Anyone who has that link can view the shared content, including hearing voice recordings and seeing narrator first names, without a Gathertell account. Share links stay active until they are revoked. If you create a share link, you are responsible for who you give it to. Revoking a link stops future access through that link, but it cannot undo views or downloads that already happened.
- Consent controls for recordings. The Service includes consent tools for the people who appear in recordings. If a person's consent is revoked, recordings that depend on it stop being shown in the Service.
5. Payment and Plans
Gathertell offers a free plan and paid plans with larger storage and usage limits. Plans, features, and pricing are described in the app and may evolve as the Service grows.
As of the date above, we have not started charging for paid plans. Before we charge you anything, we will show you the price and terms and ask for your agreement. When paid billing launches:
- Prices will be shown before you subscribe, and subscriptions will renew as described at signup.
- We may change prices or plan features with reasonable advance notice. Price changes will apply to your next billing period, not your current one.
- If you go over your plan's limits, some features (such as uploading new content) may pause until you free up space or upgrade. We will not delete Your Content just because you hit a limit.
6. Your Responsibilities
Rights to what you upload. Only upload content you have the right to use. That includes photos and videos you took or have permission to share, and it especially includes music. If you upload a music file to use as a soundtrack, you are responsible for having the rights to that music for the ways you use it, including in films you export or share. Do not upload music you do not have rights to.
Consent of people you record. Gathertell recordings capture real people's voices and images. Before you record someone, get their permission. Some places have laws that require the consent of everyone being recorded. You are responsible for complying with the recording and privacy laws that apply to you.
Recording children. If you record a child or upload content featuring a child, you are responsible for having the consent of that child's parent or guardian, or being that parent or guardian yourself. The Service's consent tools help you keep track of permissions, but the legal responsibility for obtaining them sits with you, the uploading adult.
Family information. You may add information about your family members, such as names, relationships, and family tree details. Only add information you are entitled to share, and be considerate about sensitive family facts.
7. Acceptable Use
Do not use the Service to:
- Break the law, or help anyone else break the law.
- Upload content that is unlawful, or that infringes someone else's copyright, trademark, privacy, or publicity rights.
- Upload content that sexually exploits or endangers minors. We will remove such content and report it to the authorities as required by law.
- Harass, threaten, or defame others.
- Impersonate any person, or misrepresent your connection to any person or organization.
- Upload malware, or probe, scan, or test the security of the Service without our written permission.
- Access the Service by automated means (bots, scrapers) except through interfaces we provide for that purpose.
- Attempt to access accounts, albums, or content you have not been given access to.
- Resell the Service or use it to build a competing service.
- Interfere with the operation of the Service or with other users' enjoyment of it.
We may remove content or suspend accounts that violate this section.
Reporting content. If you see a photo, video, recording, or comment in Gathertell that breaks these rules, tell us at support@gathertell.com, or use the Report option in the app on the photo or album itself. Include enough detail for us to find it. We review every report and remove content that violates these Terms. You can also block another person from inside the app, which hides everything they add from your own view.
8. Copyright Complaints (DMCA)
We respect copyright and expect our users to do the same. If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice to our copyright agent:
BuzDigital LLC, Attn: Copyright Agent
3112 Quebrada Cir, Carlsbad, CA 92009
Email: support@gathertell.com
Your notice should include: (1) your physical or electronic signature; (2) identification of the copyrighted work you claim is infringed; (3) identification of the material you claim is infringing and enough information for us to locate it; (4) your contact information; (5) a statement that you have a good faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and (6) a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act for the owner.
If your content was removed because of a copyright notice and you believe the removal was a mistake or misidentification, you may send us a counter-notice with the information required by 17 U.S.C. Section 512(g)(3). We may restore the content as the law allows.
We may terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.
9. Deleting Content and Closing Your Account
You can delete photos, videos, recordings, albums, and films from within the Service. Deleted content stops being available in the Service to you and to the people it was shared with, subject to the sharing rules in Section 4.
You can request deletion of your entire account. Our Privacy Policy and the account deletion page on our website describe how to make that request and what happens to your data. If you contributed content to other people's albums, you can choose whether those contributions should be removed as part of your request.
10. Changes to the Service; Suspension and Termination
Changes. We are actively building Gathertell, and the Service will change. We may add, modify, or remove features. If we discontinue the Service entirely, or remove a core feature you rely on to access Your Content, we will give you reasonable advance notice and a reasonable opportunity to download Your Content.
Termination by you. You can stop using the Service and request account deletion at any time.
Termination by us. We may suspend or terminate your access if you materially violate these Terms, if we are required to by law, or if your use creates risk or harm to the Service or other users. Unless the violation is serious or the law prevents it, we will tell you the reason and give you a chance to export Your Content first.
Export rights. Whatever the reason your relationship with Gathertell ends, our intent is that you never lose your memories. Except where we are legally prohibited, or where content was removed for serious violations such as unlawful material, you will have a reasonable opportunity to download Your Content before your account is closed.
11. Third-Party Services
Parts of the Service work with third parties you choose to use, such as Google sign-in and Google Photos import. Those services have their own terms and privacy policies, and we are not responsible for them. Our Privacy Policy explains which service providers we use to operate Gathertell.
12. Disclaimers
Gathertell is provided "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not promise that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, or that transcripts, face detection framing, or automatic organization will be accurate.
Some jurisdictions, including in some cases California, do not allow certain warranty disclaimers. Nothing in this section takes away rights the law does not let us take away. Where a warranty cannot be disclaimed, its duration is limited to the shortest period the law allows.
Keep your own copies. Gathertell is designed to keep your memories safe, and we take that seriously. Even so, no online service can guarantee against loss. We encourage you to keep your own copies of irreplaceable photos, videos, and recordings.
13. Limitation of Liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law:
- Gathertell will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or loss of goodwill, arising out of or related to the Service or these Terms.
- Gathertell's total liability for all claims arising out of or related to the Service or these Terms will not exceed the greater of (a) fifty US dollars ($50) or (b) the amounts you paid Gathertell in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.
These limits do not apply where the law does not allow them. Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability for gross negligence, willful misconduct, fraud, death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain damages, so some of the above limits may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms waives statutory consumer rights that cannot be waived.
14. Indemnity
If a third party brings a claim against Gathertell arising from Your Content, from your use of the Service for commercial purposes, or from your violation of these Terms or of someone else's rights, you agree to indemnify Gathertell from the resulting losses and reasonable legal costs, to the extent the claim is caused by your actions. This section does not apply where prohibited by law, and it does not require you to indemnify us for claims caused by our own conduct.
15. Dispute Resolution: Binding Arbitration and Class Action Waiver
Please read this section carefully. It affects your rights.
Let's talk first. Before starting any formal proceeding, you agree to contact us at support@gathertell.com and give us 30 days to try to resolve the issue informally. Most concerns can be resolved this way. We will do the same before starting a proceeding against you.
Agreement to arbitrate. If we cannot resolve a dispute informally, you and Gathertell agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved by binding individual arbitration, not by a judge or jury in court, except for the carve-outs below.
How arbitration works. The arbitration will be administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, available at www.adr.org. The arbitration will be held in the county where you live, or another mutually agreed location, and may be conducted by phone, video, or written submissions where the rules allow. The arbitrator can award the same individual relief a court could, including damages and individual injunctive or declaratory relief. Payment of filing, administration, and arbitrator fees will follow the AAA Consumer Arbitration Rules; if those fees would make arbitration prohibitively expensive for you compared to court, we will pay the portion the arbitrator determines is necessary to prevent that.
Small claims carve-out. Either you or Gathertell may bring an individual claim in small claims court instead of arbitration, if the claim qualifies for small claims court.
Public injunctive relief carve-out. Nothing in this section prevents you from seeking public injunctive relief in court where you have the right to do so under California law. Any request for public injunctive relief will be decided by a court, and the arbitration of all other claims will proceed and may be stayed pending the court's decision if either party requests it.
Class action waiver. You and Gathertell each agree that disputes will be brought only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate claims of different people or preside over any form of class or representative proceeding. This waiver does not apply to requests for public injunctive relief described above.
Your right to opt out. You can reject this arbitration agreement without any penalty. To opt out, email support@gathertell.com within 30 days of the date you first accept these Terms, with the subject line "Arbitration Opt-Out," and include your name and the email address on your account. If you opt out, the rest of these Terms still apply, and disputes will be resolved in court under Section 16.
Severability of this section. If any part of this Section 15 is found unenforceable, that part will be severed and the rest of the section will remain in effect, with one exception: if the class action waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, then that claim (and only that claim) must proceed in court rather than arbitration.
Survival. This Section 15 survives the end of your account or these Terms.
16. Governing Law and Venue
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict of laws rules, except that the Federal Arbitration Act governs Section 15. For any dispute that is not subject to arbitration, you and Gathertell agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in California, and each party consents to venue there. If you are a consumer with mandatory legal protections in your place of residence, nothing in this section takes those protections away.
17. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. If a change is material, we will give you reasonable advance notice, for example by email or an in-app notice, before it takes effect. Non-material changes (such as clarifications or corrections) may take effect when posted, with the "Last updated" date revised. If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, the updated Terms apply to you. If you do not agree to a change, stop using the Service and, if you wish, request account deletion. Material changes to Section 15 (arbitration) will not apply to disputes that arose before the change, and a new 30-day opt-out window will apply to the changed arbitration terms.
18. General
- Entire agreement. These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and any plan terms you accept in the app, are the entire agreement between you and Gathertell about the Service.
- Severability. If any provision of these Terms (other than as addressed in Section 15) is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect, and the unenforceable provision will be enforced to the maximum extent permitted.
- No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision, that is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
- Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, and we will notify you if we do.
- Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond its reasonable control.
- App stores. If you downloaded the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play, their applicable terms also apply to your use of the app, and those companies are not parties to these Terms and have no obligations under them.
19. Contact Us
Questions about these Terms? We are happy to help.
BuzDigital LLC, doing business as Gathertell
Email: support@gathertell.com
These terms are effective as of July 28, 2026.