Terms of Service

1. Agreement and eligibility

You may use the Service only if you can form a binding contract with us and are not barred from doing so under applicable law. To use the Service you must be at least 16 — or, if your country sets a lower age of digital consent under Article 8 GDPR, that age, but never under 13. To buy or sell courses or to subscribe to a paid plan, you must also be at least 18, or the age of majority in your jurisdiction; if you are younger, you may use those features only with the involvement and consent of a parent or guardian who agrees to these Terms on your behalf. If you use the Service on behalf of a company or other organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to bind it, and “you” includes that organisation.

We may update these Terms from time to time as described in “Changes to the Service and these Terms”. The version in force is always the one posted here, dated above.

2. Your account

To use most features you must create an account. You agree to provide accurate information, to keep it up to date, and to keep your login credentials secure. You are responsible for everything that happens under your account. Tell us promptly at support@vellum.to if you suspect unauthorised use. You may hold only one account unless we agree otherwise.

3. The Service: how Vellum works

Vellum helps you turn your knowledge and experience into an online course. Our AI interviews you, transcribes any voice notes, and drafts a structured course that you then edit, price, attach videos to, publish at a public address, and sell. Students browse, enrol, and learn.

• You are responsible for your course. The AI produces drafts to help you; you decide what to publish. You are responsible for the accuracy, quality, and legality of everything you publish.
• Vellum is a marketplace and toolset, not the author or teacher. Except for the platform itself, we do not create the courses and we are not responsible for their content. Contracts to take a course are between the Student and the Instructor, facilitated by Vellum.
• The Service changes. We may add, change, or remove features, and we may set limits (for example, on uploads or AI usage), to keep the Service running well for everyone.

4. Instructors and Students

The Service has two main roles, and you may hold both. An “Instructor” is a user who creates, publishes, or sells a course. A “Student” is a user who enrols in a course, whether free or paid. “Course Content” means everything an Instructor creates, uploads, or makes available through the Service for a course — including interview answers, lesson text, scripts, videos, images, titles, and descriptions.

As part of running the marketplace, we share certain Student information with the Instructor whose course the Student enrols in — including the Student’s name, email, enrolment, progress, and any course-related messages, reviews, or posts — so the Instructor can deliver and support the course. How each party may use that data is described in our Privacy Policy.

If you are an Instructor, you are an independent controller of the Student personal data you receive. You agree to: use it only to deliver and support your courses; comply with applicable data-protection law and maintain a lawful basis (and your own privacy notice where required); honour Students’ data-rights requests; keep the data secure; not sell it or use it for unrelated marketing without the Student’s consent; and notify us without undue delay — and in any event within 72 hours — if you become aware of a breach affecting it. We may make a separate Instructor Data Addendum available to govern these obligations in more detail.

5. Instructor content and intellectual property

You own your Course Content

As between you and Vellum, you (the Instructor) retain all ownership and intellectual-property rights in your Course Content. Vellum does not claim ownership of your courses. We claim only the licence you grant us below, which we need in order to host, run, market, and sell your course and to operate the marketplace.

The licence you grant Vellum

By submitting or publishing Course Content, you grant Vellum a worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid-up, transferable, and sublicensable licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt and reformat (for technical delivery), publicly perform and display, distribute, market, promote, and sell your Course Content and to provide it to Students, in any media now known or later developed, in order to operate and promote the Service. “Royalty-free” means we owe no licensing fee for these rights; you are instead compensated through course sales as described in “Payments, fees, and payouts”.

You also authorise Vellum to sublicense these rights — to Students so they can access what they enrol in, and to the partners who help us host, deliver, advertise, syndicate, and resell courses. We may caption, excerpt, and create promotional clips and other derivative materials from your Course Content for the purposes above.

This licence is non-exclusive — you keep full ownership of your Course Content and may use your own knowledge, story, and separately produced materials however you wish, including teaching or publishing elsewhere. So that Vellum remains the home for the course you build here, while your course is published on the Service you agree not to offer that same Vellum-hosted course — in substantially the form published here — for sale or distribution through a competing marketplace. Within the Service, Vellum may set, display, discount, and run promotions on the price of your course in line with these Terms and our published fee structure.

The portions of this licence that allow Vellum to (a) continue providing your course to Students who enrolled before it was removed, and (b) use your Course Content and uploaded assets for marketing and promotion are perpetual and irrevocable, and survive the removal of your course, the closure of your account, and any termination of these Terms. All other rights under the licence end when your course is no longer offered for new sale on the Service, except as needed to complete transactions already in progress and to keep records.

Your promises about your Course Content

You represent and warrant that you own or have all rights necessary to grant the licence above; that your Course Content and our permitted use of it do not infringe or violate anyone’s intellectual-property, privacy, publicity, or other rights, or any law; and that your Course Content is not false, misleading, defamatory, or harmful. You are solely responsible for clearing any third-party material (music, images, footage, trademarks) you include.

6. Student access and lifetime access

When you enrol in a course, we grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to access and view that course for your own learning, for as long as your access lasts. You may not copy, download (except where a feature expressly allows it), share, resell, or publicly show the course.

Where a course is offered with “lifetime access”, this means you keep access to that course for the lifetime of your Vellum account and for as long as Vellum continues to operate the Service — importantly, even if the Instructor later removes the course, stops selling it, or closes their account. To make this promise real, Vellum retains the licence described above to keep hosting and serving purchased courses to enrolled Students after an Instructor departs. Lifetime access is subject to these limits:

• It is tied to your account. If *you* close your account or we terminate it for a serious breach of these Terms, your access ends. Lifetime access does not survive your own account deletion.
• It is not a promise that Vellum operates forever. If we discontinue the Service entirely, we will give reasonable notice and, where practical, a way to retain what you bought; “lifetime” means the life of the Service, not a guarantee of perpetual operation.
• Rare exceptions. We may have to remove or disable a course if it is found to be unlawful or infringing, or if we are legally required to. We will act reasonably and, where appropriate, offer affected Students a remedy.
• Access is to the content, not the Instructor. Lifetime access means continued access to the course content; it does not entitle you to ongoing support, coaching, answers, or other services from the Instructor, which may end if the Instructor leaves.

Free enrolments may be subject to change or discontinuation; the lifetime-access promise above applies to courses purchased with lifetime access.

7. Marketing and promotional use

You agree that Vellum may market and promote your course and the Service. In particular, Vellum may feature your course on the Vellum website and apps, in catalogues and search, in email and social campaigns, and in paid and organic advertising, and may use the assets you upload — including videos, images, excerpts, course titles and descriptions, and your public profile name, handle, voice, likeness, and image as they appear in those assets — for these purposes. To the extent permitted by law, you waive any rights of privacy or publicity that would otherwise restrict these uses.

This promotional right is worldwide, royalty-free, and continues in perpetuity, including for already-distributed marketing materials, and survives removal of your course and closure of your account. Vellum may also use these assets to promote the Instructor’s own course. Where local law gives you a non-waivable right to object to the use of your personal likeness, you may ask us to stop new marketing uses of your likeness going forward; we are not, however, required to recall or remove materials already produced or distributed. We will not present you as endorsing a product or view you have not endorsed beyond your course itself, and nothing here requires Vellum to market any particular course.

8. Payments, fees, and payouts

Payments are processed by our third-party payment processor, Stripe, and are subject to its terms. By selling or buying on Vellum you also agree to the payment processor’s terms. Vellum does not store your full card or bank details.

For Students

Course prices are shown before you buy and are charged at checkout in the currency displayed. Payment is processed by Stripe on the Instructor’s connected payment account — the Instructor is the seller of record for the course — and you authorise that charge to your chosen payment method, including any applicable taxes.

For Instructors

• Payouts. To sell paid courses you must connect a Stripe account that you own (an existing account or one you create) and complete Stripe’s onboarding and identity checks. Students pay on your connected Stripe account: each sale settles directly to you, Stripe’s payment-processing fees are charged to your account under your agreement with Stripe, and Vellum’s platform fee is collected automatically from each sale. Vellum never holds your course earnings.
• Platform fee. Vellum charges a platform fee on each sale that depends on your plan — currently 1% per sale on the Pro plan, 4% per sale on the Creator plan, and 7% per sale on the Hobby plan (sales made while a paid plan has lapsed are charged at the Hobby rate). The current fee schedule is shown in the Service and may be updated on notice.
• Taxes. Where the law makes Vellum the “deemed supplier” or merchant of record — for example for VAT or sales tax on certain digital sales to consumers — we will collect and remit that tax. Otherwise you are responsible for determining, collecting, reporting, and remitting any taxes that apply to your sales, and you are always responsible for your own income taxes. You agree to give us any tax information we reasonably need to meet our obligations.
• Pricing and refunds. You set your course price within any limits we publish. You authorise us to initiate refunds of course sales on your connected Stripe account, and to reverse our platform fee where applicable, in line with “Refunds and cancellations”.

Creator subscription plans

Some features require a paid creator plan (currently Hobby, Creator, and Pro; feature availability varies by plan as shown in the Service), billed monthly in advance through our payment processor. Where we offer a free trial, it is 3 days and is available only on your first subscription. Plans renew automatically each period until you cancel. You can cancel at any time from your billing settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid period, and except where the law requires otherwise, fees already paid are non-refundable. If a plan lapses, your published courses stay published and Students keep their access; some creator features may become unavailable until you resubscribe.

9. Refunds and cancellations

We want Students to be happy with what they buy. Unless a specific course or promotion states otherwise, or the law gives you a stronger right, paid course purchases may be refunded within 14 days of purchase, provided you have not substantially consumed the course — meaning you have viewed more than 25% of its lessons or downloaded any lesson. This 14-day refund is a voluntary policy that is more generous than the statutory withdrawal right described in Additional rights for consumers in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland; where your statutory right is stronger, it prevails.

• How to request a refund. Contact us at support@vellum.to. Approved refunds are returned to your original payment method.
• Effect on Instructors. When a refund is issued, it is processed on the Instructor’s connected Stripe account, so the refunded amount comes out of the Instructor’s balance for that sale; where applicable, Vellum’s platform fee for that sale is reversed as well.
• Chargebacks and abuse. We may decline refunds or suspend accounts where we reasonably believe a request is fraudulent or abusive, and we may recover amounts owed following a chargeback.
• Subscriptions. Creator-plan fees are handled as described under “Payments, fees, and payouts” and are generally non-refundable once a period begins.

10. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Service to do any of the following, and not to help anyone else do them:

• Break the law, infringe intellectual-property or privacy rights, or post content you do not have the right to share.
• Upload content that is unlawful, fraudulent, defamatory, hateful, harassing, sexually exploitative, or that promotes violence or self-harm.
• Mislead Students about what a course is or what it will deliver, or impersonate any person or organisation.
• Circumvent our fees, route transactions off-platform to avoid them, or manipulate reviews, rankings, or enrolment numbers.
• Upload malware, attempt to breach security, scrape the Service without permission, or use it to train competing AI models.
• Interfere with the Service’s operation, place unreasonable load on it, or access it through unauthorised means.

We may review, moderate, refuse, or remove content and may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these rules, as described in “Termination”.

11. Reviews, posts, and other contributions

The Service may let you submit reviews, comments, questions, posts, and similar contributions (“Contributions”). You keep ownership of your Contributions, but you grant Vellum and the relevant Instructor a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, and — to the extent permitted by law — irrevocable, sublicensable licence to use, display, reproduce, and distribute them in connection with the Service and its promotion. You are responsible for your Contributions and must follow our acceptable-use rules.

Your Contributions can outlive your account. Because others may have replied to or relied on them, Contributions you have made to shared or community areas may remain on the platform even after you close your account, as also explained in our Privacy Policy. Where practical we will disassociate them from your name on request, but we are not obliged to remove the underlying content.

12. Termination

You may stop using the Service and close your account at any time from your settings or by contacting us. We may suspend or terminate your access, remove content, or close your account if you breach these Terms, if required by law, or to protect the Service, other users, or the public; where reasonable and lawful we will give notice and a chance to fix the problem first.

On termination: your right to use the Service ends; if you are a Student, closing your account ends your access to courses (including lifetime-access courses), as explained in “Student access and lifetime access”; if you are an Instructor, Students who already enrolled keep their access and Vellum retains the licence needed to serve and support them. Contributions and other content may remain as described above. Provisions that by their nature should survive — including the licences you grant, payment obligations, disclaimers, limitation of liability, and indemnification — survive termination.

13. Vellum’s intellectual property

The Service itself — including our software, design, the “manuscript” look and feel, the Vellum name and logo, and all related intellectual property — belongs to Vellum and its licensors, and is protected by law. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service as permitted by these Terms. You may not copy, modify, reverse-engineer, or create derivative works of the Service, or use our trademarks, without our prior written consent. This is separate from your ownership of your own Course Content.

14. Copyright complaints

We respect intellectual-property rights and respond to clear notices of alleged infringement. If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice to our designated agent at support@vellum.to that includes: identification of the work and the allegedly infringing material and its location; your contact details; a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorised; a statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you are the rights-holder or authorised to act for them; and your signature.

We may remove or disable access to material that is the subject of a valid notice and may terminate the accounts of repeat infringers. If you believe your content was removed by mistake, you may send a counter-notice to the same address.

15. Disclaimers

The Service and all content are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, to the fullest extent permitted by law. We disclaim the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, that AI-generated drafts will be accurate or suitable, or that any course will achieve a particular result, income, or outcome.

Courses are created by Instructors, not by Vellum, and reflect their views, not ours. Any course content is for general informational and educational purposes and is not professional (for example, legal, medical, or financial) advice. Some of these protections may not apply to you if your local law does not allow them, in which case they apply to the greatest extent permitted.

16. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Vellum and its directors, employees, and agents will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or business, arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms, even if advised of the possibility.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, and even if a limited remedy is found to have failed of its essential purpose, our total liability for all claims relating to the Service or these Terms is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you paid to Vellum in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred US dollars (US$100). This cap does not limit Vellum’s obligation to remit or reverse amounts actually owed under “Payments, fees, and payouts”. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including, where applicable, liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or your non-waivable statutory rights as a consumer.

17. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Vellum and its directors, employees, and agents from and against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, and reasonable expenses (including legal fees) arising out of or related to: your Course Content or Contributions; your use of the Service; your breach of these Terms or of any law; or, if you are an Instructor, your relationship with your Students and your handling of their data. We may take over the defence of any matter subject to indemnification, and you agree to cooperate with us.

18. Governing law and dispute resolution

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and subject to any mandatory consumer-protection laws of your country of residence that apply to you. This choice of law governs your contractual relationship with us only; it does not affect your data-protection rights, which are governed by the GDPR and described in our Privacy Policy. We will try in good faith to resolve any dispute informally first — please contact us at support@vellum.to.

Where permitted by law, any dispute that cannot be resolved informally will be settled by binding individual arbitration rather than in court, and you and Vellum each waive the right to participate in a class action or class-wide arbitration. This does not apply where such waiver is prohibited by law; in particular, if you are a consumer in the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland, you keep the right to bring proceedings in your local courts and nothing here deprives you of the mandatory protections of your home jurisdiction (see “Additional rights for consumers in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland”). More generally, if you are a consumer we will bring proceedings against you only in the courts of your country of habitual residence, and you may bring proceedings against us either there or in the courts of the Netherlands. Either party may still bring a claim in small-claims court or seek injunctive relief to protect its intellectual property.

You may opt out of this arbitration agreement and class-action waiver by sending written notice to support@vellum.to within 30 days of first accepting these Terms. If you opt out, disputes will be resolved in the courts identified above. Opting out has no effect on any other part of these Terms. This opt-out only matters if you are otherwise bound by the arbitration agreement; consumers in the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland keep their home-court rights regardless and do not need to opt out.

19. Additional rights for consumers in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland

If you are a consumer (acting outside your trade, business, or profession), the mandatory consumer-protection laws of the country where you habitually reside continue to apply and prevail over the choice of Delaware law above wherever they give you stronger protection — these Terms do not take those rights away. The points below apply in particular to consumers in the EEA, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland:

• Your local courts and laws. The arbitration agreement and class-action waiver above do not apply to you. You may bring claims in the courts of your home country and you keep the protection of its mandatory consumer laws.
• 14-day right of withdrawal. You may withdraw from a purchase within 14 days without giving a reason. If you ask us to start giving you access to a digital course immediately and acknowledge that you lose this right once access begins, the right ends at that point — this is how digital content is delivered. Our Refunds and cancellations practice is designed to respect this right.
• Easy cancellation. You can cancel a subscription at any time using the cancellation function in your billing settings.
• Non-excludable liability. Nothing in “Disclaimers” or “Limitation of liability” limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.
• Statutory guarantees. Your statutory guarantees about services and digital content continue to apply alongside this agreement.

If you have a consumer complaint, please contact us first at support@vellum.to and we will try to resolve it. You may also use any independent dispute-resolution scheme available to you under your local law.

20. Changes to the Service and these Terms

We may modify the Service and these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes to these Terms, we will update the “Last updated” date and, where appropriate, give notice through the Service or by email. Changes take effect when posted, or on the date we state. Your continued use of the Service after changes take effect means you accept the revised Terms; if you do not agree, stop using the Service and, if you wish, close your account.

21. General

• Entire agreement. These Terms and the documents they reference (including the Privacy Policy) are the entire agreement between you and Vellum about the Service and replace any prior agreement on that subject.
• Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect, and the unenforceable part is limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary.
• No waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond its reasonable control.
• Notices. We may give you notice through the Service or by email; you can reach us at support@vellum.to.
• Relationship. These Terms do not create any partnership, agency, or employment relationship between you and Vellum.

Thank you for using Vellum. Everybody has something to teach someone.