Terms of Service

Shuli is software for running a shul: minyan times and zmanim, announcements, chat, shiurim, giving, sponsorships and seats. A shul signs up, invites its members, and runs its own community inside it.

TODO(eli): Name the legal entity that offers this service and give its real postal address, here and in the contact section. Everything below says “Shuli”, which is a product name and not a party to a contract.

You need an account to take part, and you must be 13 or older to have one. Use a real name — your shul will see it, and so will anyone you post to. Keep your sign-in to yourself; anything done from your account is treated as done by you.

Belonging to a shul on Shuli does not by itself make you a member of that shul in any other sense. Membership, dues and standing are the shul’s own affair.

Anyone with an account can create a shul. By creating one you confirm that you are authorised to act for that community — a shul is not a hobby project, and creating one puts you in charge of other people’s information.

Whoever creates a shul becomes its first admin, and can appoint others. A shul must always have at least one admin; the software will not let the last one be removed.

Creating a shul that impersonates a real congregation, or using a shul to hold data for something that is not a community you are part of, is not permitted, and is grounds for removal.

A shul’s content is the shul’s. Its announcements, shiurim, records, schedule and member list belong to it, not to Shuli. Shuli holds them to run the service and does not sell them or use them to advertise.

What you post is yours. You keep whatever rights you have in what you write, record or upload. You give Shuli the permission it needs to store your posts and show them to the people you posted them to — that is what publishing to a channel is — and nothing beyond that.

Shuli’s software is Shuli’s. The service, its design and its code stay its own. You may not copy it, resell access to it, or take it apart to build a competing one.

TODO(eli): Counsel to draft the operative content licence — scope, duration, sublicensing to the hosting providers, and what survives an account being deleted. The paragraph above states the intent and is not a licence grant.

Every shul’s community follows the community guidelines, and a shul may add rules of its own. On top of those, and everywhere on Shuli:

• Nothing unlawful, and nothing that harasses, threatens or defames a person.
• Nothing sexually explicit or violent, and nothing inappropriate for a community that includes children.
• No spam, no unsolicited advertising, and no using a shul’s member list to market to it.
• Do not post another person’s contact details or private information without their permission.
• Do not attempt to reach another shul’s data, probe the service for weaknesses without permission, scrape it, or run automated traffic against it.
• Do not use Shuli to collect money you are not entitled to collect.

If you find a security problem, report it rather than exploit it — info@shuliapp.com.

Each shul’s admins moderate their own community. A report filed on a message goes to that shul’s admins and to nobody else; they can remove content, mute a member so they can read but not post, or remove a member entirely. Any member can also block another, which hides that person’s messages from them at once.

Shuli does not read a shul’s conversations to police them. It may act on the service as a whole — for unlawful content, abuse of the platform, or a shul that will not moderate itself.

When Shuli acts, it may remove content, or restrict or suspend a member or a whole shul. Before it does, it tells the shul’s admins what is wrong and gives them a reasonable chance to put it right — unless the problem is unlawful or putting people at risk, in which case Shuli may act first and explain straight after. A shul that disagrees with a decision can write to info@shuliapp.com and a person will look at it again.

Your shul is the merchant. Each shul connects its own Stripe account, and donations, pledges, sponsorships, tickets and seat payments settle into that account. Shuli is not the merchant of record, does not hold your funds, and does not advance them. Refunds are issued by the shul.

Stripe’s terms apply. Accepting payments means agreeing to Stripe’s own agreement for connected accounts, in addition to these terms. Stripe decides who it will serve and on what conditions; Shuli cannot override that.

There is a platform fee. A small percentage of money that moves through Shuli is taken as a platform fee, on top of whatever Stripe charges the shul to process the card. It is 0% during the pilot and settles at 1.5–2% afterwards; the current figure is on the pricing page, which is part of these terms. Where donor-covers-fees is on, a giver is shown the covered amount before they pay. Giving pages also invite the donor to add a voluntary amount for Shuli on top of their gift. It is presented with a suggested amount already selected, the donor may set it to zero, it is added to the donor’s total rather than deducted from the shul’s, and it is not a charitable contribution to the shul.

AI use above the free allowance is billed by usage. Each shul receives a free monthly allowance of AI assistance at Shuli’s expense. A shul may choose to put a payment card on file so the assists can continue past that allowance; adding that card authorises Shuli to charge it, monthly, for the part of the shul’s AI usage that exceeds the free allowance, up to a monthly limit Shuli sets. That charge is calculated at Shuli’s at-cost rates for AI use, which are set to track what Shuli’s provider charges and carry no margin; without a card on file nothing is charged and the assists stop at the allowance. The card is held by Stripe on Shuli’s own account and may be removed at any time from the billing portal, which ends any further AI charges. If an unpaid balance builds up, the assists pause until it is settled.

Receipts and tax are the shul’s. Shuli records what was given and can print a statement, but whether a gift is deductible, and what a valid receipt must say, is between the shul and its own advisers.

TODO(eli): Confirm with counsel how the platform fee should be described for tax and charity-regulation purposes, whether Shuli needs to say anything about money transmission, and what to say about chargebacks and disputes — which land on the shul’s Stripe account and have no clause here at all.

Plans and prices are on the pricing page. There is a free tier for small minyanim with a member cap, and paid plans start with a 60-day trial of everything, with no plan charge until it ends. The trial covers the plan only: a card put on file for AI use above the free allowance (section 7) is billed for that use during the trial as well as after it.

Subscriptions run month to month with no contract. A shul cancels itself from the billing portal and returns to the free tier; its data stays where it is. Cancelling stops future plan charges; what has already been paid is not refunded, including for part of a month.

A shul that cancels with more members than the free tier allows keeps every member it has. It cannot add another full member until it is back under the limit or picks a plan again.

Shuli aims to be there when your shul needs it, but it is offered without a guaranteed level of service. Features are added, changed and occasionally removed.

Two deliberate behaviours are worth knowing about, because they look like faults and are not. Notifications are held from candle lighting until havdalah and are delivered afterwards. And no changes are deployed during Shabbos or Yom Tov — which means a fix may wait until after havdalah.

Zmanim and the Shabbos gate are computed from the coordinates and the minhag a shul enters. They are checked carefully, but they are a convenience, not a psak: a shul is responsible for its own times, and should check them against its luach.

You can stop using Shuli whenever you like. A shul can cancel its subscription itself. A member can leave a shul, or delete their account entirely, from their own settings.

Shuli may suspend or end access for a serious or repeated breach of these terms — for unlawful use, for abuse of other people, or for non-payment — giving notice first as section 6 describes.

A shul’s admins can download its members, donations and pledges as spreadsheet files at any time, including on the way out, and each member can download a copy of their own record. A shul’s data is kept for seven years by default after it stops using Shuli, as the privacy page explains.

The intent, in plain words: Shuli is provided as it is, without promises that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, and its liability if something goes wrong is meant to be limited to what is reasonable for a service at this price — while not attempting to exclude anything the law does not allow to be excluded.

TODO(eli): This is the section that must be written by counsel, not by anyone else. It needs the operative warranty disclaimer, the limitation of liability and its cap, the carve-outs that cannot be limited, and an indemnity from shuls for the content and conduct of their own communities. The paragraph above is a statement of intent and is deliberately not drafted as an enforceable clause.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, and disputes about them are heard in the courts of New York.

TODO(eli): Decide whether disputes go to arbitration and whether class actions are waived, and have counsel draft the operative clause.

When these terms change in substance, the date at the top changes with them, and the next time you sign in, join a shul or create one, you accept the version then in force.

TODO(eli): Decide how a material change — including a price change on the pricing page — is announced, and how much notice is given before it takes effect.

Questions about these terms, and notices under them: info@shuliapp.com.