Hearthkeep
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Terms

The terms for this site, the shop, and Hearthkeep Home, Cloud and Backup.

Effective October 19, 2026. These terms are between you and Quantum Codeworks LLC, a company in Pennsylvania, United States, at 502 W 7th St, Ste 100, Erie, PA 16502. Write to [email protected] with any question.

What these terms cover

This site, its waitlist, the shop and your account on it, the Hearthkeep software (Hearthkeep Home, including its phone and tablet apps), and, when we offer them, Hearthkeep Cloud and Hearthkeep Backup. By using any of them you agree to these terms. If you buy for a family, you agree for the family.

Who may agree

You must be 18 or over to buy or to hold an account. Accounts are for people, not scripts. An archive’s own members, including children, are governed by the family’s admins inside the app, not by an account here.

The site and the waitlist

The site describes Hearthkeep. Joining the waitlist is not an order and reserves nothing. We send one email when Hearthkeep opens, and you can leave with one click.

Nothing is for sale yet. Before anything is, these terms will add the plans, prices, the license and refunds, and we’ll tell the waitlist.

Your account

Your buying email is your account, and it is yours alone. Keep your sign-in safe: what is done with it counts as yours. Tell us at once at [email protected] if someone else gets in. One account holds one family’s licenses; use a second account for a second family.

Your Hearthkeep Home license

One license covers one family’s archive and every computer it runs on, including standby and backup computers at relatives’ houses. Every member of the family signs in at no extra cost. Hearthkeep starts with a 30-day trial, everything on; after the trial an unlicensed archive opens read-only until it is licensed. Nothing is ever deleted for not paying.

Updates are not promised. We do not say whether or how often a new version comes out. We may change Hearthkeep over time; if we retire a feature you paid for, we tell you before it goes.

The daily license check-in

Hearthkeep Home and Hearthkeep Home Monthly need the internet about once a day to check their license. The archive sends its id, the license key’s id, the computer’s id, the ids of its paired computers and its version, and nothing about your family. The Privacy page lists every field.

If the check cannot be made for thirty days, counted from the last good answer, the archive opens read-only: you can still view and download everything, and nothing is deleted. Admins are warned from day twenty. It goes back to normal at the next good check-in.

A computer that was never paired in Admin › Computers but uses this archive’s license is read-only at once. In every case your files stay yours and stay readable.

No internet on that computer? An admin downloads a check-in request file from the archive’s license page, uploads it here while signed in on any device, and carries back a signed answer file. That counts as a check-in for thirty days.

If Hearthkeep Home’s updates are not renewed, it keeps working on the version it has.

If we ever close the service for good, we will publish a final version beforehand that turns the check-in off for every license, so your archive keeps working without us. An outage is not a closure; it only runs the thirty-day clock.

Hearthkeep Cloud and Hearthkeep Backup (when we offer them)

Both are waitlist only today.

Hearthkeep Cloud runs your archive on our servers, with the license included; we can see what you store, as the Privacy page says. If a Cloud plan goes unpaid, the archive is read-only for thirty days and every admin is emailed the date; after that it may be deleted. Taking your whole archive home is free at any time.

Hearthkeep Backup keeps an encrypted copy of a Home archive off-site. It is encrypted on your own computer before it leaves your house, and we hold only the encrypted copy.

Before we sell them, these pages will say exactly what applies.

Your content, and how you may use Hearthkeep

What your family adds is yours. You are responsible for having the right to add it and for how your family uses the archive. You agree not to:

  • use Hearthkeep for anything illegal, or store anything you have no right to;
  • break into, probe or strain our systems, or anyone else’s through them;
  • share a license key outside the family, sell or rent it, or use one license on two separate archives;
  • work around the license check or the read-only state;
  • pose as someone else to us, or send us false reports;
  • threaten or abuse the people who run Hearthkeep.

Open-source parts

Hearthkeep includes open-source software under its own licenses; those licenses govern those parts.

The AI helper

The AI helper, face matching and search by meaning can be wrong. Check anything that matters before you rely on it.

Ending

You can stop using Hearthkeep at any time, and ask us at [email protected] to close your account. We may suspend or revoke a license for a chargeback, fraud, a serious or repeated breach of these terms, or a security risk, and we tell you first unless the law or the risk prevents it. A Home archive stays readable and nothing is deleted.

Warranty

Hearthkeep is provided as it is and as available, without warranty, as far as the law allows. We do not promise it is free of bugs, never down, or right for your purpose. If you are a consumer in the EU or the UK, your statutory rights are not affected.

Liability

We are not liable for indirect losses or lost data, and our total liability to you for anything to do with Hearthkeep is limited to the greater of $100 and what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing here limits what the law does not allow us to limit, including liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by our negligence.

If someone sues us over your content

If a third party brings a claim against us because of what you put in Hearthkeep or how you used it against these terms, you cover the cost of that claim. This does not cover claims caused by our own breach of these terms.

Export law

Hearthkeep is subject to United States export and sanctions law. You confirm that you are not in a country the United States embargoes and not on a United States sanctions list, and that you will not pass Hearthkeep to anyone who is.

Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of Pennsylvania, United States. Before either of us goes to court, we write to the other and try for thirty days to settle it. After that, the courts of Pennsylvania decide, except that you may always use the small-claims court where you live, and consumers in the EU or the UK keep the protection and courts of the country they live in.

Changes

When these terms change, the date at the top changes. If a change affects people who have bought from us, we email them at least thirty days before it takes effect, unless the law makes us move faster. Earlier versions are available on request.

The small print

If a court finds one line here unenforceable, the rest still applies. These terms, the Privacy page, and for the purchase itself Paddle’s buyer terms, are the whole agreement between us. A license belongs to the archive, so it passes to whoever keeps the archive next; you may not sell it or split it, and we may hand these terms to a successor who takes on every promise in them. We are not responsible for delays caused by things outside our control; an outage on our side only runs the thirty-day check-in clock. We write to the email address on your account; write to us at [email protected], and send a legal notice to 502 W 7th St, Ste 100, Erie, PA 16502. The parts that make sense after the end keep applying: your right to the versions you own, the shutdown promise, and the liability, law and disputes sections. If we let something slide once, we have not given it up.