Terms of Service

PrivNest hosts and manages a private Nextcloud workspace for your business. We run the servers, keep the software patched, monitor the service, take backups and manage the domain and certificate. You get a workspace your team signs into for files, calendars, contacts, mail, chat and online documents.

We are the provider, not the owner of your data. Everything your team puts into the workspace belongs to you.

You are responsible for the accuracy of the details you gave us, for keeping your dashboard password secure, and for the accounts you create for your team. What your team members do inside your workspace is your responsibility, not ours.

We cannot read your content. Your files, mail, calendar entries, chat messages and documents are yours. We do not open them, index them, scan them or use them for anything. This is not a promise we are making about our behaviour — it is a description of how the software is built, and it is why we can offer this at all.

We do keep operational records. To run the service and to prove it is healthy we record counts and sizes rather than contents: how many accounts exist, how much storage is used against your plan, whether a backup succeeded, whether an update was applied, and whether the service is up. None of that includes the contents of anything your team creates.

You can switch on a Sign-in activity log for your workspace. When it is on, each time one of your accounts signs in we record:

• the date and time of the sign-in;
• which account signed in;
• the IP address the request came from;
• an approximate location worked out from that IP address — usually the town or city, and sometimes only the region, because IP addresses do not identify a precise position;
• the device and browser or app that was used, as reported by that device;
• a note when a sign-in happens a long way from where that account usually signs in, so you can spot an account being used by somebody who should not have it.

What it is not. It is not GPS and it cannot tell you where a person physically is. It does not run on anyone's phone or laptop and it costs no battery. A location that comes from an IP address can be wrong, and is often wrong when somebody is on a mobile network or using a VPN — it may point at their phone company's regional office rather than at them. Please do not treat it as proof of where anyone was.

When you tick the box and switch this on, this is exactly what happens.

• Each time somebody signs in, we collect the public IP address the sign-in came from.
• We use that IP address to work out the general location — normally the town or city, and nothing more precise than that.
• We record it, together with the date and time, the account, and the device used, in the log you can read in your dashboard.
• Those same records are also sent to the PrivNest admin panel. Our own team can see them there. That is deliberate and it is how we spot a problem on your behalf, answer you when you ask us to look into something, and keep the platform secure.

We do not use any of this to watch your team, we do not sell it, we do not share it with anyone else, and we never read your files, mail, calendar, chats or documents to produce it. What is collected is exactly the five facts listed above — nothing more is added, and nothing is inferred beyond the town or city.

If you would rather we could not see it, leave the log switched off. Nothing is recorded at all until you turn it on. Your office map is different and is never visible to us in any form.

Records are kept for a limited period that you can see and change in your dashboard. We do not keep them indefinitely and we do not combine them with any other information about a person.

If you switch on Sign-in activity, you must tell the people who use the workspace that it is on, and what it records. They are your staff, so you are the one who is responsible for how their information is handled, and in many places the law requires you to inform them — and in some places to consult them or their representatives before you start.

We are giving you a tool for looking after your own accounts. Using it to watch people without their knowledge is not what it is for, it is not something we will help you do, and it is your responsibility and not ours if you do. We may ask you to confirm that you have told your team.

Do not use the service to break the law, to store material you have no right to hold, to attack or overload our systems or anyone else's, or to send bulk unsolicited mail. Do not try to reach another customer's workspace.

New workspaces start with a free trial. When it ends, and each month afterwards, we issue a charge for the plan you chose. The price you were quoted when you signed up is the price that applies to you.

If a payment does not arrive, we will first remind you. If it is still outstanding after a grace period, we may temporarily replace your workspace's web address with a notice page until the balance is settled. Nothing is deleted at that point. Your workspace, your files and your accounts keep running throughout, and everything returns the moment the balance is cleared.

But we cannot keep an unpaid workspace for ever. Once a workspace has been offline with an unpaid balance for five days, its notice page will tell you the date it is due to be removed. If the balance is still unpaid three weeks after the workspace went offline, we will remove the workspace and everything in it. Settling the balance at any point before then stops that immediately.

If you would rather have a copy of your files than keep the workspace, tell us before that date and we will get them to you. We would always rather hand you your data than delete it — the deadline exists so that unpaid workspaces do not accumulate indefinitely, not so that anybody loses anything without plenty of warning.

We monitor the service automatically and work to keep it available, but we do not offer a guaranteed uptime figure or a service-level agreement, and we do not offer telephone support. Support is by email and through your dashboard, and we are a small team — please allow us reasonable time to respond. Backups are taken regularly; please tell us promptly if you ever need something restored.

You may cancel at any time from your dashboard. If you do, we will keep your workspace available for a short period so you can take a copy of your data, and then remove it. We will explain what happens before anything is deleted. We may end the agreement if these terms are broken, or if payment is not made after we have reminded you.

If we change these terms we will show you the new version and ask you to accept it before it applies to you. Accepting one version is never treated as accepting a later one.

Questions about these terms, or about anything we do with your data, should go to [email protected] and we will answer in writing.