Terms of Service

1. Introduction

Welcome to PM Stage! PM Stage ("PM Stage," "we," "our," "us") is a project management and workflow platform based in California, designed specifically for marketing and creative professionals (collectively, the "Service"), along with our website at pmstage.com (the "Website").

Our Service is built to provide streamlined workflows for creative and marketing teams, whether you're part of a marketing agency, university creative department, corporate marketing division, or independent creative studio.

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of our Service and Website. By accessing or using the Service or Website, you acknowledge and agree to be bound by these Terms and confirm you have read and understand our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference.

If you do not agree to these Terms, please do not access or use the Service or Website.

You agree that you will not rely on PM Stage as the sole system of record for any critical data, legal obligations, or compliance requirements.

2. How These Terms Apply

PM Stage serves a variety of creative and marketing organizations, including marketing agencies, university and college creative departments, corporate marketing teams, design studios, and freelance professionals.

2.1 Site Visitors

Users who browse our Website without creating an account.

2.2 Individual Users

Users who create a free account or purchase an individual subscription.

2.3 Organization Members

Users who access the Service as part of an organization's subscription.

2.4 Educational Institutions

Universities, colleges, and educational institutions using PM Stage for their marketing, communications, and creative teams. PM Stage is designed for marketing and creative project management. It is not designed or intended for storing or processing student education records or other regulated information. We cannot control how you use the Service. If you choose to use it with student records or other regulated data, you do so at your own risk, you are solely responsible for determining whether that use is permitted under the laws and policies that apply to you (for example FERPA), and you are responsible for any required notices, consents, and safeguards. PM Stage does not act as a school official and accepts no obligations regarding regulated records unless we agree to them in a signed written agreement.

2.5 Agencies

Marketing agencies, creative agencies, and design studios.

3. Eligibility

To use the Service and Website, you must be at least 16 years of age and legally competent to agree to these Terms.

If you are between 16 and 18 years old, you may use the Service only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian who agrees to these Terms.

4. Account Registration and Use

To access the Service, you must register for an account by providing accurate, complete, and current information. You agree to:

• Provide truthful registration information
• Maintain and promptly update your account information
• Keep your password confidential and secure
• Accept full responsibility for all activities under your account
• Notify us immediately of any unauthorized access or use

5. Subscription and Payments

6. License to Use

Subject to your compliance with these Terms, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, non-transferable, and revocable license to access and use the Service, through the interfaces we provide, solely for your own internal business purposes. All rights not expressly granted are reserved by PM Stage.

This license does NOT include the right to, and you agree not to:

• Copy, modify, translate, or create derivative works of the Service or any part of it
• Reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise attempt to discover the source code, underlying ideas, algorithms, file formats, or non-public interfaces of the Service, except to the limited extent the law expressly permits despite this restriction
• Sublicense, sell, rent, lease, resell, distribute, host, time-share, or otherwise make the Service available to third parties, or use it to provide services to third parties
• Access the Service by any automated means (for example bots, scrapers, or crawlers) or through any interface other than those we provide, or extract or harvest data from it in bulk
• Use the Service, its outputs, or its documentation to build, train, or improve a competing product or service, or any machine-learning model
• Access the Service for benchmarking, competitive analysis, or to copy its features, workflows, templates, or user interface
• Remove, obscure, or alter any proprietary notices, branding, or marks in the Service or its outputs where we require them to appear
• Circumvent or interfere with any security, access-control, usage-limit, or technical-protection measure of the Service

7. Acceptable Use Policy

You agree to use the Service in accordance with this Acceptable Use Policy. You may NOT:

• Access, tamper with, or use non-public areas of the Service
• Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of any system or network
• Interfere with or disrupt our infrastructure
• Use the Service for any fraudulent, deceptive, or illegal activities
• Distribute malware or malicious content
• Send unsolicited bulk or commercial email, or send email to people who have not asked to hear from you or where you lack a lawful basis to contact them
• Impersonate any person or organization, or send email that misrepresents its origin
• Upload, publish, or send content you do not have the right to use
• Collect sensitive personal information (for example government identifiers, financial account details, health information, or data about children) through public forms or other public features without a lawful basis and appropriate safeguards

8. Your Content

8.1 Ownership

You retain all rights to content you create, upload, or share through the Service. PM Stage does not claim any ownership of Your Content. Your work belongs to you.

8.2 Where Your Files Live

PM Stage is project management for creative and marketing teams. The Service helps you plan, track, and deliver creative work: projects, tasks, requests, approvals, and the files that go with them. The files are yours, and we are designed to give you control and flexibility over how you manage them. You decide where they live. Where you connect Google Drive, the Service can file copies of files it generates or that you upload into the Google Drive workspace you designate, organized around your projects, so your organization keeps its own archive in a place you control. You choose whether to connect Google Drive, which workspace and folders to use, who can access them, and how to organize them.

• Your Google Drive: files placed in your Google Drive belong to you and are managed under your Google account and Google's terms. Because you control them, you can move, rename, share, or delete them freely, and PM Stage does not manage or maintain them after they are filed
• PM Stage: we store the data you enter into the Service, files you upload to the Service, files the Service generates from them, and the operational and security data described in our Privacy Policy, for as long as needed to provide the Service
• Not PM Stage: we do not access files in your Google Drive other than files the Service created or files you explicitly selected, and only through permissions you grant

Google Drive is the storage we support today. We may add support for other storage providers over time; where we do, the same principles apply: the files are yours, you choose where they live, and the provider's terms govern them once filed.

Because this flexibility puts you in control, filing depends on choices and systems outside PM Stage: your Google account, the permissions you grant, how you organize your Drive, and Google's services. We provide filing on a best-effort basis and do not guarantee that any particular file will be filed, that filed copies remain complete or current after you or your users change them, or that filing will always be available. You are responsible for confirming that files you rely on are where you expect them to be and for managing them once they are in your Drive. We may add, change, or remove filing, storage, and export options as the Service evolves.

8.2.1 Deletions by You and Your Users

The Service lets you and the users you authorize delete files and data, including through bulk and clean-up tools. Deletions made by you or by any user of your organization are your responsibility. Deleted items may be recoverable only for the period, if any, shown in the Service, after which they are permanently removed and cannot be restored by us. We are not responsible for any loss resulting from deletions, including accidental or unauthorized deletions by your users, and we have no obligation to recover deleted data.

8.3 Data You Collect Through Public Features

Some features let you collect information from other people—for example, form submissions, QR-code scans, and business-card views. When you use these features, you are the controller of the data you collect and PM Stage acts as a processor on your behalf. You are responsible for providing any privacy notice to, and obtaining any consent required from, the individuals whose information you collect, and for complying with applicable privacy laws. PM Stage processes that data only to provide the Service to you.

8.4 Data Export

Subject to these Terms, you can obtain your data in the following ways:

• Google Drive: files the Service filed in your Google Drive remain there and need no export from us
• Self-service export: where the Service offers export tools, organization administrators may use them free of charge, in the formats the Service makes available
• Full export backup: on written request, and subject to payment of the fee in Section 8.5, we will prepare a copy of your organization's data and files held by PM Stage
• Your personal data: individuals may request a copy of their own personal data as described in our Privacy Policy

Exports contain the data and files held by PM Stage at the time of the export, in a format we choose that is commonly used and machine-readable. Exports do not include files that live only in third-party services such as Google Drive, data that has been deleted, or data we are not permitted to disclose. We do not warrant that an export is complete, error-free, or suitable for any particular purpose. Export options are available only while your account is in good standing and during the retention period in Section 14.1.

8.5 Export Fees

Self-service exports and personal data requests are free. A full export backup is a paid professional service:

Exports over 250 GB, shipping outside the United States, and custom formats are quoted individually. Fees are payable in advance, exclusive of taxes, and non-refundable once work has begun. Quotes are valid for 30 days. Delivery times are estimates. We may change these fees at any time; the fee in effect when we accept your request applies. These fees never apply to a request by an individual for their own personal data.

8.6 Content You Publish

Some features let you publish content to the public, for example forms, business cards, portals, and document viewers. You are solely responsible for content you publish, including having the rights to publish it and complying with the laws that apply to it. We do not review or endorse published content. We may remove, disable, or restrict any content or public page that we believe violates these Terms, infringes anyone's rights, exposes personal information, or creates risk for us or others, without notice. Public pages may display PM Stage branding.

9. AI Features (Experimental)

AI features are experimental and offered in beta, if at all. We may test, change, limit, or remove AI-assisted features at any time, and we may offer them to some organizations and not others. Nothing in these Terms obligates us to provide any AI feature. Where an AI feature is available, your use of it is optional.

If you use an AI feature, you agree to:

• Keep a person responsible for reviewing and deciding on any AI output before relying on it
• Evaluate AI outputs for accuracy, completeness, and appropriateness; they may be wrong, incomplete, or outdated
• Not submit sensitive personal information, confidential information you are not permitted to share, or regulated data
• Not use AI features to generate content that violates these Terms or anyone's rights

AI features rely on third-party models and services, which may change. Content you choose to submit to an AI feature is sent to the provider for processing under its terms. We do not use your content to train our own models. We make no guarantees regarding the accuracy, completeness, reliability, or availability of any AI feature or output, and you are solely responsible for decisions made based on them.

10. Intellectual Property

PM Stage is a proprietary system. It was designed, built, and tested on best practices for optimizing operations and streamlining workflows for creative and marketing teams. The methods, processes, workflows, configurations, and know-how embodied in the Service, and the way its features work together, are the result of that work and are the confidential and proprietary property of PM Stage, protected as trade secrets and under intellectual property law. Access to the Service does not disclose them to you for any purpose other than using the Service as permitted by these Terms.

The Service is proprietary to PM Stage. The Service and Website and everything that makes them work are owned exclusively by PM Stage and its licensors and are protected by copyright, trade secret, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. This includes, without limitation, the software and source code; the design, look and feel, and user interface; the features, workflows, and the way the Service operates; the generators, builders, renderers, templates, layouts, design systems, algorithms, and automations the Service uses to produce results; the documentation; and all improvements, modifications, and derivative works of any of them, regardless of who suggests them. These Terms do not transfer any ownership interest in the Service to you. Nothing in these Terms grants you any right by implication, estoppel, or otherwise except the limited license in Section 6.

10.1 Your Content and the Outputs You Create

You own the content you upload and the work product you create with the Service for your own use, for example the documents, graphics, pages, and files you generate. That ownership does not extend to the tools, templates, engines, or systems used to produce them, which remain ours, or to any PM Stage branding, sample content, or stock elements included in an output. To the extent an output necessarily incorporates elements of the Service, we grant you a perpetual license to use that output as part of your own work, and you may not extract those elements to reproduce or replace the Service.

10.2 Feedback

If you send us ideas, suggestions, or feedback about the Service, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free license to use them for any purpose without obligation to you, and you agree that we may develop features that resemble your suggestions without any obligation of attribution or payment.

10.3 Usage Data

We may collect and use technical and usage data about how the Service is used, and data derived from it in anonymized or aggregated form that does not identify you or any person, to operate, secure, improve, and develop the Service and to publish aggregate statistics. Such data belongs to PM Stage.

10.4 Trademarks

"PM Stage," our logo, and our product and feature names are trademarks of PM Stage. You may not use them without our prior written permission, and you may not remove or alter them where the Service displays them.

10.5 Copyright Complaints

We respect intellectual property rights. If you believe content published through the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice to support@pmstage.com with the subject "Copyright Notice" that identifies the copyrighted work, identifies the content and its location, provides your contact information, includes a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized, includes a statement under penalty of perjury that the notice is accurate and that you are authorized to act for the owner, and bears your physical or electronic signature. We may remove or disable access to the content and notify the user who published it, and we may terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

11. Third-Party Services

Our goal is to integrate with the tools your team already uses, especially Google Workspace, so you can get the most out of them and run your operations more smoothly. We believe in process optimization and in leveraging the tools that help creative teams work better, so integration with other systems is ongoing: we may add new integrations over time (for example other cloud storage, calendar, or communication providers), change how existing ones work, and retire integrations that no longer serve that goal. The Service currently integrates with third-party services you choose to connect, which may include Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google Calendar, Gmail, and project management tools you already use. Your use of any connected service is subject to its own terms and privacy policies. We do not promise that any particular integration will be offered, will keep working, or will remain available, and a planned integration is not a commitment until it is released.

Google. When you connect a Google account, the Service requests the permissions needed for the features you use, which may include creating and reading files the Service created or you selected in Google Drive, reading and writing Google Sheets you link, creating calendar events, and, where you enable it, sending email from your address. Our use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We never sell Google user data, never use it for advertising, and never let humans read it except with your consent, for security, or as required by law. Disconnecting Google in your settings revokes our access. Google may change, limit, or revoke access to its services at any time, which may stop features that depend on them, and we are not responsible for any resulting loss.

You are solely responsible for how you configure, authorize, and use third-party integrations. We are not responsible for any misconfiguration, permission grants, or data exposure resulting from your integration settings, and we are not responsible for the availability, security, functionality, or data handling practices of any third-party service you connect.

11.1 Sending Email Through Your Account

Some features can send email from your own email address, for example delivery notices, approvals, and replies to requesters. To do this you connect an email account to the Service, by authorizing a provider or by giving us sending credentials such as an app password. By connecting an account you authorize PM Stage to send email through it on your behalf when you or your organization's features trigger a message.

• Your credentials are stored encrypted, used only to send email you initiate through the Service, and are never shown back to anyone. You can disconnect the account at any time in your settings, and you can revoke any app password with your provider
• You are responsible for every message sent through your connected account: its content, its recipients, and compliance with email and privacy laws (for example CAN-SPAM) and your organization's policies, exactly as if you had sent it yourself
• We keep records of messages sent through the Service (recipients, subject, content, and delivery status, and in some cases whether a message was opened or a link was clicked) in your organization's workspace, where authorized members of your organization can see them
• Your provider is in control. Email providers may block, rate-limit, or revoke sending at any time, and messages may be filtered or fail to arrive. We do not guarantee delivery and are not responsible for actions of your provider or for consequences of messages sent through your account

Where no account is connected, the Service may send messages from a PM Stage address on your behalf, identifying you or your organization as the sender.

12. Data and Privacy

Our collection and use of personal information is described in our Privacy Policy.

12.1 User Responsibility for Data

PM Stage is designed primarily as an organizational and orchestration layer that connects to your existing storage systems. You remain fully responsible for managing, securing, and backing up your own content and data.

13. Service Availability

We strive to maintain high availability but do not guarantee uninterrupted, error-free, or secure access to the Service. The Service may be temporarily unavailable due to maintenance, updates, or factors beyond our control.

We reserve the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service at any time, with or without notice.

You acknowledge that during beta, outages, data inconsistencies, broken features, or unexpected behavior may occur and that PM Stage is not responsible for any resulting impact.

14. Termination

You may terminate your account at any time through your account settings. Organization administrators may close an organization by contacting us.

We may suspend or terminate your account if you violate these Terms or for any other reason during beta testing. We reserve the right to suspend or terminate access to the Service at any time, with or without notice, for any reason or no reason, including during beta testing. We are under no obligation to provide advance notice of termination during the beta period.

14.1 Your Data After Termination

• Your Google Drive is unaffected. Files the Service filed in your Google Drive remain under your control
• Retention window. After an organization's subscription ends or its account is closed, we intend to keep the organization's data for up to 90 days so administrators can export it. We may send reminders during that period. The window is a courtesy, not a guarantee, and may be shorter if your account was terminated for breach, if the law requires it, or if we discontinue the Service
• Deletion. After the window we may delete the organization's data from our live systems at any time, and from backups in the ordinary course, generally within a further 30 days. Once deleted, data cannot be recovered
• Sooner on request. An organization administrator may ask us in writing to delete the organization's data earlier; we may verify the request before acting
• Exceptions. We may keep data longer where required by law, to resolve disputes, to enforce our agreements, for security and fraud prevention, or in anonymized or aggregated form

You are responsible for exporting anything you need before the retention window ends. We have no obligation to retain, return, or recover data after the retention window. Sections that by their nature should survive termination, including ownership of your content, fees owed, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and dispute resolution, continue to apply.

15. Disclaimers

15.1 Beta Status

PM Stage is currently in beta/development. As such:

• Features may be incomplete, change, or be removed without notice
• Bugs and errors may occur more frequently than in a production release
• Data loss is possible, and you should maintain your own backups
• The Service may be unavailable for extended periods
• We may reset or modify the platform as needed for testing

15.2 No Reliance

You acknowledge that the Service is provided for organizational and productivity purposes only. You agree not to rely on the Service for legal, financial, medical, employment, compliance, or other professional decisions.

15.3 Data Loss Risk

You acknowledge that use of the Service during beta involves a risk of data loss, corruption, or unexpected behavior, and you agree that you are solely responsible for maintaining your own independent backups.

15.4 No Service Level Agreement

We do not provide any service-level agreement (SLA) or guarantee regarding uptime, availability, or performance of the Service.

15.5 Service Discontinuation

The Service, or any part of it, may be discontinued permanently or temporarily at any time, without liability to you.

16. Limitation of Liability

Our total aggregate liability for any claims shall not exceed the greater of: (a) the amount you paid us in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim, or (b) $100 USD.

For users accessing the Service for free or during beta testing, our total liability shall not exceed $0.

17. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless PM Stage from and against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses arising from or related to:

• Your use of the Service
• Your violation of these Terms
• Your violation of any applicable law or third-party rights
• Your Content or any content you submit

18. Dispute Resolution

Before filing any formal dispute, you agree to contact us at support@pmstage.com to attempt informal resolution.

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of California. Any legal action shall be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Santa Clara County, California.

19. Changes to Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email or by posting a notice on the Service.

Your continued use of the Service after changes become effective constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

20. General Provisions

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and PM Stage regarding the Service.

If any provision of these Terms is found invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect.

PM Stage may assign these Terms without restriction, including in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

20.1 Force Majeure

PM Stage is not liable for any failure or delay in performance resulting from events beyond our reasonable control.