Terms

The Short Version

Use River Notes to write. Enjoy it. Your writing belongs to you. We provide the service as-is and do our best to keep it running. If something goes wrong, our liability is limited to what you've paid us.

Agreement

By creating a River Notes account or using the service, you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, don't use River Notes. These terms are between you and The Sound Fuse Limited (trading as River Creative) ("River", "we", "us", "our"), a company incorporated in New Zealand.

Your Account

• You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. If you are under 13, you may only use River Notes with the consent of a parent or legal guardian.
• You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials.
• You are responsible for keeping access to your account. If you lose access to your sign-in details, contact us at hello@rivernotes.app and we will do our best to help with account recovery. We recommend keeping local backups and using the export feature regularly.
• One person per account. Do not share account credentials.

What You Can Do

River Notes is a personal writing tool. You may use it for private journaling, note-taking, creative writing, or any other lawful purpose. You may share individual notes via the share link feature.

What You Cannot Do

• Use River Notes for any unlawful purpose
• Attempt to access other users' encrypted data
• Interfere with or disrupt the service infrastructure
• Use automated tools to scrape, crawl, or overload the service
• Resell, sublicense, or redistribute access to River Notes

Your Content

You own everything you write in River Notes. We claim no intellectual property rights over your content. Your notes are encrypted and we have no interest in reading them. We will only access note content in limited circumstances — specifically to assist you with account recovery at your request.

We will never use your writing to train AI models. Not now, not ever.

When you share a note via a public link, you grant River a limited licence to store and serve the decrypted content of that specific note for the purpose of displaying the share page. This licence ends when you revoke the share link.

Pricing and Payment

All prices are in US dollars (USD) unless otherwise stated at checkout.

Free Tier

You get the writing room with no note, time, or word caps: every import format, Markdown, Markdown ZIP, print and Word export, voice scraps with on-device transcription, fifteen to twenty minutes each, highlights and encryption. You can write on any device, one at a time. Writing on another device moves the sync slot there; the device you left stays fully readable and stops accepting new writing until you move the slot back. Free accounts also include 100MB of retained encrypted image storage, and seven days of undo plus one older rescue.

Paid plan (River Notes Annual) — US$80/year

Everything in the free tier, plus all of your devices at once and always in step — no device holds a slot and none goes read-only — search by meaning, twelve months of version history kept off-device, the Burn Page writing surface, and no account-level image ceiling. Image uploads remain subject to per-file, rate and reasonable-use safeguards. Billed annually. If we ever change the price, subscribers keep the rate they joined at for 24 months from the date we announce the change, and we announce price changes by email. Until such an announcement, your rate does not change. This holds while a subscription stays continuously active; if it lapses, a new subscription starts at the then-current price.

Auto-renewal: Your subscription renews automatically each year at your held rate, subject to the price-change notice above. We will email you a reminder before each renewal. You can cancel at any time — your subscription continues until the end of the billing period, with no partial refunds for unused time. To cancel, go to Settings → Subscription, or contact us at hello@rivernotes.app.

Refunds

If you're unhappy with River Notes, contact us within 30 days of payment and we will issue a full refund. No conditions, no questions asked.

Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 (New Zealand): Nothing in these terms limits rights you have under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 or the Fair Trading Act 1986. If you are a consumer in New Zealand, your statutory rights are unaffected by these terms.

Australian Consumer Law: If you are a consumer in Australia, you have rights under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot be excluded, restricted, or modified.

To request a refund, contact us at hello@rivernotes.app with your purchase details.

Encryption and Data Security

River Notes encrypts your notes. Your data is protected both in transit and at rest. We take your privacy seriously and have no interest in reading your writing.

In the event you lose access to your account, we may be able to assist you in recovering your notes — contact us at hello@rivernotes.app and we will do our best to help.

We still recommend keeping local backups and using the export feature regularly. We are not liable for data loss resulting from corrupted local storage, device failure, or circumstances outside our reasonable control.

Service Availability

We aim to keep River Notes available and reliable, but we do not guarantee 100% uptime. We may need to take the service offline for maintenance, updates, or unforeseen circumstances. We will make reasonable efforts to notify you of planned downtime.

Limitation of Liability

River Notes is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, express or implied. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:

• Our total liability to you is limited to the amount you have paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim.
• We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages.
• We are not liable for data loss caused by loss of account access, device failure, or circumstances outside our reasonable control.

Nothing in these terms excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

Termination

You can delete your account at any time through the app settings. We may terminate or suspend your account if you violate these terms. Upon termination, your encrypted data is deleted in accordance with our privacy policy.

Changes to These Terms

We may update these terms from time to time. If a change reduces what your plan includes, raises your price, or reduces your rights, we will tell you by email at least 30 days before it takes effect. Changes that add to what you get, or that only correct or clarify wording, take effect when we publish them. Price changes are also covered by the guarantee in Pricing and Payment: your rate holds for 24 months from the date we announce a change.

Continued use of River Notes after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

Governing Law

These terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand. Any disputes will be resolved in the courts of New Zealand.

Contact

Questions about these terms? Reach us at hello@rivernotes.app or privacy@rivernotes.app for privacy-related enquiries.