1. Definitions
- Platform. The Teacher Cove software-as-a-service product, including this website, the in-app web application, and every related service we operate.
- Operator (“we”, “us”). The legal entity that runs Teacher Cove.
- Business. A tenant on the Platform: typically a tutoring or coaching business that runs scheduling, billing, and brand under a single roof.
- Business Owner. The user designated as the owner of a Business. They sign the Business up for a paid Platform subscription and configure billing, branding, policies, contact info, and admin permissions.
- Independent Teacher (“Private Tutor”). A solo practitioner running their own one-person Business on the Platform’s lower-priced tier. For the avoidance of doubt, every reference in these Terms to a “Business Owner” also applies to an Independent Teacher with respect to their own private practice tenant.
- Admin. A user the Business Owner has promoted inside their Business to manage day-to-day operations. An Admin can only manage the customizations explicitly delegated to them by the Business Owner.
- Teacher. A user inside a Business who teaches lessons. Independent Teachers are also Teachers.
- Student. A user inside a Business who books and attends lessons.
- Owner. The platform-level role used by the Operator to administer the Platform itself. Distinct from a Business Owner.
- Member. Any human inside a particular Business: the Business Owner, Admins, Teachers, and Students.
- Business-authored Policies. The Policies, Terms, and Privacy text a Business Owner writes for their own Members under section 7.
2. Acceptance & Eligibility
By creating an account, ticking the agreement box at registration, or otherwise using the Platform, you accept these Terms, the Privacy Policy below, and the Platform Policy. If you do not agree, do not create an account and do not use the Platform.
You confirm that you have full legal capacity to enter into this contract, and either (a) are at least 18 years old, or (b) are using the Platform with the documented consent and supervision of your parent or legal guardian. Business Owners and Independent Teachers further represent they have authority to bind the legal entity they represent.
3. Accounts & Roles
You are responsible for keeping your username and password confidential and for every action taken under your account. You agree to notify us immediately if you suspect unauthorized access. We may verify any information you submit and refuse, suspend, or terminate accounts in our reasonable discretion.
The Platform supports the following roles, listed from broadest to narrowest authority:
- Owner, the Operator’s own platform-level role.
- Business Owner, owns one Business (or one private-practice Business in the case of an Independent Teacher).
- Admin, promoted by the Business Owner to manage delegated areas.
- Teacher, teaches lessons inside a Business.
- Student, books lessons inside a Business.
You may not impersonate another person, share credentials, or use someone else’s account without their permission. Each human is expected to maintain their own account.
4. Rules for Business Owners & Independent Teachers
Business Owners (and Independent Teachers in their own private practice) are responsible for:
- Maintaining a valid, paid Platform subscription on the appropriate tier.
- Authoring and keeping current the Business’s own Policies, Terms of Service, and Privacy Policy under section 7. These layer on top of the Platform-level documents and bind their Members.
- Maintaining accurate Business contact information so Members can reach them.
- Configuring lawful and clearly disclosed pricing (credit packs, subscriptions, pay-as-you-go, or external billing).
- Truthfully describing the lessons offered, the qualifications of their teachers, and the scope of any guarantees they make.
- Paying their Teachers in accordance with whatever arrangement they have outside the Platform, or, when using internal Stripe payouts, in accordance with the rates they enter on the Teacher Payouts page.
- Complying with every law that applies to running their business: tax, employment, consumer protection, professional licensing, advertising, anti-discrimination, accessibility, and child-safeguarding.
- Honoring refund, cancellation, and other consumer rights granted to Students by their own Business-authored Policies and by applicable law (whichever is more protective of the Student).
Business Owners may delegate specific administrative areas to one or more Admins (branding, payments, calendar filters, dashboard role filters, lesson defaults, teacher payouts, policies, contact info, etc.). The Business Owner remains responsible for what their Admins do under those delegations.
5. Rules for Teachers & Admins
Teachers are responsible for showing up to scheduled lessons, providing the lesson described, and treating Students with respect. Teachers may not market themselves as employees, partners, or agents of the Operator.
Admins must use their delegated permissions only for legitimate Business operations and must keep Member personal information confidential. Acting outside the scope of a delegated permission, or using delegated permissions to harm Students, Teachers, or the Business, may result in immediate revocation of access and may also be a breach of the Business Owner’s contract with the Admin.
6. Rules for Students
Students must provide accurate registration information, attend lessons they have booked, and follow the Business-authored Policies of their Business (cancellation windows, late arrival, makeup credits, dress code, online-lesson conduct, etc.).
Credits, subscription seats, and pay-as-you-go charges are non-transferable between Businesses. If you join a different Business you start fresh there.
7. Business-authored Policies
The Platform allows each Business Owner (and each Independent Teacher) to write their own Policies, Terms of Service, and Privacy Policy from inside the app. Those documents:
- Bind every Member of that Business in addition to these Platform Terms.
- May add additional rules (e.g. cancellation windows, late fees, makeup credit handling) but may not contradict these Platform Terms or applicable law. In the case of a conflict, these Platform Terms govern, and applicable law governs over both.
- Are written and maintained by the Business Owner or by Admins they delegate the Policies area to. Operator does not write, review, or pre-approve Business-authored content.
- May be updated by the Business Owner at any time. Material changes apply going forward; they do not retroactively change a lesson that has already been attended.
8. Billing, Subscriptions & Stripe
The Platform charges Business Owners and Independent Teachers a recurring subscription for use of the Platform. Two tiers are currently available:
- Business Owner tier (multi-teacher Businesses).
- Private Tutor tier (one-person Independent Teachers).
Subscriptions are billed in advance and renew automatically until cancelled. Cancelling a subscription stops future billing and disables Business Owner / Admin / Teacher action POSTs at the end of the paid period; Members keep read access to their data for a reasonable wind-down window.
Student payments (credit packs, recurring subscriptions, pay-as-you-go, makeup credits) flow through Stripe. When a Business Owner has connected their own Stripe account, Student payments land directly in the Business Owner’s bank account; the Operator never holds the funds. When a Business has not connected Stripe, Student payments fall back to the Operator’s connected account and are remitted to the Business Owner under separate arrangement.
Taxes (sales, VAT, GST, etc.) on Student-facing transactions are the Business Owner’s responsibility unless the Operator clearly and explicitly handles them in writing for a particular jurisdiction.
9. Credits, Refunds & Expirations
One purchased credit corresponds to one booked lesson under the “Credits” payment model unless the Business Owner has configured otherwise. Credits expire six (6) months after the date of purchase unless the Business Owner has set a different expiration window.
Refund handling follows the Business-authored Policy of the Business that issued the credits. By default, the Operator does not issue cash refunds for Student-facing purchases; if a payment was charged in error, or a technical platform failure caused a credit to be lost, the Business Owner (or, when authorized, the Operator) will refund equivalent or additional credits to the affected Student.
Makeup credits, when enabled by a Business Owner, are gift credits issued by the Business that do not contribute to teacher payouts and may carry their own expiration policy.
10. Online Lessons, Recordings & Meetings
When a Business has online lessons enabled, Members access lessons through the meeting link and password attached to each appointment. Members agree not to share meeting links with non-attendees, not to record a lesson without the explicit consent of every attendee (subject to applicable law), and to follow the conduct rules of the Business.
The Operator may, at the Business Owner’s direction, surface meeting links inside the in-app calendar and in lesson-confirmation emails. The Operator does not host the live meetings themselves; that is provided by whatever third-party meeting tool the Business uses.
Photographs, video, and audio recordings: the Business Owner may collect and use such material for promotional purposes only to the extent permitted by their Business-authored Policies, by applicable law, and by separate consent from the Member depicted (or that Member’s parent or guardian for minors).
11. Acceptable Use
You will not, and will not encourage anyone else to: (a) violate any law; (b) infringe intellectual property; (c) harass, threaten, dox, or sexually harass another person; (d) use the Platform to facilitate child exploitation; (e) upload malware or attempt to break the Platform’s security; (f) scrape, copy, or resell the Platform’s data without permission; (g) reverse-engineer or attempt to derive source code; (h) use the Platform to send spam, deceptive marketing, or phishing; (i) impersonate another person or business; (j) use the Platform for activity that competes with the Operator (e.g. cloning the Platform); or (k) use the Platform in any way that creates risk of legal exposure to the Operator.
12. Content & Data Ownership
You keep all rights to the content you upload (logos, lesson descriptions, profile pictures, Business-authored Policies, contact text, etc.). You grant the Operator a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, copy, reformat, transmit, and display that content solely as needed to operate, improve, and secure the Platform for you.
Each Business owns the data it generates inside the Platform: its Member roster, appointments, credit ledger, payouts records, and Business-authored Policies. The Operator acts as a service provider / data processor to the Business with respect to that data; the Business is the controller. On request from a Business Owner, we will export or delete that data subject to retention obligations under section 14 and applicable law.
The Operator owns the Platform itself: the software, design, copy, trademarks, the Teacher Cove brand, and any aggregate or anonymized analytics derived from Platform usage.
13. Email, SMS & Notifications
By creating an account you consent to receive operational email at the address you provided: lesson confirmations, payment receipts, password resets, security alerts, billing notices, and policy updates. These are not optional because they are necessary to deliver the service.
Marketing email is opt-in and uses a clearly labeled “reply STOP / unsubscribe” mechanism. SMS is currently not used by the Platform; if it is ever introduced, it will be opt-in and rate disclosures will be shown at the time of opt-in.
You may receive up to four (4) operational messages per month per Business. Reply to any email to unsubscribe from optional notifications.
14. Privacy Policy
This section describes what information the Operator collects, how it uses it, and the choices you have. Each Business Owner can also publish their own Privacy Policy under section 7; that document layers on top of this one.
14.1 Information we collect
- Account information: username, email, password hash, role, time zone, address, profile picture, instrument/category tags, age (when supplied), goals, interests.
- Tenant information: the Business you belong to, your delegated permissions (if Admin), your teaching availability (if Teacher), your student-side bookings (if Student).
- Lesson activity: appointments you book, attend, cancel, reschedule, or teach.
- Billing identifiers: Stripe customer id, Stripe account id, Stripe charge / subscription / transfer ids, credit balance and ledger. We never store full credit-card numbers, those live with Stripe.
- Communications: messages submitted to the contact form, support email threads, and email-delivery diagnostics.
- Technical data: IP address, browser user agent, referrer, request path, status code, time to serve, session cookies, and the audit-log entries our admin tools record.
14.2 How we use information
- Provide and operate the Platform (scheduling, billing, calendar, notifications).
- Authenticate users and prevent abuse / fraud.
- Send operational and (with consent) marketing email.
- Comply with legal obligations and enforce these Terms.
- Improve and secure the Platform, including aggregate analytics.
14.3 How we share information
- With the Business you belong to (and the Members of that Business who legitimately need it for scheduling and billing).
- With Stripe (payment processing) and SendGrid (email delivery), our subprocessors.
- With Microsoft Azure, our hosting and key-vault provider.
- With Google (Maps Distance Matrix) when used to compute teacher drive-time, in compliance with Google’s terms.
- With law enforcement or in response to valid legal process.
- In connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or substantially all assets, subject to a successor that agrees to honor this Privacy Policy.
We never sell your personal information.
14.4 Retention
We retain account and lesson data for as long as your account is active and for a reasonable period thereafter to support audits, dispute resolution, fraud prevention, and applicable law. Stripe and SendGrid retain transactional and delivery data under their own retention policies. Audit logs (who-did-what, when) are retained for at least 12 months. You may request deletion of your account at any time; some records (e.g. invoices, tax records) must be retained for the period required by law.
14.5 Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, port, restrict, or delete your personal information, and to withdraw consent for any processing based on consent. To exercise these rights, contact us at support@teachercove.com. We will verify your identity before acting on a request.
14.6 International transfers
The Platform is hosted in the United States. If you access it from elsewhere, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States. We rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or comparable safeguards where applicable.
14.7 Children
See section 16 below.
16. Minors & Parental Consent
Tutoring frequently involves minors. The Platform is designed to be usable by minors only with the active involvement of a parent, legal guardian, or the Business that enrolled them. By creating a Student account on behalf of a child under 13, you represent that you are the child’s parent or guardian (or that you have the parent’s documented permission to act on their behalf) and you consent to the processing described in this Privacy Policy. Business Owners are responsible for ensuring that the minors they enroll have appropriate parental consent under applicable laws (including COPPA in the United States).
17. Security & Incident Response
We use industry-standard technical and organizational safeguards (TLS in transit, password hashing, parameterized SQL, isolation by tenant query filter, access logging, secret storage in Azure Key Vault). No system is perfectly secure. If we become aware of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you and the appropriate Business Owner without undue delay and follow applicable breach-notification laws.
18. Third-party Services
The Platform integrates with: Stripe (payments & payouts), SendGrid (email), Microsoft Azure (hosting, identity, key vault), and Google Maps APIs (drive-time). Each is governed by its own terms and privacy policy. You are responsible for complying with their terms when you use a feature that depends on them (e.g. running an online lesson over a third-party meeting tool).
19. Disclaimers
The Platform is provided “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, or that the Platform will be uninterrupted or error-free. The Operator is not a party to the lesson contract between a Student and a Business; we are a software service used by the Business to run scheduling and billing.
20. Limitation of Liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, neither party will be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, or goodwill arising out of or related to these Terms or use of the Platform. Each party’s total liability for direct damages is limited to the greater of (a) the fees paid by the Business to the Operator for the Platform in the 12 months preceding the claim, or (b) one hundred US dollars (US$100). These limits do not apply to a party’s gross negligence, willful misconduct, indemnification obligations, or amounts owed under section 8.
21. Indemnification
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Operator and its officers, employees, and contractors from any claim, demand, loss, or expense (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of (a) your breach of these Terms, (b) the content you upload or the lessons you deliver, (c) your violation of any law or third-party right, or (d) for Business Owners and Independent Teachers, the operation of your Business, the truthfulness of your Business-authored Policies, and the conduct of your Members.
22. Suspension & Termination
You may stop using the Platform at any time. Business Owners can cancel their subscription from their billing portal. We may suspend or terminate access immediately if (a) you breach these Terms, (b) we are required to do so by law, (c) your account creates risk of harm to other users or to the Platform, or (d) your subscription has been past due for more than 30 days. Following termination we will retain or delete your data as described in section 14.4.
23. Governing Law & Disputes
These Terms are governed by the laws of the United States and of the state where the Operator is registered, excluding conflict-of-laws rules. Disputes will be resolved in the state or federal courts of that jurisdiction. To the maximum extent permitted by law, you waive any right to participate in a class action against the Operator.
24. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms, the Privacy Policy, or the Platform Policy at any time. Material changes will be announced through the email on file and will take effect on the “Effective” date stated at the top of this page. Your continued use of the Platform after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated documents.
25. Contact
For privacy or legal questions, write to support@teachercove.com or use our contact form. For Business-specific questions (cancellation windows, makeup credits, billing for a particular lesson), contact your Business Owner directly through the in-app Contact page.