Terms of Service

Who we are and acceptance of these terms

CiteSonar (citesonar.com) is a product of Design with Aya LLC, 6834 S. University Blvd., #101, Centennial, CO 80122, USA ("we", "us", "our"). You can reach us at hello@citesonar.com.

By creating an account or otherwise using CiteSonar, you agree to these Terms of Service. If you use CiteSonar on behalf of a company or other organization, you agree on its behalf and confirm that you have the authority to do so; "you" then means that organization. If you do not agree, do not use CiteSonar.

The service

CiteSonar is a search-visibility tool for website owners. It shows why a site does or does not appear in search results and in AI assistant answers, recommends changes, and measures whether those changes worked. CiteSonar reads data and makes recommendations: it never changes your website, and it connects to your Google account with read-only permissions. Every change it recommends is one you decide whether to make, yourself or through your own tools.

We keep improving CiteSonar, so features may be added, changed or removed over time. Some features may be available only on certain plans or in certain countries.

Accounts, roles and security

You need an account to use CiteSonar. Give us accurate information, keep your password confidential, and tell us right away at hello@citesonar.com if you suspect unauthorized access. You are responsible for all activity in your workspace, including activity by team members and agency clients you invite and by API keys and apps you authorize.

• Roles: each workspace has one owner, who controls billing, the team and deleting the workspace. Members can work on the workspace's sites. An agency client seat is read-only and sees only the sites it has been granted.
• Sessions: a sign-in lasts at most 30 days and ends after 7 days without use.
• API keys: keys can be created only from a signed-in browser session. A key's secret is shown once, when it is created, and we keep only a hash of it. A key can never carry more authority than the role of the person who created it.
• Settings-changing capabilities are off for every key until you turn them on from a signed-in browser session. You can revoke keys, capabilities and connected apps at any time from Account settings.

Free tier, trials, plans and credits

Current plans, prices, credit allowances and limits are shown on your Account page and, for a purchase, at checkout before you pay. What is shown there when you buy is part of that purchase's terms. These terms do not fix any particular price or allowance.

• Free tier: you can use CiteSonar on a free plan. Free credits, including any one-time welcome credits, are offered while available and may require you to verify your email address and prove that you control your site. They expire at the time shown in your account and do not carry over. We may change the free plan's allowances and conditions.
• Trials: we may offer a free trial of a paid plan. A trial needs no card, can be used once per account, and lasts for the number of days shown when you start it. When it ends your account moves to the free plan, with your sites and history kept, unless you have bought a plan. A trial ending never charges you.
• Paid plans and top-ups: when you buy a paid plan or a top-up, you buy it through our payment processor's hosted checkout. Paid plans are billed monthly in US dollars. A top-up is a one-time purchase of extra credits.
• Credits: many features use credits. When you start a metered feature yourself, such as generating a content brief, we show an estimate before it runs. Tracking you schedule uses credits within the monthly caps shown in your account. A feature that needs credits does not run when you have none available, and we never charge automatic overages.
• Carry-over and expiry: unused credits from a paid plan's monthly allowance carry over to the next month, up to one month's allowance, and expire at the end of that next month. Top-up credits expire after the period shown when you buy them, unless the law where you live requires otherwise.
• Credits have no cash value, cannot be transferred or exchanged, and are not refundable except as these terms or the law provide.
• Promotion codes: one code per purchase. Each code is subject to the conditions shown when you use it, and we may decline a code that is not eligible.

Payments, renewal, cancellation and refunds

• Payment: payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number. Where we collect sales tax or VAT, it is included in the price shown at checkout. We may not be able to sell in every country, and a purchase may be refused where sales are not yet open.
• Renewal: a paid plan renews automatically each month, and you authorize us to charge your payment method for each new period until you cancel.
• Plan changes: an upgrade takes effect straight away. A downgrade takes effect at the end of the current billing period.
• Price changes: new prices apply to new purchases. We will not raise the price of a subscription you already hold without giving you at least 30 days' notice.
• Failed payments: if a renewal payment fails, your account enters a 7-day grace period in which it keeps working while we continue to try to collect payment. If payment has not succeeded by the end of the grace period, features that use credits stop starting new work until it does or the subscription ends.
• Cancellation: you can cancel at any time by emailing hello@citesonar.com. Unless you ask otherwise, we cancel at the end of the billing period you have already paid for, and your plan stays in effect until then.
• When a paid subscription ends: whether you cancel it or it ends because payment was not made, your workspace moves to the free plan with its sites and data kept, and the free plan's limits apply from then on. We do not delete it because a subscription ended; it is deleted only if the workspace owner deletes it.
• Refunds: fees are non-refundable, and we do not give refunds or credits for partial billing periods, unused credits or unused time, except where the law requires. If a payment is refunded or reversed through a dispute, we withdraw the credits that payment bought, in proportion to the amount returned. This does not by itself change your plan or its other limits. A partial refund of something that cannot be divided, such as an agency client add-on, is handled by us case by case.

Deleting your workspace or sites

The workspace owner can delete the whole workspace from Account settings. Once you confirm, the workspace is frozen at once: every sign-in, API key and connected app stops working, and the deletion cannot be undone. Its data is then deleted as described in our Privacy Policy, except de-identified financial totals we must keep for accounting and tax. A single site can be deleted through our API, or by asking us.

Export first. Each site's records can be downloaded as JSON or CSV from the Data and privacy section of your Account page. Export stops working the moment you confirm a deletion, and we cannot recover deleted data for you.

Deleting a workspace does not by itself cancel a paid subscription with our payment processor; ask us to cancel it. For anything else, see Contact below.

API, MCP and AI agents

CiteSonar offers an API and an MCP (Model Context Protocol) connection so that you, or an AI agent you authorize, can use the product programmatically. Anything done with your API keys or authorized apps, including by an AI agent, is treated as done by you. An agent can act only within its key's scope and the capabilities you have turned on. Keep keys secret, do not share them outside your organization, and revoke any key you think is exposed. We may limit or throttle use of the API and MCP connection to protect the service.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• break any law or infringe anyone's rights through CiteSonar;
• add a site you do not own or are not authorized to manage, or connect a Google or other account you are not authorized to connect;
• send us server logs or other data you are not entitled to share;
• try to gain unauthorized access to CiteSonar, another workspace or our systems, or probe, scan or test their security without our written permission;
• get around credit limits, budgets, plan limits or usage limits, including by opening multiple accounts to collect extra free credits;
• interfere with or overload the service, or introduce malware;
• copy, scrape, resell or redistribute the service or its underlying data other than through the product's own features, reports and exports;
• reverse engineer the service, except where the law allows it despite this restriction; or
• use CiteSonar to build a competing product or dataset.

Your data

You keep all rights in the content and data you bring to CiteSonar, including your sites, business information, keywords, server logs and connected account data. You give us permission to host, copy, process and display that data only to provide, secure and support the service for you, as described in our Privacy Policy. If you connect a Google account, our use of that data is limited as described in the Privacy Policy's Google user data section, including the Limited Use requirements.

You are responsible for having the rights, notices and permissions needed for the data you give us. If you need a data processing agreement for personal data you give us, email hello@citesonar.com.

Third-party data and services

CiteSonar depends on third parties, including Google, search and AI data vendors, AI model providers, our payment processor, email delivery and public data sources; our Privacy Policy lists them. We do not control them, and their data can be incomplete, delayed or wrong. An outage or change on their side can affect what CiteSonar can show or do. Services you connect yourself, such as Google, Slack, a webhook destination or your own AI agent, are governed by your agreement with them.

Content we collect from web pages, search results and AI answers belongs to others. We treat it as data, not as instructions, and we do not endorse it. CiteSonar includes open-source components, which remain under their own licenses.

AI features and output

CiteSonar's recommendations come from rules applied to the data we collect, and each carries a confidence level. Some features, such as content briefs, use AI models to draft text. The AI assistant answers we check come from third-party AI systems and can vary from one run to the next. Outcome measurements compare data before and after a change, and may report that there is not enough data to tell or that other changes make the result unclear.

All of this is evidence to support your decisions, not a guarantee. We do not guarantee any search ranking, AI citation, traffic, revenue or other result: search engines and AI systems are outside our control and change independently of anything CiteSonar does. AI-generated text can be inaccurate or incomplete, so review it before you use it.

Changes you make to your site

You decide whether to make any change CiteSonar recommends. You are responsible for every change you make to your site or other systems, including content, code, structured data, crawler rules and server settings, and for their effects. Test changes and keep backups before you deploy them.

Suspension and termination

You may stop using CiteSonar at any time. We may suspend or end your access, in whole or in part, if you breach these terms, if a payment is not made, if it is needed to prevent harm, abuse or a security risk, or if the law requires it. Where reasonable, we will tell you first and give you a chance to put things right. If we decide to stop offering CiteSonar, we will give you at least 30 days' notice where we can, so that you can export your data.

Sections of these terms that by their nature should continue after your access ends, including those on payments owed, your data, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity and governing law, continue to apply.

Intellectual property and feedback

CiteSonar, its software, design and brand belong to us or our licensors, apart from the open-source components it includes. These terms give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use CiteSonar while your account is in good standing. You may use and share the reports, briefs and exports CiteSonar produces for you in your own business, including with your clients.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without any obligation to you.

Availability

We work to keep CiteSonar running, but we do not offer a service level agreement or promise any particular uptime or response time. The service may be unavailable during maintenance, or because of problems with our providers or the internet.

Warranty disclaimer

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, CITESONAR IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT AND ACCURACY. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE, OR THAT ITS DATA, RECOMMENDATIONS OR AI OUTPUT WILL BE ACCURATE OR COMPLETE.

Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, NEITHER WE NOR OUR SUPPLIERS WILL BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, TRAFFIC, RANKINGS, DATA OR GOODWILL, ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO CITESONAR OR THESE TERMS, EVEN IF WE WERE TOLD THEY WERE POSSIBLE.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO CITESONAR OR THESE TERMS IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF THE FEES YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR US$100.

Some places do not allow some of these exclusions or limits, so they apply to you only as far as the law allows.

Indemnity

You will defend and indemnify Design with Aya LLC and its members, employees and agents against any third-party claim, and the resulting losses, damages and reasonable costs, including legal fees, arising from your data, changes you make to your site, your use of CiteSonar (including by your team, clients, API keys and AI agents), your breach of these terms, or your violation of any law or anyone's rights.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Colorado, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

• Arbitration: where the law permits, any dispute arising from or related to these terms or CiteSonar will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Commercial Arbitration Rules, before one arbitrator, in English, seated in Denver, Colorado. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court with jurisdiction.
• Exceptions: either party may bring an individual claim in small claims court if it qualifies, and either party may ask a court for an injunction to stop infringement or misuse of its intellectual property or misuse of the service.
• No class actions: disputes are resolved only on an individual basis. Neither you nor we may bring or take part in a class, collective or representative action or arbitration against the other.
• Opting out: you may opt out of arbitration by emailing hello@citesonar.com within 30 days after you first accept these terms, saying that you opt out and naming your workspace.
• Courts: if you opt out, or if arbitration is not permitted or not enforceable for a dispute, that dispute will be decided only by the state or federal courts located in Colorado, and you and we consent to their jurisdiction.

Nothing here removes protections that the law where you live gives you and that cannot be waived by agreement.

Eligibility and business use

You must be at least 18 years old to use CiteSonar. CiteSonar is a business tool, offered for professional and business use and not for personal, family or household use.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as CiteSonar and the law change. We will post the new version here with a new date. If a change is material, we will tell workspace owners by email or in the product at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you keep using CiteSonar after a change takes effect, you accept the updated terms; if you do not agree, stop using CiteSonar and cancel any paid plan before then.

General

• Entire agreement: these terms, our Privacy Policy and the terms shown to you at checkout are the whole agreement between you and us about CiteSonar.
• Assignment: you may not transfer these terms without our written consent. We may transfer them as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets.
• Severability and waiver: if any part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies. Not enforcing a right is not a waiver of it.
• Events outside our control: we are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
• Notices: we send notices to the workspace owner's email address or show them in the product. Send notices to us at hello@citesonar.com.
• Relationship: you and we are independent parties. These terms do not create a partnership, agency or employment relationship, and no one else has rights under them.
• Language: if we provide these terms in another language, the English version controls.