Skip to main content
Homeschool Harbor

Legal

Terms of Service

Last updated: October 12, 2026

Thank you for using Homeschool Harbor. We build it to help homeschool co-ops and groups run their classes, families, volunteering, and payments in one place. Because we don't know every group personally, these Terms of Service ("Terms") set out what you and we agree to.

When we say "Homeschool Harbor", "we", "our", or "us", we mean Homeschool Harbor, LLC, a Virginia limited liability company, 8401 Mayland Dr Ste S, Richmond, VA 23294, USA.

When we say "Services", we mean homeschoolharbor.org, each organization's Homeschool Harbor site (on our domain or a custom domain), and everything we provide through them.

When we say "Organization" or "you", we mean the co-op, group, or other organization that signs up for the Services, and the person who accepts these Terms on its behalf. When we say "Users", we mean everyone the Organization lets use its site: its administrators, instructors, and member families.

When we say "Customer Data", we mean the information the Organization and its Users put into the Services, such as family, child, class, attendance, volunteering, and payment records.

By creating an account, or by using the Services after we update these Terms, you agree to the latest version. If we don't enforce a provision at some point, that doesn't mean we give up the right to enforce it later. These Terms limit our liability (see "Liability" below).

Account terms

  1. You must be at least 18 and able to agree to these Terms for your Organization.
  2. You're responsible for keeping your account secure and for making sure your Users do the same. We can't be liable for loss or damage caused by a failure to do so.
  3. You're responsible for everything done in your Organization's site, including by your Users, and for who you give administrator access and which permissions they have.
  4. Who the Services are for. The Services are for adults: Organization administrators, instructors, and parents and guardians. Nobody under 18 may sign up an Organization or create an account on their own. Children under 13 may not have their own login: a child's information is entered and managed by their parent or guardian, or by the Organization, and never by the child. Users aged 13 to 17 may have a login only if their Organization gives them one; the Organization is responsible for doing so only with their parent or guardian's agreement.
  5. You may not use the Services for any purpose listed under "Use restrictions" below, and you must not let your Users do so either.
  6. Accounts must be registered by a human, not by automated means.
  7. The person who accepts these Terms confirms that they are authorized to accept them for the Organization, and does so as its representative. If the Organization is an informal group and not a legal entity, the group is the Organization for purposes of these Terms.

Your responsibilities for family data

The Organization decides what information it collects from its families (including on its membership application) and what it does with it. For that information, the Organization is the "controller" (or "business") and Homeschool Harbor processes it on the Organization's behalf as a "processor" (or "service provider"). The Data Processing Addendum below describes this in more detail. In particular, you agree that:

  1. You have the right to put Customer Data into the Services, and you've told your families, in a way that meets the laws that apply to you, how their information will be used and that it's stored with Homeschool Harbor. You'll get any permission the law requires from a child's parent or guardian (including under the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) before you put the child's information into the Services or ask a family to.
  2. You'll collect only what your Organization needs, especially about children and health. The Services let you record allergies, medical notes, and learning differences so the right adults can keep children safe; they are not a medical record and don't replace your own emergency procedures.
  3. You'll handle requests from your families to see, correct, or delete their information. The Services give administrators the tools to do this, and we'll help if you ask.
  4. You are the school of record and responsible for your own accounting. When you erase a family at its request, its personal information is deleted at once, but its invoices and payments stay in your books under the family's name for 30 days (longer if you place a hold), then become "Former family" with a number. Export what you need, and keep your own accounting, tax, and official records (including transcripts and attendance records that families or schools ask you for) outside the Services. We can't restore an erased family's information, and we can't produce records for a family we no longer hold.
  5. What you publish on your public website is public and is your responsibility. Get the permission you need before you show a person's name, photo, or words there, especially a child's. We never publish member information on your public website ourselves.

Payment and refunds

  1. New Organizations get a free trial. We tell you its length when you sign up (currently 30 days). No card is needed for the trial. When it ends you need a paid subscription to keep using the Services; if you don't add a payment method, your site is suspended (see "Cancellation and termination"). If you add a card during the trial, it isn't charged until the trial ends.
  2. Subscriptions are billed yearly, in advance, through our payment processor, Stripe. Card details go directly to Stripe and never reach our servers.
  3. The yearly price depends on how many families have an active account in your Organization's site, at the per-family rate, minimum, and maximum shown on our pricing page. The first year is billed on the families you have at the end of the trial, and each renewal on the families you have then. Families who join during the year are charged for the rest of that year, pro-rated, on at most one invoice a month (never more than the yearly maximum). Families who leave don't reduce the year you've already paid for.
  4. No refunds. You can cancel any time; you won't be charged again, and your site stays fully available until the end of the period you've paid for. We don't prorate or refund partial periods, unused time, or families who leave during the year. If something has gone wrong on our side, contact us and we'll make it right case by case.
  5. Fees don't include taxes. You're responsible for any taxes, levies, or duties that apply, except taxes on our own income.

Payments your families make to you

If your Organization collects dues, deposits, or other fees online, those payments go directly into your Organization's own Stripe account. Your Organization is the merchant: it sets the prices, receives the money, pays Stripe's fees, and handles its families' refund and dispute questions. Your use of Stripe is governed by your agreement with Stripe. Homeschool Harbor doesn't hold, receive, or take a share of those payments.

Cancellation and termination

  1. Your Organization's administrators can cancel at any time from the billing page. An email asking us to cancel is not a cancellation, but we're happy to help if you need it.
  2. After cancellation, or if a trial ends without a paid subscription, your site's administrators keep read-only access for 60 days, including a full export of your Customer Data. After 60 days, all Customer Data is permanently deleted from our active systems, and it is removed from our backups within a further 3 weeks. We can't recover it after that. You can subscribe again within the 60 days to pick up where you left off.
  3. We may suspend or terminate an account that violates these Terms, including the use restrictions, or that we need to stop to protect our Users, the Services, or others. Where we reasonably can, we'll tell you first and give you a chance to fix the problem and export your data.
  4. Abuse of anyone working for Homeschool Harbor, including threats, will result in immediate termination.

Changes to the Services and prices

  1. We may change or discontinue parts of the Services. If we discontinue the Services as a whole, we'll give you at least 60 days' notice and a way to export your data.
  2. We may change prices. If a change affects what you pay, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice by email before it applies to you.

Uptime, security, and privacy

  1. We provide the Services "as is" and "as available". We don't offer a service-level agreement, but we take uptime seriously.
  2. We protect Customer Data with encryption in transit, access controls, and encrypted, off-server backups. See the Privacy Policy for details.
  3. You agree that we process Customer Data only as described in these Terms, the Privacy Policy, and the Data Processing Addendum, and for no other purpose. People at Homeschool Harbor look at Customer Data only: - to help with a support request from your Organization; - to fix a problem, such as an error that stops something working, looking at as little personal information as possible; - to keep the Services secure and to investigate reports of misuse; and - when the law requires it, as described in the Privacy Policy.
  4. We use a small number of service providers (subprocessors) to run the Services. They're listed on our Subprocessors page.
  5. We never sell Customer Data, never use it for advertising, and never share it with anyone except as these Terms and the Privacy Policy describe.
  6. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act and similar state laws, Homeschool Harbor is a "service provider" (or "processor") for Customer Data.

Data Processing Addendum

These Terms include the Common Paper Data Processing Agreement Standard Terms, version 1.1 (commonpaper.com/standards/data-processing-agreement/1.1), completed by our DPA Cover Page. When your Organization accepts these Terms, it also accepts the DPA. If the DPA and these Terms conflict about Customer Data, the DPA wins.

Your content

  1. Everything your Organization and its Users put into the Services stays yours. You give us a limited permission to store, process, and display it only to provide the Services to you.
  2. We don't pre-screen content, but we may remove content that violates these Terms.
  3. Homeschool Harbor owns the Services themselves, including the software and design. You may not copy or resell any part of the Services without our written permission.
  4. We won't list your Organization's name or logo on our website or in marketing unless your Organization turns that on in its settings. You can turn it off at any time.

Use restrictions

You may not use the Services to, and may not let anyone else:

  • collect or extract information from organizations or accounts that aren't yours;
  • get around, disable, or interfere with security or access controls;
  • trick, defraud, or mislead us or other Users, including by pretending to be someone else;
  • upload viruses, malware, or tracking code;
  • overload, disrupt, or interfere with the Services;
  • harass, threaten, or harm others, including children; or
  • break any law that applies to you, including privacy and child-protection laws.

Report misuse to privacy@homeschoolharbor.org. We won't reveal who reported it to the account involved.

Features and bugs

We design and test the Services carefully, but no software pleases everyone or is free of bugs. We don't promise the Services will meet every need or never fail. We prioritize problems affecting security and privacy.

Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Homeschool Harbor won't be liable to you or anyone else for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, punitive, or exemplary damages, or for lost profits, goodwill, or use, arising from these Terms or the Services, even if we were told they might happen. Our total liability for any claim relating to the Services is limited to the amount your Organization paid us in the 12 months before the claim.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that the law does not allow to be limited.

Homeschool Harbor provides software. We aren't responsible for your Organization's classes, events, volunteering, supervision of children, or other activities, or for the conduct of your Organization's members, instructors, or volunteers.

You agree to defend and hold Homeschool Harbor harmless from third-party claims arising from Customer Data you had no right to put into the Services, or from your Organization's own activities, such as its classes, events, and supervision of children. This doesn't apply to the extent a claim arises from our breach of these Terms or our negligence.

General

  1. These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Virginia, and both of us agree to those courts' jurisdiction.
  2. We may update these Terms. For a significant change, we'll update the date above and email your Organization's administrators at least 30 days before it takes effect.
  3. If a court finds any part of these Terms unenforceable, the rest still applies.
  4. You may not transfer your account without our permission. If Homeschool Harbor is acquired or merges with another company, we'll tell you before your data is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Questions about these Terms? Email privacy@homeschoolharbor.org.

Adapted from 37signals' policies, used under CC BY 4.0.