About these terms
These terms are an agreement between a church that uses Sown (“you”), including the staff it invites, and Jackson Porter, a sole proprietorship based in Ontario, Canada, who operates Sown (“Sown”, “we”). By starting a trial, subscribing or using the dashboard, the person doing so confirms they can agree to these terms for the church.
Our privacy policy explains what personal information Sown handles and why. It forms part of these terms.
The service
Sown takes the sermons a church publishes on YouTube and produces notes, transcripts, a Scripture index, discussion guides, topic and series pages, and answers to questions through Selah, the AI assistant on each church’s site (a church may give it another name). These are published on a site for the church, which church staff manage through a dashboard. A church can also offer a weekly sermon email that people sign up for on its site, and can embed parts of its Sown site on its own website.
Accounts
Staff accounts are for the people a church invites. You’re responsible for who you invite, for the roles you give them, for what they do in the dashboard, and for keeping access to their email accounts secure, since that is how they sign in. Tell us straight away at privacy@joinsown.com if you think someone has signed in who shouldn’t have.
Your content
- Your church keeps ownership of its sermons and everything it publishes through Sown.
- You give Sown permission to copy, process, store and display that content, and to send it to the service providers named in our privacy policy, only to provide the service to you.
- You confirm that you have the right to publish the sermons you connect to Sown, including any music, readings or images in them.
- Sown reads public information about your YouTube videos through the YouTube API Services. By connecting a channel, you also agree to the YouTube Terms of Service, and Google’s use of that information is covered by the Google Privacy Policy.
People who use your church’s site
Your church’s site is offered by your church, and Sown runs it for you. For the personal information Sown handles about the people who use your site, such as the email addresses of weekly-email subscribers, your church decides why it is collected and Sown processes it on your behalf, as our privacy policy and the notice on your site describe. You agree to use that information only for the purpose it was given, such as sending the weekly email, and to tell us if someone asks your church to see, correct or delete it.
When Sown sends the weekly sermon email, it sends it on your church’s behalf, in your church’s name, only to people who confirmed their sign-up, with a one-click unsubscribe link in every email, as Canada’s anti-spam law requires. You confirm that your church’s name and mailing address shown in the email are correct.
AI-generated content
Notes, guides, summaries and answers are drafted by AI and can contain mistakes, including wrong Scripture references or statements a preacher didn’t make. You’re responsible for reviewing what your church publishes, and for the settings that decide whether notes publish automatically.
Selah answers from your church’s sermons. It is not counselling — pastoral, medical, legal, financial or otherwise — and is no substitute for the care of your church’s people. It is not designed for emergencies or crises: each site’s notice points people to crisis lines and emergency services instead. You shouldn’t present Selah as a pastor, counsellor or emergency service.
Acceptable use
You agree not to use Sown, or let anyone use your account, to:
- publish content you don’t have the right to publish, or that infringes anyone’s copyright, trademark or privacy;
- publish unlawful content, or content that promotes violence or harassment against anyone;
- send email to people who haven’t asked for it, or add addresses to a sign-up on anyone else’s behalf;
- try to reach another church’s data, get around Sown’s security, rate limits or usage limits, or test Sown’s security without our written permission;
- copy, scrape or resell Sown’s service or its answers in bulk, or use them to build a competing product;
- put malware on Sown, or interfere with its operation for anyone else;
- put personal information about other people, especially sensitive information such as health or pastoral matters, into sermons, notes or settings without their consent.
Subscriptions
Sown is sold as a subscription to one of the plans on our pricing page, paid monthly or yearly:
- Starter: $39 a month, or $390 a year.
- Growth: $79 a month, or $790 a year.
- Multisite: $149 a month, or $1,490 a year.
Prices are in Canadian dollars (CAD) and don’t include taxes; applicable taxes, such as GST or HST, are added to each invoice. Every plan includes every feature and unlimited staff seats. The plans differ in how many church sites and Selah answers a month they include, and in the extras listed on the pricing page. A church with its own written agreement with Sown (through a denomination or network, for example) is billed as that agreement says, and where that agreement and these terms differ, the agreement applies.
Free trial
A church’s first subscription starts with a 30-day free trial. Each church gets one free trial. We don’t ask for a payment method to start it, and nothing is charged during it. To continue after the trial, add a payment method before it ends; the first payment is taken when the trial ends. If the trial ends without one, the church’s site is paused, and its data is kept and then deleted as described under “When a subscription ends”.
Payment and renewal
Subscriptions are paid in advance, a month or a year at a time, and renew automatically at the end of each billing period until they are cancelled. Payments are processed by Stripe, our payment processor; Sown never sees or stores full card numbers. Every payment comes with a receipt, and invoices are available from the dashboard.
If a payment fails, Stripe tries again several times over the following weeks and we let you know by email. The church’s site stays up for 7 days after the payment first fails; if it’s still unpaid after that, the site is paused until the payment goes through. If the last attempt fails too, the subscription is cancelled: the church’s data is kept, then deleted, as described under “When a subscription ends”, and to start again, contact us.
Changing plans
You can change plans, or switch between monthly and yearly billing, at any time from the dashboard once a payment method is on file. A change to a larger plan takes effect immediately, and the difference for the rest of the billing period is charged then, prorated to the day. A change to a smaller plan takes effect at the start of the next billing period. If the smaller plan includes fewer church sites than you use, we’ll agree with you which sites to keep before the change takes effect; the others are paused, not deleted, and their data is kept and then deleted as described under “When a subscription ends”.
Cancellation
You can cancel at any time from the dashboard. Cancelling stops the subscription from renewing: the church keeps full use of Sown until the end of the period it has paid for, and is not charged again.
Refunds
Payments are non-refundable. We don’t give refunds or credits for part of a billing period, for unused Selah answers, or when a church moves to a smaller plan or cancels, except where the law requires it, or where we end the service for a reason that isn’t your fault (see “Ending the service”).
When a subscription ends
An owner can download an export of the church’s data — its sermons, notes, transcripts and series — from the dashboard at any time, including for 30 days after the subscription ends. During those 30 days the church’s site is paused. After them, we delete the church’s data from Sown. It stays in our encrypted backups until they are replaced, which takes at most 12 months, and is never restored from them except to recover from a fault. We keep the records the law requires us to keep, such as invoices and payment records, for as long as it requires.
Price changes
We may change our prices. We’ll tell you by email at least 30 days before a new price applies to your subscription, and it applies from your first renewal after that notice. If you don’t want to continue at the new price, you can cancel before it applies.
Availability and changes
We work to keep Sown running smoothly, but we can’t promise it will always be available without interruption, and it depends on services we don’t control, such as YouTube and our AI providers. Features may change as Sown develops; we’ll tell you about significant changes in advance, and we won’t remove a core feature of your plan during a period you’ve paid for.
Ending the service
You can stop using Sown at any time by cancelling your subscription, as described under Subscriptions, which also says what happens to your church’s data.
We may suspend a church’s site or account straight away, and then tell you why, if we reasonably believe it is needed to stop a serious breach of these terms (such as unlawful content or an attack on Sown), to protect people or Sown’s security, or because the law requires it. For any other breach, we’ll first tell you what’s wrong and give you at least 14 days to put it right before we suspend or end the service.
We may also stop offering Sown altogether. If we do, we’ll give you at least 60 days’ notice, time to export your data, and a prorated refund of any period you’ve paid for but won’t get.
Disclaimers
Apart from what these terms promise, Sown is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the extent the law allows, we don’t give any other warranties or conditions, express or implied, including that Sown is fit for a particular purpose, that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that AI-generated content is accurate or complete.
Limitation of liability
To the extent the law allows:
- Neither you nor Sown is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, or for lost profits, revenue, donations, data or goodwill, even if warned they were possible.
- Each side’s total liability to the other for all claims about Sown or these terms is limited to the amount the church paid Sown in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim, or CA$100 if that is more.
- These limits don’t apply to your obligation to pay for your subscription, to either side’s liability for fraud or wilful misconduct, or to anything the law doesn’t allow to be limited.
You agree to cover Sown’s reasonable costs of a claim brought by someone else because of the content your church publishes through Sown, or your breach of “Acceptable use”, provided we tell you about the claim promptly and let you take part in defending it.
Changes to these terms
We may update these terms as Sown changes. For a change that matters, we’ll tell the owners of each church by email at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you don’t agree to the change, you can cancel before it applies, and we’ll refund any period you’ve paid for after that date. Otherwise, the new terms apply from that date.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. Any dispute that can’t be settled by talking it through goes to the courts of Ontario, unless the law where your church is based gives you the right to bring it there.
General
These terms, the privacy policy and any written agreement your church has with Sown are the whole agreement between us about Sown. If a court finds part of them unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we don’t enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later. Neither side is responsible for a delay caused by events beyond its reasonable control. You can’t transfer these terms without our agreement; we may transfer them to a business that takes over Sown, and will tell you if we do.
Contact
Jackson Porter
2880 King St.
Jordan Station, ON L0R 1S0
Canada
Questions about these terms: privacy@joinsown.com