Terms of Service

The terms you agree to when you use RootFlare.

Written to be read: what we promise you, what we ask of you, and where responsibility sits.

Last updated October 8, 2026

Thank you for using RootFlare. When we say “we”, “our” or “us”, we mean Trail10, which makes and runs RootFlare. When we say “the Service”, we mean RootFlare: the website at rootflare.app, the web app and field mode on your phone, and the reports and exports it produces. When we say “you”, we mean the person or business that owns a RootFlare account, and the people they invite to it.

By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you use it on behalf of a business, you confirm you can agree to them for that business. We may update these Terms; when we make a significant change, we'll update the date at the top of this page and email account owners before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after that means you accept the updated Terms. If we don't enforce a part of these Terms at some point, that doesn't mean we give up the right to. These Terms limit our liability; please read that section.

Beta testing

RootFlare is in beta testing. While it is, accounts are by invitation and free of charge, and features may change, appear or go away as we learn what works. We'll do our best to tell you before a change that affects your work, and your data stays yours throughout.

Your account

  1. You're responsible for keeping your password safe, and for making sure the people on your team do the same. We can't be responsible for loss or damage caused by a password that wasn't kept safe.
  2. The account owner is responsible for everything that happens in the account, including what the people they invite do and add.
  3. Each person needs their own login, and accounts must belong to people, not bots.
  4. Please give us accurate information, and keep it up to date.

Payment, trials and plan changes

  1. Paid plans start with a free trial; the pricing page says how long. A card is needed to start one, and you won't be charged until the trial ends. Each account gets one trial.
  2. Plans are billed in advance, monthly or yearly, through our payment processor, Stripe. On a plan priced per person, adding someone to your team adds their price to your next bill.
  3. If a payment fails, we'll tell you and try again. If it still can't be collected, the account becomes read-only until it is: you can still see and download everything, but not make changes.
  4. You can change plans at any time in Settings → Billing. Changes take effect as Stripe works them out, which may mean a prorated charge or credit on your next bill.
  5. Prices don't include taxes. Where we're required to collect sales tax or similar, we'll add it to your bill; otherwise those taxes are yours to pay.

Cancellation and termination

  1. You can cancel at any time in Settings → Billing. Your plan continues until the end of the period you've paid for and isn't charged again; we don't refund the unused part of a period. After that the account is read-only, and you can resume at any time.
  2. To delete your account and its data, email us. What happens to your data then is described in our Privacy Policy.
  3. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these Terms, with notice where we reasonably can. Abusing or threatening anyone who works on RootFlare will end an account straight away.

Acceptable use

You agree not to, and not to let anyone on your account:

  • use the Service for anything unlawful, or in a way that infringes someone else's rights;
  • try to get into accounts, data or systems that aren't yours;
  • interfere with the Service, overload it, or get around its security or limits;
  • copy, resell or reverse-engineer the Service, except where the law allows it despite this.

Your content

  1. The trees, assessments, photos, client details and reports you put in or make with RootFlare belong to you. You give us permission to store, process and display them only as needed to provide the Service to you.
  2. You're responsible for having the right to everything you upload, photographs included, and for having your clients' permission or another lawful reason to record their information.
  3. We don't review your content, but we may remove content that breaks these Terms or the law.

Professional judgment

Assessments, ratings and reports made with RootFlare are the professional judgment of the arborist who makes them. RootFlare records and formats that judgment: it keeps what the assessor observed and entered, calculates a rating from the values entered using a fixed risk matrix, and lays the result out as a report. Nothing the Service produces certifies a tree's condition or safety, and none of it is a substitute for a qualified inspection by a trained arborist.

AI analysis offers suggestions for the arborist to review, accept, change or ignore; it never decides a rating and never appears in a report. Responsibility for an assessment's accuracy, and for any decision made on the strength of it, rests with the arborist and business that perform it, not with Trail10.

The ISA form

RootFlare can fill in the International Society of Arboriculture's Basic Tree Risk Assessment Form with your assessment. The form belongs to the ISA. RootFlare and Trail10 aren't affiliated with the ISA, and a filled form is your work, made with our software, not a document issued by the ISA.

Services from others

Some features use services you set up with someone else. AI analysis runs on your own Anthropic API key, under your own agreement with Anthropic and at your own cost. Maps come from OpenStreetMap and the U.S. Geological Survey. We aren't responsible for those services, their availability, or their charges.

Changes to the Service and prices

  1. We keep improving RootFlare, which means features sometimes change or are removed. We may change or stop any part of the Service, and we'll give notice of anything that takes away something you rely on wherever we can.
  2. If we change the price of your plan, we'll email the account owner at least 30 days before the new price applies to you.

Uptime, security and privacy

  1. Your use of the Service is at your own risk. We provide it “as is” and “as available”, without a service-level agreement, though we take keeping it running seriously. Field mode keeps your work on your phone when you can't reach us, and syncs it when you can.
  2. We protect your data with encryption in transit and at rest, and with regular backups. Our Privacy Policy says what we collect, who helps us run the Service, and when a person here may look at your account; you agree we may handle your data as it describes, and for no other purpose.

Our software and name

Trail10 owns the Service, including its software, design and the RootFlare name and mark. Using the Service doesn't give you any ownership of it. Please ask before using our name or logo.

Features and bugs

We build RootFlare with care and test it thoroughly, but like all software it has bugs, and it won't suit everyone. We fix the ones that matter most first, especially anything to do with security or your data, but we can't promise the Service will be free of errors or meet every need.

Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Trail10 is not liable to you or to anyone else for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, including lost profits, goodwill, use or data, even if we were told they were possible, arising from: (i) using or being unable to use the Service; (ii) the cost of getting substitute services; (iii) unauthorized access to or alteration of your data; (iv) any decision made on the strength of an assessment, rating or report made with the Service; (v) anything a third party says or does on or through the Service; or (vi) anything else relating to these Terms or the Service, whether in contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise.

In other words: using RootFlare means trusting us to look after your work, and we do our best to earn that trust. If something goes wrong anyway, these Terms put the risk with you, not us.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Ohio, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and any dispute about them or the Service will be heard in the state or federal courts located in Ohio. If any part of these Terms can't be enforced, the rest still applies.

Questions

Email us at contact@rootflareapp.com or use the Contact page, and a person will read it.

Adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies / CC BY 4.0.