Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) form a binding agreement between you (“you,” “photographer,” or “Studio”) and The Photographer’s Framer, LLC, a Florida limited liability company, trading as Story Wall Systems (“SWS,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), governing your use of the SWS platform at app.storywallsystems.com and the public-facing site at storywallsystems.com.

By creating an account or using the service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

SWS is a software platform that helps professional photography studios manage clients, sessions, proposals, contracts, invoices, payments, image galleries, framed-print designs, albums, and related operations. We provide the software; you run your business.

• You must be at least 18 years old to create an account.
• You must provide accurate and complete information during registration.
• You are responsible for keeping your login credentials secure and for all activity under your account.
• You may not share your account or use it on behalf of another business without our written permission.

• SWS is offered as a monthly subscription with several tiers (currently Designer, Production, and Gallery Pro, with Studio Lite and Studio Pro forthcoming). Pricing is published at app.storywallsystems.com/settings/subscription and may be updated from time to time.
• A 30-day free trial is available with full access to evaluate the platform. No credit card is required to start the trial.
• Paid subscriptions are billed monthly in advance via Stripe. By subscribing, you authorize us to charge your payment method for each billing period until you cancel.
• Subscriptions auto-renew unless cancelled. You can cancel at any time from your account settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.
• We do not provide refunds for partial months unless required by law — but we do refund unused renewals, charges that should not have happened, and failures that are ours. Our Refund & Cancellation Policy sets out exactly when.
• If you participate in a Founding cohort discount, the discounted rate applies for 12 months from the date the discount is first applied, after which standard pricing for your then-current tier applies. Subject to these Terms.

Photographers may connect their own Stripe account to accept payments directly from their clients on invoices and proposals. When you do this:

• Client payments are processed through your connected Stripe account, not through SWS’s account. Funds settle directly to your bank.
• SWS does not take a platform fee on client payments. Stripe’s standard processing fees apply.
• SWS is not a party to transactions between you and your clients. Disputes, chargebacks, refunds, and tax obligations are between you, your client, and Stripe.
• You are responsible for complying with Stripe’s terms, applicable laws, and any tax reporting requirements.

Our Acceptable Use Policy sets this out in full — what is prohibited, how we enforce it, how to report a problem, and the terms under which we welcome security research. It forms part of these Terms. In summary, you agree not to:

• Use SWS for any illegal purpose or to violate any laws.
• Upload content that infringes intellectual property, contains malware, or depicts illegal material.
• Attempt to access accounts or data that don’t belong to you.
• Reverse-engineer, scrape, or systematically extract data from the platform.
• Resell, sublicense, or rent access to SWS without our written permission.
• Use the platform to send spam or unsolicited communications.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms. The Acceptable Use Policy describes how we decide between a conversation, a suspension and a termination, and when we skip straight to the last.

• You retain all ownership of the content you upload — images, client information, designs, contract templates, and any other materials.
• You grant SWS a limited, worldwide license to host, store, process, transmit, and display your content solely as needed to provide the service to you.
• You are responsible for ensuring you have the rights to use any content you upload, including model releases for client images.
• If you cancel your account, you may export your data before deletion (see our Privacy Policy).

We offer an optional feature that groups a gallery’s photographs by the people in them. Enabling it creates a face template for each person — a biometric identifier regulated in Illinois, Texas, Washington and under the UK/EU GDPR. It is off unless you turn it on.

If you enable it, you are the controller of the biometric data it creates, and you agree that:

• You will obtain consent first. Before enabling it on photographs of any person, you will obtain that person’s written consent to the creation and storage of a face template, and tell them in writing what is collected, what it is for, and how long it is kept. Illinois, Texas and Washington require this, and Illinois allows that person to sue you directly if you do not.
• You will not enable it on photographs of a minor without the written consent of a parent or legal guardian.
• You will pass on deletion requests. If someone asks you to destroy their face data, you will clear it or tell us to.
• You confirm this per gallery. You must confirm you hold that consent before each gallery’s first scan. We record the confirmation, and no scan can start without it.
• You accept responsibility for that consent and will indemnify us against claims arising from your failure to obtain it. We provide the tool and the record; the relationship with the person in the photograph is yours.

For our part: face data for one gallery is never compared against any other, is never sold, shared or used to train models, and is destroyed on the schedule published in our Biometric Data Retention & Destruction Policy. You can clear a gallery’s face data at any time, including after switching the feature off.

Some features use automated systems: face grouping (above), image-recognition labels that describe objects and scenes in your photographs, assistive drafting of text you review before sending, and — if you connect a mailbox — Studio Memory, which sends your correspondence with existing clients to a large language model to suggest facts worth remembering.

Studio Memory is the one that runs on a schedule rather than when you ask. It is limited to clients already in your records and to messages they are a participant in, and every suggestion waits for you to confirm it. You can leave your mailbox disconnected, and nothing is sent.

We do not use your data, your clients’ data, or your photographs to train third-party AI models. Automated suggestions are suggestions: you remain responsible for what you send to your clients and for checking it is right.

The client records, photographs and correspondence you put into SWS belong to you and your clients, not to us. You are the controller of that data and we are your processor, on the terms of our Data Processing Agreement, which forms part of these Terms and applies automatically — you do not need to sign anything.

It lists every third party we share data with (our Subprocessors), what we do if there is a breach, and how long we keep things after you leave.

The SWS platform, including all software, designs, branding, and documentation, is owned by Story Wall Systems and protected by intellectual property laws. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the platform during your active subscription. We retain all rights not expressly granted.

We aim for high availability but do not guarantee uninterrupted access. Scheduled maintenance, third-party outages (Stripe, AWS, Cloudflare, Clerk, Google), or unforeseen events may cause downtime. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to communicate planned maintenance in advance.

SWS depends on third-party services — hosting, the database, payments, authentication, email and SMS delivery, and others. Every one of them is named, with what it receives and why, on our Subprocessors page, which is the single current list and is kept up to date as we add or drop a provider. Your use of these integrations is subject to their respective terms. We are not responsible for changes to or outages of third-party services.

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, STORY WALL SYSTEMS, ITS OFFICERS, AGENTS, AND AFFILIATES WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFITS, LOST DATA, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM RELATED TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) $100 OR (B) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Story Wall Systems from any claims, damages, or expenses arising from your use of the service, your content, your relationships with your clients, or your violation of these Terms.

• You may cancel your account at any time from your settings.
• We may suspend or terminate your account if you violate these Terms or fail to pay subscription fees.
• Upon termination, your right to use the service ends. You may export your data within 90 days of cancellation; after that, your data will be deleted in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law provisions. Any dispute arising from these Terms or your use of the service will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Florida, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be announced via email or in-app notice at least 30 days before taking effect. Continued use of the service after changes constitutes acceptance.

Questions about these Terms? Email hello@thephotographersframer.com.

Notices under these Terms may be sent to:

Copyright infringement notices go to our designated agent instead — see Acceptable Use.