Terms of service

1. The Subject Matter and Definitions

These terms and conditions govern the use of the PopuliHub service between the Service Provider and the Customer.

“Service” in this agreement is used to define the online participation service called PopuliHub provided by Mainio Tech Oy. The Service is an online tool that allows its users to create participation experiences and provides related additional features such as platform registrations, user profiles and various data collection and voting tools.

“Service Provider” (hereafter “Mainio Tech” and “we”) refers to Mainio Tech Oy. The company’s official business ID number in Finland is 2403169-6.

“Customer” defines the company, organization or individual who uses the PopuliHub service.

“Material” defines the documents, files, and other data that has been moved or transferred to the PopuliHub service.

“Spam” defines mass or bulk email communications to a group of people without their prior consent. In short, we mean unsolicited bulk emailing.

2. Entry into Force

This agreement will enter into force when the Customer has agreed on the terms of this agreement and entered their necessary details into the Service. We reserve the right to deny access to the Service if the Customer provides invalid information during the registration process.

3. Features and Contents of the Service

These terms apply to the PopuliHub service provided by Mainio Tech. The Service may contain customer-specific concepts for which all of these terms are valid.

Customers can use the Service to create participation experiences on the servers that provide this Service. These participation experiences consist of social networks where users can register to the platform and participate in various participation processes.

We reserve the right to add or remove features from the Service. If the changes to the features affect the Customers’ use of the service, the changes will be reported well in advance to the Customers. We are not responsible for any cost to the Customer caused by such changes to the Service. If necessary, new services can be offered to the Customers with additional agreements.

If the Customer wants new features or changes to the current features, we may evaluate the possibility for providing such features and offer an estimate of the cost and schedule related to delivering them to the Customer. Such changes may also affect these terms. However, by no means are we under any responsibility to provide such an estimate or to deliver the desired changes to the Service. Individual changes to the Service and pricing will be agreed on with a separate agreement.

4. Responsibilities of the Service Provider

We, as the Service Provider, are responsible for guaranteeing that the quality of the Service corresponds with the requirements as defined in this agreement.

Our responsibility is to ensure the availability of personnel and other resources required for delivery of this Service.

We are constantly developing and improving our activities to ensure our services fulfill the terms defined in this agreement. In addition, we are doing our best to ensure the documentation related to the Service and its use is up to date.

The Service is delivered using our own methods and practices for producing the Service. We are entitled to make changes to our technical environments, hardware, software and methods, and practices for producing the Service. Such changes require us to ensure the Service is delivered to the customer as agreed in this agreement.

The Service is delivered through an TLS secured connection between the Customers’ end-devices and our servers.

4.1 Service Level

We guarantee the following service level for our user support:

• Emails regarding to the use of the Service will be answered as soon as possible.
• Proposal and schedule for resolving a Customer’s problem will be reported to the Customer as a response message.

We are doing our best ensure the availability of the Service at any given time. However, we do not guarantee an availability level for the Service nor are we responsible for any downtime generated by third parties. In case our Service becomes temporarily unavailable, our technical team will investigate the situation as their highest priority and provide any information the Customers may request about the situation.

We also reserve the right to interrupt access to the Service temporarily for maintenance reasons. We will ensure, that in such a situation, the Customer is notified well in advance, either on the website of the Service or with direct email messages to the Customers’ contact email.

We are not responsible to compensate any direct or indirect cost to the Customers caused by Service unavailability or interruptions.

5. Responsibilities of the Customers

The Customers must provide us with sufficient and correct information for delivering the Service. If a Customer is not a person, a contact person needs to be named and the contact details for that person need to be kept up to date during the use of the Service. The Customer must affirm the validity of their Materials, including their contact details. Regarding to the Materials the Customer may have stored in the Service, the Customer agrees to comply with the applicable Finnish laws, especially regarding personal data and copyright-related issues.

The Customer may be authenticated through our own Customer database or any third-party services. If our own authentication layer is used, then the Customer uses an account-specific password with his/her email address to log in to the Service. The Customer is responsible for protecting and storing authentication credentials carefully. The Customer is solely responsible for preventing any external parties from accessing personal authentication credentials. The Customer is responsible for all uses of the Service under their personal account. This includes being responsible and obliged to compensate for any damages caused by Service abuse or misuse that has happened under the Customer’s account. The obligation for compensating for these damages applies to the Service Provider and any third parties that are affected by the abuse or misuse.

Email message content sent through the Service and the related recipients’ addresses must comply with our policies and guidelines. Our email policy is available online at https://www.populihub.com/email-policy/. Sending unsolicited bulk emails (i.e., Spam) through the Service is strictly forbidden and will always lead to liability for damages (see section 9 of this agreement). The Customer is responsible for ensuring the emails sent through the Service do not include any harmful parts (e.g., viruses or malware) that might damage the functionality of the Service or risk the security of the Service or its users, including the platform users. We reserve the right not to process some or all of the Material provided by the Customer if the Material does not comply with our guidelines, policies, rules, and terms. In such a situation, we agree to report the inadequacies or insufficiencies in the provided Material to the Customer’s contact person as soon as possible.

The Customer must immediately report to us any errors in their applications that might interact with the Service. If we need to make any special arrangements to deliver or perform changes or additional features ordered by the Customer, caused by invalid Material supplied by the Customer or otherwise due to the Customer, we reserve the right to charge the additional costs caused by such special arrangements from the Customer.

The Customer agrees to inform us in advance if any special law or administrative order binding the Customer might necessitate special requirements or arrangements from the Service. The Customer also agrees to cover any costs related to such special requirements or arrangements. The implementation of such special requirements or arrangements is agreed with the Customer with a separate agreement.

6. Processing Customer's Collected Data

All data collected through the Service belongs to the Customer. Mainio Tech acts as the data processor and maintains this data in the service environment. Mainio Tech handles the service environment's information security according to the Privacy Policy of the Service.

Customer's collected data is used only to provide the service to the Customer. Customer takes full responsibility of the obligations regarding the collected cata. In case the Service is used to collect personal information, the Customer has obligation to write a privacy policy statement where the Customer acts as the data controller. The privacy policy statement must mention Mainio Tech Oy as a data processor.

Mainio Tech may remove customer's collected data from the system or disclose them to external party due to a legislative administrative order. In these situations the Customer will be informed about actions taken on the Customer's collected data within 72 hours from the moment Mainio Tech's representative has provably received the administrative order.

7. Charges and Payments

We may require the Customer to pay for the use of Service in advance through a third-party payment service, a bank e-payment service, or a reference payment with a bank wire transfer. If the payment is made through a bank wire transfer, then the Customer must pay using the reference number assigned on the invoice. We do not pay interest on advance payments.

The use of this Service is priced according to our current pricing available on our website. The currently valid payment terms are also available on our website. We may also agree separately on the pricing with a Customer. All prices and payment terms are valid until further notice and we reserve the right to change our pricing and payment terms by informing the Customer through the Service or our website. If customer-specific pricing has been agreed on separately with the Customer, then the Customer will be informed individually through the Customer’s contact email address if any changes apply to the pricing or payment terms. We reserve the right to add indirect taxes or other fees as determined by official authorities without limiting them by their name. If the publically available pricing or Customer’s individual pricing contain any obvious mistakes in spelling, calculation, or data processing, we are not responsible for delivering the Service according to this erroneous or inaccurate pricing information.

If there are any changes to the pricing or payment terms, the Customer will be informed fourteen (14) days advance before the new pricing becomes valid. The Customer has the right to terminate and end the use of the Service if the Customer does not accept the changes to the pricing or payment terms.

8. Intellectual Property

Copyright and other intellectual property rights of the Material imported into the Service remain at the Customer. However, the Customer grants s the permission to use this Material in order to provide the Service and tasks specified in this agreement.

We reserve the right to all of our materials, including the materials and information provided to the customers for the purpose of using the Service, including all documentation related to the Service. All rights to the Service and its related intellectual property rights remain our sole property. The Customer does not have any right to use or exploit; unless explicitly specified in this agreement, the materials included in our intellectual property rights under any circumstances without a prior written consent from us.

9. Confidentiality and Data Loss

Both parties of this agreement agree to keep all the Materials and other possible details and information confidential if the Materials are marked as confidential or can be obviously identified as confidential. Both parties also agree not to use these Materials in violation with this agreement.

We commit to handling and storing all confidential information with care and to ensure to the best of our abilities that this information is not changed, destroyed, lost, or obtained by any external party that does not have the right to access this information. We will do our best to ensure that all data and information are secured and all interactions with the Service and the Customers’ end-devices are via a secured connection. However, confidentiality of messages sent in an open network (e.g., email messaging networks) cannot be fully guaranteed.

We agree to immediately stop using any confidential information and will return such information on any Customer’s request. The Customer is also entitled to request that we destroy all confidential information received in any form. These requests are fulfilled as necessary and as possible.

However, without violating our obligation to professional secrecy, we may disclose Customers’ confidential information to our subcontractors and partners, if this is necessary for them to deliver and implement any part of the Service. We also reserve the right to internally use, disclose, and process information related to agreements, contracts, use of service, and customer relationships.

The Customer also has the right to disclose necessary information on their own to subcontractors and partners, if this is necessary for the Customer to use and take full advantage of the Service.

Both parties are responsible for ensuring that their subcontractors and partners agree to keep all the disclosed information confidential and to use this information only for necessary purposes related to the use and delivery of the Service.

10. Liability for Damages and Liquidated Damages

We are not liable for the damages caused by the incorrect operation of a computer or other hardware. If a hardware failure or our personnel is responsible for any service downtime, that time will not be charged to the Customer. We are not liable for any indirect damages caused by errors in our software or tasks performed for the Customer, including but not limited to loss of profits. The limitation of our liability is always either in correcting the error or re-doing the task.

The customer is entitled to compensation from significant direct damages that are caused by service downtime or system failure because of negligence of the Service Provider. However, the amount of compensation is limited to the amount the Customer has paid for using the Service.

The Customer does not have a right to compensation from damages caused by reasons beyond our control. In addition, we do not compensate any indirect damages for the customer.

The Customer does not have a right to compensation for service downtime, failures, or errors caused by failures or errors by a telephone company or other third party outside of our control.

If the Customer violates these terms deliberately or with negligence and does not correct this conduct after receiving a notice, we are entitled to 5,000€ compensation in liquated damages per violation. In addition, if a customer has violated our email policy in sending email messages, we are entitled to a 50€ penalty per sent email that has violated our policies. This clause does not limit our possibility of claiming additional compensation from the Customer.

We specifically state here that issues related to liquidated damages are treated only within the definitions of this agreement.

11. Force Majeure

Neither party in this agreement is responsible for delays or damages caused by reasons beyond their control that cannot reasonably be required to be taken into account after the conclusion of this agreement and cannot reasonably be avoided. These reasons might include avian and swine influenza, other epidemics, fires, insurrections, riots, confiscations, strikes, lockouts, and boycotts or other organized labor actions, including those situations where a party to this agreement is either involved in or subject to such events. This clause includes a third World War and possible global revolution initiated by robots. Force majeure conditions affecting a subcontractor of either party to this agreement are also considered as a release from liability, if a new subcontractor cannot be acquired without unreasonable additional costs or an essential loss of working time.

A party faced with force majeure is required to inform, without delay, the other party thereof as well as of the end of the force majeure.

12. Disclosure of Customer Information

Personal data of the Customers or their users received by the Service are handled according to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Customer must take full responsibility of the personal data collected through the Service according to the same rules.

During the registration process, the Customer becomes a customer of our company and personal details are entered into our customer database. These details are used for providing the Service, its related purposes, and managing and maintaining a customer relationship.

Our privacy policy and its descriptions are available at our current location. Electronic versions are available at https://www.populihub.com/privacy/. Contacts related to sections Chapter III of the EU General Data Protection Regulation are required to be in a written format, signed, and sent to our current postal address or personally delivered to our current location.

The Customer authorizes us to handle such data described above and in our privacy policy.

13. Applicable Law and Dispute Resolution

This agreement is governed by Finnish law.

Disputes are primarily settled through negotiations. If any dispute cannot be resolved through negotiations between the parties, such a dispute will be settled in the District Court of Helsinki if the Customer is a person, or according to the rules of the Arbitration Committee of the Chamber of Commerce in Finland if the Customer is a legal entity. Any dispute may also be settled by a mediation process in accordance with the rules of the Finnish Bar Association if both parties agree to such settlement in writing. We also have the right to apply for precautionary measures in the court of law located at the Customer’s registered location or other courts that are significant to the terms of this agreement.

14. Assignment to Third Parties

We reserve the right to assign this agreement to a third party by informing the Customer of such an assignment at least twenty-eight (28) days in advance.

The Customer does not have the right to assign this agreement to a third party without our prior written consent.

15. Subcontractors and Third-Party Service Providers

We have the right to use subcontractors to provide and implement the Service unless otherwise agreed. We remain responsible under this agreement for the work performed by any subcontractor to the same extent as is if we performed the work ourselves.

We also possibly might use third-party services to implement and provide the Service. The Customer may request additional information about such third-party service providers if the customer is interested in such information. If any failures in the Service are due to failures to perform by a third party, we are not responsible for any direct or indirect damages caused by such failures. We may change our third-party service providers or work with new ones (including those abroad) if we decide to do so. If the third-party service provider is located in the U.S., then we require those organizations to comply with the safe harbor framework’s requirements.

16. Modifications and Amendments

We have a unilateral right to modify or amend the terms of this agreement. Such modifications or amendments enter into force after the Customer has signed into the service for the first time after the modifications or amendments have been published and agreed to as the new terms of the agreement. A customer’s continued use of the Service following the modifications or amendments constitutes an acceptance of the new terms of this agreement. If the Customer does not agree with the new terms, this agreement is terminated between the parties with a seven (7)-day notice period during which the prior terms apply. The Customer’s right to use the Service ceases on the expiry of the period of notice and the Customer’s account is cancelled after the notice period.

17. Term and Termination

This agreement will have an unlimited duration.

Both parties have the right to terminate the agreement in fourteen (14) days by written notification or by email after the terms have been agreed. During the period of notice, the Customer is not entitled to create content within their PopuliHub service, or send any email messages through the Service. However, during this period, the Customer has the right to retrieve the data related to their instance created with the Service in accordance with the terms of this agreement.

Both parties of this agreement have the right to terminate this agreement by written or email notification, if the other party has been declared bankrupt or in liquidation. This clause also applies if the other party substantially fails to comply with the terms of this agreement and does not correct its behavior to comply with the terms within fifteen (15) days of notification.

In addition, we have the right to terminate the agreement and remove the Customer’s account from the Service immediately if the Customer puts the security of the Service at risk or violates the laws in force. We also have the right to terminate this agreement if the Customer has not paid its fees and possible interest expenses to the Service Provider fourteen (14) days after a notice bill was sent to the Customer. However, the termination of the agreement does not exempt the Customer from paying any unpaid fees.