Terms of service

The short version: contours please! turns public federal GIS data into planning-grade site deliverables. The data is real and cited, but it is not a survey, and decisions that need a licensed professional still need one. Use the service honestly, and the deliverables you generate are yours to use.

1. Who we are, and what you're agreeing to

These terms are a contract between you and contours please!, an independent data product operated from Texas, United States ("we", "us"). By creating an account, joining the waitlist, or using the site or its tools, you agree to these terms and to the privacy policy. If you're using the service for a company, you're agreeing on its behalf and confirming you're allowed to.

2. What the service is

You define a site boundary; we fetch and process public federal datasets (USGS 3DEP elevation, FEMA NFHL flood layers, NRCS SSURGO soils, USDA NAIP imagery, Census TIGER roads, and others named in each report) and return deliverables: contour files, a site report, exports, and a 3D walkthrough. Coverage follows the underlying federal data, which is produced by third parties and varies in vintage and resolution by location.

3. Not a survey, and not professional advice

• Nothing we produce is a boundary survey, topographic survey, flood determination, geotechnical report, or engineering work product, and nothing here is performed by or reviewed by a licensed surveyor or engineer.
• Deliverables are planning-grade: right for screening, feasibility, and early design, not for construction staking, permitting submittals that require sealed work, lending determinations, or legal boundary questions.
• Where a decision requires a Professional Land Surveyor, licensed engineer, or official FEMA determination, hire one. We say this on the site, in the report, and here because it matters.

4. Your account

Keep your login to yourself and tell us if you think it's been compromised. You're responsible for what happens under your account. One person per account; a team should use its own accounts.

5. Plans, pulls, and the free tier

Usage is measured in site pulls. Each plan's monthly pull count and per-run acreage cap are stated on the pricing page. A pull is only counted when an extraction succeeds. Generated deliverables are kept temporarily for download and then expire; re-generating an expired site costs a new pull.

6. Payments

We are not accepting payments or new signups yet; accounts and paid plans open at launch, and joining the waitlist only stores your email for the launch announcement. When paid plans open, subscriptions and refill packs will be billed through Stripe, renew until canceled, and can be canceled any time from your account page, taking effect at the end of the billing period. Prices can change; existing subscribers get notice before a change applies to them.

7. Your boundaries, our deliverables

• What you give us: the boundaries you draw or upload stay yours. You give us permission to process them to run the service. Don't upload a boundary you have no right to analyze.
• What you get back: the deliverables generated for your pulls are yours to use, copy, and share for any lawful purpose, including client work. Watermarked free-tier files keep their watermark.
• The underlying data comes from public federal sources and stays subject to its own terms, which is why every report cites where each number came from.

8. Acceptable use

• No probing, disrupting, or overloading the service, and no evading rate limits, pull counts, or plan gates.
• No scraping the service or reselling raw automated access to it. Using your deliverables in your own products and client work is fine and expected.
• No misrepresenting our output as a certified survey or sealed professional work, yours or anyone else's.
• No unlawful use.

9. Availability and changes

We aim to keep the service up, but it's provided without an uptime guarantee, and features can change. The federal services we pull from go down sometimes; extractions can fail or degrade when they do, and a failed pull is not charged.

10. Disclaimers

The service and everything it produces are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that any dataset is current, complete, or correct for your site.

11. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent Texas law allows: we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or costs of substitute services. Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is capped at the greater of $100 or the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose. Some of this may not apply to you where the law says it can't.

12. Ending things

You can stop using the service or ask us to delete your account any time. We can suspend or terminate accounts that break these terms, and we'll say why unless the law prevents it. Sections that by their nature should survive (7, 10, 11, 13) survive termination.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute that ends up in court belongs in the state or federal courts located in Texas, and both sides consent to that venue.

14. Changes to these terms

If we change these terms in a way that matters, we'll update the effective date above and, for account holders, note it in the service before the change applies. Continuing to use the service after that means the new terms apply.

15. Contact

Questions about these terms? Email [email protected].