Terms of Service

01 Agreement to terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") form a binding agreement between you and Altrum ("Altrum", "we", "us"). By accessing this website, submitting an enquiry, or engaging us to perform services, you accept these Terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the website or our services.

If you accept these Terms on behalf of a company or other legal entity, you represent that you have authority to bind that entity, and "you" means that entity.

02 Definitions

• "Services" — the design, development, testing, deployment, maintenance and consulting work Altrum performs.
• "SOW" — a Statement of Work, proposal or written scope document describing a specific engagement, its deliverables, timeline and fees.
• "Deliverables" — the source code, binaries, designs, documentation and other materials Altrum creates for you under an SOW.
• "Client Materials" — content, data, brand assets, credentials and other materials you provide to us.
• "Altrum Materials" — pre-existing or generally applicable tools, libraries, frameworks, templates and know-how owned by Altrum.
• "Acceptance Period" — the review window defined in section 8.

03 Services we provide

Altrum provides mobile product services which may include:

• Product discovery, technical strategy and scoping.
• UX research, interaction design, visual design and design systems.
• Native iOS development (Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit) and native Android development (Kotlin, Jetpack Compose).
• Cross-platform development (Flutter, React Native).
• Backend, API, cloud infrastructure and integration work.
• Quality assurance, automated testing and performance optimisation.
• App store submission, release management and compliance support.
• Post-launch maintenance, monitoring and iterative improvement.

The specific services for your engagement are those stated in your SOW. Anything not stated in the SOW is out of scope.

04 Proposals and engagement

1. Enquiry. You send us a brief. We may ask questions to understand scope.
2. Proposal. We issue a written proposal with deliverables, assumptions, exclusions, timeline and fees. Proposals are valid for 30 days unless stated otherwise.
3. Acceptance. The engagement begins when you sign or give written approval of the SOW and the initial payment clears.
4. Scheduling. Delivery windows are reserved on acceptance. If acceptance is delayed, the delivery window may shift to the next available slot.

Estimates given before a signed SOW are indicative only and do not bind either party.

05 Client responsibilities

Timely delivery depends on you as much as on us. You agree to:

• Provide a single decision-maker empowered to give approvals.
• Supply Client Materials, content and access credentials in usable form and on schedule.
• Respond to questions, review requests and approval requests within 5 business days.
• Own and maintain the accounts required for release — Apple Developer Program, Google Play Console, cloud and any third-party services — and pay their fees.
• Ensure you have the rights to all Client Materials you give us, and that they do not infringe third-party rights or applicable law.
• Keep credentials secure and tell us promptly if they are compromised.

Where a delay attributable to you exceeds 10 business days, we may reschedule the project and charge reasonable re-mobilisation costs. Where it exceeds 30 days, we may treat the project as suspended under section 19.

06 Fees and payment

6.1 Payment schedule

Unless your SOW states otherwise, fixed-price projects are invoiced as follows:

Retainer and care-plan engagements are invoiced monthly in advance. Time-and-materials work is invoiced monthly in arrears against a logged record of hours.

6.2 Terms

• Invoices are payable within 14 days of the invoice date unless the SOW says otherwise.
• All fees are exclusive of VAT, sales tax, withholding tax and bank transfer charges, which you bear.
• Prices are quoted and payable in the currency stated on the invoice.
• Overdue amounts accrue interest at 1.5% per month (or the maximum permitted by law, if lower), calculated daily from the due date.
• We may suspend work and withhold Deliverables while an invoice is more than 14 days overdue. We will give written notice first.
• Third-party costs (store fees, licences, paid APIs, devices, stock assets) are passed through at cost and pre-approved by you in writing.
• Payments are non-refundable except as set out in our Refund & Cancellation Policy.

07 Change requests and scope

Scope is what the SOW says it is. Anything else — new features, new platforms, redesigns of approved screens, additional rounds of revision beyond those specified, or integrations discovered later — is a change.

1. Either party may propose a change in writing.
2. We assess the impact on fees, timeline and dependencies, usually within 3 business days.
3. You approve or decline in writing. Approved changes become part of the SOW.
4. We do not begin work on a change before written approval, and no change is chargeable without it.

Minor adjustments that do not materially affect effort are absorbed at our discretion as a matter of goodwill, not obligation.

08 Delivery, review and acceptance

• We deliver work in increments, typically a reviewable build at the end of each two-week sprint.
• On final delivery you have an Acceptance Period of 10 business days to review against the SOW's acceptance criteria.
• If the Deliverables materially fail to meet those criteria, notify us in writing with enough detail to reproduce the issue. We will correct it at no charge and re-deliver, starting a fresh 5 business day review of the corrected items.
• Deliverables are deemed accepted if you do not report a material failure within the Acceptance Period, or if you put them into production or commercial use.
• Cosmetic differences, feature requests and preference changes are not grounds for rejection; they are handled as change requests under section 7.

09 Intellectual property

9.1 Your ownership

On receipt of all sums due under the SOW, Altrum assigns to you all right, title and interest in the Deliverables created specifically for you — including source code, compiled binaries, design files, and project documentation. We will execute any reasonable document needed to record that assignment, and will transfer repositories, store listings and project accounts to you on request.

9.2 Our retained rights

Altrum retains ownership of Altrum Materials — our pre-existing tools, internal libraries, boilerplate, frameworks, methodologies and general know-how — including anything of that kind incorporated in the Deliverables. We grant you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence to use, modify and distribute those Altrum Materials as part of the Deliverables, for any purpose.

9.3 Your materials

You retain ownership of all Client Materials. You grant us a limited, non-exclusive licence to use them solely for the purpose of performing the Services during the engagement.

9.4 Before payment

Until payment in full, all Deliverables remain the property of Altrum and are licensed to you only for evaluation and review. Commercial or production use before full payment is unlicensed.

9.5 Skills and residuals

Nothing in these Terms restricts Altrum from using the general skills, techniques and experience gained in performing the Services, provided we disclose no Confidential Information and reuse none of your proprietary code or designs.

10 Third-party components

Deliverables may include open-source or commercially licensed third-party components. Those components remain subject to their own licences, which we will document for you. We select components with licences appropriate for your intended use and will flag any copyleft obligation before adopting it.

Where a Deliverable depends on a paid third-party service or SDK, the licence, subscription and renewal are your responsibility. We are not liable for a third party changing its pricing, terms, API or availability, but we will help you adapt as a change request.

11 App store submission

We prepare and submit builds to the Apple App Store and Google Play on your behalf where the SOW includes it, and we build to the platform guidelines in force at the time.

You are responsible for the accuracy of store metadata, age ratings, privacy nutrition labels and data-safety declarations you approve, and for holding the developer accounts under which the app is published.

12 Warranty and support

• We warrant that the Services will be performed with reasonable skill and care by suitably qualified personnel.
• We warrant that for 30 days after acceptance the Deliverables will substantially conform to the SOW's specification on the target OS versions and devices stated in it. We will fix reproducible defects reported in that window at no charge.
• The warranty does not cover: changes made by you or a third party; issues caused by Client Materials or third-party services; new OS or device releases; feature requests; or use outside the documented environment.
• After the warranty period, ongoing work is covered by a care plan or a separate SOW.
• Care plans typically cover monitoring, OS and store compliance updates, dependency and security patches, and a monthly allowance of improvement hours. Unused hours do not roll over unless the plan says so.

Except as expressly stated here, all warranties are subject to section 16.

13 Confidentiality

Each party may receive non-public information from the other ("Confidential Information"). The receiving party will: use it only to perform or receive the Services; protect it with at least the care it uses for its own confidential information; and disclose it only to personnel and contractors who need it and are bound by equivalent obligations.

These obligations do not apply to information that is or becomes public without breach, was already lawfully known, is independently developed without reference to the disclosure, or is lawfully received from a third party. Disclosure compelled by law is permitted where the receiving party gives prompt notice, if legally allowed, and discloses only what is required.

Confidentiality obligations survive for 5 years after the engagement ends, and indefinitely for trade secrets. Either party may require a separate NDA; we will sign yours or provide ours.

14 Data protection

Each party will comply with applicable data protection law. Where we process personal data on your behalf, you are the controller and we are the processor, and the terms in section 14 of our Privacy Policy — or a separate Data Processing Agreement where one is executed — govern that processing. Our handling of your data as a controller is described in the same policy.

15 Acceptable use

You may not use this website or our Services to:

• Build or distribute anything unlawful, fraudulent, defamatory, or infringing of third-party rights.
• Create malware, spyware, credential harvesters, or software designed to gain unauthorised access to systems or data.
• Collect personal data without a lawful basis, or in breach of platform policy.
• Circumvent app store rules, payment systems, or usage restrictions of a third-party service.
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to our systems, probe them for vulnerabilities without written permission, or interfere with their operation.
• Scrape, republish or resell this website's content without our written consent.

We may decline or stop any engagement that in our reasonable judgement would breach this section, applicable law, or platform policy — and may do so without liability beyond refunding work not yet performed.

16 Disclaimers

Except for the express warranties in section 12, the Services, Deliverables and this website are provided "as is" and we disclaim all other warranties, express, implied or statutory, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade, to the fullest extent permitted by law.

We do not warrant that software will be uninterrupted or error-free, that all defects can be corrected, that an app will be approved by any store, or that the Services will achieve any particular commercial result — downloads, ratings, revenue or otherwise. Any figures in proposals or on this website are illustrative, not promises.

Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation. Where you deal with us as a consumer, your statutory rights are unaffected.

17 Limitation of liability

Subject to section 16:

1. Neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for loss of profit, revenue, goodwill, anticipated savings, business opportunity or data, however caused, even if advised of the possibility.
2. Altrum's total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with an engagement, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty or otherwise, is limited to the total fees paid by you to Altrum under the SOW giving rise to the claim in the 12 months preceding the event.
3. We are not liable for failures of third-party platforms or services, including app store rejection or removal, API deprecation, outages of cloud providers, or changes to third-party terms.
4. You are responsible for maintaining your own backups of Client Materials and production data.
5. No claim may be brought more than 12 months after the party bringing it became aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, of the facts giving rise to it.

These limits reflect the allocation of risk between us and are a fundamental basis of the fees charged.

18 Indemnity

You will indemnify and hold Altrum harmless against claims, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from: (a) Client Materials, including any claim that they infringe a third party's rights; (b) your use of the Deliverables in breach of these Terms or applicable law; (c) content, data or business practices of the application after it is in your control; and (d) your breach of section 15.

Altrum will indemnify you against third-party claims that the Deliverables, as delivered by us and used as intended, infringe that third party's copyright — provided you notify us promptly, give us control of the defence, and cooperate reasonably. This indemnity does not apply to Client Materials, third-party components, or modifications not made by us. Our liability under this indemnity is subject to section 17.

19 Suspension and termination

• For convenience. Either party may terminate an engagement on 15 days' written notice. See the Refund & Cancellation Policy for what is payable.
• For cause. Either party may terminate immediately if the other commits a material breach and fails to cure it within 14 days of written notice, or becomes insolvent, enters administration or ceases to trade.
• Suspension. We may suspend the Services for non-payment beyond 14 days, for a client-caused delay beyond 30 days, or where continuing would breach section 15 or applicable law.
• On termination. You pay for all work performed and non-cancellable commitments up to the termination date. We deliver work completed and paid for in its then-current state, and return or delete Confidential Information at your election.
• Survival. Sections 9, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 21, 23 and 24 survive termination.

20 Force majeure

Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control — including natural disaster, war, terrorism, civil unrest, epidemic, government action, sustained utility or internet failure, or a major cloud or platform outage. The affected party will notify the other promptly and use reasonable efforts to mitigate. If the event continues for more than 60 days, either party may terminate the affected engagement without liability beyond amounts already due.

21 Non-solicitation

During an engagement and for 12 months after it ends, neither party will knowingly solicit for employment or engagement any individual of the other who was directly involved in the project, without written consent. General public advertising not targeted at those individuals, and hiring someone who responds to it, is not a breach. If a party does hire such an individual in breach of this section, it will pay the other a placement fee equal to 30% of that individual's first-year gross compensation as a genuine pre-estimate of loss.

22 Publicity

Unless your SOW says otherwise, Altrum may identify you as a client, describe the work at a general level, and display screenshots of the released app in our portfolio and proposals — only after the app is publicly released, and never including your Confidential Information, source code or non-public metrics. You may withdraw this permission at any time by writing to us, and we will remove the material within 30 days.

23 Governing law and disputes

These Terms and any non-contractual obligations arising from them are governed by the laws of the United Arab Emirates, and the courts of the Emirate of Dubai have exclusive jurisdiction — unless your SOW specifies a different governing law and forum, in which case the SOW prevails.

Escalation before litigation

1. The party raising the dispute sends a written notice describing it and the outcome sought.
2. Both parties' project leads confer in good faith within 10 business days.
3. If unresolved after a further 20 business days, senior representatives confer.
4. Only then may either party commence proceedings. Nothing prevents either party from seeking urgent injunctive relief at any time.

24 General provisions

• Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the SOW and any policy referenced in them, are the entire agreement and supersede all prior discussions and representations.
• Amendment. We may update these Terms for future engagements by posting a revised version with a new effective date; the version in force when your SOW was signed governs that engagement. Changes to a signed SOW require written agreement from both parties.
• Independent contractor. Altrum is an independent contractor. Nothing creates a partnership, joint venture, agency or employment relationship.
• Subcontracting. We may use vetted subcontractors bound by equivalent confidentiality and IP terms, and remain responsible for their work.
• Assignment. Neither party may assign without the other's written consent, except to a successor in a merger or sale of substantially all assets.
• Severability. If a provision is held unenforceable, it is modified to the minimum extent necessary and the rest remains in force.
• Waiver. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.
• Notices. Notices must be in writing and sent by email to the addresses used for the engagement; they are deemed received on the next business day.
• Third parties. No one other than the parties has any right to enforce these Terms.
• Language. The English version of these Terms governs.

25 Contact