Terms of service

These terms are an agreement between Shep (“Shep”, “we”, “us”) and the church or ministry that signs up for Shep (“your church”). They also apply to every person who uses Shep through a church (“you”).

If you sign up on behalf of a church, you confirm that you are allowed to agree to these terms for it. Our privacy policy, data processing terms and acceptable use policy form part of these terms.

Shep is software that helps a church notice and care for its people. It includes discipleship reflections, leader observations and notes, conversation and prayer records, groups, reminders, connect cards (QR visitor forms), reports, email and push notifications, and connections to other church systems.

We will provide Shep with reasonable care and skill, and work to keep it available and secure. We improve Shep regularly. If we remove a feature your church relies on, we will give church admins at least 30 days’ notice where we reasonably can.

Shep is a tool for pastoral care. It is not professional counselling, medical or crisis support, and it does not replace your church’s own judgement or safeguarding processes.

• Each person needs their own account. Accounts are for people aged 16 and over, or younger with a parent or guardian’s consent.
• Keep your sign-in details to yourself and tell us straight away if you think someone else has used your account.
• Your church’s admins decide who has access and what role each person has. They can change or remove access at any time.
• A person can belong to more than one church. Each church controls only its own information.

Because your church decides what is recorded in Shep, your church agrees to:

• tell its people that it uses Shep and what for, and give them our privacy policy or its own;
• get consent before recording sensitive information about a person, and a parent or guardian’s consent for children;
• give access only to people who need it for their role, and remove access promptly when someone steps down;
• follow its own child safety and safeguarding policies, and any reporting duties it has under law; and
• handle requests from its people to access, correct or delete their information, with our help where needed.

Your church owns its information. That includes everything its people enter and everything synced from its systems. You own what you write yourself.

You give Shep permission to store, copy, display and process that information only so we can provide, secure and support Shep for your church. We do not sell it, use it for advertising or train AI models on it. We may use aggregated statistics that cannot identify any person or church to understand how Shep is used.

Your church can export its information at any time while it uses Shep, and for 30 days after it leaves.

Everyone using Shep must follow our acceptable use policy. In short: record people with care, only what helps you care for them, never use Shep to harass, shame or expose anyone, and don’t try to break or get around its security. We may suspend access that breaks the policy, and will tell your church why unless the law or someone’s safety prevents it.

If your church connects Shep to another service (such as Elvanto, Planning Center, Breeze, Mailchimp, Slack or Zapier), your church’s use of that service is governed by that provider’s terms. Your church instructs us to send and receive information to and from it, and we are not responsible for how that provider handles information once it has it.

Shep is free for churches in our founding church programme. We will not charge your church anything unless it has agreed in writing to a price first.

When paid plans start, we will give your church at least 60 days’ notice of the price and its terms. If your church does not agree, it can export its information and leave without charge. Prices will include GST where it applies.

We own Shep, including its software, design and name. These terms give your church and its people a right to use Shep while your church’s account is active, not ownership of it. If you send us feedback or ideas, we may use them to improve Shep without owing you anything.

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or changes any right or remedy you or your church has under the Australian Consumer Law, the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 or the Fair Trading Act 1986 (NZ) that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Where we are allowed to limit our liability for failing to meet a consumer guarantee, our liability is limited to supplying the service again or paying the cost of having it supplied again.

Subject to section 10, and to the extent the law allows:

• Shep is provided “as is”. We do not promise it will always be available or free of errors.
• Neither of us is liable to the other for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profits, revenue or goodwill.
• Our total liability to your church in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of the fees your church paid us in that period and AUD $1,000.
• These limits do not apply to liability for personal injury or death caused by negligence, to fraud, or to a breach of our obligations about privacy and security of your church’s information caused by our wilful misconduct or gross negligence.

If your church leaves

Your church can stop using Shep at any time by telling us. It can export its information first, and for 30 days afterwards. We then delete it as our privacy policy describes.

If we end the agreement

We may end the agreement or suspend access with 30 days’ notice if your church seriously breaches these terms and does not fix it within that time, or immediately if continuing would put people at risk of harm or break the law. If we ever stop offering Shep, we will give at least 90 days’ notice so your church can export its information.

If you leave a church

You can ask your church to remove you, or delete your account by emailing privacy@shephub.com. Information your church recorded about you is your church’s, and it will decide whether to keep it under its own policies and the law.

If something goes wrong, please talk to us first at legal@shephub.com. Both of us will try in good faith to resolve it within 30 days before starting court proceedings, except where urgent relief is needed.

These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia, and the courts there have non-exclusive jurisdiction. If your church is in New Zealand, nothing in this section takes away rights you have under New Zealand law.

We may update these terms. We will email church admins at least 30 days before a change that materially affects your church. If your church does not accept the change, it may leave before the change takes effect, as section 12 describes. Continuing to use Shep after that date means accepting the updated terms.

• Neither of us is responsible for delays caused by events outside our reasonable control.
• If part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies.
• We may transfer these terms to a buyer of our business, who must honour them. Your church may transfer them with our agreement, which we will not unreasonably refuse.
• These terms are the whole agreement about Shep between us, unless we sign something else in writing.