Terms of Service
Welcome to Starting Frame. These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of startingframe.com, the Frame workspace, and the apps within it (collectively, the "Service"), provided by Starting Frame LLC, a New Jersey limited liability company ("Starting Frame," "we," "us," "our"). By accessing or using the Service, you agree to these Terms.
The short version: Starting Frame's creative tools — Struna, the video editor, and the browser graphics tools — are free forever. The production toolkit — Just Read It, Next, and future apps — is included with Starting Frame Membership ($24/month, 14-day free trial). You own your files. We provide the interface. We can't see your project content — we designed it that way. Use the Service for legitimate creative and production work, and we're good.
Eligibility and age
You must be at least 13 years old to create a Starting Frame account, or at least 16 if you reside in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom. If the law where you live sets a higher minimum age for using a service like this without a parent's permission, that age applies to you instead. By creating an account you confirm you meet it.
If you are under 18, you may use the Service only with the knowledge and permission of a parent or guardian, and that parent or guardian is responsible for your use of it and for any charges. We do not ask for your date of birth and we do not want it — see our Privacy Policy for why.
Signing a media release is different, and the age is 18. A person under 18 generally cannot give binding consent to a media release, so where a signer is not yet 18 our release signer collects a parent or guardian's consent instead. This is set out under Media releases you collect below.
If a parent or guardian believes a child holds an account, write to [email protected] with the subject line "Child privacy" and we will close it and delete the information. There is no fee and no form.
If you are using the Service on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization to these Terms.
Your account
You sign in to Frame using one of three methods: email + password, Sign in with Google, or Sign in with Microsoft. You are responsible for the security of the email address, password, or third-party account you use to sign in.
If you upgrade to a paid (Pro) tier on any app, your account is additionally protected by multi-factor authentication. You will be required to enroll a second factor (a passkey or an authenticator app one-time-password) on your first sign-in after the upgrade. You may not disable multi-factor authentication while your subscription is active.
You can delete your account at any time from Frame settings.
Your content — you own it
You retain all rights, title, and interest in any content you create, upload, edit, or save using the Service ("Your Content"). We claim no ownership of Your Content.
As a rule, we do not hold Your Content. Our apps are interfaces: the work you make is saved to
- a cloud storage provider you have connected (Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox), or
- your local device via download.
There are a few deliberate exceptions, and we would rather name them than imply there are none. While your account is active we do hold:
- brand kits and saved palettes, including any logo or font file you upload to them;
- a Scene logo, which is served publicly at an unguessable address so your on-air graphics can display it;
- pointers to your files — titles, file identifiers, cue marks — never the contents of the files themselves;
- signed media releases, until they are delivered and purged.
Everything in that list is deleted within 30 days of account deletion. Our Privacy Policy describes each item and how long it is kept.
When you use Next App's invited-viewer feature for a live show, Your Content briefly transits through a real-time communications channel (Ably) to your invited viewers. We do not store this content. It exists in transit during the live show and may sit in viewers' browser memory and local storage for up to 24 hours after the show, then auto-clears.
License to operate the Service
You grant us a limited, non-exclusive, revocable license to handle Your Content solely to the extent necessary to provide the Service to you — for example, transiting your rundown through a real-time channel to your invited show viewers. This license does not let us use Your Content for any other purpose, and it ends when you stop using the Service or revoke our access.
Media releases you collect
Release is a signing tool. It never writes legal text for you — you supply your own release wording, you own it, and you are responsible for whether it does what you need. We provide the form, the signature capture, the timestamped record, and the delivery into your own storage.
When you use it, you take on the following, and they matter:
- The people who sign are your responsibility, not ours. You decide why you are collecting signatures and what you do with the signed releases. You must have the right to ask, and you must tell people what you are collecting and why. We hold that information on your instructions and use it for nothing of our own.
- A signer under 18 cannot bind themselves. Where our form indicates a signer is not yet 18, it collects the name, relationship and signature of a parent or guardian instead. You must not work around this — not because of our rules, but because a release signed by a minor may be void and you will not find out until someone objects to the footage.
- Filming children brings obligations we cannot discharge for you. Schools, youth sports, recitals and camps frequently require their own consent process, and some venues and jurisdictions require more than a signature. Signing through Release does not satisfy those for you.
- Do not use Release to collect signatures you would be embarrassed to explain — from people who cannot understand what they are signing, under pressure, or for wording that misrepresents what will happen to the footage.
- People who sign can contact us directly. Anyone who has signed one of your forms may write to us to ask what we hold about them or to have it deleted. We will honour that, and we will tell you when we do rather than acting behind your back.
You indemnify us for claims arising from releases you collected, as set out under Indemnification.
Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- Use the Service to store, share, or transmit content that is illegal, infringes the rights of others, or violates applicable laws or regulations.
- Use the Service to harass, threaten, harm, or impersonate any person.
- Use the Service to create, store, or transmit sexual content involving minors, or any material that exploits or endangers a child. We report this to the authorities and terminate the account immediately and without notice. There is no appeal.
- Collect signatures, images, or personal information from a child in a way that the law where you are does not allow.
- Attempt to interfere with or compromise the security, integrity, or availability of the Service.
- Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service without our prior written authorization, or breach any security or authentication measures.
- Use the Service to send spam, unsolicited communications, or malware.
- Resell, sublicense, or commercially redistribute the Service to others.
- Add music, footage, fonts, images, or any other material that you do not hold the rights to use that way. Some of our apps — Struna, the video editor, in particular — run entirely inside your browser and never send your media to us, which means we cannot see what you have added and cannot check it for you. Being able to export a file is not a licence to use what is inside it.
If you violate these Terms, we may suspend or terminate your account.
Copyright and the DMCA
We respect copyright and we expect the same. Parts of the Service store or display material you give us — a logo on a Scene overlay, a logo or font in a brand kit, a signed release. If you believe material stored on or displayed by the Service infringes a copyright you own or represent, tell our designated agent.
Designated agent for copyright notices
Brian Pilgrim
Starting Frame LLC
1 Farrell Lane, Marlboro, NJ 07746, USA
Phone: (917) 331-3042
Email: [email protected]
U.S. Copyright Office registration: DMCA-1079416
Sending a notice
To be effective under 17 U.S.C. §512(c)(3), your notice must include:
- your physical or electronic signature, as the owner of the exclusive right or someone authorised to act for them;
- identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed;
- identification of the material you say is infringing, with enough detail for us to find it;
- your address, telephone number, and email address;
- a statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorised by the owner, its agent, or the law; and
- a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act on their behalf.
Please send notices to the agent above rather than to general support, so the clock starts when it should. Misrepresenting that material is infringing can make you liable for damages, including costs and legal fees, under §512(f).
What we do about it
On receiving a notice that complies with the above, we will remove or disable access to the material and make reasonable efforts to tell the person who put it there, passing on a copy of the notice.
Counter-notice
If you believe your material was removed by mistake or misidentification, you may send our agent a counter-notice containing your signature; identification of the material and where it was; a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or misidentification; and your name, address and telephone number, together with your consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the district where you live (or, if you live outside the United States, the District of New Jersey), and that you will accept service from the person who filed the notice.
If you send a valid counter-notice we may restore the material in ten to fourteen business days, unless our agent first receives notice that the complainant has filed an action seeking a court order against you.
Repeat infringers
We terminate, in appropriate circumstances, the accounts of people who repeatedly infringe copyright. We decide what is appropriate case by case, taking into account the number and seriousness of notices and whether they were contested.
Tiers, pricing, and payment
The Service is structured as a free baseline with optional paid tiers on specific apps.
Always free
- Struna — the browser video editor. No account needed to edit or export, and no watermark on anything you export.
- The browser graphics tools (Typo, Callout, Chat, Background, Blip, Scene, Facadr) — no account needed to use them, no functional limits, no watermark. Signing in is free and only saves your work.
- Just Read It (JRI) — full teleprompter with operator + viewer + pop-out modes.
- Next — event rundown and show-runner.
- All accessibility features across every app (dyslexia-friendly fonts, low-vision reading fonts, high-contrast modes, captions and timed-text support, screen-reader compatibility). Accessibility will never be paywalled.
Paid (Pro)
- Starting Frame Membership — $24 per month, after a 14-day free trial. Includes the production toolkit: saved-scripts library, session history, and faithful
.docxrendering (bold / italic / inline color from your Word document carry through to the prompter) in Just Read It; and Pro features in Next and future Starting Frame apps as they ship. One membership, all paid apps included. - A paid tier for Next will be introduced ahead of Next's public launch. Pricing for Next Pro will be communicated at least 30 days before it becomes available, and current free Next users will receive grandfather treatment as described below.
Payment processor
All paid subscriptions are processed by Stripe (Stripe Payments Company). Payment card details are entered into Stripe's PCI-compliant checkout and stored by Stripe. Starting Frame never receives or stores your full payment card number. Sales tax, where applicable, is calculated and collected by Stripe at checkout.
Billing cycle
Subscriptions auto-renew monthly until cancelled. Your card is charged on the same day of each month that your subscription started. If a charge fails, Stripe will retry for up to seven days; if the retry sequence fails, your Pro access ends and your account reverts to the free tier without losing any underlying data.
Refunds and cancellation
All sales are final. We do not offer refunds, including for partial billing periods, periods of non-use, or accidental renewals. You may cancel your subscription at any time from Frame settings (which redirects you to the Stripe Customer Portal). Cancellation stops all future charges and keeps Pro access active through the end of the period you have already paid for. After that period ends, your account reverts to the free tier — your underlying data (saved scripts, session history, preferences, OAuth connections) is preserved; only the Pro-specific features are gated.
Grandfather treatment for early users
Users who created a Just Read It account before 2026-07-01 are grandfathered into the saved-scripts library feature at no cost — a thank-you to early users for trying the tool before it had a paid tier. Grandfathered status does not extend to other Pro features (such as faithful .docx rendering) introduced after the launch of paid tiers; those remain Pro-only.
Price changes
We may change pricing for any paid tier. If we do, we will give existing subscribers at least 30 days' advance notice by email. You may cancel before the new price takes effect.
Discontinuation
Because your project files live in your own cloud storage and not on our servers, you can move on at any time without losing anything you have created.
Third-party services
The Service relies on third-party services, including Auth0 (authentication and multi-factor authentication), Google and Microsoft (sign-in and storage providers), Ably (real-time pub/sub for live show broadcast in Next), Stripe (payment processing for paid tiers), Resend (transactional email delivery), and our hosting provider DigitalOcean. Your use of those services is also subject to their respective terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for outages, errors, or actions of third parties, though we will communicate with you about issues that affect your access.
When you connect Google Drive or OneDrive, you authorize our apps to read and write a narrow slice of your storage — files Frame creates or that you open in Frame for Google Drive, or files inside a dedicated Apps/Frame folder for OneDrive. We use least-privilege OAuth scopes (drive.file for Google, Files.ReadWrite.AppFolder for Microsoft), which means we cannot access files outside that scope. You can revoke this access at any time from Frame settings or from your provider's account settings.
Our newsletter
Subscribing to our newsletter is separate from holding an account, and neither requires the other. We send it through Beehiiv, we use your address for nothing else, and every issue carries an unsubscribe link that works. See our Privacy Policy.
Service availability
We aim for high availability, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted access. The Service is provided "as is" and "as available." We may modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service or any feature at any time, with reasonable notice where feasible.
Disclaimers
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, OR COURSE OF PERFORMANCE.
WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, SECURE, OR FREE FROM HARMFUL COMPONENTS, OR THAT ANY ERRORS OR DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED.
Limitation of liability
TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL STARTING FRAME LLC, ITS OWNERS, OPERATORS, EMPLOYEES, OR AGENTS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOSS OF DATA, REVENUE, OR PROFITS, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
OUR TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS ($100).
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages. In those jurisdictions, the above limitations apply to the maximum extent permitted by law.
Indemnification
You agree to indemnify and hold Starting Frame LLC harmless from any claim, demand, loss, or damage, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of your use of the Service, Your Content, or your violation of these Terms.
Termination
You may terminate your account at any time from Frame settings.
We may terminate or suspend your account if you violate these Terms, with reasonable notice where feasible.
Upon termination, your data on our servers (email, OAuth refresh tokens, preferences, access metadata) will be deleted within 30 days. Your project content was never on our servers and is unaffected by termination.
If you are a consumer outside the United States
Some countries give consumers rights that a contract cannot take away. Nothing in these Terms removes those rights. Specifically:
- The disclaimers and the limitation of liability above apply only to the extent the law where you live permits. Where it does not — and in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere it often does not — our liability is whatever that law says it is, and the $100 cap does not apply to it.
- Nothing here excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.
- If you are a consumer in the EEA or the UK, you may bring proceedings in the courts of the country where you live, and the mandatory consumer-protection law of that country applies to you regardless of the governing-law clause below.
- EU consumers may also use the European Commission's online dispute resolution platform, though we would much rather you emailed us.
Governing law and disputes
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Jersey, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising from or related to these Terms or the Service shall be resolved exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. This is subject to the section immediately above — if you are a consumer whose local law gives you the right to sue where you live, that right is yours and this clause does not take it.
There is no arbitration clause and no class-action waiver in these Terms. If you have a dispute with us, you keep every route the courts give you.
Changes to these Terms
If we update these Terms materially, we will notify you by email and update the "Last updated" date above. Your continued use of the Service after such notice constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms.
Severability
If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.
Entire agreement
These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and Starting Frame regarding the Service.
Contact
Email: [email protected]
Postal: Starting Frame LLC, 1 Farrell Lane, Marlboro, NJ 07746-1517