Terms of service

These terms govern the use of Censuma, the workplace climate survey service of José Alejandro Chaves Ramírez, an individual, national ID 5-0448-0254, domiciled in Liberia, Guanacaste, Costa Rica, trading as Knotfix —«Knotfix»—. Creating an account accepts them, and from that moment they are a contract between Knotfix and the contracting organization —«the Client»—.

They are read together with the Privacy policy and the Data processing addendum, which form part of this contract.

Who can contract

Censuma is sold to organizations. Whoever creates the account represents that they have authority to bind the organization they act for. If they do not, they should not create the account.

The service is not offered to consumers and is not intended for personal or household use: this is a business-to-business contract. Should the contracting party turn out to be a consumer within the meaning of its country's law, the mandatory rules of that law prevail over anything said here, including any right of withdrawal.

The account

The Client is responsible for its users' credentials and for the activity carried out with them. If it suspects improper access, it must notify us immediately.

Every user has a role, and the role defines what they can see and do. Assigning roles is the Client's job.

The free trial

Censuma is sold self-service and starts with a free trial of 30 calendar days, counted from the moment the account is created. No card or other payment method is requested to begin.

During the trial the whole service can be configured —the organization tree, the roster, the questionnaires, the sampling and study drafts— and with no plan limits at all. The only thing the trial does not allow is launching a study, which is the step that opens response collection; consequently it produces no results and sends no email invitations. To see those, there is a demo walkthrough with example data, available without an account.

The trial does not turn into a paid plan: it cannot. There is no payment method on file, so there is nothing to charge and nothing is charged until a plan is expressly contracted. Before the trial ends we send an email.

Once the trial expires without contracting, the account is not blocked and not deleted: it becomes read-only. Whatever was configured can still be consulted and exported, and nothing can be written or launched until a plan is contracted. Data is kept that way until the owner deletes the account, and «What happens to the data at the end» then applies.

Prices, taxes and invoicing

The prices in force are those shown at the time of contracting, on the product's checkout screen or on the site's pricing page. They are expressed in United States dollars (USD) and any applicable tax is already included: the amount shown is the total to be charged.

The service is charged annually in advance, in a single payment on contracting and on each renewal.

The subscription is sold and charged by Polar as merchant of record. For tax purposes Polar is the party that sells to the Client: it determines and remits whatever tax applies in the Client's country —which may not be a Costa Rican tax—, extracts it from the published price and issues the receipt for that transaction, showing the tax as a separate line. Nothing is added on top of the price the Client saw.

Everything charged for the service goes through that channel, with no exception, including charges for people beyond what the plan includes. We do not issue separate invoices for use of the service: the roster overage is added to the subscription invoice and carries the same tax treatment. Until August 2026 that charge was invoiced outside the gateway and this was changed on purpose, because it also matters to the Client: a separate invoice from us would force it to treat that part as an import of services distinct from the main one, with whatever formalities its country imposes.

⚠️ No Costa Rican electronic invoice is issued through that channel, because the selling party is not domiciled in the country. A Client that needs a Costa Rican invoice —to deduct the expense or to support a withholding— must request it before contracting: in that case the charge is processed from Costa Rica, the tax included is the 13 % value added tax, and the electronic invoice required by tax rules is issued.

The Client is responsible for any taxes, withholdings or import-of-services formalities that the law of its own country imposes on this contract.

Card details never pass through our servers: they are entered in our payment processor's form and travel from the browser straight to it.

Each plan includes a number of studies per period, a number of people in the roster and a number of invitation emails. People beyond what is included do not block the service: they are charged per head, at the annual rate published for that plan and up to the maximum the plan allows. The other limits apply as caps.

That charge is calculated on the largest roster the plan sustained during the period, not on the roster on the renewal date. We measure daily how many people are above what is included, and the maximum reached is charged once, at the annual rate. That is the reading an annual price calls for: a study is launched against the roster of a single moment, so whoever measured 260 people received the service for 260 even if the roster drops afterwards. Both figures —how many people there are today and the period's maximum— are visible on the plan screen all year, next to the amount they will produce.

The overage is charged on renewal and through the same channel as the subscription, once the period that was measured has ended.

If a charge cannot be processed, we retry it and notify by email. For the 14 calendar days following expiry the service keeps working in full, so that a card problem does not interrupt a study in progress. After that window without regularizing, the account becomes read-only.

Renewal and cancellation

The subscription renews every year automatically, for an equal term, unless cancelled.

Cancellation is done from the account itself, with no call and no paperwork, and takes effect at the end of the period already paid for: the service remains available until that date and is not charged again. The current period is not refunded or prorated, precisely because the service continues to be provided in full until that period ends. After that date the account becomes read-only.

If we change prices, the new price applies to new subscriptions and to anyone changing plan. The price the Client contracted does not change on renewal for as long as the same plan is kept. Should we ever need to change it, we give notice in writing 30 days before the renewal, and the Client may cancel before it takes effect.

What the Client is responsible for

This is the most important section of the contract, because it describes obligations only the Client can meet.

The Client is the controller of the database of its roster and of its employees' answers —«responsable de la base de datos» under Law 8968, controller under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation and its UK equivalent. Knotfix processes them on its behalf, as processor. Which of those regimes applies to the Client depends on where its employees are, and the Client is the one who knows that: the obligations below are the same under all of them.

Specifically, the Client undertakes to:

• Inform its employees before measuring: what is collected, for what purpose, who will see the results and what rights they have —article 5 of Law 8968, articles 13 and 14 of the GDPR—; and establish a valid legal basis, which in an employment relationship is rarely consent, because the imbalance between the parties makes it questionable. Knotfix provides a model notice, which does not relieve the Client of reviewing and adapting it.
• Complete any employee-consultation formalities its country requires before measuring —in several European countries a staff survey goes through the works council. This is the Client's job because only it knows what representative bodies it has.
• Not use its own questions to collect sensitive data: health, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, sex life and sexual orientation, racial or ethnic origin, genetic or biometric data —article 9 of Law 8968 and article 9 of the GDPR. The ability to add questions belongs to the Client, and so does responsibility for what it asks.
• Warn that free-text answers are published verbatim. The Client sees the full text of open questions, with no filtering of identifying details. If it uses open questions, it must say so to its people in the prior notice.
• Not use Censuma to monitor, appraise or discipline identified individuals. The service measures groups; using it for anything else contradicts its design and its stated purpose.
• Keep the roster accurate and current, including removing people who no longer work at the organization.
• Comply with the labour and data protection rules that apply to it.

What Knotfix is responsible for

• Providing the service as described on the site and in the documentation.
• Upholding the anonymity of responses as a property of the system and not as a setting. No role, plan, support action or Client request uncovers an individual response or a result suppressed by the confidentiality threshold. This obligation admits no exception and is not negotiable by contract.
• Applying the security measures of article 10 of Law 8968 and article 32 of the GDPR, and keeping confidentiality under article 11 of the former. Those measures are described in the Addendum.
• Providing support through the in-product help form, by email at knotfixservice@knotfix.com and by phone at +506 8791 7066, Monday to Friday from 8:00 to 17:00, Costa Rica time, except public holidays.

The data belongs to the Client

Everything the Client uploads and everything the service produces from it —roster, answers, results— belongs to the Client. Knotfix acquires no rights over that content beyond what is needed to provide the service, and does not use it to train models, to build cross-client benchmarks, or for any purpose of its own.

We may use aggregated, irreversibly anonymized data —from which neither the Client nor any individual can be identified— to operate and improve the service.

The software belongs to Knotfix

The service, its code, its design, its brand and its documentation belong to Knotfix. The contract grants the right to use it while in force, not to copy, resell, decompile or derive a competing product from it.

Acceptable use

Not permitted: attempting to access another organization's data, probing or breaching the security of the service, automating usage in ways that degrade it, uploading unlawful content or malicious software, or impersonating another person.

Attempting to re-identify a respondent is expressly prohibited, by any means, including combining exported results with outside information.

Availability

We work to keep the service continuously available, without committing to an availability percentage unless separately agreed. Scheduled maintenance windows are announced in advance where foreseeable.

Warranties

Knotfix warrants that the service will work substantially as described on the site and in the documentation while the subscription is in force, and that it is provided with professional diligence. If something does not work that way, tell us: we fix it, and if we do not fix it within a reasonable time the Client may terminate the contract and is refunded the proportional part of what was paid for the period it did not get to use. That refund is the single exception to the no-refunds rule, and it exists because here the reason is not that the Client changed its mind.

Beyond that, the service is provided as is: we do not warrant that it will be error free or uninterrupted, nor that it will serve a particular purpose the Client has in mind that the documentation does not describe, and we give no implied warranties beyond those the law does not allow to be excluded.

⚠️ What we do warrant without exception is anonymity, and that warranty lives in «What Knotfix is responsible for»: it is not a promise about performance but a property of the system, and none of the exclusions in this section loosens it.

The decisions are the Client's. Censuma measures and publishes aggregate results; it does not diagnose, does not recommend employment measures and does not replace the judgement of whoever manages people. What the Client decides on the strength of a result is its own.

Suspension and termination

We may suspend the service, with prior notice and for the shortest necessary time, in case of sustained non-payment, use that endangers the security or integrity of the service, or serious breach of these terms. Where the risk is immediate, we suspend first and notify right after.

Either party may terminate at the end of the current period. A serious breach left uncured for 30 days after notice allows immediate termination.

What happens to the data at the end

For as long as the account exists —including once it has lapsed, when it becomes read-only— the Client can export its results with the product's export tools, with no time limit. We do not provide a full dump of the database by any other route.

The account owner may delete the account at any time, from the account itself. On confirmation the data is erased immediately and irreversibly: there is no grace period and no copy we can restore afterwards, except for what a legal obligation requires us to keep. Anything worth keeping should be exported first. The detail is in the Addendum.

Liability

Neither party is liable for indirect damages, loss of profit or loss of opportunity.

Knotfix's total liability towards the Client —on any ground, contractual or otherwise, and across all claims within a same period— shall not exceed the amount actually paid by the Client over the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to it. Where no amount has been paid over that period —during the free trial, for instance— the cap shall be USD 1,000.

None of this limits liability for wilful misconduct or gross negligence, nor any liability the applicable law does not allow to be limited —including, where relevant, liability under article 82 of the GDPR towards data subjects, which is not available to be contracted away.

If someone brings an intellectual property claim

If a third party claims against the Client that using Censuma infringes its patent, copyright, trade mark or trade secret, Knotfix will take over the defence and pay whatever is agreed or awarded by a court, provided the Client notifies us without delay, lets us conduct the defence and cooperates with it.

Should that happen we may, in this order of preference: modify the service so it no longer infringes, obtain the right to keep using it, or terminate the contract and refund the proportional part of what was paid.

This obligation does not cover whatever the claim concerns the Client's own content —its questions, its roster, its logo—, nor use of the service outside what this contract allows, nor its combination with anything we did not supply. The mirror image applies: if the claim is about content the Client uploaded, the Client answers for it, on the same terms and with the same notice and cooperation conditions.

Force majeure

Neither party is liable for a failure caused by something beyond its reasonable control —natural disaster, war, civil unrest, general power or communications outage, act of an authority, or the failure of one of the infrastructure providers the Privacy policy declares—, for as long as the cause lasts and provided notice is given and reasonable efforts are made to resume.

This does not reach the obligation to pay what is already due, nor the security and confidentiality obligations, nor the deadline to report a data incident: those apply regardless. If the cause lasts more than 60 days, either party may terminate the contract and the proportional part of what was paid and not provided is refunded.

Sanctions and export controls

Each party represents that it is not subject to international sanctions and does not appear on the sanctioned-person lists of Costa Rica, the United States, the European Union or the United Kingdom, and that it is not acting on behalf of anyone who is. The Client further undertakes not to use the service from a sanctioned territory nor for operations those rules prohibit, and not to give access to anyone who is listed.

This is not boilerplate: the service's infrastructure is hosted in the United States —see the provider table in the Privacy policy— so those rules reach the provision of the service even though neither party is domiciled there. If a sanction makes it unlawful to keep providing the service, we suspend it for as long as that lasts and we say so.

Changes to these terms

We may amend them. If the change is material, we give 30 days notice by email and a record is kept of which version each Client accepted and when. Continuing to use the service after the stated date accepts the new version; anyone who disagrees may cancel without penalty before that date.

Governing law

This contract is governed by the laws of the Republic of Costa Rica. Disputes are submitted to the courts of Liberia, province of Guanacaste, unless the law imposes another venue.

Assignment, entire agreement and language

Assignment. Neither party may assign this contract without the other's written consent, which will not be unreasonably withheld. The exception works both ways: assignment to whoever acquires the whole of the business or of the assets used to perform the contract, where notice is enough.

Entire agreement and severability. This contract, together with the Privacy policy and the Addendum, is the complete agreement about the service and supersedes anything discussed beforehand. If a clause turns out to be invalid, it is trimmed to whatever is valid and the rest stands. Not enforcing something once is not a waiver of enforcing it later.

Language. These three documents are published in Spanish and English. The Spanish version governs: the English one is a courtesy translation and, on any discrepancy, the original prevails. That follows from the contract being governed by Costa Rican law; it is not a preference.

Contact

knotfixservice@knotfix.com · +506 8791 7066

Notices this contract requires in writing —cancelling, objecting to a change, demanding performance— go by email, so that the date and the content are on record.