Terms of Service

1. Agreement to These Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") form a binding agreement between you ("you", "the user", or "the instructor") and the independent developer and operator of the web application hosted at profdesk.app ("ProfDesk", "the Service", "we", "us", or "our"). By creating an account, accessing, or using the Service, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, you must not use the Service.

You must be at least 18 years of age and capable of forming a legally binding contract to register as an instructor. ProfDesk is intended for educators and is not directed to children.

2. About the Service

ProfDesk is an Outcome-Based Education (OBE) assessment and grading tool, designed primarily for individual instructors who manage their own courses. Its features include course and module structuring, Course and Program Learning Outcome (CLO/PLO) mapping, digital rubric evaluation (ZenGrader), student roster and submission management, and AI-assisted rubric drafting and scanned-submission matching and grading proposals.

ProfDesk is an independently operated product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any university, examination board, or educational institution.

3. Accounts, Registration & Verification

Users register directly through the Service and must provide a valid email address, which must be verified before certain features become available. An instructor may also create a teacher-managed class account for a student. A student may later create a full federated ProfDesk account and connect that class account after proving control of it. A federated account may use both Student and Teacher workspaces.

• Providing accurate, current, and complete registration information;
• Maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials and any credentials you issue to your students; and
• All activity that occurs under your account, whether or not authorized by you.

You must notify us promptly of any unauthorized use of your account. We are not liable for any loss arising from your failure to safeguard your credentials.

Connecting a class account is reversible. While connected, class access and storage responsibility for student-specific class files follow the federated account. The instructor may disconnect the class account for recovery, at which point live access and storage responsibility return to the instructor-managed account. A teacher-managed class account has no independent AI allowance; AI use requires a federated account and is charged against that account's applicable Free or Pro allowance.

4. Plans, Billing & Merchant of Record

ProfDesk is offered on a free tier and one or more paid ("Pro") tiers. Feature limits, quotas, and pricing for each tier are described on our pricing page and may be updated from time to time.

• Merchant of Record. All paid subscriptions are sold and processed by our authorized reseller and Merchant of Record (a third-party payment provider). Your financial transaction and payment contract are with that provider and are subject to its own buyer terms. The provider handles payment processing, invoicing, and applicable global sales tax/VAT.
• Renewals. Paid subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing cycle unless cancelled before the renewal date.
• Optional add-ons. Certain Pro features, including Student Activity Insights, may be sold as separate recurring subscriptions at the price displayed before checkout. An add-on that requires Pro grants no access after Pro ends. Where supported, ProfDesk will schedule a dependent add-on to end with Pro; you remain responsible for reviewing your subscriptions in the payment provider's billing portal.
• Refunds. Refund requests are handled in accordance with our Refund Policy and, where applicable, our payment provider's buyer terms. Except where required by law, fees already paid are non-refundable.
• Changes to pricing and plans. We may introduce, modify, or discontinue plans, features, quotas, or prices at any time. Where a change materially reduces a paid feature you are actively paying for, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you; your continued use after the change takes effect constitutes acceptance.

If a subscription is not renewed or is downgraded, access to paid features (including courses beyond the free-tier limit) may become read-only or restricted in accordance with the applicable plan.

5. Acceptable Use & Fair Use of AI

ProfDesk integrates third-party generative artificial intelligence to assist faculty with automated rubric drafting and scanned-submission matching and grading proposals. By using these features you agree to the following:

5.1 Assistive Nature & Instructor Oversight

All AI-generated outputs, grade recommendations, rubric mappings, extracted roll numbers, and feedback drafts, are strictly assistive recommendations. No AI score or evaluation is ever finalized, published, or synced to student records without direct review, modification (if needed), and confirmation by the responsible human educator. You retain sole and ultimate academic responsibility and final discretion over all published grades and student evaluations.

5.2 Data Handling & AI Provider Transmission

When you use an AI feature, relevant contextual data (submission excerpts, assignment instructions, and rubric parameters) is transmitted to our third-party AI provider(s) in order to process your request. You acknowledge and agree that data submitted through the Service's AI features may be processed, retained, and used by our AI provider(s) to operate, develop, and improve their models and services, including for training purposes. You should not upload content through the AI features unless you have obtained all rights and consents necessary for such processing. As the educator, you act as the Data Controller of any student submissions you upload and must ensure that such uploads comply with your applicable institutional consent and privacy obligations.

5.3 Fair-Use AI Credit Metering & Limits

To maintain fast response times and equitable resource distribution for global educators, ProfDesk meters AI features using credits:

• Free Tier: up to 20 AI credits per month.
• ProfDesk Pro Tier: a generous monthly allowance of up to 500 AI credits per month under our standard fair-use policy, covering extensive multi-course evaluation for individual faculty workloads.

If you use all available AI credits within a single calendar month, automated AI features may be temporarily paused until the next cycle reset. Instructors with extraordinary batch-grading volumes may contact support for custom allocations.

File storage is likewise provided under fair use, with a standard allowance on each plan (currently 500 MB on Free and 10 GB on Pro). We may adjust these allowances over time; if you approach your limit we'll let you know so you can free up space or upgrade.

Class sizes and active enrolled students on ProfDesk Pro are provided under fair use, with a standard guideline of up to 100 active students per course for individual faculty teaching loads. Instructors managing larger lecture cohorts may contact support for custom provisioning.

Observer access allows verified guardians, parents, and advisors to view student progress. Pro accounts include up to 3 observer places across your roster (up to 3 per student), with unlimited observer capacity available via the Observers add-on.

Observer access operates in one of two modes, chosen by the instructor. Under student consent, the student approves each observer and may end the relationship at any time. Under instructor managed, access begins without student approval and only the instructor may end it; the student is always informed of who observes them and may ask the instructor to remove an observer. By enabling instructor-managed observer access you confirm that you have the authority, and any consent required by your institution or by applicable law, to grant that person access to the student's records. ProfDesk cannot verify guardianship or institutional authority and relies on your confirmation. You remain responsible for the observers you admit under this mode.

5.4 Prohibited Conduct

You agree not to, and not to permit anyone to:

• Use automated bots, scripts, or scrapers to trigger batch AI generation outside normal interface or API workflows, or otherwise circumvent rate limits or task metering;
• Reverse engineer, decompile, extract system prompts, or attempt to derive the source code, models, or infrastructure of the Service;
• Use ProfDesk or its AI output to build, train, or improve a competing product or machine-learning model;
• Upload unlawful, infringing, or malicious content, or content you lack the right to process;
• Interfere with, overload, or disrupt the Service, its security, or other users' access; or
• Resell, sublicense, or provide the Service to third parties except as expressly permitted.

6. AI Outputs Are Not Guaranteed

Artificial intelligence can produce inaccurate, incomplete, or inconsistent results. AI-assisted matching, rubric drafts, and grade suggestions are provided for convenience only and may contain errors. You are solely responsible for reviewing, correcting, and approving every output before relying on it or communicating it to students. ProfDesk makes no representation that any AI output is accurate, fit for a particular academic purpose, or compliant with any institutional or accreditation standard.

7. Your Content & Responsibility for Student Data

Instructors retain their rights in course content, modules, assessment questions, solutions, and authoring materials they upload. Students retain their rights in their own submissions and personal-workspace content. Grades, feedback, annotations, and applied rubric results form part of the relevant academic record. You grant us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide license to host, store, process, transmit, and display content associated with your account solely to operate and provide the Service (including transmitting relevant excerpts to AI and storage providers as described above).

As the educator, you are the party responsible for the student data you process through ProfDesk. You represent and warrant that you have all necessary rights, consents, and lawful authority to upload and process that data, and that doing so does not violate any law or any obligation you owe to your students or institution. You agree to indemnify us in respect of any claim arising from Your Content or your handling of student data.

If you subscribe to Student Activity Insights, you acknowledge that active-time and engagement values are estimates based on privacy-limited in-course signals. They are intended to support teaching, learner outreach, and course design. You must not treat them as conclusive proof of attendance, identity, effort, academic integrity, or misconduct, or use them as the sole basis for a grade or disciplinary decision.

8. Availability, Storage, Backups & Deletion

The Service is provided on a commercially reasonable-effort basis and may be offered as an evolving product. We do not guarantee uninterrupted, error-free, or continuously available service. Uploaded files are stored via third-party object storage. While we take reasonable care, we do not guarantee that data will never be lost or corrupted, and you are responsible for retaining your own independent copies of important records. We may impose or change storage and usage limits at any time.

Deletion and custody transfer are permanent. When an instructor deletes a connected student's roster entry, a course, or the instructor account, instructor-owned course and assessment content is deleted. A connected federated student retains only a detached, read-only academic record of their own work: submitted files or attempts, marks, feedback, annotations, the rubric snapshot applied to that work, and minimal course/assessment titles. Assessment questions, context, solution keys, modules, lecture materials, and unrelated instructor files are not retained. The detached record cannot receive new submissions or be edited.

If the class record is not connected to a federated account when the instructor deletes it, its student records and files are permanently deleted. This includes a record the instructor disconnected before deletion. If a federated user deletes their own account, their personal workspace and detached read-only academic records are deleted, while any still-live connected class records are returned to the relevant instructor's custody and storage allowance. Deletion is irreversible and we cannot restore deleted content. Certain billing and transaction records held by our Merchant of Record may be retained independently as required by law.

9. Intellectual Property

All rights, title, and interest in and to the Service, including its software, source code, interface design, algorithms, workflows, branding, and documentation, are and remain owned by us. Except for the limited right to use the Service under these Terms, no license or ownership interest is granted to you. "ProfDesk" and associated logos are our marks and may not be used without permission.

10. Suspension & Termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access, with or without notice, if you breach these Terms, misuse the AI or infrastructure, fail to pay applicable fees, or use the Service in a way that may cause harm or legal risk. On termination, your right to use the Service ceases immediately; sections that by their nature should survive (including ownership, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and governing law) will survive.

11. Disclaimer of Warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE", without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will meet your requirements, that grades or outputs will be accurate, or that the Service will be secure, uninterrupted, or free of errors or harmful components.

12. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we (the operator of ProfDesk) will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, records, profits, goodwill, or academic standing, arising out of or relating to your use of or inability to use the Service, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) the total fees you actually paid to us (via our Merchant of Record) for the Service in the three (3) months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) fifty US dollars (USD 50). Because the free tier is provided at no charge, our liability to free-tier users is limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.

13. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the operator of ProfDesk from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or connected with: (a) Your Content or your handling of student data; (b) your use or misuse of the Service; or (c) your breach of these Terms or of any law or third-party right.

14. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will revise the "Effective Date" above and, for material changes, make reasonable efforts to provide notice. Your continued use of the Service after updated Terms take effect constitutes your acceptance of them.

15. Governing Law & Dispute Resolution

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or in connection with them or the Service are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. You agree that the state and federal courts located in the State of Delaware shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any such dispute, and you submit to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

Nothing in this section affects payment-related matters that are governed by the separate terms of our Merchant of Record. Where you are a consumer with mandatory legal protections in your country of residence that cannot be excluded by agreement, nothing in these Terms limits those mandatory rights.

16. General

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and Refund Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service and supersede any prior agreements. If any provision is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full effect. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our consent; we may assign them in connection with a transfer of the Service.

17. Contact

For questions about these Terms, please contact [email protected].