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Terms of Service

Last updated: 24 September 2026

This version applies to contracts made from 13 September 2026. For earlier contracts, it applies no sooner than 13 October 2026, after the notice described in section 22.

The most important thing: backups run automatically, but nobody verifies them. Test a restore yourself. See section 20.

1. What we do

principale.dev deploys, configures and maintains open-source software on a server dedicated to you: hardware you own, or a machine you rent from a hosting provider of your choice. You contract with that provider and pay it directly, so you pay two separate bills — one to your provider for the server, one to us for Care. Installing is free. The software and the data on that server are yours and you keep full administrator access to it. We do not sell or resell hosting, storage or compute, we do not run your applications on infrastructure of ours, and we do not operate a mail relay.

2. Words we use

  • Server — the machine you own or rent from your hosting provider, which you connect to our panel.
  • Self-Service — the free mode. You trigger deployments, updates and redeploys yourself in the panel.
  • Care — the paid per-server subscription, with the automated capabilities the panel shows as active on that server.
  • Consumer — a natural person contracting for purposes not connected with their business. A natural person running a sole proprietorship whose purchase — though connected with their business — has no professional character for them benefits from the protection Polish law gives a trader on consumer rights, in particular protection against unfair contract terms and the right of withdrawal.
  • Business customer — anyone who states at ordering that they are contracting directly in connection with their business activity. That statement does not deprive a sole trader of statutory protection where the purchase has no professional character for them.

3. Beta, by invitation

The service is in beta and registration is currently open only to people we invite. We may decline a registration or withdraw an invitation that has not been used yet. The service is still being built: features may change or be withdrawn, and interruptions may happen. Features described as planned or on the roadmap are not part of what you are buying — you are buying only what the panel shows as active on your server. None of this affects rights you have under consumer law, which apply in full.

4. How the agreement is formed

The service is self-serve: the agreement is formed when you create an account in the panel and connect a server. Installing applications from the catalog is free. Care requires an explicit order in the panel before it starts.

The service provider is Kcem.pl Konrad Cempura. Tax ID (NIP): 6792826746. Contact: hello@principale.dev.

5. What you need in order to use the service

  • A server running a supported Linux distribution (Ubuntu or Debian), reachable over the internet, to which you can give us SSH access with administrator rights.
  • Enough memory and disk space for the applications you want. Each application shows its own requirements in the panel before you install it, and the panel refuses an install the server cannot support.
  • Storage of your choice for backups, and a domain name if the application needs one.
  • A current web browser with JavaScript and cookies enabled, and a working email address, to use the panel.

6. Self-Service scope

The free Self-Service mode covers one server per account. In Self-Service you direct the operations yourself: deploys, updates and redeploys are triggered by you in the panel, and scheduled backups run to storage you control. Care adds only the automated capabilities the panel shows as active on that server.

7. Pricing

Prices are shown in Polish złoty (PLN). Self-Service costs 0 zł. Care costs 59 zł net per server per month; the price for a Polish consumer is 72.57 zł gross with 23% VAT. We do not offer annual billing or one-shot services. The 60-day Care trial starts with the first successful deployment, without requiring a payment card. If the trial ends without an order, the server continues in Self-Service mode. Payments and subscription management are handled by Stripe.

8. Changing the price

We may propose a new Care price when the costs of providing Care change — infrastructure, payment processing or taxes — or when the scope of Care changes materially. At least 30 days beforehand, we will tell you by email and in the panel about the new price, the reason and the date it would take effect. An increase requires your express acceptance in the panel; silence is not consent, and without acceptance your Care subscription ends after the paid period that precedes the new price. We apply a reduction automatically from the next billing period. A new price never applies to a period you have already paid for.

9. Right of withdrawal (consumers)

If you are a consumer, you have 14 days to withdraw without giving a reason. The 14 days run from the day you order Care — each Care order is a separate contract, so ordering after a trial starts a fresh 14 days. Tell us at hello@principale.dev — a plain message is enough.

Care is a continuous monthly service, so it is never fully performed within those 14 days. That means you do not lose the right of withdrawal by letting us start work — if you ask us to start straight away and then withdraw within the 14 days, you simply pay for the days the service was actually provided, and we refund the rest. Nothing is deleted from your server when you withdraw.

You may use this wording, though any clear statement works: “I hereby withdraw from my contract for the Care subscription ordered on [date] for the server [name or address].”

Businesses do not have this statutory right of withdrawal, except a natural person running a sole proprietorship where the contract, from its content, has no professional character for them — in particular where the purchase does not correspond to the business activity registered in CEIDG. In that case the right remains, as section 2 explains.

10. Complaints

Send complaints to hello@principale.dev. Please tell us your account email, which server the complaint concerns, what happened and when, and what you would like us to do. We will answer within 14 days of receiving the complaint, to the email address you wrote from. If you are a consumer and we do not answer within 14 days, the complaint is treated as accepted.

11. What you are responsible for

As the owner of the server, you are responsible for:

  • Giving us SSH access to the server and keeping that access working
  • Meeting the requirements in section 5
  • Keeping the server running and reachable, and paying your hosting provider
  • Providing storage for backups — backups are written only to storage you designate and control
  • Testing that your backups can actually be restored. We recommend doing this at least once every three months. See section 20.
  • Keeping your panel account credentials safe

12. Acceptable use

You may not use the service, or a server managed through it, to:

  • send spam or bulk unsolicited email, or forge sender addresses
  • host or distribute malware, phishing pages, or tools for attacking other systems
  • store or share content that is unlawful — in particular content infringing someone else's rights, child sexual abuse material, or content inciting violence or hatred
  • attack, scan or overload third-party systems, or our panel
  • break the licence terms of the software we install for you

You are responsible for what is stored on your server. We do not review or moderate your content, and we do not want access to it. If someone tells us your server is being used unlawfully, we may pass the notice on to you.

13. Suspension

If you break section 12, or if Self-Service is being used far beyond normal use (for example repeated mass redeploys), we may suspend our services for the server concerned. Suspension means we stop running Care jobs and panel actions for it. We do not switch off your server, and we do not delete anything on it. Your applications keep running.

We will tell you first, say what the problem is, and give you at least 7 days to fix it. We may suspend immediately, and tell you straight afterwards, only where harm is happening now — for example an active spam run or attack from your server, or where a court or authority orders it. If you fix the problem, we restore the service. If Care was suspended through no fault of yours, we refund the days lost.

14. Third-party open-source software

Nextcloud, Immich, Mailcow and everything else in our catalog is third-party open-source software. It is licensed to you by its own authors under its own licence terms, and those authors give no warranty. We choose, install, configure and update it with due care, and we answer for how we do that work — but we do not answer for defects in the software itself, and we cannot promise it is free of bugs or security flaws.

15. Who your data belongs to

All data on your server belongs to you. We claim no ownership of any of it. You keep full administrator access to your server the whole time you use the service — nothing you run depends on us continuing to exist.

16. Who we share data with

We use a small number of outside providers to run the service:

  • Stripe — payments and subscription management
  • Resend — sign-in links and other messages the panel sends you, and contact-form messages
  • Cloudflare — publishing and checking DNS records for domains you point at your server, where you ask us to manage them

Your hosting provider is not one of our subcontractors: you choose it, you contract with it and you pay it directly. Details of what data is processed, on what basis and for how long are in our Privacy Policy. If we add a provider that handles your personal data, we will update that list before it starts.

17. Availability

Your applications run on your server — their availability depends on your server and your hosting provider. We maintain the management panel with due care and announce planned maintenance in advance. We are not liable for downtime caused by your infrastructure or by third-party providers.

18. Limitation of liability

If you are a consumer. We are liable to you on the terms set out in law, and nothing here limits your statutory rights. What we are responsible for follows from what we undertook to do: we install, configure and maintain software on your server, and we run the jobs described in your plan. We are not responsible for problems caused by your own server or hosting provider, by backups you chose not to verify, or by defects in the third-party open-source software you asked us to install.

If you are a business. This paragraph does not apply to a sole trader covered by the consumer paragraph above; for everyone else, we are liable only for damage we actually cause by failing to perform this agreement. Our total liability for all claims is limited to the fees you paid us for the affected server in the 12 months before the event, and to 500 zł if you paid nothing. We are not liable for lost profits. We are not liable for damage caused by your server, your hosting provider, backups you did not verify, or defects in third-party open-source software.

These limits never apply to damage we cause intentionally, or to death or personal injury.

19. No guaranteed availability or response time

We do not promise that the service will be available at any particular time, and we do not promise to respond to you within any particular time. Support is automated: the panel tells you what happened and what to do next. There is no on-call engineer and no ticket queue staffed by a person. Your applications run on your server, so their availability depends on your server and your hosting provider, not on us. This is how the service works permanently, not only during the beta. It does not shorten the 14-day deadline for answering a complaint under section 10.

20. Backups are not verified

Backups run on a schedule to storage you control. We do not check that a backup completed, and we do not restore from one to prove that it works. A monthly verified restore drill with a plain-language report is on our roadmap and is not available yet. Until it is, treat restore testing as your responsibility, and assume an untested backup may not restore.

21. Ending the agreement

You can end it at any time. Cancel Care in the panel; cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have paid for. Installed applications and data stay on your server and keep running — cancelling only switches off the Care features. Your server continues in Self-Service, free, for as long as you want.

Care also ends at the end of the paid period if you do not accept a price increase proposed under section 8. There is no additional charge for this.

We can end it too, but only for a reason and with notice. We may terminate by giving you 30 days' notice if we stop offering the service or the plan you are on, or if you break section 12 and do not fix it after we ask you under section 13. In that case we refund any fees you have paid for the period after the agreement ends. We may terminate without notice only where a court or authority requires it.

What we delete. Within 30 days of your account closing we delete the access credentials we hold for your server — SSH keys, passwords and any hosting-provider tokens — unless the law requires us to keep something longer, for example accounting records. Nothing on your server is deleted, and you keep your own administrator access to it.

22. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms — for example to describe a new feature, or because the law changes. We will tell you at least 30 days before the new version applies, by email and in the panel, and say what changed. If you do not accept the change, you can end the agreement before it takes effect, without any penalty. Changes never apply backwards to a period you have already paid for or to a complaint already made.

23. If we transfer the business

We may in future move this business into a company. If your agreement is to move with it, we will tell you at least 30 days beforehand, naming the new provider. You can end the agreement before the transfer without any penalty and without any fee, and we will refund fees paid for the period after it ends. We will not transfer your agreement without telling you, and this section is not your advance consent to a transfer. If the new provider becomes the controller of your personal data, we will inform you as data protection law requires.

24. Events outside our control

Neither side is responsible for failing to perform because of something outside its reasonable control — for example a natural disaster, war, a general failure of internet infrastructure or electricity supply, or a binding order of a public authority. We will tell you as soon as we can and do what we reasonably can to limit the effect. If such an event lasts more than 30 days, either side may end the agreement, and we refund fees paid for the period not provided. This does not limit your statutory rights.

25. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of Poland and applicable European Union law.

If you are a consumer, the competent court is determined by law; we do not impose one on you. Talking to us first under section 10 is usually faster. You may also be able to use out-of-court dispute resolution, for example through a municipal consumer ombudsman (rzecznik konsumentów) or the Trade Inspection (Inspekcja Handlowa).

If you are a business customer, disputes are settled by the common court with jurisdiction over our registered seat. This does not apply to a sole trader covered by the consumer paragraph above, who keeps the court the law gives them.

26. Language

These terms exist in Polish and in English. For customers in Poland the Polish version governs; the English version is a courtesy translation.

27. Contact

For questions about these terms, contact us at hello@principale.dev.