Terms of Service

kott is a browser-based real-time dither, glitch and VJ studio. You keep ownership of what you create. Camera and microphone processing happens entirely on your device — nothing from your webcam or mic is uploaded. The paid kott licence is a one-time purchase that covers both the web studio and the macOS app; there is nothing to renew and nothing to cancel. We sell it to you ourselves, so we are the seller of record and we handle our own tax and our own refunds. If you hold an older subscription, it still renews until you cancel it, which you can do at any time from your billing portal. This summary is for convenience only; the numbered terms below govern.

In these Terms: “kott”, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Ievgeniia Onokhova, an individual sole proprietor established in California, United States, and the operator of the kott service. “Service” means the kott website (kott.io), the browser-based studio application, and all related features, APIs and content we make available. “You” and “User” mean the person or entity using the Service. “Account” means your registered kott account. “Plan” means a tier of the Service (kott Free, or the paid kott licence described in Section 5). It also covers the earlier paid tiers we no longer sell but still honour — a kott Pro subscription, a kott Studio seat, or a Founder license. “kott licence” means the single one-time paid licence now offered, which covers both the browser studio and Kott for macOS (Section 5). “User Content” means any project, preset, image, export, text, metadata or other material you create, upload, save or publish through the Service. “Published Content” means User Content you choose to make public — for example a preset you publish to the gallery or content you expose through a share link. “Merchant of Record” or “MoR” means a third-party provider that sells a product to you as the seller of record. No kott product is sold to you through a Merchant of Record. Everything covered by these Terms — the browser studio and Kott for macOS alike — is sold by us directly, and we are the seller of record for it (see Section 5).

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) form a binding agreement between you and Ievgeniia Onokhova. By creating an Account, accessing the studio, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, Cookie Policy, Refund Policy and Copyright / DMCA Policy, each incorporated here by reference. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. If you use the Service on behalf of an organization, you represent that you are authorized to bind that organization, and “you” refers to that organization.

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA) or the United Kingdom, you must be at least 16 years old, unless the law of your member state sets a lower digital-consent age (as low as 13), in which case that lower age applies. Where you are below the age of digital consent that applies to you, a parent or legal guardian must review and agree to these Terms on your behalf and supervise your use.

We do not knowingly permit anyone under 13 to create an Account or use the Service. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 (or under the applicable minimum age), we will delete it. See the Privacy Policy for children’s-data details.

Authentication is passwordless: we send a one-time sign-in link (magic link) to your email address. You are responsible for maintaining access to, and the security of, the email inbox associated with your Account, and for all activity that occurs under your Account. Notify us promptly at support@kott.io if you suspect unauthorized access.

You agree to provide accurate account information, to keep it current, and not to impersonate any person or entity or misrepresent your affiliation. You may not share, sell or transfer your Account, and you may not access the Service through automated means except as we expressly permit. You are responsible for the devices, browsers and connectivity you use to reach the Service.

Plans. The Service is offered on a freemium basis. kott Free is available at no charge and is not a trial. The paid offering is a single one-time kott licence, covering both the browser studio and Kott for macOS. Kott for macOS is not a separate purchase: one licence unlocks the paid feature set in the studio and licenses the macOS app. The licence is $39 through the end of 13 September 2026 and $59 after that, before any tax that applies to you. It is not a subscription: it does not renew, and there is nothing to cancel. These Terms govern your use of the browser studio; your use of the macOS app under the same licence is governed by the Kott for macOS License Agreement.

What we no longer sell. We no longer offer new kott Pro subscriptions ($15 monthly / $144 annual), the $99 Founder license, or a separately priced Kott for macOS license. If you already hold one, it is unaffected: your access continues on the terms you bought it under, an existing subscription still renews until you cancel it (see the renewal and cancellation paragraphs below), and an existing macOS license key keeps working under the Kott for macOS License Agreement. kott Studio remains a per-seat arrangement made with us directly rather than through self-serve checkout. Features, prices and any billing interval actually available to you are described on our pricing page and disclosed again at checkout, and the checkout disclosure governs if it differs from this Section.

Who sells you the licence; payment processing and tax. We sell every kott purchase to you directly and we are the seller of record for it — the browser studio and Kott for macOS alike, and the same was true of the Plans and licenses listed above. We use Stripe as our payment processor. Stripe is a payment processor only. It is not a Merchant of Record, it is not the seller, and it does not sell the product to you. Because no reseller stands between us, we are responsible for our own tax handling: any sales tax, VAT or GST that applies to your purchase is calculated, collected and remitted by us, out of our own registrations, rather than by a Merchant of Record on our behalf. No third-party reseller’s buyer terms apply to a kott purchase. We never receive or store your full payment-card number — Stripe handles all card data (see the Privacy Policy).

Automatic renewal — for existing subscription Plans. The paid kott licence does not renew, so this paragraph and the next apply only to a subscription Plan — and they govern any subscription Plan you hold or buy. Paid subscription Plans automatically renewat the end of each billing period (the “renewal interval” — monthly or annual, as you selected) and your payment method is charged the then-current price for the next period, unless you cancel before the renewal date. Before you pay, the renewal interval and the exact renewal price are clearly disclosed to you and separately acknowledged at checkout, distinct from these Terms. After purchase, you receive a confirmation email that includes instructions for cancelling. For annual Plans, we send a renewal reminder before each automatic renewal. These disclosures are intended to satisfy the U.S. Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA), the California Automatic Renewal Law (ARL) and comparable automatic-renewal laws.

Cancellation — as easy as signing up. You can cancel at any time from your billing portal (Account → Manage billing), which is at least as easy to use as the process by which you subscribed. When you cancel, your Plan does not renew again; your paid access continues until the end of the period you have already paid for, after which your Account reverts to kott Free. Downgrades take effect at the end of the current period. Except where a refund is required by law or granted under our Refund Policy, amounts already paid for the current period are not pro-rated on cancellation.

Price changes. We may change our prices. A change to the kott licence price applies to future purchases only — what you paid for a licence you already hold does not change, and you are never charged again for it. The increase from $39 to $59 after 13 September 2026 is one such change, stated here in advance. For an existing subscription Plan, a price change applies to future billing periods only and will be notified to you in advance (for example, before an annual renewal), so that you may cancel before the change takes effect. Taxes may change without notice where set by law.

Failed payments. If a renewal charge on an existing subscription Plan fails, it may be retried, and we may suspend or downgrade paid features until payment succeeds.

The Founder license is no longer offered. This Section stays because people hold one, and it continues to govern theirs.

The Founder license is a one-time purchase made on kott.io and sold by us directly (Section 5). It grants the licensed Account the kott Pro feature set — tracking Pro as it changes, rather than a frozen snapshot of it — plus a Kott for macOS license key, issued to the Account.

What “for life” means. It means for as long as we operate the Service — the operational lifetime of the kott product, not a fixed number of years and not a perpetual guarantee that the Service will run indefinitely. If we discontinue the Service, this license terminates with it, subject to any non-waivable consumer rights and the refund handling in Section 7 and the Refund Policy. The license does not auto-renew and there is nothing to cancel.

Limits. A Founder license covers one Account and one seat. It is personal to the purchasing Account and non-transferable unless we state otherwise in writing. It does not include products sold separately from the kott Plans, and it does not include a separate product of ours sold on its own site, under its own terms and through its own seller arrangement. It carries no entitlement to a per-seat kott Studio tier.

Refunds are governed by our Refund Policy. Because we are the seller of record for every kott purchase (Section 5), we process refunds ourselves and no third-party reseller’s terms are layered on top. Nothing in these Terms or that policy limits any non-waivable statutory refund or cancellation right you may have (for example EU/UK distance-selling withdrawal rights). See Sections 16 and 17.

You own your content. As between you and us, you retain all ownership and intellectual-property rights in your User Content, including your projects, presets and exports. We claim no ownership of them.

Private content. User Content you keep private (for example local/browser projects, or private cloud projects saved to your Account) is stored and processed only to provide the Service to you, as described in the Privacy Policy. We do not publish it or grant others rights to it.

Licence for Published Content. When you publish a preset to the gallery, enable a share link, or otherwise make User Content public through the Service, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable (to our hosting and content- delivery subprocessors) and transferable licence to host, store, cache, reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform, distribute and make available that Published Content, and to create thumbnails, previews and derivative representations of it, solely for the purposes of operating, promoting and improving the Service and its gallery and sharing features. This licence lasts only as long as your Published Content remains public; it ends within a reasonable time after you delete the Published Content or make it private, except for (a) copies already shared or forked by others under Section 8’s remix terms, (b) residual backup copies, and (c) any use you have separately authorized. We may display attribution (such as your username) alongside Published Content.

Remix / fork.The gallery is a community feature. When you publish a preset, you allow other Users to view, use, and — where the feature is enabled — copy or “fork” your published preset to build their own derivative presets, and you grant those Users a non-exclusive licence to do so within the Service. A preset captures effect settings and parameters, not necessarily any source image you used. Reciprocally, when you fork another User’s published preset, you receive that same licence and must respect their attribution and these Terms. You are responsible for ensuring you have the rights to any source material (images, video, fonts, audio) you incorporate before you publish or share it.

Your representations about your content. You represent and warrant that you own or have the necessary rights to your User Content and to grant the licences above, and that your User Content and its publication do not infringe any third party’s rights or violate any law or our Acceptable Use Policy.

Moderation & takedown. We may, but are not obliged to, review, moderate, refuse, label, restrict, remove or disable access to any Published Content that we reasonably believe violates these Terms, the Acceptable Use Policy, our Copyright / DMCA Policy or applicable law, or in response to a valid legal request. Where required by law (for example the EU Digital Services Act), we will give affected Users a statement of reasons and information about how to appeal.

Your use of the Service, including anything you publish or share, must comply with our Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits (among other things) illegal content, child sexual abuse material, intellectual-property infringement, malware, harassment and spam, and which sets out your responsibilities when using kott output in live performances (including epilepsy / photosensitivity warnings for strobing visuals). Violations may result in enforcement under Section 12.

Our rights. The Service, including its software, design, user interface, and the kott name, logo and other brand features, is owned by us or our licensors and is protected by intellectual-property laws. Except for the limited rights expressly granted here, we reserve all rights. You may not copy, modify, reverse-engineer (except to the extent that restriction is prohibited by applicable law), resell or create derivative works of the Service itself, and you may not use our name or marks without our prior written permission except to refer factually to the Service.

Your right to use your exports commercially. Subject to these Terms and your Plan, you may use the visual output you create and export from kott — including for commercial purposes. The paid kott licence (or an earlier paid Plan, Founder or macOS license) grants an explicit commercial-use licence for content you create and export with kott. The export watermark applies only to exports made without a signed-in Account, and not to any Plan. You remain responsible for having the rights to any third-party material (images, video, fonts, audio) you bring into your work. You may not extract or redistribute bundled third-party assets (such as premium fonts, models or audio) as standalone assets outside your own creative output.

We respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement and operate a repeat-infringer policy as described in our Copyright / DMCA Policy, which sets out how to submit a notice under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c), how to submit a counter-notice, and our designated agent’s contact details.

By you. You may stop using the Service and delete your Account at any time from your Account settings. Deleting your Account cancels future renewals and initiates deletion of your data as described in the Privacy Policy.

By us. We may suspend or terminate your access, or remove content, if you materially breach these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, if required by law, to protect the Service or other Users, or in connection with fraud or non-payment. Where practicable and lawful, we will give notice and, for less serious issues, a chance to cure. If we terminate paid access without cause and other than for your breach, we will refund any pre-paid, unused fees on a pro-rata basis. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 1, 8 (as to residual licences), 10, 13–20) survive.

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, whether express, implied or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. Real-time vision, GPU and rendering features depend on your device, browser and hardware and may not run, or may run differently, on all configurations. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or that content or projects will never be lost; you are responsible for keeping your own backups of important work.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties. Where that is the case, the above exclusions apply only to the extent permitted, and you may have additional rights (see Sections 16 and 17).

To the fullest extent permitted by law, and except for liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law (such as liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or a party’s gross negligence or wilful misconduct):

(a) neither party will be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, goodwill or business, arising out of or relating to the Service, even if advised of the possibility; and

(b) our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service and these Terms will not exceed the greater of (i) the amounts you paid for the Service in the twelve (12) months before the event giving rise to the liability, or (ii) USD 100.

Jurisdictional carve-out. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages or liabilities. In those jurisdictions our liability is limited to the greatest extent permitted by law, and nothing in these Terms affects your non-waivable statutory rights (see Sections 16 and 17).

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless Ievgeniia Onokhova and any employees, contractors and agents from and against any third-party claims, damages, liabilities, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to (a) your User Content or Published Content, (b) your use of the Service in breach of these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, or (c) your violation of any law or third-party right. We will notify you of any such claim, and you may not settle a claim in a way that imposes obligations on us without our consent. This Section does not apply to the extent a claim arises from our own breach or wrongdoing, and does not apply where you are a consumer to the extent such indemnities are prohibited by consumer-protection law.

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the Service are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and, subject to any mandatory law of your country of residence, you and we submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located in the State of California.

Consumer protection. If you are a consumer, nothing in this Section deprives you of the protection of the mandatory consumer-law provisions of the country where you live, and you may be entitled to bring proceedings in your local courts.

If you are a consumer, you have statutory rights that these Terms do not exclude, restrict or modify. In particular:

EU / EEA & UK. Your mandatory rights under EU and UK consumer law — including rights relating to conformity of digital content and services, and distance-selling withdrawal rights — remain unaffected. Where these Terms conflict with a non-waivable right, that right prevails. See the Refund Policy for withdrawal-right handling.

Australia. Our goods and services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. For major failures you are entitled to a replacement or refund and to compensation for other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage; for failures that do not amount to a major failure you are entitled to have problems rectified in a reasonable time and, if not done, to a refund. Nothing in these Terms limits those rights.

Other jurisdictions. Consumers elsewhere retain any equivalent non-waivable statutory rights under their local law.

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will provide reasonable advance notice — for example by email to the address on your Account or by a prominent notice in the Service — and will update the “Last updated” date above. Changes take effect on the date stated in the notice. If you do not agree to a change, you should stop using the Service and may cancel; your continued use after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms, to the extent permitted by law. Where a change materially reduces your rights, we will seek any consent required by law.

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable, that provision will be limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.

No waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, subject to your rights on such a transfer.

Entire agreement. These Terms and the policies incorporated by reference are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service and supersede prior agreements on the subject.

Force majeure. Neither party is liable for failure or delay caused by events beyond its reasonable control.

Ievgeniia Onokhova — individual sole proprietor (no company registration)
California, United States
General / support: support@kott.io
Legal notices: support@kott.io

Related policies: Privacy · Refunds · Cookies · Acceptable Use · DMCA