Terms of service

These terms govern access to and use of Spore, a transactional email service available through an API and a web interface, published by L'Alternative Fabrique (see the legal notice).

Creating an account, using the free tier or subscribing constitutes unreserved acceptance of these terms, of the acceptable use policy and of the data processing agreement, which form an integral part of them.

The service is open to businesses and consumers alike. Provisions expressly reserved for consumers apply only to natural persons acting for purposes outside their trade or profession.

Spore receives messages through its API and delivers them to the recipients' mail servers. The service includes:

• generation and management of DKIM signing keys for your sending domains;
• verification of authentication DNS records (DKIM, SPF, DMARC, bounce address);
• signing and submission of messages to the sending servers;
• bounce handling, automatic population of suppression lists and unsubscribe management;
• event webhooks, message templates, branding and revocable API keys.

Spore does not measure opens or clicks. This is a deliberate design decision: no tracking pixel and no link rewriting is inserted into your messages.

Spore is a transactional email service: messages triggered by an action or an existing contractual relationship with the recipient. It is neither designed nor offered as a marketing campaign or newsletter platform. Excluded uses are detailed in the acceptable use policy.

Opening an account requires a valid email address. You are responsible for the accuracy of the information provided, for the confidentiality of your credentials and API keys, and for any use made through them. A compromised key must be revoked without delay from your account.

The free tier allows one sending domain and up to 3,000 emails per month. It is provided as is, with no availability commitment on our part, and may be changed or withdrawn subject to the notice period in article 6.

Creating multiple accounts to circumvent the free-tier limits is prohibited and constitutes a breach of the acceptable use policy.

The Pro plan is a monthly subscription, billed in advance, at €12 per month. It includes unlimited sending domains and 100,000 emails per billing period.

As the publisher benefits from the French VAT exemption for small businesses (art. 293 B of the General Tax Code), displayed prices exclude VAT. Should that regime cease to apply, prices would be increased by the applicable tax; that increase, being fiscal in nature, would be notified to you under article 6.

Beyond the 100,000 included emails, additional sends are metered and billed at the following rate: [À COMPLÉTER : tarif au-delà des 100 000 e-mails inclus]. Usage above the plan allowance is billed in arrears, on the following billing period.

Payments are handled by Mollie B.V. (Netherlands), our payment provider (see the legal notice). No card data passes through or is stored on our servers. An invoice is issued on request at contact@sporee.fr.

The subscription renews automatically at each term until cancelled. If a payment fails, access to paid features is suspended after a reminder and the account reverts to the free tier.

As the subscription is monthly and cancellable at any time from your account, without notice or fee, it carries no commitment beyond the current month. Should a plan longer than one month be offered, you would be informed by email, at the earliest three months and at the latest one month before the term, of your option not to renew, under art. L. 215-1 of the French Consumer Code.

The sending quotas and rate limits attached to each plan exist to protect the stability of the service and the shared sending reputation. Exceeding a quota may cause excess sends to be rejected or deferred.

Rate limiting may also be applied where bounce or complaint rates are abnormally high, under the acceptable use policy.

The service evolves. New features are included in your plan unless expressly stated otherwise.

Any price increase, introduction or change of the overage rate, or substantial reduction of included volumes is notified to you by email at least thirty days before it takes effect, and applies only from the following billing period. You may cancel free of charge before that date. Continued use after it takes effect constitutes acceptance.

If you are a consumer under the French Consumer Code, you have fourteen days from subscription to withdraw, without giving reasons.

Before your payment is confirmed, you are asked to confirm, via a checkbox separate from acceptance of these terms, that you expressly request immediate performance of the service and acknowledge that once it has been fully performed you lose your right of withdrawal (art. L. 221-25 and L. 221-28, 1° of the French Consumer Code). Absent that request, access to paid features opens only at the end of the fourteen-day period.

If you withdraw after requesting immediate performance, the amount due is calculated in proportion to the service provided up to the notification of your withdrawal; the balance is refunded within fourteen days.

To exercise this right, write to contact@sporee.fr.

You may cancel your subscription at any time from your account. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period: access is retained until then, with no renewal afterwards. Your account then reverts to the free tier.

We may suspend or terminate your access in the event of a breach of these terms or of the acceptable use policy, without notice where the seriousness or urgency justifies it, and without refund of the current period. The conditions of such suspension are set out in the acceptable use policy.

On deletion of your account, your domains, API keys, templates and delivery logs are erased under the data processing agreement. Export beforehand anything you wish to keep.

The service is provided with no contractual availability commitment. No service level (SLA), no uptime figure and no associated penalty is guaranteed.

We use reasonable means to maintain continuity, but interruptions may occur: maintenance, incidents, failure of an infrastructure provider, or network incidents.

We undertake to use reasonable technical means to favour delivery of your messages: DKIM authentication, SPF and DMARC configuration, monitoring of the sending servers' reputation, adherence to sending standards and automatic bounce handling.

This is an obligation of means and under no circumstances an obligation of result. The decision to accept, classify as junk, defer or reject a message belongs exclusively to the recipient's server and its filters.

We neither control nor can guarantee the behaviour of third-party mailbox providers (including Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, or corporate mail systems), the decisions of blocklist operators, or recipients' anti-spam policies. Rejection, junk classification or non-delivery of a message by a recipient server does not constitute a failure of the service.

Deliverability depends very largely on factors that are yours: the quality of your recipient addresses, the legitimacy of the contact, message content, complaint rates and the DNS configuration of your domains. Use that does not comply with the acceptable use policy degrades sending reputation and therefore delivery, for you and for other customers.

You warrant that your use of the service complies with applicable law, third-party rights, the rules on direct marketing and personal data protection, and the acceptable use policy.

In particular, you warrant that you have, for each recipient you send a message to, a legitimate basis for contacting them, and that you are able to evidence it.

You are solely responsible for the content of the messages sent, the recipient addresses used and the DNS configuration of the domains you declare.

You indemnify us against any third-party, supervisory-authority or mailbox-operator claim, action or award arising from the content you sent, the recipients you targeted or your use of the service in breach of these terms, including reasonable defence costs.

Our liability is limited to direct and foreseeable damage resulting from a breach attributable to us. It may not exceed the amounts you actually paid during the six months preceding the triggering event.

Indirect damage is excluded, in particular loss of revenue, loss of customers, reputational harm, loss arising from the non-delivery or delayed delivery of a message, and loss of data of which you kept no copy.

These limitations do not apply in the event of gross negligence or wilful misconduct, personal injury, or where the law sets them aside, in particular under the statutory guarantees owed to consumers.

If you are a consumer, you benefit from the statutory guarantee of conformity for digital content and services (art. L. 224-25-12 et seq. of the French Consumer Code), independently of these terms. No clause may deprive you of it.

The service, its interface, code, documentation, API and trade marks remain our exclusive property. Your subscription grants you a personal, non-exclusive and non-transferable right of use for the duration of the contract.

The content of the messages you send, your templates and your brand assets belong to you, within the limits of the rights you hold in them.

Processing of your account data is described in the legal notice, where we act as controller.

For your recipients' addresses and the content of the messages you send us, you act as controller and we act as processor, under the data processing agreement, concluded under art. 28 GDPR and forming an integral part of these terms.

These terms are governed by French law.

In the event of a dispute, please contact us so that an amicable solution can be sought. If you are a consumer and your written complaint has not been resolved, you may refer the matter free of charge to the consumer mediator we are registered with:

• Centre de la Médiation de la Consommation de Conciliateurs de Justice (CM2C)
• 49 rue de Ponthieu, 75008 Paris, France
• cm2c.net — cm2c@cm2c.net

The mediator may only be seised after a prior written complaint to us has gone unanswered or unresolved.

Failing an amicable resolution, the dispute will be brought before the competent courts. If you are a consumer, the protective jurisdiction rules provided by law remain available to you.

This English version is provided for information. The French version is the authoritative one and prevails in the event of any discrepancy.