1. Introduction and Acceptance
These Terms and Conditions (the "Terms") govern your access to and use of the Sumna website at sumna.app, the Sumna web application, the Sumna recorder application, and all related services, features, and content (together, the "Service"). The Service is owned and operated by Linguae Academy LLC, a Virginia limited liability company doing business as "Sumna" ("Sumna," "we," "us," or "our").
By creating an account, clicking to accept these Terms, or otherwise accessing or using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. If you do not agree to these Terms, you must not use the Service.
If you use the Service on behalf of a company, school, academy, or other organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization, and "you" refers to both you and that organization.
2. Definitions
"Tutor" means a teacher, tutor, or academy that registers a Sumna account to create class summaries, homework, exams, lesson plans, and related materials for their students.
"Student" means a person whose information a Tutor enters into the Service, and who may be invited by that Tutor to access the student portal.
"Student Portal" means the part of the Service where an invited Student can sign in to view materials that their Tutor has chosen to publish or send.
"Your Content" means all content that you or your Students submit to the Service, including lesson audio, transcripts, student profile details, notes, goals, uploaded files, and homework submissions.
"Generated Content" means summaries, homework, exams, lesson plans, progress analyses, and other materials that the Service produces using artificial intelligence, based on Your Content.
"Plan" means a Sumna subscription tier (currently Free, Entry, Expert, and Pro).
3. Eligibility and Accounts
3.1 Tutor accounts. You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract to register a Tutor account. You agree to provide accurate, current, and complete registration information and to keep it up to date.
3.2 Student accounts. Student Portal accounts are created only through an invitation issued by a Tutor. Students must be at least 13 years old to hold a Student Portal account. Tutors are responsible for the consent obligations described in Section 10 before inviting any Student who is a minor.
3.3 Account security. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. Notify us immediately at privacy@sumna.app if you suspect unauthorized use of your account. We are not liable for losses caused by unauthorized use of your credentials where we have not been negligent.
3.4 One account per person. You may not share an account, sell or transfer an account, or register an account on behalf of someone else without authority to do so.
4. The Service; Plans and Features
4.1 What the Service does. Sumna helps Tutors turn lesson transcripts or audio into structured class summaries, and (depending on Plan) create homework, exams, and lesson plans, deliver branded documents to Students by email or through the Student Portal, and track Student goals and progress.
4.2 Plans. Features and usage limits depend on your Plan. Current Plans, prices, and limits are described on our pricing page at sumna.app/pricing, which forms part of these Terms. As of the effective date: the Free Plan includes a limited number of summaries per month; the Entry Plan includes a larger monthly summary allowance; the Expert Plan adds audio transcription hours, homework, and exams; and the Pro Plan adds more capacity and lesson plans. We may adjust the features and limits of each Plan as described in Section 14.
4.3 Usage limits and fair use. Monthly allowances (such as summaries per month and audio transcription hours) reset each billing cycle and do not roll over. Features described as unlimited are subject to fair use; we may throttle or restrict usage that is abusive, automated, or far outside normal use for a single tutoring practice.
4.4 Publication control. Materials you create in the Service are private to you until you choose to publish them to a Student's portal or send them by email. You are solely responsible for deciding what to share with each Student.
5. Free Plan and Trials
The Free Plan is offered so you can evaluate the Service and does not require a payment method. We may also offer promotional trials or special accounts (such as founders or early-tester accounts) that provide the features of a paid Plan for a limited period; the specific terms (length, features included, and what happens at the end) will be stated when the offer is made. Unless stated otherwise, when a trial or promotional period ends and you have not subscribed to a paid Plan, your account moves to the Free Plan and content you created remains accessible under Free Plan limits. We may modify or discontinue the Free Plan or any trial at any time, and we may limit Free Plan accounts that appear to be duplicates created to circumvent usage limits.
6. Fees, Billing, Renewal, and Cancellation
6.1 Payment processing. Paid subscriptions are billed through our payment processor, Stripe. We do not store your full card details. By subscribing, you authorize us and Stripe to charge your payment method for the applicable recurring fees and any applicable taxes.
6.2 Automatic renewal. Paid Plans renew automatically at the end of each billing period (monthly or annual) at the then-current price for your Plan, until you cancel. By subscribing, you consent to recurring charges.
6.3 Cancellation. You can cancel at any time through the billing portal in your account settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period; you keep paid-plan access until then, after which your account moves to the Free Plan. We do not charge cancellation fees.
6.4 Refunds. Except where required by applicable law, fees are non-refundable, including for partial billing periods or unused allowances. If you believe you have been billed in error, contact us at privacy@sumna.app within 30 days of the charge and we will review it in good faith.
6.5 Price changes. We may change subscription prices. Price changes take effect at your next renewal, and we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email before a price increase applies to you. If you do not agree with a price change, you may cancel before it takes effect.
6.6 Taxes. Fees are exclusive of taxes unless stated otherwise. You are responsible for any applicable sales, use, VAT, or similar taxes, other than taxes on our income.
6.7 Failed payments. If a renewal payment fails, we may retry the charge and notify you. If payment is not received within a reasonable period, we may downgrade your account to the Free Plan.
6.8 Statutory withdrawal rights (EEA/UK consumers). If you are a consumer in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you may have a statutory 14-day right of withdrawal from a subscription purchase. By starting your subscription immediately, you request immediate performance and acknowledge that, where permitted by law, you lose the right of withdrawal once the service has been fully performed, and that if you withdraw during the 14-day period you may owe a proportionate amount for service already provided.
7. Your Content; Licenses; Intellectual Property
7.1 You own Your Content. As between you and Sumna, you retain all rights in Your Content. We do not claim ownership of your transcripts, recordings, student information, notes, or uploads.
7.2 License to us. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, process, transmit, display, and create derivative works from Your Content solely as needed to provide, maintain, secure, and improve the Service for you, and as otherwise permitted by our Privacy Policy. This license ends when Your Content is deleted from the Service, except for limited backup retention described in the Privacy Policy.
7.3 Generated Content. As between you and Sumna, and to the extent we hold any rights in Generated Content, we assign those rights to you upon creation. You are free to use Generated Content in your tutoring practice, including under your own branding. You acknowledge that AI-generated output may not be protectable by copyright in some jurisdictions and that similar output may be generated for other users from similar inputs.
7.4 No training on Your Content. We do not use Your Content or Generated Content to train artificial-intelligence models, and we engage AI providers under terms that restrict their use of your data to providing the service to us. See the Privacy Policy for details.
7.5 Our intellectual property. The Service itself — including software, design, text, graphics, logos, and the Sumna and Linguae Academy names and marks — is owned by us or our licensors and is protected by intellectual-property laws. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Service in accordance with these Terms. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, reverse-engineer, or create derivative works of the Service except as permitted by law.
7.6 Feedback. If you send us suggestions or feedback, you grant us the right to use it without restriction or compensation.
8. Recordings and Transcripts — Your Responsibilities
The Service allows you to upload lesson audio or paste transcripts for processing. Recording a conversation is regulated by law in many places, including all-party-consent rules in a number of U.S. states and consent and transparency requirements under the GDPR and similar laws.
You are solely responsible for ensuring that you have the legal right, and all required consents, to record a lesson and to submit the recording or transcript to the Service. This includes obtaining consent from Students and, where a Student is a minor, from the Student's parent or guardian, where required by applicable law. We do not monitor your recordings and we rely on your compliance with this section. You will indemnify us for claims arising from recordings or transcripts you submit without the required consents, as described in Section 18.
The Sumna recorder application stores recordings locally on your own device. When you upload audio for transcription, the audio is processed by our transcription providers and is not retained on our servers; the resulting transcript is stored in your account. See the Privacy Policy for details.
9. AI-Generated Content
Generated Content is produced by artificial-intelligence systems and may contain errors, omissions, or inaccuracies, including incorrect language explanations, wrong answer keys, or mischaracterizations of a lesson. You must review Generated Content before publishing or sending it to a Student. Generated Content is a drafting aid, not professional, pedagogical, or legal advice, and you remain solely responsible for the materials you deliver to your Students, including their accuracy and suitability. We make no warranty that Generated Content will be accurate, complete, or fit for a particular teaching purpose.
10. Student Portal; Students and Minors
10.1 Invitation model. Students access the Service only through the Student Portal, using an invitation issued by their Tutor. A Student sees only the materials their Tutor has published or sent to them.
10.2 Minimum age. The Student Portal is not available to children under 13, and we do not knowingly create portal accounts for children under 13. Tutors must not invite a Student they know to be under 13 to the Student Portal. Tutors may still use the Service to prepare materials for younger students without giving those students portal access, provided the Tutor complies with Section 10.3.
10.3 Tutor responsibilities for minors. If a Student is under 18 (or the age of majority where they live), the Tutor is responsible for: (a) obtaining verifiable consent from the Student's parent or guardian before entering the Student's personal information into the Service and before inviting the Student to the Student Portal; (b) where the GDPR or similar law applies, ensuring that any consent relied on meets the age-of-consent rules of the Student's country (which range from 13 to 16 within the EEA); and (c) responding to any parent or guardian request to review or delete the Student's information, using the tools in the Service or by contacting us. We process Student information on the Tutor's behalf and rely on the Tutor's compliance with this section.
10.4 Student terms. Students must use the portal only for their own learning, keep their credentials confidential, and upload only their own homework and materials they have the right to share. Tutors are responsible for their Students' use of the Service.
10.5 Deactivation. A Tutor may deactivate or delete a Student at any time, which ends the Student's portal access. If a Student account is deleted, associated data is deleted as described in the Privacy Policy.
11. Acceptable Use
You agree not to, and not to permit your Students to:
- use the Service for any unlawful purpose or in violation of any applicable law or regulation;
- submit content that is defamatory, harassing, hateful, sexually explicit, or that violates another person's privacy, publicity, or intellectual-property rights;
- upload malware or other harmful code, or attempt to probe, scan, or breach the security of the Service or its infrastructure;
- access the Service by automated means (bots, scrapers) or attempt to circumvent usage limits, rate limits, or plan restrictions, including by creating multiple free accounts;
- resell, sublicense, or provide the Service to third parties as a service bureau, other than delivering materials to your own Students in the ordinary course of your tutoring practice;
- use the Service to build a competing product, or copy its features, interface, or underlying prompts;
- misrepresent your identity or affiliation, or impersonate any person.
We may investigate suspected violations and may remove content, suspend, or terminate accounts as described in Section 15.
12. Privacy and Data Protection
Our collection and use of personal information is described in the Sumna Privacy Policy at sumna.app/privacy. For personal information about Students that a Tutor submits to the Service, the Tutor acts as the data controller (or equivalent role under applicable law) and Sumna acts as the Tutor's processor/service provider, processing that information only to provide the Service. Tutors are responsible for having a lawful basis for the Student information they submit. A data processing addendum reflecting these roles (including GDPR Article 28 terms) is available on request at privacy@sumna.app and is incorporated into these Terms where applicable law requires processor terms.
13. Third-Party Services
The Service depends on third-party providers, including hosting and database infrastructure, payment processing (Stripe), AI text generation (Anthropic), audio transcription (AssemblyAI; OpenAI), and email delivery (Resend). Your use of Stripe's payment services is also subject to Stripe's own terms. We are not responsible for third-party services we do not control, but we choose providers carefully and bind them to appropriate contractual protections as described in the Privacy Policy. Lesson platforms you use (such as Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Preply) are not part of the Service, and your use of them is governed by their own terms.
14. Service Changes and Availability
We are continuously improving the Service and may add, change, or remove features, or modify Plan limits, at any time. If a change materially reduces the core functionality of a paid Plan mid-term, we will notify you, and you may cancel and receive a pro-rata refund of prepaid fees for the remaining term as your exclusive remedy. The Service is provided without guaranteed uptime; we may suspend the Service temporarily for maintenance, security, or events beyond our reasonable control. We are a small company and support is provided on a reasonable-efforts basis by email.
15. Suspension and Termination
15.1 By you. You may stop using the Service at any time and may cancel a paid Plan under Section 6.3. You may delete your account and all associated data from your account settings, or by emailing privacy@sumna.app. Deleting your account permanently removes your profile, your Students' records and portal accounts, and all content in your account.
15.2 By us. We may suspend or terminate your access, with notice where practicable, if: you materially breach these Terms; your use creates security, legal, or abuse risk; payment for a paid Plan fails and is not cured; or your account has been inactive on the Free Plan for an extended period (in which case we will give at least 30 days' email notice before deletion). We may also terminate for convenience with at least 30 days' notice, in which case we will refund any prepaid fees for the period after termination.
15.3 Effect of termination. On termination, your license to use the Service ends. You may request an export of Your Content before termination, and for 30 days after, by emailing privacy@sumna.app. After that, we may delete Your Content in accordance with the Privacy Policy. Sections that by their nature should survive (including Sections 7, 8, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 21) survive termination.
16. Disclaimers of Warranties
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE AND ALL GENERATED CONTENT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, AND UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE OPERATION. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT GENERATED CONTENT WILL BE ACCURATE OR SUITABLE FOR YOUR STUDENTS. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, SO SOME OF THE ABOVE MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU; IN THAT CASE, IMPLIED WARRANTIES ARE LIMITED TO THE MINIMUM SCOPE AND DURATION PERMITTED BY LAW. NOTHING IN THESE TERMS AFFECTS STATUTORY RIGHTS THAT CANNOT BE WAIVED, INCLUDING THE STATUTORY RIGHTS OF CONSUMERS IN THE EEA AND UK.
17. Limitation of Liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW: (A) NEITHER SUMNA NOR ITS MEMBERS, MANAGERS, EMPLOYEES, OR SUPPLIERS WILL BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, LOST DATA, LOSS OF GOODWILL, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY; AND (B) OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (i) THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM AND (ii) FIFTY U.S. DOLLARS (US $50).
THESE LIMITS DO NOT APPLY TO LIABILITY THAT CANNOT BE LIMITED BY LAW, INCLUDING LIABILITY FOR GROSS NEGLIGENCE, WILLFUL MISCONDUCT, DEATH OR PERSONAL INJURY CAUSED BY NEGLIGENCE, OR FRAUD. FOR CONSUMERS IN THE EEA/UK, WE ARE LIABLE UNDER STATUTORY LAW FOR INTENT AND GROSS NEGLIGENCE, AND FOR SLIGHT NEGLIGENCE ONLY IN CASE OF BREACH OF ESSENTIAL CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS, LIMITED TO FORESEEABLE, TYPICAL DAMAGE.
18. Indemnification
You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Sumna and its members, managers, and employees from and against any third-party claims, damages, and reasonable costs (including attorneys' fees) arising out of: (a) Your Content, including recordings or transcripts submitted without required consents; (b) your breach of these Terms, including your obligations regarding minors in Section 10; or (c) your violation of applicable law or of a third party's rights. This section does not apply to consumers where prohibited by applicable law; in that case, you remain responsible for damage caused by your breach in accordance with statutory rules.
19. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution
19.1 Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, USA, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules. If you are a consumer in the EEA or UK, you also benefit from mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence, and nothing in this section deprives you of that protection.
19.2 Informal resolution first. Before filing a claim, you agree to contact us at privacy@sumna.app and give us 30 days to try to resolve the dispute informally.
19.3 Venue. Any dispute not resolved informally will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Virginia, and both parties consent to their jurisdiction — except that if you are a consumer in the EEA or UK, you may bring proceedings in the courts of your country of residence, and we will bring proceedings against you only in that country. EU consumers may also use the European Commission's online dispute resolution platform.
19.4 No class actions. To the extent permitted by law, disputes will be resolved on an individual basis, and neither party will participate in a class or representative action against the other. This waiver does not apply where prohibited by law.
20. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes, we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email or in-app notice before the changes take effect. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of updated Terms constitutes acceptance. If you do not agree to updated Terms, you must stop using the Service and may cancel any paid Plan; if a material change adversely affects a prepaid subscription, you may cancel and receive a pro-rata refund for the remaining term.
21. General Provisions
21.1 Entire agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, any data processing addendum, and any Plan-specific terms presented at purchase form the entire agreement between you and Sumna regarding the Service and supersede prior agreements on that subject.
21.2 Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions remain in effect.
21.3 No waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
21.4 Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, provided your rights are not materially reduced.
21.5 Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control.
21.6 Notices. We may send notices to the email address on your account. You may send legal notices to privacy@sumna.app.
21.7 Export and sanctions. You may not use the Service in violation of U.S. export-control or sanctions laws.
22. Contact
Linguae Academy LLC (d/b/a Sumna)
Virginia, USA
Email: privacy@sumna.app