Terms of Service

Effective date: August 24, 2026

Acceptance of Terms

By downloading, installing, or using FermentAdvisor (the "app," "we," "us," "our"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the app.

These Terms govern your use of FermentAdvisor on iOS, Android, and our website at fermentadvisor.app. They form a binding agreement between you and Christopher Hilmoe (the app's owner). Please read them carefully.

Description of Service

FermentAdvisor is a tracker for home fermentation. It generates ferment schedules (check-ins, feeds, bottle dates, and safety windows), mid-ferment check-in reads, and finished-batch diagnoses based on the ferments, details, and photos you submit.

FermentAdvisor covers non-alcoholic home fermentation: vegetable ferments (sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, hot sauce), dairy ferments (yogurt, milk kefir), cultured beverages (kombucha, water kefir, tepache, tejuino), vinegar, bean & grain (miso), and the perpetual cultures that feed several of these (sourdough starter, kombucha SCOBY, kefir grains, vinegar mother). It does not cover meat curing, cold smoking, or any process regulated as a meat product.

The service is provided "as is." See the Food Safety, Generated Advice, and Disclaimers sections below for important limits on what the app's output represents.

Food Safety

Safe-handling guidance in FermentAdvisor — salt percentages for lacto-fermentation, submersion requirements, refrigeration windows, and mold-versus-kahm-yeast distinctions — comes from published extension and peer-reviewed sources, badged by confidence tier in the app. It is not a substitute for your own judgment.

You acknowledge and agree that:

  • Fermentation safety depends on you following the process. Correct salt concentration, keeping vegetables submerged, using clean equipment, and refrigerating or discarding a batch when it should be are your responsibility. The app's guidance is informational, not supervisory.
  • Mold-versus-kahm-yeast (or similar healthy-versus-spoiled) reads are advisory, not a guarantee. When in doubt about a ferment's safety, the safer choice is always to discard it. FermentAdvisor's photo-based reads are a second opinion, not a substitute for your own senses — smell, texture, and appearance all matter, and any of them being wrong is reason enough to throw a batch out.
  • Some ferments carry real risk if made incorrectly. Under-salted or improperly submerged lacto-ferments can support harmful bacteria rather than the acid-producing culture that makes them safe. Follow the app's stated ratios and submersion guidance exactly, particularly for vegetable ferments.
  • FermentAdvisor's non-alcoholic scope is a real boundary, not a suggestion. Ferments like tepache are only covered within the window where they stay a soft drink; continuing a ferment well past what the app describes can produce meaningful alcohol content the app does not track or advise on.
  • Timelines are estimates. Ferment speed varies with temperature, ingredients, and the culture itself — the app's check-in schedule exists because fermentation is variable, not a countdown to a guaranteed result.

Accounts

Creating an account

FermentAdvisor requires an account from your first use of the app — there is no anonymous mode. Sign-in uses a passwordless email code: you enter your email address, we send an 8-character code valid for 15 minutes, and entering it signs you in (creating your account automatically if you're new).

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account. By creating an account, you confirm you meet this age requirement.

Account security

You're responsible for keeping access to your sign-in email account secure. Anyone with access to your email inbox can sign in to your FermentAdvisor account by requesting a sign-in code.

If your email is compromised, secure your email account first, then contact us at privacy@fermentadvisor.app to secure or delete your FermentAdvisor account.

Pro Subscriptions and Billing

Free tier

Every account gets 8 free lifetime uses, drawn from one pool shared by starting a jar, running a check, or logging a finish. Beyond that, watching a short rewarded ad grants one additional use, or you can subscribe to Pro. Checks that identify a safety issue — such as a mold-versus-kahm-yeast read — never draw from this pool, on any tier.

Billing and renewal

FermentAdvisor offers Pro subscriptions at $39.99 USD per year or $4.99 USD per month. Prices in other currencies are set by Apple or Google at platform-mapped rates and may differ from a direct USD conversion.

Subscriptions are billed by Apple (App Store) or Google (Play Store), not by us directly. By subscribing, you authorize the platform to charge your stored payment method for the subscription period and any auto-renewals.

Subscriptions automatically renew at the end of each billing period (annual or monthly) at the then-current price unless you cancel before the renewal date. Apple and Google will notify you in advance of any price change in accordance with platform policy; you may cancel before the change takes effect to avoid being charged the new price.

Cancellation

You can cancel a Pro subscription at any time through your Apple App Store or Google Play Store account settings:

  • iOS: Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions → FermentAdvisor → Cancel Subscription
  • Android: Play Store → Profile → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions → FermentAdvisor → Cancel subscription

Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. You retain Pro access until that period ends. We do not have the ability to cancel platform subscriptions on your behalf — only Apple and Google can.

Refunds

Refunds for App Store subscriptions are handled by Apple under their Media Services Terms (reportaproblem.apple.com). Refunds for Play Store subscriptions are handled by Google under their refund policy (play.google.com/store/account).

We do not issue refunds directly. If you believe a refund is warranted (accidental purchase, technical issue preventing use, etc.), contact Apple or Google support — they have full authority over platform-billed subscription refunds.

Acceptable Use

You agree to use FermentAdvisor only for its intended purpose: planning, checking on, and logging your own fermentation. Specifically, you agree NOT to:

  • Submit photos containing nudity, violence, or other inappropriate content (these will be rejected by the processing layer and may result in account suspension)
  • Submit photos or content belonging to others without permission
  • Reverse engineer, scrape, automate, or attempt to extract bulk data from the app or website
  • Use the app to harass, abuse, or harm any person
  • Resell or sublicense access to FermentAdvisor or your Pro subscription
  • Attempt to bypass usage limits or otherwise interfere with the app's normal operation
  • Use the app for any purpose that violates applicable laws

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these rules.

Your Content

Ownership

You retain ownership of the photos you upload, the notes you write, and the jars you save. Your content is yours.

License to us

To provide the FermentAdvisor service, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, store, process, transmit, display, and modify your submitted content (ferment details, photos, notes) solely for the purpose of operating the FermentAdvisor service for you.

This license covers sending your content to our processing partner (Anthropic) for analysis, storing your content in our backend infrastructure (Cloudflare), and displaying your content back to you within the app.

This license does NOT cover: using your content for AI model training, selling your content to third parties, or displaying your content publicly without your explicit permission. If you delete specific content or your account, this license terminates with respect to that content.

Generated Advice

FermentAdvisor's ferment schedules — check-in cadence, feed timing, safety windows — are computed from a curated reference dataset, sourced and confidence-badged in the app. Check-in reads and finished-batch diagnoses use artificial intelligence (Anthropic's Claude API) to read your photos and ferment details and generate a response.

You acknowledge that:

  • Generated output is advice, not authority. While we use validation layers (deterministic safety windows, escalation to higher-capability models for uncertain cases), the analysis can still be incorrect, incomplete, or surprising.
  • FermentAdvisor is not a substitute for your own judgment — especially on food safety. When a photo-based read and your own senses disagree, or you're simply unsure, discard the batch.
  • Following FermentAdvisor's advice is your choice. Outcomes — a failed batch, a spoiled jar, an off flavor — are not warranted by us.
  • Photo-based reads require sending your photos to Anthropic's servers. See our Privacy Policy for what data is shared, how it's protected, and your rights to access or delete it.

Intellectual Property

FermentAdvisor (the app, the website, the jar logo, the Plan / Check / Log mode names, and all original UI/UX) is the intellectual property of Christopher Hilmoe. You may not copy, modify, distribute, or create derivative works of these elements without written permission.

Third-party trademarks (Apple, Google, Anthropic, Cloudflare, RevenueCat, Resend, and others) belong to their respective owners and are used here under standard nominative-use principles.

Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

Warranty disclaimer

FERMENTADVISOR IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE APP WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT GENERATED ADVICE IS ACCURATE, RELIABLE, OR SUITABLE FOR YOUR SPECIFIC FERMENTATION NEEDS.

Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL FERMENTADVISOR OR ITS OWNER BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, USE, GOODWILL, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, RESULTING FROM (A) YOUR USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE APP; (B) GENERATED ADVICE, SCHEDULES, OR READS; (C) FAILED OR SPOILED BATCHES, INGREDIENT WASTE, OR FOODBORNE ILLNESS ARISING FROM YOUR OWN FOOD HANDLING; OR (D) ANY OTHER MATTER RELATING TO THE APP.

OUR TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF FERMENTADVISOR SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF: (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID TO US FOR PRO SUBSCRIPTIONS IN THE 12 MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM, OR (B) $100 USD.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or limitations of liability; in those jurisdictions, the above limitations apply to the extent permitted by law.

Termination

You can terminate your relationship with FermentAdvisor at any time by deleting the app from your device and requesting account deletion per the Account Deletion section of our Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or terminate your access to FermentAdvisor at any time if you violate these Terms, if your account is used for fraud or abuse, or if continued operation poses risk to other users or our infrastructure. We will notify you of termination via your account email when reasonably possible, but reserve the right to terminate immediately in cases of serious violation.

Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wisconsin, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any dispute arising from these Terms or your use of FermentAdvisor shall be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

If you reside in a jurisdiction whose mandatory consumer protection laws provide rights that override this choice (for example, certain EU consumer-law provisions), those rights apply notwithstanding this section.

Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms as the app evolves. When we make material changes, we will update the effective date at the top of this page and notify active account holders by email (using the address associated with the account). Continued use of FermentAdvisor after an update means you accept the revised Terms.

If you do not agree with the revised Terms, your remedy is to stop using the app and (optionally) request account deletion.

Contact

Questions about these Terms? Get in touch:

Email: privacy@fermentadvisor.app