Terms of Service
Last updated 10 August 2026
Summary. You own your content and your data. By default, every draft requires your approval before it is sent. Do not use the software to send unsolicited messages or to breach a connected platform's rules. Self-hosting the planner is free; the agent features take a subscription, which can be cancelled at any time.
1. What Backline is
Backline is band-management software: it drafts replies, captions and outreach in a voice you configure, and manages shows, setlists, stage plots, merch and finances. By default, every outbound draft waits for a person to approve it.
Two ways to run it: self-hosted on your own hardware, and managed, where we host it for you. These terms cover both; where they differ, it says so.
2. Your account
Keep your credentials to yourself and use a real email address so account recovery works. You're responsible for what the people you invite to your install do with it.
3. Your content is yours
Everything you put into Backline belongs to you, and so does everything it drafts for you. We claim no licence over it and no ownership of it. On a self-hosted install it is stored only on your server; the narrow flows that do transit our infrastructure (AI drafting under the default configuration, and the one-click account connections) are enumerated in the Privacy Policy, each with its opt-out.
4. Drafts, approval, and what that means
Backline uses AI models to write drafts. Models get things wrong. A draft can be inaccurate, badly judged, or wrong for the moment. That is exactly why approval exists.
You are responsible for what you approve. Once a person in your band approves a draft, it goes out under your name, and it is your message. Read them before approving.
One qualified exception: an admin can explicitly enable automation, and only after confirming their password. What automation is allowed to do is fixed in the code, not in a setting:
- High-risk drafts are never automated. They wait for a person, one at a time, whatever automation is set to.
- Low-risk comment replies are the only thing that can go out without a person seeing them first.
- Emails and posts can never be sent or published by automation. It can approve them, but sending an email and publishing a post are separate steps that a person takes, or that run at a time a person chose in advance.
Understand the second and third points before you switch this on. With automation enabled, an email or post can reach "approved" without anyone having read it. If you turn automation on, what it approves is on you too.
5. Acceptable use
Don't use Backline to:
- send unsolicited bulk messages, or anything a reasonable person would call spam;
- impersonate someone, or misrepresent who is writing;
- harass, threaten or abuse anybody;
- break the terms of a connected service (Instagram, Google and Stripe all have their own rules, and they apply to you);
- break the law where you live or where you're sending.
On managed installs we may suspend an account that does these things. Given what the software is for, this is not the kind of clause we expect to use.
6. Connected accounts
Connecting Instagram, Gmail or Google Calendar authorises Backline to act on that account for the purposes described in the Privacy Policy. You can disconnect at any time, from Backline or from the platform, and access stops immediately.
7. Payment, on managed plans
Subscriptions bill through Stripe on the interval shown at checkout. Cancel whenever you like and you keep access until the end of the paid period. We don't pro-rate partial months. If we ever raise prices, current subscribers get notice first.
Self-hosting the planner (shows, setlists, merch, money, the whole operational side) is free of charge and always will be. The agent features (drafting, the approval pipeline, integrations) take the same subscription whether we host the install or you do.
8. Availability
Managed installs are run carefully but come with no uptime guarantee, and maintenance sometimes means downtime. Self-hosted availability is entirely in your hands, including backups, which we strongly recommend you take.
9. Warranty and liability
Backline is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind. To the extent the law allows, our liability is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. On an unlicensed self-hosted install, that is nothing.
Nothing here limits liability for fraud, or for anything else that cannot legally be limited.
10. Ending it
Cancel any time. We can end a managed account for a serious or repeated breach of section 5, with notice unless the breach makes that impossible. On termination you can export your data; see the Privacy Policy for deletion.
11. Changes
If these terms change materially we'll update the date above and tell managed customers by email. Continuing to use Backline after that means you accept the new version.