Terms of Service

Last updated: 30 May 2026

These terms are an agreement between you and Dearly. By using Dearly, you agree to them. We've kept them short and readable. If you don't agree, please don't use the service.

1. What Dearly is

Dearly is a tool for creating and sharing personalized letters — with text, styling, voice notes, and images — by link, QR code, or email. Dearly is operated by Bhanu Kowshik Papineni, an individual based in Oakland, California, USA ("we," "us," "Dearly").

2. Who can use Dearly

You must be at least 13 years old to use Dearly. By using it, you confirm that you are 13 or older. If you are under the age of majority where you live, you should use Dearly only with the involvement of a parent or guardian.

3. Your content

You keep ownership of everything you create on Dearly — your words, recordings, and images ("your content"). You are responsible for your content, and you confirm that:

You have the right to create and share it.
It doesn't infringe anyone's copyright, privacy, or other rights.
It isn't unlawful, hateful, harassing, threatening, or deceptive.

By using Dearly to store and deliver a letter, you grant us a limited permission to host, process, and transmit your content solely to provide the service to you and the people you share it with. We don't claim ownership of your content and we don't use it for advertising.

4. Sharing and recipients

When you share a letter, anyone with the link or QR code can open it — shared content is reachable by its link and isn't password-protected. If you send a letter by email, you confirm that you have a genuine personal reason to contact that recipient and are not sending unsolicited bulk or commercial messages. Don't use Dearly to spam, harass, or deceive anyone.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

Use Dearly for anything illegal, harmful, or abusive.
Upload malware, attempt to break, overload, or reverse-engineer the service.
Impersonate someone else or misrepresent who a letter is from.
Send unsolicited bulk email or otherwise misuse the email feature.
Collect or harvest data about other users.

We may remove content or restrict access if we believe these terms are being broken.

6. Deletion and data

You can ask us to delete a letter or any personal data at any time by emailing hello@dearlynotes.app. How we handle your data is described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms.

7. The service is provided "as is"

Dearly is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, reliability, or uninterrupted availability. We don't guarantee that letters will always be deliverable, that links will last forever, or that the service will be error-free. Use it accordingly, and keep your own copy of anything important.

8. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent allowed by law, Dearly and its operator will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, or for any loss of data, content, or letters, arising from your use of (or inability to use) the service. Our total liability for any claim relating to Dearly will not exceed USD 100.

9. Changes and availability

We may update, change, or discontinue any part of Dearly at any time. We may also update these terms; when we do, we'll change the "Last updated" date above. Continuing to use Dearly after a change means you accept the updated terms.

10. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute will be handled in the courts located in California, unless local law requires otherwise.

11. Contact

Questions about these terms? Email hello@dearlynotes.app.