Terms of Service

Maico Labs (Pty) Ltd · Last updated: 6 July 2026

1. The agreement

These terms are a contract between you and Maico Labs (Pty) Ltd, a company registered in South Africa ("we", "us"), governing your use of Dictopad at dictopad.com (the "Service"). By creating an account you accept these terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not accept them, do not use the Service.

2. What the Service is

Dictopad is a browser-based dictation tool: you record speech (up to 15 minutes per recording), receive a text transcript, and may optionally have that text reformatted by our Polish feature. Transcripts are stored encrypted on your own device, not on our servers — see the Privacy Policy for how data flows.

The subscription includes fair use of 2,000 minutes of transcription per month — more than an hour of talking every single day. We'll warn you as you approach it. If you routinely need more, contact us.

3. Your account

You must be at least 18, provide accurate information, and keep your login credentials secure. You are responsible for activity under your account. One account per person; accounts may not be shared or resold.

4. Billing, trials, and cancellation

• Orders are processed by Paddle, our merchant of record — Paddle handles checkout, invoicing, VAT/sales tax, and payment security, and their buyer terms apply to the transaction itself.
• The subscription price is the one shown at checkout (currently $5 per month for founding customers, or the annual equivalent where offered), starting after a 7-day free trial. A payment method is required to start the trial; cancel before the trial ends and you pay nothing. Your price never increases while your subscription stays active — price changes only apply to new signups.
• You can cancel anytime from your account. Cancellation stops future charges; the subscription runs to the end of the paid period.
• Refunds are covered by our Refund Policy — 14 days, no questions asked.
• If a renewal payment fails, we'll retry and notify you before restricting the Service.

5. Your content

Everything you dictate is yours. We claim no ownership of, and no licence to, your recordings or transcripts. Our architecture means we do not have your transcripts at all — they exist encrypted on your device. You are responsible for exporting anything you need to keep; local browser data can be removed by your browser or by clearing site data.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use the Service for unlawful purposes;
• attempt to breach, probe, or overload the Service, or circumvent rate limits and fair-use controls;
• resell, sublicense, or provide the Service to third parties as your own offering;
• reverse engineer the Service except where the law expressly permits it.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these rules, with notice where practicable.

7. Accuracy — please read this one

Speech-to-text is very good and not perfect. Transcripts and Polish output may contain errors, including errors that reverse the meaning of what you said. Review your text before you rely on it, especially for legal, medical, financial, or other consequential use. The Service is a drafting tool, not a substitute for your judgment.

8. Availability

We aim to keep Dictopad available at all times but do not guarantee uninterrupted service. The Service depends on third-party infrastructure (including speech-to-text processing, authentication, and hosting providers); outages of those providers can affect Dictopad. We are a small company and will always tell you honestly what is going on at our status channels.

9. Disclaimers and liability

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, to the maximum extent permitted by law. To the same extent, our total liability to you for any claim arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the amounts you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, and neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages. Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including under the South African Consumer Protection Act where it applies to you.

10. Termination

You can delete your account at any time from within the app, which cancels your subscription and removes your data from our systems as described in the Privacy Policy. We may terminate or suspend the Service for material breach of these terms, or discontinue the Service entirely with at least 30 days' notice — in which case any prepaid, unused period is refunded.

11. Changes to these terms

If we change these terms materially, we'll notify you by email or in the app at least 14 days before the change takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after that date means you accept the updated terms.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa, and disputes fall under the jurisdiction of the South African courts — without depriving you of mandatory consumer protections in your country of residence.

13. Contact

Maico Labs (Pty) Ltd, South Africa · [email protected]. We aim to respond within 2 business days.