Terms of Service

The Service is operated by Patrick Engelkes (“BabySteps”, “we”, “us”), based in Germany. You can reach us at hello@ourbabysteps.com.

You must be at least 16 years old, or the age of digital consent where you live if that is higher, to create an account. BabySteps is a service for adults recording their family's life; it is not directed at children and children do not hold accounts.

You are responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials secure and for what happens under your account. Tell us at hello@ourbabysteps.com if you believe someone else has access to it.

Please give accurate information when you sign up. You may sign in with an email and password, with Apple, or with Google where it is available.

A family holds up to six people and shares its children's journals. Anything you add can be seen by the family members who have access to the journal you added it to. Invite codes are single-use and expire after seven days — only give one to someone you intend to have access.

The person who created the family is its owner. Admins can manage the family, its children, its journals, and its invites. Removing someone from a family ends their access going forward, but the content they contributed stays in the family's journals.

You are responsible for having the right to add what you add. If you upload photos, videos, or recordings of someone else — including another family's child — make sure the person or their parent or guardian is happy for you to.

You agree not to use the Service to:

• upload content that is unlawful, or that infringes someone's rights;
• upload content that exploits, endangers, or sexualises a child in any way;
• harass, threaten, or impersonate anyone, including other members of your family;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Service, other people's accounts, or our infrastructure;
• probe, scrape, or overload the Service, or interfere with its normal operation.

We may suspend or terminate an account that breaks these rules. We report child sexual abuse material to the appropriate authorities.

Your photos, videos, recordings and words remain yours. We claim no ownership of them.

You grant us a limited licence to store, process, reproduce and display your content strictly for the purpose of operating the Service for you and the family you share it with — for example, storing a photo, generating a thumbnail, and showing it to the family members allowed to see it. This licence exists only so the app can work; it ends when you delete the content or your account. We will not use your content to advertise, to train machine-learning models, or for any purpose other than running the Service.

We want your memories to outlast the app, so we will say this plainly: BabySteps is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis, and no online service is a guaranteed archive. Keep your own copies of anything you could not bear to lose. The app can save the photos and videos you shoot in it to your phone's camera roll for exactly this reason — leave that switch on.

We may change, suspend, or discontinue parts of the Service. If we ever have to shut it down, we will give you reasonable notice and a way to get your content out.

The Service itself — the app, its design, its name, and its logo — belongs to us. These Terms give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use it, and nothing more.

You can stop using the Service at any time. To delete your account and personal data, email hello@ourbabysteps.com from the address on your account — there is no in-app delete button yet, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.

We may suspend or terminate your access if you materially breach these Terms, or where we are required to by law.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service is provided without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose and uninterrupted availability.

BabySteps records developmental firsts as keepsakes, not as a medical or developmental assessment. The age hints in the app describe what is typical, not what is expected of your child. Nothing in the app is medical advice — talk to your paediatrician about your child's development.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, or for loss of data or profits, arising from your use of the Service. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law — including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or under mandatory German product liability law.

We may update these Terms as the Service changes. We will change the “last updated” date above, and for significant changes we will let you know in the app. Continuing to use the Service after a change means you accept the updated Terms.

These Terms are governed by the laws of Germany, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. If you are a consumer, you also keep the protections of the mandatory law of the country you live in.

Questions about these Terms: hello@ourbabysteps.com.