Terms of Service

These terms are between you (or the organization you represent) and Xplicit Tech Solutions, which operates HootQuill. By creating an account you accept them. If you are accepting on behalf of an organization, you confirm you have authority to bind it.

HootQuill is software for preparing, sending, approving and electronically signing documents.

We are a technology provider, not a party to the agreements you execute through the service. We do not draft, review, endorse or verify your documents, and nothing in the product is legal advice. Whether a given agreement is valid, enforceable, or appropriate for its purpose is entirely your responsibility and that of your counterparties.

The service is designed to support signatures under the U.S. ESIGN Act and UETA: it records affirmative consent to transact electronically, captures intent to sign, and preserves an audit trail including timestamps, IP address and a hash of the signed document.

It is not suitable for documents requiring notarization, witnessing, or identity verification beyond control of an email address, nor for any document a law excludes from electronic execution. You are responsible for determining whether electronic signature is appropriate for a given document in your jurisdiction.

Where you route signing through a service you have connected, that service collects the consent, the signature and the evidence, and issues its own certificate of completion. Its records govern that signature. We file the executed document and keep our own audit trail of what we did, but we do not restate their findings as ours.

You may upload your own PDF instead of generating one from a template. You are responsible for its contents and for having the right to send it. We do not review, edit or interpret what you upload.

We keep the file exactly as uploaded and, separately, the file as executed. Neither is altered after the fact.

You may connect third-party services to your account. Doing so is your decision and creates a relationship between you and that provider under their terms and their pricing, not ours. We are not a party to it.

While a service is connected we send it content at your direction — for a signing service, the document and each recipient’s name and email address. We do not control its availability, its security, what it charges, or whether it continues to exist. Where a provider is free or donation-funded, that is worth weighing before you rely on it for contracts you need years from now.

Disconnecting stops new documents going there. Anything already sent stays in that account and remains subject to their terms. Your executed documents and audit trail remain with us either way.

• Keep account credentials confidential, and tell us promptly of any compromise.
• Ensure you have the right to upload and send the content you put into the service.
• Do not use HootQuill to send unlawful, fraudulent or deceptive documents.
• Do not impersonate another person or organization.

You keep all rights to your content. You grant us only the licence needed to host, process, transmit and display it in order to run the service for you.

We aim for continuous availability but do not guarantee it, and the service is provided “as is” without warranties of any kind. Planned maintenance will be announced where practical.

An outage at a service you have connected is that provider’s to resolve. Signing through HootQuill itself does not depend on any integration, and remains available whether or not one is connected.

If we decide to discontinue HootQuill, we will give you at least ninety days’ notice by email, keep export available for the whole of that period, and delete nothing during it.

We put this in writing because it is a fair question to ask of a small company, and because “as is” is not a good enough answer about documents you may need years from now.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, or for lost profits, lost business, or loss of data. Our total liability for any claim is limited to the amounts you paid us in the twelve months preceding the claim.

In particular, we are not liable for the content, validity or enforceability of any agreement executed through the service, or for any dispute between you and a counterparty.

You may close your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate an account that breaches these terms. On termination you may export your data; see the Privacy Policy for retention periods.

Separately from any breach, an account that goes unused for a long time is paused and eventually has its agreements’ contents removed. You are emailed well before either happens, signing in stops it, and accounts with an active subscription are not affected. The Privacy Policy sets out the schedule and the notice you get.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Chautauqua County, New York.

support@hootquill.com