Terms of use

As of June 5th 2023

1. General, Scope

1.1 The following General Terms and Conditions (hereinafter the “Terms”) apply for the customer’s (hereinafter the “Customer” or “you”) use of the website rows.com and the services offered on Rows.com, in particular the use of the spreadsheet software-as-a-service solution and all related contracts between the Customer and Rows GmbH, Am Märchenbrunnen 5, 10407 Berlin, (hereinafter “Rows” or “we”).

1.2 The services offered on rows.com can be accessed and used solely by entrepreneurs or businesses, subject to the regulations of these Terms. Pursuant to sec. 14 of the German Civil Code, an entrepreneur is a natural or legal person or a partnership with legal personality who or which, when entering into a transaction, acts in exercise of his or its trade, business or profession.

1.3 These Terms apply exclusively. Deviating, supplementary or contradictory terms and conditions of the Customer will not be accepted. The aforementioned shall also apply if we do not expressly object to the inclusion of such terms and conditions.

2. Contractual Relationships, Account Creation, Registration Requirements

2.1 Rows offers you free and paid services on rows.com. Some features of our services may only be accessed upon the conclusion of a subscription and payment of applicable fees. Customers who have created an account for our free services have the possibility to order and use our paid subscription-based services. With the conclusion of a contract for paid subscription-based services, the registered Customer enters into an additional contractual relationship with Rows in addition to the free membership in accordance with these Terms.

2.2 Where Rows offers a free temporary workspace with limited functionalities/features that allows you to directly use a spreadsheet on the Rows website without creating an account, you acknowledge and agree that Rows is entitled to amend, modify or alter such an offer for a temporary workspace at any time or to delete such feature altogether. For the usage of such temporary workspace without a Rows account, these Terms apply unless stated explicitly otherwise herein. To make full use of our services offered on rows.com, including saving spreadsheets, you have to create an account for both free and paid subscription-based memberships. You must be at least 18 years of age or older to use and register for our services.

2.3 To create an account, you have to provide your first and last name, a valid email address, and you have to select a password. The contractual relationships are personal and non-transferable. You shall provide true and complete information when creating an account.

2.4 As a registered user of Rows, you can create and save a workspace and invite other users to your workspace to allow collaboration of users in the workspace. If you create a workspace you will become the owner of your workspace and give the users you invited to your workspace access and edit rights to the spreadsheets in your workspace subject to the specific content and limitations of your free membership or paid subscription services as indicated on the website (see section 4 below). As the owner of your workspace you can also determine one or more of the users you invited as administrators of your workspace. Administrators appointed by you for your workspace can invite other users to your workspace, conclude up and downgrades of your current subscription on your behalf, change a payment method for a paid subscription on your behalf etc. as specified in more detail on our website. However, only you as the creator of a workspace are entitled to delete a workspace. Usage of the workspace by users invited by the owner or by administrators appointed by the owner are allocated to the consumption within the scope of the respective content and limitations of the membership/paid subscription of the owner of the respective workspace.

2.5 Where Rows also offers the Customers to use the Rows forum (forum.rows.com), e.g. for discussions and communications with other Rows Customers and/or with us, the usage of the Rows forum is subject to the applicable Terms as stated on http://forum.rows.com/tos and requires a separate registration by the Customer.

3. Scope of Service, Non-exclusive License

3.1. Within the scope of the free membership, you can only use the agreed-upon free services. The same applies for usage of a temporary workspace offered by Rows pursuant to sec. 2.2 that does not require a Rows account. If you conclude a paid subscription-based contract with us, you can use the agreed-upon paid services.

3.2 Rows offers you services in the form of a software-as-a-service solution that enables you to develop software applications. You can use our services by creating applications in which you will input data either manually or by importing data via your own applications or from third-party services.

3.3 Some third-party services are integrated in our solution and don’t require the Customer to separately register with the third-party provider to use such integrated third-party service. For such integrated third-party services, additional terms of use of the respective third-party services apply in addition to Rows' Terms of Use, whenever you use a function interacting with the respective third-party service(s). These additional terms of use of the respective third-party services are an essential part of the contractual relationship between you and Rows and we make you aware of these additional terms of use during your registration for Rows or before you use a temporary workspace offered on the Rows website pursuant to sec. 2.2. You can find a comprehensive list of the third-party services in question and the additional terms of use for such integrated third-party services here (the “Integration Terms of Use”): https://rows.com/terms/integrations. You can find a full description of the integrations in question, including a comprehensive list of the respective functions, in our integrations marketplace (https://rows.com/integrations).

3.4 In all other cases importing data from other third-party services is possible e.g. through generic web requests or through integrated APIs of third-party services that require a separate registration and acceptance of the terms of use of such third-party services from the Customer with such third-party service.

3.5 During the term of the contract for a free membership or a paid subscription-based membership, you can access the software by means of a web interface (via the Internet) and use the functionalities as agreed upon with Rows depending on whether you have opted for free membership or paid subscription-based membership. More information on our software and services, in particular which services can be accessed via a free membership and which services require a paid subscription-based membership, can be found on rows.com.

3.6 Rows grants you the non-exclusive, non-transferable and limited right to use the software and services during the term of the respective contract with you. This right is subject to the scope of services and limitations as contractually agreed with you in relation with a free temporary workspace on the website and/or a free and/or paid subscription-based membership as governed by the regulations in these Terms. In particular, you shall not be entitled to make the services and software available to third parties for use, whether in return for payment or free of charge, or to reproduce, sell or transfer, rent or lend parts of it for a limited period of time. For the sake of clarification, the aforementioned does not restrict your use of sharing and publishing functionalities provided by Rows pursuant to the regulations in sec. 5.6.

4. Subscription-Based Services, Conclusion of Contract, Prices/Payment, Upgrades/Downgrades

4.1 Rows offers free and paid subscription-based services. You can select between several tiers of paid subscription-based services for your workspace(s) as indicated on the website by clicking on the respective subscription tier on our website. Prior to the conclusion of a contractual relationship concerning paid subscription-based services for your workspace(s), you will be informed about the content of the respective subscription tier and included services, the subscription period, the prices and the terms of payment in accordance with the applicable statutory provisions.

4.2 Rows will immediately confirm the receipt of your order by electronic means (by email) in accordance with the applicable statutory provisions. However, this does not constitute an acceptance of your offer. The contract shall only become valid upon acceptance of Rows by means of an express declaration of acceptance or by providing the ordered service or access hereto within two days.

4.3 You can correct input errors until you click on the confirmation button that closes the ordering process. The text of the contract will be made available to you in accordance with the applicable statutory provisions, however, we will not store the text of the contract for you after conclusion of the contract. The contract language is English.

4.4 The agreed fees are exclusive of statutory VAT.

4.5 For the payment you can only use the payment methods available during the order process.

4.6 You can upgrade your then current paid subscription for your workspace at any time to a subscription of a higher tier as indicated on our website. In case of an upgrade to a higher subscription tier for your workspace, the new upgraded subscription will become effective immediately for the new term of the higher tier subscription and any fees already paid by you for the remaining term of your previous subscription for a lower tier will be credited pro rata to your new subscription period for the higher tier.

4.7 A downgrade from a paid subscription of a higher tier of your workspace to a paid subscription of a lower tier shall become effective for the new term of a lower tier subscription immediately after the end of your then current subscription of a higher tier.

5. Customer obligations, Prohibited Uses, Responsibilities, Grant of rights

5.1 You shall prevent unauthorized access to or use of the services by third parties and shall in particular keep passwords and all other login information confidential. You shall promptly notify Rows if you become aware of or are suspecting any unauthorized access.

5.2 You agree not to use the services including in particular integrated third-party services and the software for any unlawful or illegal activity. Furthermore, you shall not violate, misappropriate, or infringe any Rows or third party copyrights, trademarks, rights of privacy and publicity, trade secrets, patents, or other proprietary rights.

5.3 The responsibility for all information, data, texts and other materials processed by the Customer using our services, including integrated or other third-party services and the software (the “Customer Data”), e.g. submitted, manually inputted or imported from other integrated and other third-party services e.g. by generic web requests or through integrated APIs of third-party services or the user’s own applications, lies exclusively and unrestrictedly with you shall be defined as “Customer Data”. This shall in particular apply to any and all information, data, texts and other materials originating from third parties and/or integrated and other third-party services. Rows does not monitor the Customer Data stored or processed by you while using our services and does not claim any ownership hereto Customer Data.

5.4 You shall only upload and process Customer Data to which you own all required rights or where you have obtained a valid license to process or use such Customer Data within the applicable legal framework.

5.5 If you choose to integrate data from third-party services/applications and/or use third-party APIs for integration in our services and software, you shall comply with all applicable terms and conditions of such third-party services/applications. You shall solely be responsible for the integration of data from such third-party services/applications.

5.6 Where the Rows services allow you to share e.g. spreadsheets with others, e.g. with colleagues or business partners or within a workspace where you are the owner/admin of such workspace, for whatever purpose, you shall be responsible for such third-parties’ use and access to the spreadsheets.

5.7 Where the Rows services’ functionalities allow the sending of short messages and emails directly via our services and/or integrated and other third-party services and/or where our services allow you to request contact information and details from businesses and natural persons e.g. from integrated third-party services and databases, you shall comply with all applicable laws and regulations and shall in particular not use the services to send unsolicited communications, promotions/advertisements or spam and/or use the services to send short messages and emails to persons or contact persons who have not given their specific permission to receive such short messages and emails pursuant to the applicable laws and regulations, in particular any applicable privacy and data protection legislation. Furthermore, your short messages and emails shall not contain information which is unsolicited, offensive, threatening or abusive or which otherwise is of criminal or unethical nature according to applicable law(s).

5.8 You agree not to use the services and/or integrated and other third-party services to harass, abuse, stalk, threaten or defame any person or entity.

5.9 You shall not attempt to reverse engineer, decompile, hack, disable, interfere with, disassemble, modify, copy, translate, or disrupt the features, functionality, integrity, or performance of the services including but not limited to integrated third-party services, except to the extent such restrictions are prohibited by applicable copyright laws.

5.10 Rows reserves the right to limit or restrict your access and use of the services, integrated third-party services and/or to delete your account if you are in breach of or violate any of the regulations of these Terms, in particular the regulations pursuant to sec. 3.3 and/or sec. 5.1 – 5.9. However, in such cases Rows shall notify you of the respective breach and violation before such limitation or restriction or deletion and allow you to correct such breach and violation within ten days. The aforementioned shall not apply if you have repeatedly breached or violated these Terms and/or if a correction by you is not tolerable for Rows.

5.11 You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Rows and its subsidiaries, affiliates, legal representatives agents and employees, from any loss, claim or demand, including reasonable attorneys' fees, made by any third party –including claims and demands from third-party services integrated in our services– due to or arising out of your use of the services including integrated third-party services and/or your violation of these Terms, in particular violations of sec. 3.3, sec. 5.1 – 5.9, and/or your violation of the additional terms of use from integrated third-party services and other third-party services.

5.12 You hereby grant Rows a royalty-free, worldwide, transferable and perpetual license to use or incorporate into our website and/or our service/software any suggestions, enhancement requests, recommendations or other feedback provided by you to Rows that is related to our website and/or our service/software through any means.

6. Terms for the usage of the Rows API

6.1 Registered Rows users can use the Rows API, a RESTful application programming interface that allows users to read and maintain data inside spreadsheet tables subject to the following terms. Your use of the Rows API must furthermore comply with the technical documentation and other documentation on the Rows API made available by Rows and updated from time to time and which apply in addition to these terms and can be found here: http://developers.rows.com.

6.2 Rows explicitly reserves the right to modify, restrict the use of or deactivate or discontinue the availability of the Rows API. Rows also reserves the right to charge for the usage of the Rows API. Where Rows provides you with support or assistance regarding your use of the Rows API, Rows does not assume any obligation to do so.

6.3 As between the parties, Rows owns all rights, title and interest in and to the Rows API, including all elements and components of the Rows API. Subject to your compliance to these terms, Rows grants you a (i) limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-assignable, non-sublicenseable and non-transferable license to use the API and (ii) to distribute or allow access to your integration of the Rows API within the applications developed by you to end users of your applications during the term of the agreement with you or in case of the provision of the Rows API free of charge for the user, until Rows deactivates the Rows API, whatever occurs earlier.

6.4 The user shall use the Rows API solely in compliance with any and all applicable laws and regulations, in particular unfair competition laws, copyright laws, trademark laws and data privacy laws. The user acknowledges that the user is solely responsible for any and all actions carried out via the Rows API and where the user is the owner of workspace/s, the owner shall furthermore be responsible for any actions from the user’s collaborators, such as editors, in the user’s workspace/s. Rows reserves the right to suspend or terminate your use of the Rows API in case of any violations or breaches of these terms. Section 5.11 shall apply with regard to any third-party claims raised against Rows in relation with the user’s use of the Rows API.

6.5 The user shall use the Rows API solely for legally compliant and permitted uses and purposes. In particular, the restrictions and prohibited uses pursuant to section 5 shall apply likewise to the use of the Rows API. Furthermore, the user is prohibited from gaining access to or trying to gain access to workspaces of other Rows users/Customers via use of the Rows API.

6.6 The user shall be responsible to implement and maintain adequate and sufficient security measures for API keys generated by the user. Rows does not assume any responsibility or obligation in this respect.

6.7 As the owner of a workspace or workspaces within the Rows service, you acknowledge and agree that any member of workspaces created by you, is entitled to generate API keys via the Rows API. The API keys will reflect the read/write permissions of the workspace member who created them. You may change roles and permissions for users/collaborators of your workspaces.

6.8 In addition, all other terms of these Terms of Use apply for your usage of the Rows API unless indicated otherwise per the above.

7. Term, Termination

7.1 Each contract for a paid subscription is automatically extended at the end of the contract by the contract period agreed in each case (up to a maximum of one year per extension/renewal), unless the contract is cancelled by you or Rows at the latest 1 (one) day before the expiry of the relevant contract period.

7.2 You can cancel a paid subscription either in writing (e.g. letter, email) or electronically through the respective setting in your Rows account.

7.3 Upon termination of a paid subscription your status reverts to free membership with the restricted scope of use and services associated with the free membership.

7.4 Contracts with the Customer for free memberships run for an indefinite period of time and may be terminated anytime by both parties (e.g. by email or electronically through the respective setting in your Rows account).

7.5 The legal right of both parties to termination of both free membership and paid subscriptions for material breach remains unaffected.

8. Availability, Data Back-Ups

8.1 Rows intends to make and keep the services and the software available to Customers 24/7. However, we cannot guarantee availability at any time. In particular, access to our services and software may be temporarily restricted or disabled to the extent that the security of the network operation or the maintenance of the network integrity is endangered or in case of maintenance works, e.g. updates, patches and modifications, whereby the necessary restart of the server can lead to brief interruptions in server operation. Furthermore, access to our services and software may be temporarily restricted or disabled if our server is not available due to technical or other problems beyond Rows’ control (e. g. in the case of force majeure or third-party negligence).

8.2 Please note that through your use of third-party services and third-party APIs in connection with our software and services, our software and services interoperate with a range of third-party service features. Rows does not make any warranty or representation on the availability of those features and/or APIs. Please note that such third-party web services, features and third-party APIs and their usage are subject to the terms and conditions of the respective third party.

8.3 You are obliged to secure the Customer Data and to make back-ups thereof regularly in your own responsibility.

9. Liability

9.1 Rows accepts full liability for damage and losses caused by intent or gross negligence.

9.2 Rows accepts liability for ordinary negligence only for injury to life, limb or health or breach of material contract duties whose fulfilment is essential to the due and proper performance of the contract or whose breach compromises the achievement of the contractual purpose and whose fulfilment the Customer could reasonably rely upon (“material obligation”). The liability of Rows for any breach by negligence of a material obligation shall be limited to damage and losses that are characteristic for the type of contract and were foreseeable.

9.3 This limitation of liability shall not extend to any fraudulent concealment of defects or guarantee as to quality given by Rows, or claims of the Customer under liability legislation (such as the Product Liability Act).

9.4 The liability of legal representatives, employees and vicarious agents engaged for the discharge of duties of Rows shall not exceed the liability of Rows.

9.5 In deviation from sec. 9.1 to 9.4., where Rows offers a free temporary workspace on the Rows website that does not require a Rows account pursuant to sec. 2.2, Rows does not assume any liability or warranty to the user of such free temporary workspace.

10. Privacy Policy, Data processing on behalf of the Customer

10.1 For information on the processing of our Customer’s personal data while using our services, please find our privacy policy here.

10.2 In case you use our software to process personal data of third parties, defined as any information concerning the personal or material circumstances of an identified or identifiable individual and where such processing is not related to a purely personal or household activity of the Customer, you are responsible for compliance with any applicable data protection regulations for such processing. Rows will process the data transmitted by you only in accordance with your instructions. Details of such data processing on your behalf are subject to a separate data processing agreement to be concluded in accordance with the relevant statutory provisions between you and Rows. In case you are intending to process personal data of third parties as aforementioned, you may execute a data processing agreement from Rows here.

11. Final Provisions

11.1 These Terms shall be governed by German law to the exclusion of the rules on the Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and the rules for conflicts of laws.

11.2 If the Customer is a merchant, a corporate body under public law, constitutes special assets governed by public law, the exclusive competent court of jurisdiction for all disputes arising out of or in connection with these Terms shall be the respective court having jurisdiction over the registered seat of Rows.