Terms of Service

The Black Line · Last updated: November 1, 2026 · Version 1.0

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of The Black Line, the client management software for photography and video studios (the "Service"), offered by Roberto Panciatici, trading as The Black Line, Germany, VAT ID DE315901832 ("we", "us"). Full provider details are in our Imprint.

By creating a studio account, starting a trial or paying for a plan, you ("Customer", "you") agree to these Terms and to our Data Processing Agreement ("DPA"), which forms part of these Terms.

1. Who can use The Black Line

1.1 Businesses only. The Service is offered exclusively to entrepreneurs within the meaning of § 14 German Civil Code (BGB): photographers, videographers, studios and other businesses acting in their trade or profession. It is not offered to consumers. By accepting these Terms you confirm that you act as a business.

1.2 Account owner. The person who creates the studio is its owner and must be at least 18 years old and authorised to bind the business. The owner is responsible for everyone they invite to the studio (admins, members, collaborators) and for keeping login credentials secret.

1.3 Your clients never need an account. Your clients (couples, families, companies) use the public pages you send them (contract, signature, questionnaire, Client Lounge, payments). They are not parties to these Terms; their relationship is with you.

2. The Service

2.1 The Service lets you manage clients and services, prepare and send contracts for electronic signature, collect client data and questionnaire answers, plan payments and record what you receive, send emails from your studio, and, depending on the plan, use the Client Lounge, team access, API and MCP connectors, and AI features. The current features of each plan are described on our pricing page.

2.2 Your texts are yours. We provide the structure: templates, fields, signature flow, emails. The content of your contracts, questionnaires, guides, privacy notices and emails is written and chosen by you and is your sole responsibility, including whether it complies with the law that applies to you and your clients. The base templates we provide are neutral examples, not legal advice, and do not choose a governing law or venue for your contracts.

2.3 Electronic signature. The signature flow produces a simple electronic signature with an email code, a timestamp and a signed PDF. Whether it is sufficient for a particular contract depends on the law that applies to that contract; it is not a qualified electronic signature under the eIDAS Regulation.

2.4 Payments of your clients. The Service shows your clients how to pay you (bank transfer, PayPal link, card via your own Stripe account, cash, crypto details you enter). Money never passes through us. When you connect Stripe, the contract for card payments is between you and Stripe. Exchange rates for Bitcoin amounts are taken from public price sources and shown for information only.

2.5 Changes to the Service. We develop the Service continuously and may add, change or remove features. We will not materially reduce the core features of your plan (client records, contracts and signature, payment plans, questionnaires) during a period you have already paid for. If a change materially reduces your plan, we will tell you at least 30 days in advance and you may cancel with a pro-rata refund of prepaid fees.

3. Trial and early access

3.1 Free trial. If we offer a free trial, its length and the features included are stated on the pricing page or in the invitation. A trial never turns into a paid subscription by itself: at the end you choose a plan; if you don't, the studio becomes read-only (section 7.3) and nothing is charged.

3.2 Early access. Before general availability we may open studios by invitation ("early access"). Early-access features may be incomplete or change at short notice; sections 9 and 10 apply with the addition that we give no availability commitment for early-access features. Any special price agreed for early access is honoured for the period stated in the invitation.

4. Plans, prices and payment

4.1 Plans. The Service is offered in the plans published on our pricing page (currently Essential, Studio and Complete), billed monthly or annually in advance. Prices are net; VAT is added where applicable (reverse charge for businesses in other EU member states with a valid VAT ID).

4.2 Payment. Payment is processed by our payment provider (currently Stripe) or made against our invoice. If you subscribe with a payment method, you authorise recurring charges to it until you cancel. Invoices are sent by email.

4.3 Automatic renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically for the same period (one month or one year) unless cancelled before the end of the current period.

4.4 Upgrades and downgrades. Upgrades take effect immediately, with the difference charged pro rata. Downgrades take effect at the end of the current period. If a downgrade removes a feature, the related data stays stored and is exported with the rest of your data; it is no longer editable.

4.5 AI usage. Plans that include our AI features may include a monthly usage allowance stated on the pricing page. Above it, AI features may pause until the next month.

4.6 Price changes. We may change prices for future periods by giving at least 30 days' notice by email. The new price applies from the next renewal after the notice period. If you do not agree, you may cancel before the new price applies.

4.7 Late payment. If a payment fails, we may make your studio read-only after giving you at least 7 days' notice by email, until payment is made. We do not delete data because a payment failed, except at the end of the procedure in section 7 if the subscription ends.

4.8 Refunds. Fees already paid are not refunded, except where these Terms or mandatory law provide otherwise, or where we terminate for convenience (section 7.2).

5. Your obligations

5.1 Lawful use and lawful data. You may only enter personal data into the Service that you are allowed to process. For data about your clients and other people you are the controller under the GDPR; we process it on your behalf as your processor under the DPA. You are responsible for having a lawful basis, for informing your clients (your own privacy notice), and for handling their requests. The Service helps you with tools (export, archive, delete); the decision is yours.

5.2 Acceptable use. You will not use the Service to: send spam or emails to people who have not asked for them; store payment card numbers, passwords or special categories of personal data (health, religion, etc.) in free-text fields beyond what your work strictly requires; upload unlawful content or content that infringes third-party rights; attack, overload, reverse-engineer or scrape the Service other than through our published API and MCP; resell access to the Service without our written consent.

5.3 Fair use of storage and email. The Service is not a photo-delivery or backup service. If your use of storage or email clearly exceeds what is normal for a studio of your size, we will contact you first and agree on a solution before taking any action.

5.4 Your email domain. When the Service sends emails from your studio address, you are responsible for the mailbox and the sender settings you provide (for example SMTP credentials and SPF/DKIM records).

5.5 Indemnity. You will hold us harmless from third-party claims (including claims of your clients or authorities) arising from content you entered, texts you used, emails you sent or data you processed in breach of these Terms or the law, unless we are responsible for the breach.

6. AI features and connectors

6.1 What the AI does. Depending on the plan, the Service can draft emails, prepare a client's setup from an inquiry, or import data, using AI models of our sub-processor listed on the Subprocessors page. Nothing the AI prepares is sent to your clients without your approval.

6.2 Your review. AI output can be wrong or incomplete. You review it before using it, and you do not use AI features to take decisions that produce legal effects on people solely by automated means.

6.3 No training. We do not use your data or your clients' data to train AI models, and our AI sub-processor is contractually prohibited from doing so.

6.4 Your own AI (MCP and API). If you connect your own AI assistant or a third-party tool through our MCP server or API keys, that tool is chosen by you and acts on your instructions. The provider of that tool is not our sub-processor; your agreement with it governs how it handles the data it reads. Actions towards your clients still require your confirmation in the Service.

7. Term, cancellation and termination

7.1 Cancellation by you. You can cancel at any time in the Service, where available, or by email to us; cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period. There is no statutory right of withdrawal, because the Service is offered to businesses only.

7.2 Termination by us. We may terminate a subscription with 30 days' notice to the end of a month; in that case we refund the unused part of prepaid fees. Either party may terminate immediately for good cause (§ 314 BGB), for example serious or repeated breach of section 5.2, or payment arrears of more than 60 days.

7.3 Read-only period and your data. After the end of the subscription (or of the trial without a plan), your studio stays available read-only for 90 days. During the subscription and during these 90 days you can download your signed contracts as PDF in the Service and, on request by email, receive a copy of all your data (clients, services, contracts, payments, questionnaires, files) in a commonly used, machine-readable format (for example CSV or JSON) within 30 days of your request. Pages already sent to your clients (signed contracts, receipts) remain viewable during this period.

7.4 Deletion. After the 90 days we delete your studio and all its data from our systems, after reminding you by email at least 14 days in advance. Copies in backups are deleted when those backups are overwritten in their regular cycle; until then they are kept secure and used only to recover from a technical failure. You can ask us to delete earlier. Data we must keep under tax or commercial law (our own invoices to you) is kept for the legal period.

7.5 Suspension. We may temporarily suspend access, after notice where possible, if necessary to prevent a security risk or serious harm to the Service or third parties. We lift the suspension as soon as the reason ceases.

8. Intellectual property

8.1 The Service, its software, design and base templates belong to us or our licensors. During your subscription you receive a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service for your business.

8.2 Your content (client data, texts, photos, logos) belongs to you. You grant us the rights we need to host, display and process it in order to provide the Service, and for nothing else.

8.3 Feedback you give us may be used to improve the Service without obligation to you.

9. Availability and support

9.1 We make reasonable efforts to keep the Service available and to announce planned maintenance in advance where possible. We do not guarantee uninterrupted availability; interruptions can occur, in particular due to maintenance, security updates or events outside our control (force majeure, failures of the internet or of third-party networks).

9.2 We make regular backups of the Service's data. You remain responsible for keeping your own copies of documents you are legally required to keep (for example signed contracts and invoices).

9.3 Support is provided by email on business days. We try to answer within two business days.

10. Liability

10.1 We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the German Product Liability Act, and where we have given a guarantee.

10.2 For slight negligence we are liable only for breach of an essential contractual obligation (an obligation whose fulfilment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on which you may regularly rely), and only up to the damage that was foreseeable and typical for this type of contract when the contract was concluded.

10.3 In the cases of 10.2, our total liability per contract year is limited to the fees you paid for the Service in the 12 months before the event causing the damage.

10.4 Within the limits of 10.2 and 10.3, for the loss of data we are only liable for the effort that would have been needed to restore it from copies you made in line with section 9.2.

10.5 Our liability under the GDPR towards data subjects (Art. 82 GDPR) remains unaffected by this section.

10.6 Except in the cases of 10.1, we are not liable for the content of your texts and contracts, for decisions you take on the basis of AI output you approved, or for the services of payment providers and other third-party services you connect.

10.7 The limitations also apply in favour of our employees and agents.

11. Data protection and confidentiality

11.1 How we process the personal data of studio users (as controller) is described in our Privacy Policy. How we process your clients' data on your behalf (as processor) is governed by the DPA, which you accept with these Terms.

11.2 Each party keeps confidential the non-public information of the other it receives in connection with the Service.

12. Changes to these Terms

We may amend these Terms for valid reasons (new features, changes in law or case law, security). We will send you the changes by email at least 30 days before they take effect. If you do not agree, you may cancel your subscription with effect from the date the changes take effect and receive a pro-rata refund of prepaid fees for the remaining period. Until then the previous Terms apply to you.

13. Final provisions

13.1 Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG).

13.2 Venue. The exclusive place of jurisdiction for all disputes arising from or in connection with these Terms is Berlin, Germany, provided you are a merchant, a legal entity under public law or have no general place of jurisdiction in Germany. We may also sue you at your registered office.

13.3 Language. These Terms are drafted in English. If we provide a translation, the English version prevails, except for the German version of the DPA if you have accepted it.

13.4 Order of precedence. If there is a conflict: (1) DPA (for the processing of personal data), (2) these Terms, (3) the pricing page.

13.5 Severability. If a provision is invalid, the rest remains valid; the statutory provision applies in its place.

13.6 Notices. We send notices to the email address of the studio owner. You send notices to info@robertopanciatici.com.