Legal

Terms of Service

Version 1.0 — Effective July 15, 2026

By creating an account or using the CertForge Service, you agree to these Terms.

1 Acceptance of Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") constitute a legally binding agreement between you and CertForge, LLC, a Colorado limited liability company ("CertForge", "we", or "us").

By creating an account, accessing, or using the CertForge certificate governance platform available at certgov.app and any related services (collectively, the "Service"), you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms. If you are accepting on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization.

If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the Service.

2 Description of Service

CertForge provides a certificate lifecycle governance platform that enables organizations to discover, manage, approve, issue, and renew TLS/PKI certificates across their infrastructure. The Service includes:

  • Certificate inventory discovery and management
  • Policy-based certificate issuance and approval workflows
  • Integration with public and private certificate authorities
  • Automated certificate renewal and alerting
  • Audit logging and compliance reporting
  • Self-hosted deployment options via the CertForge binary and open-source connectors

CertForge reserves the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service at any time with reasonable notice where practicable.

3 Account Registration and Security

To use the Service, you must register for an account with a valid email address. You agree to:

  • Provide accurate and current account information
  • Maintain the security and confidentiality of your credentials
  • Notify CertForge promptly of any unauthorized access to your account
  • Ensure all users of your organization's account comply with these Terms

You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account. CertForge is not liable for any loss or damage arising from unauthorized account access where you failed to reasonably protect your credentials.

4 Acceptable Use

You agree to use the Service only for lawful purposes and in accordance with these Terms. You must not:

  • Use the Service to obtain certificates for domains you do not own or control
  • Attempt to circumvent, disable, or interfere with security features of the Service
  • Use the Service to facilitate fraud, impersonation, or phishing
  • Reverse engineer, decompile, or derive the source code of the Service (except as permitted by applicable law)
  • Resell or sublicense access to the Service without written authorization from CertForge
  • Conduct automated scraping, crawling, or load testing beyond normal operational use

CertForge reserves the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate this policy.

5 Fees and Payment

Certain features of the Service require a paid subscription. Fees are described on our pricing page and may be updated with advance notice. By subscribing, you authorize CertForge to charge your payment method on a recurring basis.

  • Subscriptions are billed in advance on a monthly or annual basis
  • All fees are non-refundable except as required by applicable law or as otherwise stated in a separate order form
  • Failure to pay may result in suspension of your account
  • You are responsible for all applicable taxes

Price changes will be communicated with at least 30 days' notice and will not apply to the current billing period.

6 Intellectual Property

The Service and all associated software, interfaces, documentation, and content (excluding your data) are owned by or licensed to CertForge and protected by applicable intellectual property laws. Nothing in these Terms transfers any ownership rights to you.

CertForge grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access and use the Service solely for your internal business operations during the term of your subscription.

Open-source components of the CertForge ecosystem (including the certforge-connector, certforge-discovery, and certforge-issuer) are licensed separately under their respective open-source licenses.

7 Your Data

You retain all ownership rights to your certificate data, configuration, and other content you upload to the Service ("Customer Data"). You grant CertForge a limited license to process Customer Data solely to provide and improve the Service.

CertForge will process personal data within Customer Data in accordance with our Data Processing Agreement. CertForge will not sell or share your Customer Data with third parties for their own commercial purposes.

8 Confidentiality

Each party may have access to confidential information of the other. Both parties agree to: (a) keep confidential information secret using at least reasonable care; (b) use confidential information only as permitted under these Terms; and (c) not disclose it to third parties without prior written consent, except as required by law.

These obligations do not apply to information that is or becomes publicly known through no fault of the receiving party, was already known to the receiving party, or is independently developed without reference to the confidential information.

9 Warranties and Disclaimers

CertForge warrants that it will provide the Service with reasonable skill and care and substantially in accordance with its documentation.

EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY STATED, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. CERTFORGE DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR MEET YOUR SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS.

CertForge is not a certificate authority and is not responsible for the decisions of third-party certificate authorities integrated with the Service. CertForge is also not responsible for the availability, accuracy, or actions of third-party services used in certificate issuance, including but not limited to ACME providers (Let's Encrypt, ZeroSSL), DNS validation services, or cloud-based HSMs.

The Service does not constitute legal, compliance, or security advice. Customers are responsible for ensuring that their use of the Service meets their own legal and regulatory obligations.

10 Certificate Approval and Renewal Responsibility

Customer is solely responsible for reviewing and approving (or rejecting) certificate requests and renewals within the Service, and for configuring any automated approval or renewal policies. CertForge's role is limited to facilitating the workflow, recording the decision, and submitting approved requests to the applicable Certificate Authority.

CertForge shall have no liability for any certificate that expires, fails to renew, or is issued incorrectly as a result of: (a) Customer's failure to approve a pending request in a timely manner; (b) Customer's configuration of approval workflows or automated renewal policies; (c) the unavailability or errors of any third-party Certificate Authority or ACME provider; (d) the failure of DNS, domain validation, network connectivity, or other external dependencies outside CertForge's reasonable control; or (e) force majeure events, including internet infrastructure failures or government-mandated service interruptions.

Customer remains solely responsible for monitoring certificate expiration dates and for ensuring continuity of its own systems and services. CertForge may provide expiration alerts and renewal automations as a convenience feature, but such features do not constitute a guarantee of timely renewal or relieve Customer of its monitoring obligations.

Where Customer elects to store private keys within the Service, Customer acknowledges the associated risks and is encouraged to use customer-managed keys or hardware security modules (HSMs) where the security of the private key is critical. CertForge limits its liability for private key loss or compromise to the extent arising from CertForge's gross negligence or wilful misconduct.

11 Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL CERTFORGE BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFITS, DATA LOSS, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY LIABILITY ARISING FROM DELAYED OR FAILED CERTIFICATE RENEWALS, CERTIFICATE EXPIRATION, INCORRECT CERTIFICATE ISSUANCE RESULTING FROM CUSTOMER-APPROVED REQUESTS, OR ANY DOWNSTREAM OUTAGE OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION.

CERTFORGE'S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE FEES PAID BY YOU IN THE TWELVE MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM OR (B) ONE HUNDRED US DOLLARS ($100).

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, so the above limitations may not apply to you.

12 Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless CertForge and its officers, directors, employees, and agents from any claims, damages, losses, costs, or expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from: (a) your use of the Service in violation of these Terms; (b) your Customer Data; or (c) your violation of any applicable law or third-party rights.

13 Term and Termination

These Terms remain in effect while you use the Service. You may terminate your account at any time through the account settings. CertForge may terminate or suspend your account immediately for material breach of these Terms, non-payment, or if required by law.

Upon termination: (a) your access to the Service will cease; (b) your data will be retained and deleted in accordance with our DPA retention schedule; and (c) provisions that by their nature should survive (including limitations of liability, indemnification, and governing law) will survive.

14 Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Colorado, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-law provisions. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service that cannot be resolved informally will be submitted to binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Commercial Arbitration Rules, with proceedings conducted in Denver, Colorado.

Nothing in this section prevents either party from seeking injunctive or other equitable relief in any court of competent jurisdiction. You agree to bring any claim within one year of the event giving rise to the claim.

15 Changes to These Terms

CertForge may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be communicated by email or by a notice within the Service at least 30 days before taking effect. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of the updated Terms constitutes your acceptance of the changes.

If you do not agree to the updated Terms, you must stop using the Service before the changes take effect.

Questions about these Terms?

Contact us — we'll respond within 2 business days.

legal@certforge.xyz