Terms of service

The service

What we provide

Image compression and format conversion, on the website and through the API, and a page analyzer that measures the images on a page you name. We work to keep the service up and the results faithful, and we provide it as it is: we cannot promise it will never be down, or never produce a result you dislike.

• Compression is lossy by design. Every web result comes with a before-and-after view. Look before you download, especially at anything you cannot make again.
• Keep your own copy. Uploads and results are deleted within 24 hours and cannot be recovered afterwards. Blinkimg is a tool, not a place to keep images.
• Results are yours. What comes out belongs to whoever owned what went in.

Accounts

Your account

The website works without an account. An account adds a plan, credits and API keys. If you make one:

• Give a real email address that reaches you. It is how we verify you, reset your password and tell you about changes.
• Keep your password and your API keys to yourself. Anything done with them counts as done by you until you tell us they were stolen. Two-factor authentication is in Settings, and we recommend it.
• One person, one account. An organisation may hold an account and give its keys to its own systems.
• You must be at least 13, and old enough to agree to terms like these where you live.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. Where we can, we say why first.

Your content

Your images stay yours

You keep every right to what you upload. We take no ownership, and we claim no licence beyond the one it takes to do the job.

What you must not upload

• Content you have no right to use.
• Content that is illegal where you are or where we are.
• Sexual content involving minors. We report it.
• Malware, or anything crafted to break the service.

We do not review images, so we rely on you here. If we learn of a breach we may close the account and, where the law requires it, report what we found.

Our images

Using our images

The photographs, figures, charts and drawings on this site, the blog covers, and the before-and-after files of our own reference images are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, share and adapt them for any purpose, commercial ones included.

What the licence asks

• Credit Blinkimg and link to the page you took the picture from.
• Say if you changed it.
• Do not suggest that Blinkimg endorses you or your use.

What it does not cover

• The author’s portrait photos.
• The Blinkimg name, logo and wordmark.
• Your own images. They stay yours, as the section above says.

Each picture’s licence is also stated in the page’s structured data, so image search can show it.

Fair use

Limits and acceptable use

Free use is rate-limited so the service stays fast for everyone. Without an account you get 50 images a run, up to 10 of them conversions to another format, and 30 MB a file, with 100 images an hour and 300 a day from one address. The counter beside the drop zone shows where you stand. Each plan's limits are on the pricing page and enforced by the service.

Do not:

• Work around a limit, with many accounts, many addresses or otherwise.
• Run scripts against the website. The API exists for that.
• Resell the service, or present it as your own.
• Probe, overload or disrupt the service, or try to reach other people’s data.
• Click an ad the website shows, or cause clicks on one, by any automated or deceptive means.

We may block an address, a key or an account that does, and we may report abuse to the network it came from.

The page analyzer

The analyzer loads one public page you name and measures its images. Use it on pages you may read: your own site, or one anyone can open. A scan reads the page as a visitor would and changes nothing on it.

• One page a scan. Scanning a site page by page to map it, or scanning to load a site down, is misuse, and we may refuse, slow or block scans that look like it.
• Scans are counted a day: 5 without an account, and by plan with one; the pricing page has the numbers.
• A report describes a public page at the moment we loaded it, as our engine measured it. It is a measurement, not advice, and not a claim about the site or its owner.
• A report you claim can get a link that anyone can open. Sharing it is your choice, and you can delete the report at any time.
• A site can keep us out with a robots.txt rule for BlinkimgBot, and we honour it. The privacy policy says what a scan keeps.

Free use

Free use and advertising

The website is free to use. Free pages show ads from Google AdSense. Each ad is labelled as an ad, and Google decides which one you see. We do not endorse what they advertise, and a purchase from an advertiser is between you and the advertiser.

Paid plans show no ads on any page for as long as the plan runs. The privacy policy says what ads collect and how to turn personalised ads off.

Paid plans

Subscriptions, credits and packs

Subscriptions renew until you cancel

Monthly or yearly, charged in advance. Cancel any time from Billing; access runs to the end of the period you paid for, and nothing more is charged.

Switching plans is prorated

A switch happens on Stripe’s billing page. You pay the difference for the rest of the period, or the difference comes off the next payment.

Credits arrive by the month

Every account gets 500 free API credits on the first of each month; what is unused by the end of the month is gone. A plan adds its own credits for every month paid, the whole year at once on yearly billing; they roll over while the plan runs and lapse when it ends.

Packs never expire

Purchased credits stay on the account whatever the plan does. The free monthly credits are spent first, then the plan’s, then purchased ones.

Prices may change

Never for a period you have already paid for. A change to your plan’s price reaches you by mail before it applies.

Who sells, currency and tax

Paid plans and packs are sold through Link, a Stripe company, as the merchant of record: it charges your card, adds tax where it applies, sends the receipt and handles payment disputes. Blinkimg provides the service and the support for it. Prices are in US dollars; checkout may show them in your local currency.

Refunds

Our refund policy

• A duplicate charge is always refunded, whenever you notice it.
• A charge dated after you cancelled is always refunded.
• Credits already spent are not refundable, and a purchase is refunded at most once.
• Refunds go back to the card that paid, through Stripe, and take a few days to appear.

Developer API

The API and the integrations

• Keys are yours to protect. A call made with a key spends that account’s credits.
• Credits cost what the pricing page says: 1 per compression, 2 per conversion. An attachment (one original with its sizes) costs once: 1 credit to compress, 2 with one format, 2 more for each further format. A job that fails on our side is refunded in full. A job that fails on the file itself (a format we do not read, a damaged image, a size that cannot be reached) keeps its charge, like a finished one.
• Rate limits per key and per plan are enforced and published on the developer API page.
• We may change the API. A breaking change comes with notice by mail and a period in which the old behaviour still works.
• The SDK, the WordPress plugin and the Shopify app are not released yet. When each ships, it is covered by these terms and by the licence it is published under.

Availability

Changes, downtime and retired features

We change Blinkimg often, and we may add, alter or retire features. If we retire something a paid plan promised, we tell members before it happens, and the refund policy above applies on request.

Maintenance and failures happen. We aim for the service to be up, and we do not promise a level of uptime.

Liability

Warranty and liability

The service is provided as it is and as available, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose.

To the extent the law allows, our total liability for anything arising from the service is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. We are not liable for lost data, lost profits, or indirect or consequential damages. Nothing here limits a liability the law does not allow to be limited.

You agree to cover us against claims that arise from content you uploaded without the right to.

Ending it

Ending the agreement

Changes

Changes to these terms

The date at the top moves when these terms do. A change that matters goes out by mail to members before it takes effect. Using the service after that date means you accept the new terms. If you do not, stop using the service and tell us; we refund the rest of a paid period.

Disagreements are best settled by mail, and most are settled with one. Write to us before anything else; the privacy policy covers what we hold about you.

Contact

How to reach us