Terms of Service

Ottermerce writes to your BigCommerce store. That is the whole point of it, and it is also the thing that can go wrong, so these terms spend most of their length on who is responsible for what gets written. They are written to be read. Where the service has a limitation, it says so rather than leaving it for you to discover.

Agreeing to these terms

By creating an account, installing the app on a BigCommerce store, or using the service in any other way, you agree to these terms. If you are doing so for a company, you are confirming that you are allowed to agree on its behalf. If you do not agree, do not install the app.

In these terms, the service means the Ottermerce web application, its API and the BigCommerce app that connects to it. You means the account holder.

What the service does

The service reads catalog data out of a BigCommerce store into CSV or XLSX files, and writes data from those files back into the store. It covers products, variants, categories, pages, blog posts, redirects, brands, customers and customer groups, and provides a browser-based editor for changing many products at once.

Your store is the source of truth. The service does not keep its own copy of your catalog. It holds your uploaded files, the export files it produced, and a per-row record of what each import did — nothing else about your products or customers.

What you are responsible for

This is the part that matters most, so it is not buried. The service does exactly what your file tells it to do. A file can update, delete and replace real data, and the service has no way to know whether a row was intended.

• The contents of your files. A DELETE command deletes. A REPLACE command deletes and re-creates, which loses any field the file does not mention. Deleting a category deletes its sub-categories with it, because that is how BigCommerce behaves.
• Reviewing a dry run before a real run. Every import type can be run with Dry run ticked, which reports what each row would do and writes nothing. It takes the same code path as a real run, so a row that will fail is named there first. Using it is your decision, not a requirement, and skipping it is at your own risk.
• Having a backup. The service cannot undo an import. There is no rollback, and none is planned. Export the data you are about to change, and keep that file.
• Your BigCommerce credentials. Keep your store's API token and your account password to yourself. There is no password-reset email, by design, so a lost password cannot be recovered by email — contact support instead.
• The data you upload. You must have the right to upload it, and to have it written to the store you are writing to. If it includes personal data about your customers, you are the controller of that data and we process it on your instructions.

Email sent to your customers

The service sends no email of any kind — no verification, no welcome, no notifications. There is one exception, and it is opt-in per row: the customer importer reads a Force Password Reset column, and a row that sets it causes BigCommerce to email that customer a password-reset message.

That column is never implied by any other column, and the customer export never writes it, so a file that has been through an export and back cannot trigger it by accident. If you set it, you are asking for those emails to be sent, and you are responsible for having a lawful basis to contact those people.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use the service to write data to a store you are not authorised to change;
• upload files containing malware, or content that is unlawful where you or your customers are;
• attempt to reach another account's data, files, or store credentials;
• work around plan limits, or share one account between separate businesses to avoid them;
• use the service to send unsolicited email to your customers, including through the password-reset column above;
• load-test, scrape or attack the service, or use it in a way that degrades it for other users.

We may suspend an account that is doing any of these, and will say why. Where the problem is a misunderstanding rather than abuse, we will ask first.

Plans, limits and payment

Plans differ by how many imports you may run per day, how large a file may be, and how many items one import may contain. The limits that apply to your account are shown on the Plan page inside the app, which reads them from the same code that enforces them.

Paid plans are not yet purchasable through the app. There is no payment form and no card is stored. Every account is on the Free plan unless a paid plan has been arranged directly, and its limits are the trial — there is no time limit and no card required. When paid plans open, prices and billing terms will be stated before anything is charged, and nothing will be charged to an existing account without being agreed first.

Availability

The service is offered as it is, without a service-level agreement. It runs on a single server and may be unavailable during maintenance, a deployment, or a failure of a provider it depends on. Imports run on a queue, so an interruption may leave a run part-finished; the per-row results show which rows completed, and re-running the same file is safe for every command except NEW.

BigCommerce's own API is a dependency. When it rate-limits, errors or changes behaviour, imports fail with whatever it reports. Those failures are surfaced per row rather than hidden.

Your data, and getting it out

You can export your catalog at any time while your account is active, in CSV or XLSX. What the service stores about you, for how long, and how to have it deleted is set out in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms.

Ending it

You can stop at any time. Uninstalling the app from your BigCommerce control panel revokes the token BigCommerce issued to us. Using Disconnect in Settings only removes our copy of the token — it does not revoke it, and the page says so; uninstalling is what revokes it.

Ask us and we will delete your account and its files. We may close an account that breaches these terms, or stop offering the service entirely — in which case we will give notice with enough time to export your data.

Our liability

To the extent the law allows: the service is provided without warranties of any kind, and we are not liable for lost profits, lost revenue, lost or corrupted data, or any indirect or consequential loss. Our total liability for any claim is limited to what you paid us for the service in the twelve months before the claim, and where you paid nothing, that amount is zero.

Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded. Read this section next to the responsibilities above: the tool writes what your file says, the dry run exists so you can check first, and no backup is kept on your behalf.

Not affiliated with BigCommerce

Ottermerce is an independent product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by BigCommerce. "BigCommerce" is used only to say what the service works with. Your use of BigCommerce is governed by your own agreement with them, and this one does not change it.

Changes to these terms

If these terms change in a way that affects your rights or what you are agreeing to, the date at the top will change and the change will be noted. Continuing to use the service after that means you accept the revised terms.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Vietnam, and the courts of Vietnam have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them. This does not remove any consumer-protection right you have under the law of the country you live in.

Contact