Terms of Service

This is a translation. The German version is legally binding.

Terms of Service and customer information for Mesh

I. Terms of Service

§ 1 Scope

(1) These terms apply to all contracts between you and Yanick Stephan, Digital Services Stephan, Sängerbuchenweg 4, 64291 Darmstadt (hereinafter "we") about Mesh: an account on our Matrix server onmesh.chat in the tiers Mesh Free and Mesh Plus, and the use of the Mesh apps for desktop, web, iPhone, iPad and Android.

(2) A consumer is any natural person who concludes the contract for purposes that are predominantly outside their trade, business or self-employed profession. A trader is anyone who, when concluding the contract, acts in the course of their trade, business or self-employed profession.

(3) The contract consists of the following, in this order: the service description in the Pricing section on onmesh.chat, these Terms of Service and the Acceptable Use Policy.

(4) The customer's own terms apply only if we have expressly agreed to them in text form.

(5) We offer Mesh as a managed, self-hosted solution for businesses individually. The Terms of Service of Digital Services Stephan apply to it.

§ 2 Account

(1) You create an account on onmesh.chat yourself in a Mesh app. Registration is free of charge and does not commit you to anything.

(2) Your details must be correct. If your email address changes, you enter the new one in Mesh without undue delay.

(3) We can refuse a registration without giving reasons, in particular to protect against misuse.

§ 3 Conclusion of contract

(1) The presentation of Mesh on the website is not a binding offer.

(2) Mesh Free: the contract is concluded when you create the account and we activate it.

(3) Mesh Plus: you choose monthly or yearly payment in Mesh. Before submitting, you see an overview of all details and can change them or cancel the order. By clicking the button to place the order with an obligation to pay, you make a binding offer. The contract is concluded when we confirm the order in text form or activate Mesh Plus.

(4) We handle orders and the contract by email, partly automatically. Make sure that the email address you provided is correct and that our messages do not end up in your spam filter.

§ 4 Prices and payment

(1) Mesh Free is free of charge. Mesh Plus costs €3.99 a month or €39 a year. The prices at the time of the order apply. For consumers, all prices are total prices including VAT.

(2) We name the available payment methods and the payment service provider in the order process.

(3) The fee for Mesh Plus is due in advance for the respective billing period, that is for one month or one year. You receive invoices by email.

(4) If you are in default with a payment and still do not pay after a reminder with a reasonable deadline, we can suspend the services of Mesh Plus. Your account then continues with the services of Mesh Free. The obligation to pay remains.

(5) We can adjust prices for ongoing contracts at the end of a billing period if our costs for infrastructure, energy or licences change. We announce the change in text form at least 6 weeks in advance. In the event of an increase you can terminate the contract with effect from the date the change takes effect. If our costs fall, we lower the prices accordingly.

(6) You can only set off claims that are undisputed or have been finally established by a court. You have a right of retention only for claims arising from the same contract.

§ 5 Services and availability

(1) What we provide is set out in the service description in the Pricing section. Mesh Free includes chats, spaces, calls, end-to-end encryption, all apps and federation with other Matrix servers, with these limits: uploads up to 100 MB per file and 1 GB a month, camera in calls up to 720p, screen share up to 1080p at 15 frames per second, up to 10 people per call. Mesh Plus includes everything in Mesh Free and in addition the bridges under § 6, with these limits: uploads up to 500 MB per file and 10 GB a month, camera up to 1080p, screen share up to 1440p at 30 or 1080p at 60 frames per second, up to 50 people per call.

(2) The values stated for camera and screen share are maximums. What actually arrives also depends on your connection and device and those of the other participants.

(3) Mesh is in beta. We develop Mesh continuously. Functions may change and there may be errors. We do not restrict the main services under paragraph 1 for ongoing Mesh Plus contracts.

(4) Our servers and services are available 99 % of the time on a monthly average. Maintenance work is included in this. Outages we cannot influence are not counted, for example force majeure, faults on the internet outside our network or attacks by third parties despite reasonable protective measures. For Mesh Free we do not promise any particular availability.

(5) Matrix is federated. We deliver messages to users of other Matrix servers to those servers. We are not responsible for their operation, availability or handling of data.

(6) We may adapt hardware and software to the state of the art. We may have services provided by third parties, in particular data centres and infrastructure providers. They are listed in the Privacy Policy.

§ 6 Bridges

(1) With Mesh Plus you can connect your accounts on WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and Discord to Mesh through a bridge. The bridge signs in to that service on your behalf, passes messages both ways and, on request, brings in your past history.

(2) These services belong to third parties. Their terms apply to the use of your account there, and you comply with them yourself. A service may restrict, suspend or delete accounts used through a bridge, or change its technology so that a bridge stops working temporarily or permanently. We are not liable for this. You have no claim to any particular bridge.

(3) Chats through a bridge are not end-to-end encrypted on the way to the other service, because the bridge has to translate them.

(4) When Mesh Plus ends, access to the bridges ends too. We sign the sessions out of the other services. Chats already in your account remain there.

§ 7 Obligations of the customer

(1) You comply with the Acceptable Use Policy and make sure that third parties to whom you give access comply with it too.

(2) You keep passwords and your recovery key secret. If you notice misuse, you report it to us immediately.

(3) Only your devices can decrypt encrypted messages. If you lose all signed-in devices and your recovery key, neither you nor we can recover these messages. Keep the key safe.

(4) Your content must not break any laws or infringe any third-party rights. We are not obliged to check your content in advance.

(5) If you culpably breach these obligations and third parties bring claims against us as a result, you indemnify us against those claims. This includes the costs of a reasonable legal defence.

§ 8 Illegal and terrorist content

(1) No illegal content may be stored or distributed via our services. This includes content that is a criminal or administrative offence, infringes copyright, trademark, competition or personality rights, breaches data protection or youth protection law, or is terrorist content within the meaning of Regulation (EU) 2021/784. Details are set out in the Acceptable Use Policy.

(2) Anyone can report suspected illegal content to us, by email to the point of contact named in the Imprint. We review every report promptly, carefully and objectively. The review is carried out by humans. We use automated means only as support. We cannot read the content of encrypted rooms; we then review what is submitted to us with the report.

(3) If content is illegal, we can block or remove it, switch off individual functions, suspend your account or terminate the contract. We choose the mildest effective measure and take into account the rights of everyone involved, including freedom of expression and information.

(4) We carry out removal orders from a competent authority concerning terrorist content within one hour of receipt, provided the order contains no obvious errors and is complete.

(5) We inform you of every measure without undue delay and give reasons for it, unless the law prohibits this.

(6) You can lodge a complaint against a measure, with reasons and by email to the point of contact named in the Imprint. For measures concerning illegal content you have six months to do so, for measures concerning terrorist content one month. We decide within two weeks and tell you the outcome with reasons. If the measure was unjustified, we lift it and restore the content.

§ 9 Suspension

(1) We can suspend services in whole or in part if you breach the Acceptable Use Policy or § 7 and do not remedy the breach within a reasonable period after being notified.

(2) We suspend without prior notice only if third parties, other users or our infrastructure are at acute risk or if we are legally obliged to do so. We then inform you without undue delay.

(3) We lift the suspension as soon as the reason for it no longer exists. If you are responsible for the suspension, the obligation to pay remains.

§ 10 Term and termination

(1) The contract for Mesh Free runs for an indefinite period. You can end it at any time by deleting your account or by giving us notice in text form. We can terminate it with one month's notice.

(2) Mesh Plus with monthly payment runs for one month and is extended by a further month each time unless you terminate it by the end of the current month.

(3) Mesh Plus with yearly payment runs for one year. If neither party terminates by the end of that year, the contract is extended for an indefinite period. After that, either party can terminate at any time with one month's notice. For periods you have already paid for that fall after the end of the contract, we refund the fee pro rata.

(4) We can terminate Mesh Plus with one month's notice to the end of a billing period.

(5) The right to terminate without notice for good cause remains. For us, good cause exists in particular if you breach the Acceptable Use Policy seriously or repeatedly despite a warning, or if you are in default with two consecutive payments.

(6) Notice of termination can be given in text form, for example by email to info@dss-net.de. You can also terminate Mesh Plus via the termination button "Cancel contracts here" (section 312k BGB), which we provide in Mesh as soon as Mesh Plus can be booked.

(7) When Mesh Plus ends, your account continues as Mesh Free. The limits of Mesh Free then apply. Access to the bridges ends under § 6 (4).

(8) Back up your data before you delete your account. We then delete the data of your account without undue delay, at the latest after 30 days. We keep contract and invoice data for as long as the law requires.

§ 11 Defects

The statutory rights in the event of defects apply. Please report faults without undue delay and as precisely as possible so that we can fix them quickly.

§ 12 Liability

(1) We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the German Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz) and to the extent that we have given a guarantee.

(2) In the case of slight negligence we are liable only if we breach a material contractual obligation. These are obligations whose fulfilment makes the contract possible in the first place and on whose observance you may regularly rely. Liability is then limited to the damage that was foreseeable when the contract was concluded and is typical for the contract.

(3) In the event of data loss we are liable under paragraph 2 only for the effort needed to restore the data from a proper backup.

(4) Otherwise liability is excluded. Paragraphs 1 to 3 also apply to our vicarious agents.

§ 13 Data protection

How we process your personal data is set out in the Privacy Policy.

§ 14 Changes to these terms

(1) We can change these Terms of Service and the Acceptable Use Policy if the legal situation or case law changes, new services are added or a gap in the terms needs to be closed. We do not change the main services or the relationship between service and price in this way.

(2) We tell you about changes in text form at least 6 weeks before they take effect and highlight what is changing.

(3) If you are a trader, the changes are deemed accepted if you do not object in text form within 6 weeks of receiving the notice. We specifically point this out in the notice.

(4) If you are a consumer, the changes apply only if you expressly agree to them.

(5) If you object or do not agree, the contract continues on the previous terms. Either party can then terminate it with ordinary notice, observing the agreed notice periods.

§ 15 Final provisions

(1) German law applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. If you are a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory provisions of the country in which you have your habitual residence.

(2) If you are a merchant, a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law, or if you have no general place of jurisdiction in Germany, Darmstadt is the exclusive place of jurisdiction for all disputes arising from the contract. We may also bring an action at your registered office. Mandatory statutory places of jurisdiction, in particular for consumers, remain unaffected.

II. Customer information

1. Provider

Yanick Stephan
Digital Services Stephan
Sängerbuchenweg 4
64291 Darmstadt
Germany
Phone: +49 6150 5589000
Email: info@dss-net.de

2. Conclusion of contract and correcting entries

The steps for concluding the contract are set out in § 3. You can check and change your entries on the overview page until you submit the order.

3. Contract language and contract text

The contract language is German. The English version of these terms is a translation; the German version prevails. We do not store the contract text in a way that lets you retrieve it from us later. You can print or save the order details before submitting. After the order we send you the order details and these Terms of Service by email.

4. Main characteristics

The main characteristics of the services are set out in § 5 and in the Pricing section.

5. Prices and payment

The prices are set out in § 4 and in the Pricing section, the payment methods in the order process. If you initiate a payment from outside the European Union, you bear the bank charges incurred.

6. Right of withdrawal

Consumers have a statutory right of withdrawal. You can find the instructions and the model form on the Right of withdrawal page.

7. Liability for defects

The statutory rights in the event of defects apply.

8. Term and termination

The term and notice periods are set out in § 10.

9. Dispute resolution

We are neither willing nor obliged to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.

Last updated: 20 October 2026