Terms & Conditions

1.1 Eligibility. To use the Services, you must be at least eighteen (18) years of age and have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract. By creating an account, you represent and warrant that you meet these requirements.

1.2 Account creation. You must create an account to access the Services. Registration and sign-in are available through GitHub OAuth or email one-time passcode. You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account and within any organizations you own or join.

1.3 Account security. You are responsible for protecting access to your authentication methods (including your GitHub account and email inbox). INSTANT LTD is not responsible for loss or damage arising from your failure to secure your account or devices.

1.4 Accurate information. You agree to provide accurate registration information and to keep your contact details current so we can send billing, security, and service notices.

2.1 Organization model. Resources on Instant Cloud (applications, databases, domains, environment variables, builds, and related configuration) are provisioned and billed at the organization level. An individual user may create or belong to one or more organizations, subject to platform limits.

2.2 Roles and responsibility. Organization members may hold roles such as owner, admin, or member. The organization owner(s) are responsible for billing, invites, member access, and activity under that organization. You are responsible for the conduct of anyone you invite.

2.3 Shared access. Anyone with access to an organization may be able to view, modify, or delete that organization's resources and configuration, including secrets and connection details, depending on their permissions. Choose members carefully.

3.1 Prepaid credit model. The Services use a prepaid organization credit balance denominated in Rwandan Francs (RWF). Usage is deducted from that balance as you consume compute, storage allocation, builds, custom domains, and other billable features described on our pricing page and in your billing console.

3.2 Top-ups. You may add credits through the payment methods we make available in the product (currently mobile money via our payment partner, Intouch, and any manual or promotional grants we issue). We do not store your mobile-money PIN or full payment instrument secrets; confirmation of successful payment is received from the payment provider.

3.3 Provisioning buffer. Before creating or scaling certain resources, your organization must hold enough credits to cover a published runway buffer (currently seventy-two (72) hours of the selected compute cost). We may refuse or pause provisioning if the buffer is not met.

3.4 Pricing changes. Rates and buffers may change. For material price increases, we will provide at least thirty (30) days' notice by email or in-product notice before the change applies to ongoing usage. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.

3.5 Taxes. Unless we state otherwise, amounts shown in the product are the amounts debited from your credit balance. You are responsible for any taxes applicable to your purchase or use of the Services under local law.

3.6 Credits and refunds.

• Credits purchased or granted have no cash value, are non-transferable between organizations except as we expressly permit, and are applied only to usage on Instant Cloud.
• Consumed usage is not refundable. Unused prepaid balance is generally non-refundable, except where we choose, in our discretion, to issue a refund or credit adjustment for a clear billing error, duplicate top-up, or service incident we acknowledge in writing.
• Promotional or manually granted credits may be revoked if issued in error, obtained through abuse, or if your organization violates this Agreement.
• Refund requests, when we agree to consider them, must come from an organization owner using a registered contact email. We may require identity and payment verification. Approved refunds are processed by the methods we designate and may take a reasonable period to complete. Bank, mobile-money, currency conversion, and intermediary fees are your responsibility unless we agree otherwise in writing.

You may use the Services only for lawful purposes and in a manner that does not harm Instant Cloud, our infrastructure providers, other customers, or third parties. Without limitation, you must not:

• Use the Services for illegal activity, fraud, phishing, or distribution of malware, ransomware, or exploit kits.
• Launch or participate in denial-of-service attacks, port scanning of third-party systems without authorization, or other network abuse.
• Send unsolicited bulk communications (spam) or operate open relays or similar abusive mail infrastructure.
• Mine cryptocurrency or run similarly abusive high-intensity workloads that degrade shared infrastructure, except where we expressly authorize a workload type in writing.
• Infringe intellectual property, privacy, or other rights; host or distribute child sexual abuse material; or facilitate trafficking, terrorism, or other violent crime.
• Attempt to bypass billing, quotas, authentication, multi-tenancy isolation, or security controls; probe or attack the platform itself; or resell the Services without our prior written consent.
• Use the Services for activities that create unreasonable risk of physical harm, critical infrastructure disruption, or regulatory sanctions exposure for Instant Cloud.

We may investigate suspected violations, suspend or terminate organizations, remove content or resources, and report activity to authorities where required. Report abuse to support@instant.rw.

5.1 Low balance and grace. If your organization's credit balance is insufficient to continue normal operation, we may warn you and place the organization into a grace period (currently forty-eight (48) hours). During grace, existing resources may continue to run and accrue charges while new or scaled provisioning may be restricted.

5.2 Suspension. If the balance is not restored before grace ends, we may suspend the organization: applications may be scaled down or paused, managed databases may be stopped, and creating new billable resources may be blocked. Data is generally preserved during suspension, subject to Section 5.3.

5.3 Retention and deletion after suspension. If an organization remains suspended, we retain compute resources and associated volumes for a limited retention window (currently fourteen (14) days from suspension). We send deletion warnings during that window. After the retention window, we may permanently deprovision Swarm services and wipe managed database volumes and related runtime data. That destruction is irreversible. Account metadata and billing history may be retained as described in our Privacy Policy. You are responsible for exporting anything you need before deletion.

5.4 Restoration. Topping up to a sufficient balance may restore access if resources have not yet been permanently deprovisioned. After permanent deletion, restoration is not available.

5.5 Policy and security suspensions. We may suspend or terminate access immediately for AUP violations, security incidents, legal process, non-payment abuse, or risk to the platform, with or without prior notice when urgency requires it.

5.6 Termination by you. You may stop using the Services and delete organizations and resources through the product controls we provide. Outstanding usage already incurred remains payable from remaining credits. Unused credits are handled under Section 3.6.

6.1 No formal SLA. Instant Cloud does not currently offer a contractual uptime Service Level Agreement. The Services are provided on an "as available" basis. We work to keep the platform reliable, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation.

6.2 Planned and unplanned interruption. Downtime may result from maintenance, deployments, capacity limits, network issues, upstream provider incidents (including our compute hardware provider, registry, edge, control-plane hosting, DNS, or payment partners), software defects, or force majeure.

6.3 Credits for incidents. If we choose to issue goodwill or incident credits, those credits are applied to future usage only, have no cash value, and are your sole remedy for availability shortfalls unless mandatory law requires otherwise.

7.1 Your content. You retain ownership of source code, data, and content you store in or process through your applications, databases, and configuration. We do not claim ownership of your content. You grant us a limited licence to host, copy, transmit, and process that content solely to provide and secure the Services (including builds, deployments, backups we may offer in future, logs, and support).

7.2 Your responsibilities. You are solely responsible for: (a) the security of your applications, databases, credentials, and secrets; (b) configuring access controls and dependency updates; (c) complying with laws applicable to your content and end users; and (d) maintaining your own backups and disaster-recovery plans. Managed database backups and customer object storage may be limited or unavailable depending on product maturity—do not treat the platform as your only copy of critical data.

7.3 GitHub and builds. If you connect GitHub, you authorize us (via OAuth and/or our GitHub App) to access repositories you select, clone source for builds, receive webhooks, and store deployment metadata (such as repository name, branch, and commit SHA). Build artifacts may be stored in our private container registry. You represent that you have rights to the repositories you connect.

7.4 Infrastructure dependency. Compute-plane workloads run on Linux hosts we operate in our Kigali region (KGL-1), which may depend on third-party hardware and network providers. Control-plane components (dashboard, API, auth, billing metadata, queues) may run on separate hosting providers. Failures at any layer can affect the Services.

7.5 Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond reasonable control, including natural disasters, war, terrorism, pandemics, government action, internet backbone or power-grid failures, and widespread third-party infrastructure outages.

8.1 Security measures. We implement commercially reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect the platform, including encryption of secrets at rest in the control plane, TLS in transit where applicable, and network isolation between platform roles. You remain responsible for securing workloads you deploy.

8.2 Security incidents. If we become aware of a security incident that materially affects personal data we process as a controller, or that results in unauthorized access to your provisioned resources under our control, we will notify affected account contacts without undue delay and, where feasible, within seventy-two (72) hours of confirming the incident, with information reasonably available to us about the nature of the incident and steps taken.

8.3 Privacy Policy. How we collect, use, share, and retain personal data is described in our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference into this Agreement.

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless INSTANT LTD, its directors, employees, and agents from and against third-party claims, losses, damages, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to: (a) your use of the Services; (b) your content and provisioned resources; (c) your violation of this Agreement or law; or (d) your infringement of third-party rights.

If we seek indemnification, we will notify you of the claim with reasonable promptness and you will reasonably cooperate in the defence. You may not settle a claim that imposes obligations on us without our prior written consent.

10.1 Platform IP. All rights in the Services— including the platform, Instantpack build technology, APIs, documentation, and branding— remain with INSTANT LTD and its licensors. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Services solely as permitted by this Agreement.

10.2 Restrictions. You may not copy, modify, create derivative works of, reverse-engineer (except to the limited extent mandatory law allows), or resell the Services; or use our marks without prior written permission.

10.3 Feedback. If you submit suggestions or feedback (including through the in-app Feedback feature), you grant us an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide licence to use and incorporate that feedback without obligation or compensation to you.

11.1 Governing law. This Agreement is governed by the laws of the Republic of Rwanda, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

11.2 Dispute resolution. The parties will first attempt to resolve disputes informally for thirty (30) days after written notice. If unresolved, either party may pursue mediation and, failing that, binding arbitration administered in Kigali, Rwanda, in English, under rules of a mutually agreed forum (including the Kigali International Arbitration Centre where applicable). Either party may seek interim injunctive relief from competent courts in Kigali to protect rights pending resolution.

12.1 Disclaimer. THE SERVICES ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, OR FREE OF DATA LOSS.

12.2 Limitation. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW: (a) we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including lost profits, revenue, goodwill, or data, or the cost of substitute services; and (b) our total cumulative liability arising out of this Agreement or the Services will not exceed the greater of (i) the total amounts you paid to INSTANT LTD for the affected organization in the twelve (12) months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (ii) RWF 500,000.

12.3 Exceptions. Nothing in this Agreement limits liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, indemnification obligations that cannot be limited, or any liability that cannot be limited under mandatory Rwandan law.

You acknowledge that these limitations are an essential basis of the bargain and that we would not provide the Services on these terms without them.

13.1 Changes. We may modify this Agreement. For material changes (including pricing, deletion timelines, or liability terms), we will provide at least thirty (30) days' notice by email or in-product notice. AUP updates may take effect on posting when needed to address abuse. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance, except where we require affirmative re-acceptance.

13.2 Notices. We may notify you via the email on your account or in-product messages. Formal notices to us may be sent to legal@instant.rw or support@instant.rw.

13.3 Assignment. Neither party may assign this Agreement without the other's consent, except in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of substantially all assets.

13.4 Severability; entire agreement. If a provision is unenforceable, the remainder stays in effect. This Agreement, together with the Privacy Policy and any order-specific terms we expressly accept in writing, is the entire agreement and supersedes prior understandings regarding the Services.

13.5 Relationship. The parties are independent contractors. This Agreement does not create a partnership, joint venture, or employment relationship.

Questions about these Terms & Conditions: support@instant.rw.