Terms of service

Last updated 13 September 2026

These terms govern your use of Commonage, provided by Digital Tide LLC (“we”). By using the service you agree to them. If you are accepting on behalf of a community association, you confirm you are authorised to bind it.

How the service is arranged

Commonage is normally licensed to a community association. The association decides who may use it, what information goes into it, and what happens to that information. Residents and board members use the service through their association’s account.

This matters for two reasons. Your association’s own rules and governing documents continue to apply and are not changed by anything here. And where your association controls a record, requests about that record may need to go to the association rather than to us.

What your association decides, and what we do not

Commonage is software. We host it and keep it running. We do not govern your community, and we are not your association’s agent, manager, partner or fiduciary, and not yours.

In particular, we do not:

• adopt, interpret or enforce covenants, bylaws, rules or architectural standards;
• set, levy, waive, collect or forgive assessments, dues, fines, penalties, interest or liens;
• decide violations, approve or deny architectural requests, or determine who is eligible to vote, to run or to hold office;
• call, conduct, supervise or certify elections, meetings or votes;
• verify that what an association or its members put into the service is accurate, lawful, or consistent with that association’s governing documents;
• determine whether an association is complying with its governing documents or with any statute that applies to it.

Those are the association’s decisions and the association’s responsibility, and they remain so when the association records them, calculates them or communicates them using Commonage. The service reflecting a decision is not the service making it. Deadlines, templates, calculations and workflows are conveniences that an association may use or ignore; an association remains responsible for what its own law and documents require of it.

Disputes with your association or your neighbours

If you disagree with a fine, an assessment, an election result, a violation notice, an architectural decision, a board action or anything else your association does, that is a matter between you and your association. Raise it with them. We have no authority to change, reverse, reduce or overrule any of it, and asking us to will not resolve it.

To the extent the law allows, you release Digital Tide LLC from claims, demands and damages of every kind arising out of or connected with any dispute between you and an association, a board member, a manager, a vendor or another resident — including disputes about money owed, records, access, enforcement, elections or anything an association did or did not do. This does not release us from our own obligations to you under these terms.

Accounts

• Keep your sign-in credentials to yourself. Activity under your account is treated as yours.
• Give accurate information about who you are and what property you are connected to. Access rights depend on it.
• Tell us promptly if you believe your account has been used by someone else.

Acceptable use

Do not use Commonage to:

• break the law, or infringe someone else’s rights;
• reach records you are not entitled to, or attempt to work around the boundaries between communities;
• upload malicious code, or interfere with the service’s operation or availability;
• harass or abuse another user, including a board member or a neighbour;
• extract data in bulk by automated means, except through an interface we provide for that purpose.

Your content

You keep ownership of what you put into Commonage. You grant us the permission we need to host, process and display it so the service works — including showing it to the people in your association entitled to see it.

You are responsible for having the right to upload what you upload, and for the accuracy of what you record.

De-identified and aggregated data

We may create and use de-identified, aggregated information derived from activity in the service — information that does not identify any person, property or community — to operate, secure, analyse and improve Commonage, and to produce general statistics. Using information that identifies you for any purpose beyond delivering the service requires your consent.

Fees and payment

Subscription fees are set out in the agreement with your association. Where Commonage is used to collect dues, assessments or fees, payments are processed by our payment processor under its own terms; we do not store card numbers. Amounts owed to an association, and any penalty or interest on them, are set by that association and its governing documents, not by us.

Records and retention

Some records — ledger entries, ballots and statutory association records — are kept for a period set by law, and are append-only: they are not edited or deleted after the fact, including by us. This is what allows a board to answer a question about a past decision. Retention periods are set out in our privacy policy.

Availability

We work to keep Commonage available and will give notice of planned maintenance where we reasonably can. Unless a separate written agreement with your association says otherwise, the service is provided without a guaranteed level of availability.

Ending your use

An association may end its subscription under its agreement with us. We may suspend or end access where these terms are broken, where continuing would create a legal or security risk, or where fees go unpaid. On termination, an association may export its data for a reasonable period before it is deleted, subject to the retention periods above.

Disclaimers

Commonage is not legal, financial, accounting or tax advice. Community association law varies by state and changes over time. Templates, workflows, deadlines and calculations in the service are tools, not advice, and they do not replace a professional. Confirm anything consequential — particularly election procedure, assessment enforcement and statutory deadlines — with your association’s counsel.

Except as these terms expressly state, the service is provided “as is” and “as available”, and to the fullest extent the law allows we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or that any calculation, deadline or template it produces is correct or sufficient for your situation.

We are not responsible for the acts or omissions of third parties, including payment processors, email providers, identity providers and the networks any of them depend on, or for information an association, a manager or another user puts into the service.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, lost goodwill, or the cost of substitute services — whether the claim is brought in contract, tort, negligence, strict liability, statute or otherwise, and whether or not we were told such damages were possible.

Our total liability for all claims arising out of or relating to the service, in the aggregate, will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount actually paid to us for the service in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the first claim, or (b) one hundred US dollars. This limit applies even if a remedy in these terms is found to have failed of its essential purpose.

Without limiting the above, we are not liable for loss arising from a decision an association makes or fails to make; from the content, accuracy or lawfulness of anything an association or a user records; from an association’s compliance or non-compliance with its governing documents or with any statute; from reliance on a template, calculation, deadline or workflow in place of professional advice; or from a dispute described under disputes with your association or your neighbours.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions or limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for fraud, for willful misconduct, or for gross negligence where the law so provides. These limits reflect an agreed allocation of risk and are part of the basis on which the service is offered at its price.

Indemnity

If you are an association, or you accept these terms on behalf of one, you will defend, indemnify and hold harmless Digital Tide LLC and its members, officers and employees from claims, damages, penalties, losses and reasonable legal fees brought by a third party and arising out of or connected with:

• the association’s decisions, actions and omissions, including assessment, enforcement, election, architectural, records and meeting decisions;
• information the association or its users put into, or take out of, the service;
• the association’s compliance or non-compliance with its governing documents or with any law applicable to it, including notice, record-keeping, election and collection requirements;
• use of the service in breach of these terms.

If you are an individual user, you will indemnify us on the same basis for claims arising from your own breach of these terms or your misuse of the service. We will tell you promptly about any claim we seek indemnity for, and you may control its defence provided any settlement that admits fault or imposes an obligation on us has our written agreement.

Time limit on claims

Any claim arising out of or relating to the service or these terms must be brought within one year after the claim arises, or it is permanently barred — unless the law that applies to you does not allow a shortened period, in which case the shortest period that law permits applies.

Resolving disputes with us

Talk to us first. Before starting arbitration or a lawsuit, send a written description of the dispute and the relief you want to privacy@commonage.app. We will do the same for a dispute we have with you. Give it sixty days; most things end here.

Binding arbitration. If that does not resolve it, any dispute between you and Digital Tide LLC arising out of or relating to the service or these terms will be resolved by final and binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its rules then in effect, before a single arbitrator, seated in Tennessee or conducted remotely at the arbitrator’s direction. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction. You and we are giving up the right to a trial before a judge or jury.

No class actions. Disputes will be brought only in an individual capacity. Neither you nor we may bring or take part in a class, collective, consolidated or representative proceeding, and the arbitrator may not award relief to anyone who is not a party. If this paragraph is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim — and only that claim — proceeds in court, and the rest of this section still applies.

What is carved out. Either of us may bring an individual claim in small-claims court, and either of us may ask a court for an injunction to stop unauthorised access to the service or misuse of intellectual property.

You can opt out. You may reject this arbitration and class-waiver section by emailing privacy@commonage.app within thirty days of first accepting these terms, with your name and the community you are connected to. Opting out costs you nothing else in these terms, and it affects only this section.

Governing law and venue

These terms and any dispute arising out of them or the service are governed by the laws of the State of Tennessee, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Where a dispute proceeds in court rather than arbitration, you and we consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the state and federal courts located in Tennessee, and each waive any objection to that venue.

Nothing in this section deprives a consumer of the protection of mandatory rules of the place where they live.

General

• Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, it is modified to the least extent needed to make it enforceable, or severed, and the rest remains in force.
• No waiver. Not enforcing a provision on one occasion does not waive it.
• Assignment. You may not assign these terms without our written consent. We may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger or sale of the business.
• Entire agreement. These terms, with the privacy policy and any written agreement between us and your association, are the whole agreement about the service. Where a signed agreement with an association conflicts with these terms, that agreement governs for that association.
• Survival. The sections on your content, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, time limit on claims, disputes and governing law survive termination.

Changes to these terms

When these terms change, the date at the top changes with them. Where a change materially affects your rights, we will give notice through the service before it takes effect.

Contact

Notices under these terms — including the dispute notice and the arbitration opt-out described above — go to: