Terms of Service

1. Who we are and who you are

We are Zain Stack LLC (زين ستاك ذ م م), a limited liability company registered in Sharjah Media City Free Zone (SHAMS). Registered address: Sharjah Media City, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Contact: hello@zainstack.com. We sell professional software development services to businesses. We are not a recruiting, staffing, or employment agency. Buying a plan does not make anyone your employee.

By using the website or asking us to work, you confirm you have authority to do so. If you are an individual acting wholly or mainly outside a trade or profession, tell us before paid work starts so we can apply any extra consumer rules that cannot be excluded.

2. Using the website

The website is information about our services. Listed prices are an invitation to contact us, not a binding offer to the world. Submitting an enquiry does not create a paid engagement and does not charge you.

You must not misuse the form (spam, malware, unlawful content), attempt to disrupt the site, or submit other people’s personal data without a lawful basis.

3. The services

If we agree to work together, we provide senior-led, AI-assisted custom software development as described in the Service Agreement and, unless it says otherwise, on a monthly capacity plan (Starter, Growth, Scale, or Custom) or a scoped project.

• Included monthly hours are a cap — not unlimited time, unlimited revisions, or 24/7 support.
• Extra hours are agreed in advance and billed only for time actually used, at the extra-hour rate then confirmed in writing.
• Unused included hours do not roll over unless a Service Agreement says otherwise.
• We may use AI-assisted development tools. We remain responsible for the professional quality of work we deliver. We will not use your confidential client materials to train publicly available models where our tools and contracts allow us to prevent that.
• Plans do not include a dedicated employee team. Specialists may be involved when a project needs extra skill or capacity.

4. Your responsibilities

You will provide timely access, decisions, content, environments, and acceptances reasonably needed. Delays on your side may delay delivery. You are responsible for the lawfulness of data you give us to put in your software, for your users’ accounts, and for backups of production systems unless we have expressly agreed in writing to host or back them up.

5. Fees and payment

Fees are those we confirm in a Service Agreement or invoice. Website prices can change; an agreed engagement uses the price we confirm in writing.

• Unless agreed otherwise, monthly plans are billed in advance for the coming month.
• Extra hours are billed after they are used.
• Invoices are payable within 14 days of the invoice date unless the invoice states another period.
• You are responsible for taxes that the law requires you to bear. We will add GST, VAT, or similar tax to invoices where we are required to charge it.
• We may pause work if invoices are overdue.

6. Cancellation and refunds

We supply professional software development services. We do not sell physical goods, and this website does not take payment. A retail return-and-exchange policy for products therefore does not apply. If a signed Service Agreement says something different, that agreement controls for that engagement. Mandatory rules on defective or non-performed services still apply and are not excluded.

We advertise that monthly plans can be cancelled at any time. That means there is no lock-in term on standard plans. It does not mean a cash refund of a month already billed, because that month’s capacity was reserved for you.

Website enquiries. Submitting the form does not charge you. There is nothing to refund at that stage.

Monthly plans. Standard monthly plans have no minimum term. To cancel, email hello@zainstack.com (or the address on your invoice) stating that you wish to end the plan. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing month. We will not invoice later months. We do not charge a cancellation fee for ending a standard monthly plan at month-end, and we do not impose a consumer cancellation charge of the kind Indian e-commerce rules restrict.

Unused included hours. Included hours you do not use in a billing month expire at the end of that month. They are not refunded and do not roll over, unless your Service Agreement says otherwise.

Extra hours. Extra hours are agreed first and billed only for time actually used. Unused extra hours are not billed. Time already used is payable and is not refundable except where the deficient-services rules below apply.

Work already performed. Custom professional services already delivered cannot be “returned”. Fees for work already performed are not refundable, except where the deficient-services rules below apply.

Prepaid months that have not started. If you have paid in advance for a future billing month that has not started, and you cancel before that month begins, we will refund that unused prepaid month to the original payment method where possible.

Services not performed or deficient. If we fail to provide the services, or they are deficient or not as agreed, you are entitled — as applicable law requires — to have us re-perform the affected work, or to a refund of a fair part or all of the fees for that work. We will not refuse a refund that the law requires.

This is how that sits with the countries we serve:

• India. Where the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 apply, a seller of services must not refuse to discontinue the service or refund consideration if the service is defective, deficient, or not as agreed. Many of our clients buy for a commercial purpose and may not be “consumers” under that Act; we still follow this section. We do not complete checkout on this website; paid work starts only after we agree terms in writing.
• United Arab Emirates. Federal Law No. 15 of 2020 and Cabinet Decision No. 66 of 2023 require a service provider to warrant the service for a period matching its nature (or the agreed period, if longer). If that is not met, the customer may choose re-performance, a partial refund reflecting use or shortfall, or a full refund if the service was not performed. We honour that. We do not use a “no refund” term to avoid those duties.
• United Kingdom. Genuine business-to-business contracts have no automatic 14-day cooling-off right. If you are a UK consumer contracting at a distance, the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 may give a 14-day cancellation right unless an exemption applies — including where you asked us to start during that period and accepted that you would lose the right once the service is fully performed. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 also requires services to a consumer to be provided with reasonable care and skill. Tell us before paid work starts if you believe you are a consumer.
• United States. There is no single federal “return period” for custom professional services. We will follow this section as written and will not use unfair or deceptive practices. If we ever take card payments on a recurring basis from a person covered by an automatic-renewal law (for example California), we will provide the required clear cancellation method.

How to ask. Email hello@zainstack.com with the invoice or month concerned and what you are asking for (cancellation, prepaid-month refund, or a defect claim). Approved refunds go back to the original payment method where possible, within a reasonable period and in line with the payment provider and any applicable legal timeline. Please contact us before disputing a card payment so we can resolve it. We may contest a chargeback for work already delivered in line with this section and the card-scheme rules.

This is not a shipping, exchange, or restocking policy. We do not ship products. Source code and other deliverables already provided under a paid month are not recalled as if they were retail goods; the remedy for deficient work is re-performance or a fair refund as described above.

7. Intellectual property

When you have paid in full the fees for a custom deliverable, we assign to you the intellectual property in that deliverable that we are able to assign.

We keep all rights in our pre-existing materials, tools, libraries, know-how, and generic components. We grant you a licence to use those retained materials as reasonably needed to use the paid-for deliverable.

Open-source and third-party software remains under its own licences. You must comply with those licences in your use. Until fees for a deliverable are paid, we reserve our rights in unpaid work.

8. Confidentiality

Each party will keep the other’s non-public information confidential and use it only for the engagement, except information that is public (other than by breach), independently developed, received from a third party free to disclose it, or required to be disclosed by law (with notice where legally allowed).

9. Client data

When we process personal data inside software we build for you, you are typically the controller (or Indian data fiduciary) and we are the processor, except for our own CRM and enquiry data, where we are the controller. A data processing addendum can be signed on request for a client project. Website enquiry data is described in our Privacy Policy.

10. Quality of work

We will provide the services with reasonable skill and care. Custom software is not guaranteed to be error-free. You should test and accept work. Unless a Service Agreement sets a specific warranty period, we will fix defects in our work that you report while you are on an active paid plan, within that plan’s hours, or as otherwise agreed.

We do not warrant that software will meet a purpose we were not told about in writing, or that third-party platforms (cloud providers, APIs, app stores) will be uninterrupted.

Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that the law does not allow us to exclude: fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; death or personal injury caused by negligence; or any other liability that applicable law says cannot be limited (including, where they apply, non-excludable consumer rights in the UK, UAE, India, or US).

11. Limitation of liability

Subject to the previous paragraph, our total liability arising out of a Service Agreement is limited to the fees you paid us under that agreement in the 12 months before the claim.

We are not liable for lost profits, lost opportunity, loss of goodwill, or indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of data except to the extent we were contracted in writing to back it up, or for loss caused by your failure to keep credentials or backups.

These limits apply to the maximum extent permitted for business-to-business contracts in the relevant place. If a court finds a limit unenforceable, it will be modified only as far as needed to make it enforceable. For UK business customers, limits are intended to be reasonable under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977.

12. Indemnity

You will indemnify us against claims arising from content, data, or instructions you provide, or from your use of the deliverables in a way that infringes third-party rights or law, except to the extent caused by our negligence or breach of these Terms or the Service Agreement.

13. Independent contractor

We are an independent contractor. Nothing creates a partnership, joint venture, or employment relationship. Our people are not your employees.

14. Events beyond control

Neither party is liable for delay caused by events beyond reasonable control (including outages of major cloud providers, war, epidemic, or a change in law), provided they take reasonable steps to mitigate and give notice.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms for the website by posting a new version with a new date. Changes to an active paid engagement require agreement in writing, unless the change is required by law.

16. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of India, excluding conflict-of-law rules. The courts of India have exclusive jurisdiction, except that: (a) we may bring proceedings in your country of establishment to recover unpaid fees; and (b) nothing here limits any non-excludable right you have to bring a claim in your country of residence or establishment where mandatory consumer or data-protection law gives you that right.

17. Contact

Zain Stack LLC (زين ستاك ذ م م). Sharjah Media City, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. https://www.zainstack.com. hello@zainstack.com.