Verbatimus — School Licence Terms

Effective August 4, 2026

Publisher: Low Battery Studios ("we", "us", "our")
App: Verbatimus, a mobile app for learning English irregular verbs
Website: lowbatterystudios.net
Contact: ask@lowbatterystudios.net

Introduction

These terms explain when using Verbatimus requires a paid licence — whether you are a school, a class, or an individual teacher working on your own — what that licence covers, and the promises everyone makes when they use the app. They are written in plain English so a school administrator, or a teacher, can read them without a lawyer.

The short version: Verbatimus is free forever if you are learning a language for yourself. If you use it to teach or train other people, you need a paid school licence — that includes a school, and it equally includes one teacher working alone. The app is never locked or switched off — the requirement to hold a licence is a matter of trust and of these terms, not something the app enforces by blocking you.

Who these terms are between, and how you accept them

When you first open Verbatimus, it asks whether the device is for personal or school use.

• If you choose personal, you accept the personal-use parts of these terms as an individual.
• If you choose school, or if you paste a school key into the app, you means the School (defined below), and you accept these terms on the School's behalf. If you are an independent teacher, that School is simply you. If you are doing this for an organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to accept these terms for it and to commit it to the licence fees they describe.

Selecting school mode and/or entering a school key is how these terms are accepted for school use.

Definitions

• School — any use of Verbatimus to teach or train other people. That includes an individual teacher or private tutor working on their own, as much as it includes a school, college, language academy, tutoring business, company, government body, or other organisation. "School" is our shorthand for all of these; it does not mean you have to be an institution.
• Device — a single phone, tablet, or other piece of hardware on which Verbatimus is installed.
• Teacher / Seat — one individual teacher who uses Verbatimus as part of a School's teaching. One Seat means one teacher. Seat counts are how the licence fee is calculated. You pay per teacher, not per Device — one teacher who uses several Devices is still one Seat. An independent teacher with no institution behind them is a School of one, and needs one Seat.
• Licence — the paid permission, described in these terms, that allows a School to use Verbatimus. A Licence is valid while the School's monthly subscription is current and paid.
• School key — a small piece of signed text (signed so the app can check it is genuine) that a teacher pastes into the app once on each Device to record that the School holds a Licence. It contains no personal or student information.
• Trial — the free 40-day period a Device may be used for school use before a Licence is needed.

Free when you're learning for yourself

If you are an individual learning English irregular verbs for yourself, Verbatimus is free. That is true whatever your job — a teacher brushing up on their own English, on their own time, is learning for themselves and pays nothing.

• You pay nothing.
• There are no ads and nothing to buy inside the app.
• You never need a school key.

We intend personal use to stay free, and nothing in these terms asks an individual learner to pay. (See "Changes to these terms" — the personal-use-is-free promise is carved out of our right to make changes.)

Your licence to use Verbatimus

We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use Verbatimus:

• Learning for yourself: free, for your own individual learning.
• School use: for a School's own teaching, across its own Devices, for as long as the School holds a valid Licence.

We (and our licensors) own Verbatimus and everything in it. All rights not expressly granted here are reserved; using the app does not transfer any ownership to you.

When a school licence is required

You need a valid Licence if you use Verbatimus to teach or train other people — for example:

• a teacher using it with a class or with students they teach;
• a school, college, or language academy deploying it to learners;
• an independent teacher or private tutor using it with their own students, even working entirely alone;
• a tutoring business or company using it to train people;
• any other institutional or commercial use.

This obligation is a legal requirement under these terms — even though the app never enforces it. The app itself is never locked, blocked, or paywalled; it keeps working fully whether or not a Licence is in place, in the same spirit as classic "honour system" shareware. Using Verbatimus for School purposes after the Trial without a valid Licence is not authorised by the licence above and is a breach of these terms, even though the app continues to function. Holding a valid Licence for your School's use is your responsibility.

The 40-day free trial

When a Device is first set up for school use, that Device gets its own 40-day free Trial, with every feature working.

• Nothing is limited or disabled during the Trial.
• When a Device's 40 days end, the app shows a calm, on-screen reminder to enter a school key.
• This reminder never blocks or interrupts learning. The app continues to work in full. It is simply a nudge to buy a Licence if the School wants to keep using Verbatimus.

Because the Trial runs on each Device from its own first school-mode setup, adding a new Device may give that Device its own 40 days. This does not change the School's obligation to hold a valid Licence for its use of Verbatimus.

Fees and billing

Licences are sold as a monthly subscription, bought directly on our website. There is no application and no approval step.

• US$10 per teacher (Seat), per month. No minimum — one teacher is one Seat, and one Seat is a perfectly valid Licence.
• There are no volume tiers: the hundredth Seat costs the same as the first.
• Paying by invoice or purchase order: the price is the same, but card checkout may not suit your finance rules. Email ask@lowbatterystudios.net and we'll arrange it.

Billing details:

• Payment is handled by Stripe on lowbatterystudios.net. We do not see or store your card details ourselves.
• The subscription renews automatically each month until you cancel.
• You can change your Seat count, update your card, or cancel yourself at any time, without contacting us, from Manage your licence.
• Subscriptions are cancellable at any time. If you cancel, your Licence runs until the end of the current paid month and then does not renew.
• Monthly fees already paid are non-refundable, except where the law requires otherwise. On cancellation you keep access for the remainder of the paid month.
• A "Seat" means one teacher using Verbatimus under the School. You choose how many Seats to buy based on how many teachers will use it.
• Prices are in US dollars and are inclusive of any tax we are required to account for — the amount shown at checkout is the amount you pay.
• The checkout on lowbatterystudios.net and these terms are part of the same agreement and should be read together.

The school key — delivery and how it works

When a School buys a Licence, we provide a school key: a short piece of signed text.

• A teacher pastes the key into the app once on each Device. That's it.
• There are no accounts and no logins. You don't sign in, and you don't create a profile.
• No student or teacher data is ever sent to us by the app. To keep your Licence current, the app periodically sends your school key back to us to renew it — the key contains only your School's name, seat count, expiry, and subscription reference, never any information about your teachers or students. Between those renewal checks the app works offline. See our Verbatimus privacy policy.
• The key may be copied for use by your School's own teachers and Devices. If you are a School of one, it is simply yours.
• Lost your key? You can have a fresh one sent to the billing email address on file from Manage your licence, without contacting us. Repeat requests are limited to one every few minutes. If we set your Licence up by hand — for an invoice or a purchase order — email us instead and we'll send it.
• Seat counts are honour-based, not enforced by the app. We trust your School to buy enough Seats to match the number of teachers actually using Verbatimus, and to keep that in line with what you're paying for.

Please use your school key only for your own School's licensed use. Don't publish it publicly or pass it to unrelated organisations.

Acceptable use

When using Verbatimus, please:

• use it for genuine learning and teaching;
• keep your School's Seat count honest and up to date;
• not resell, sublicense, or rebrand the app as your own;
• not break, tamper with, or reverse-engineer the app, except where the law says you may;
• not use the app for anything unlawful.

Keeping seat counts honest

Because seat counts are honour-based, we may occasionally ask a School to confirm, in good faith, roughly how many teachers are using Verbatimus, so the Licence matches actual use. This is a simple manual self-report, separate from the app. You can adjust your Seat count yourself, up or down, at any time from Manage your licence. Apart from the school-key renewal described above, the app sends us no data — and never any student or teacher information.

When a licence ends

A Licence ends if the School cancels it, if the monthly subscription is not paid, or if we end it for a material breach of these terms (for example, using Verbatimus for School purposes without a valid Licence, publishing the school key, or reverse-engineering the app).

When a Licence ends, the School must stop using Verbatimus for School purposes, or buy a new Licence — even though the app is not technically disabled and will keep running. Learning for yourself may continue for free. The sections on ownership, acceptable use, no warranty, and limitation of liability continue to apply after a Licence ends.

Privacy and licence verification

Verbatimus is built to be private. Everything you and your learners do in the app — all progress and activity — stays on the Device and is never sent to us. The app collects no student or teacher personal data.

The one exception is licence verification: so your Licence can renew automatically, the app occasionally sends your school key back to us. The key contains your School's name, seat count, expiry, and subscription reference — and nothing about your teachers or students. We use it only to confirm the subscription is active and return a renewed key. Our Verbatimus privacy policy describes this in full.

If you contact us by email (for example, about billing), we will of course have whatever you choose to send us. Payments are handled by Stripe under their own terms and privacy policy.

What we can and can't promise

Verbatimus is provided "as is" and "as available". We work hard to make it useful and reliable, but we can't promise it will be error-free, uninterrupted, or perfectly suited to every classroom.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all implied warranties, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Some places don't allow certain warranties to be excluded; where that's the case, those rights remain and this section applies only as far as the law permits.

If something goes wrong

To the extent the law allows:

• We aren't liable for indirect or knock-on losses — for example, lost teaching time, lost data, or lost profits.
• If we are found liable to a School despite the above, our total liability is limited to the amount that School paid us for the Licence in the 12 months before the issue arose. For free personal use, where nothing has been paid, our total liability is limited to US$50 or the smallest amount the law allows, whichever is greater.

Some places don't allow certain limits like these. Where that's the case, the limits apply only as far as the law permits, and nothing here removes rights that can't legally be removed.

App stores

If you download Verbatimus from the Apple App Store or Google Play, that store's terms also apply to your use of the app. Where required by the store, Apple and/or Google are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time — for example, if our pricing or how the school key works changes. When we do, we'll post the updated version on lowbatterystudios.net with a new date, and we'll aim to surface a short notice in the app (for example, at next launch or key entry) since we have no other way to reach you. For a School, material changes take effect from the next monthly renewal. Continuing to use Verbatimus after an update takes effect means you accept the updated terms.

One thing we won't change: learning for yourself stays free. This section does not let us start charging individual learners who use Verbatimus for their own learning.

We won't change the price of a monthly subscription part-way through a month you've already paid for.

General

• Entire agreement. These terms, together with the checkout on lowbatterystudios.net, are the whole agreement between us about your use of Verbatimus, and replace any earlier statements about it.
• Severability. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force.
• No waiver. If we don't enforce a part of these terms straight away, we don't lose the right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. We may transfer these terms to another company (for example, if our business is sold). A School may not transfer its Licence to another organisation without our consent.

Contact

Questions about licensing, billing, or these terms:

Low Battery Studios — ask@lowbatterystudios.net — lowbatterystudios.net