1. Agreement to these Terms
These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Joshua Hoffman, the developer and operator of Embark ("Embark," "we," "us," or "our"). They apply to the Embark mobile and web apps, the startembark.com website, and related services (collectively, the "Service").
By accessing or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
2. Eligibility
You must be at least 16 years old and legally able to enter into this agreement. If you are not old enough to enter into a binding agreement where you live, a parent or legal guardian must review and agree to these Terms on your behalf.
3. Your account
You must provide accurate account information and keep it current. You are responsible for activity under your account and for protecting access to your devices, email account, and sign-in methods. Notify us promptly if you suspect unauthorized access.
You may not transfer your account, impersonate another person, create accounts through unauthorized automated means, or use the Service if we previously suspended you for violating these Terms.
4. The Service
Embark helps you organize activities, hours, contacts, memories, and other application-related information. Features may include local access, cloud synchronization, notifications, dictation, exports, and paid functionality. We may add, change, limit, or remove features as the Service develops.
Embark is not an admissions service, healthcare provider, educational institution, legal service, or medical-record system. It does not guarantee admission, employment, certification, eligibility, or any other outcome. Information and suggestions provided by Embark are for organization and general informational purposes, not legal, medical, admissions, financial, or other professional advice.
5. Your content
You retain ownership of content you submit to the Service. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, copy, process, transmit, synchronize, display, format, and otherwise use that content only as reasonably necessary to provide, secure, support, and improve the Service, comply with law, and exercise our rights under these Terms. This license ends when the content is deleted from our systems, except for limited backup, legal, or operational retention described in our Privacy Policy.
You represent that you have the rights and permissions needed to submit your content and that doing so does not violate law, confidentiality duties, contracts, or anyone else's rights. You are responsible for reviewing generated transcripts and any output before relying on or submitting it.
Do not enter patient names, medical-record numbers, contact information, or other patient-identifying health information. You are responsible for following the confidentiality and record- keeping rules of your school, employer, clinical site, volunteer organization, and profession.
6. Acceptable use
You may not use the Service to:
- Break the law, infringe rights, breach confidentiality, harass others, or submit unlawful, deceptive, harmful, or malicious content.
- Fabricate experiences, hours, memories, credentials, references, or other application material.
- Probe, scan, disrupt, overload, reverse engineer, bypass, or gain unauthorized access to the Service or another user's data, except where a restriction is prohibited by law.
- Upload malware, scrape the Service, use unauthorized automation, or interfere with security, rate limits, authentication, or payment controls.
- Resell, sublicense, or commercially exploit the Service unless we agree in writing.
We may investigate suspected misuse and remove content, restrict features, or suspend accounts when reasonably necessary to protect users, the Service, or third parties.
7. Privacy
Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, share, retain, and protect information. By using the Service, you acknowledge those practices.
8. Trials, Early Access, referrals, and subscriptions
Free trial
Embark offers eligible users a seven-day free trial. You choose when to start it after signing in and completing setup. The trial is shared across your devices, requires no payment information, and does not automatically become a purchase or subscription. Reinstalling the app or deleting and recreating an account does not create a new trial entitlement.
Early Access Pass
The Early Access Pass is a one-time purchase, currently offered at US $14.99. The price, currency, and any applicable taxes shown by your app store or payment provider before purchase apply. Buy through Stripe in the browser app or through the mobile app’s store. Your trial and verified paid access are shared across devices signed in to the same Embark account. The pass includes the current activity, hours, and memory tracking tools, device sync, and every update and feature released during the Early Access period.
The pass covers the Early Access period, not lifetime access. We have not set an end date for Early Access. Application summaries, essay tools, and advisor feedback are planned and are not yet available. Their scope and release dates may change. Your pass includes any of those features released during Early Access; features released after the subscription transition will be covered by the subscription plans available then.
Transition to subscriptions
When Embark moves from Early Access to subscriptions, your pass includes three months of free access beginning at that transition, plus any verified referral months you have earned. We will give Early Access members advance notice of the transition and explain the subscription prices and options, which have not yet been finalized.
You will not be enrolled in a paid subscription or charged automatically because your trial, Early Access period, or free subscription months end. After your included months, you can choose whether to subscribe. If you choose a subscription, its price, billing period, renewal terms, and cancellation options will be shown before you agree to purchase. Subscriptions may automatically renew under the terms you accept at that time.
Referral rewards
Members with an active, verified Early Access Pass can share a referral code. An eligible friend must enter the code before buying their first Early Access Pass. Applying a code creates a pending referral; rewards are granted only after the friend's qualifying purchase is verified and both accounts meet the program's eligibility requirements.
- Each qualifying referral grants one free subscription month to each account, to use when subscriptions begin.
- Each account can earn up to three referral months total, including the month earned by using another member's code. Combined with the three months included with the pass, this provides up to six free months.
- You can use only one other member's code. An attached code cannot be changed or added after purchase. Self-referrals, reciprocal referrals between the same two accounts, and duplicate or fraudulent claims are not eligible.
- Pending referrals reserve reward capacity for 30 days. If a pending referral expires, the code may need to be applied again before checkout, subject to eligibility and available reward capacity.
- Referral months apply to future subscription access and do not reduce the Early Access purchase price.
- A refund, purchase revocation, or chargeback for either participant's qualifying pass reverses the associated referral rewards for both accounts. Ordinary subscription cancellation or the planned end of Early Access does not reverse earned referral rewards.
We may review referrals for abuse and withhold or reverse ineligible or fraudulent rewards. Pending or under-review referrals are not earned months. Current offer details are also available on our Pricing page.
When access ends
If your trial or paid access ends, you can still view and export your saved records, delete records, and delete your account without purchasing access. Adding or editing records, importing content, and other paid workflows require an active trial, Early Access Pass, or subscription. Access expiration alone does not delete your saved records.
Billing, cancellation, and refunds
Purchases made through Apple or Google are billed and managed by the applicable app store and are also subject to its terms. Cancel through the store or account used to purchase. Deleting Embark or your Embark account does not necessarily cancel a subscription. Purchases made through another payment provider must be managed through that provider. Refunds are handled under the applicable store or provider rules and any rights required by law.
We may change future prices or plan features with notice required by law. Attempting to evade trial, purchase, referral, or entitlement limits is prohibited. Nothing in this section limits refund rights or other consumer rights required by law.
9. Third-party services
The Service relies on third-party platforms and providers for functions such as authentication, hosting, synchronization, transcription, notifications, analytics, diagnostics, email, and payments. Your use of those providers may also be subject to their terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for third-party services outside our control, but this does not limit obligations we cannot disclaim under applicable law.
10. Our intellectual property
The Service, including its software, design, branding, and documentation, is owned by us or our licensors and is protected by intellectual-property laws. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Service for its intended purpose. No other rights are granted.
If you send suggestions or feedback, you allow us to use them without restriction or compensation. This does not give us ownership of your private Embark content.
11. Suspension and termination
You may stop using Embark at any time. You can permanently delete your account from the Danger Zone on your in-app Profile after confirming your identity, or contact us for help. We may suspend or terminate access if you materially or repeatedly violate these Terms, create risk or legal exposure, fail to pay applicable fees, or if necessary to protect the Service or others. When practical, we will provide notice and an opportunity to address the issue.
On termination, your license to use the Service ends. Provisions that by their nature should survive will survive, including those concerning ownership, payment obligations, disclaimers, liability, indemnity, disputes, and general terms.
12. Disclaimers
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available." We disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, and any warranty that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, accurate, complete, or error-free.
Local-first and synchronization features reduce some access risks but do not guarantee against data loss. Keep independent copies of information you cannot afford to lose and verify important dates, hour totals, transcripts, and application material before relying on or submitting them. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain disclaimers, so some of this section may not apply to you.
13. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Embark and Joshua Hoffman will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for loss of data, profits, opportunities, goodwill, or other intangible losses arising from or relating to the Service or these Terms.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability for all claims arising from or relating to the Service or these Terms will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid to Embark in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim or US $100. These limits do not apply where prohibited or to liability that cannot legally be limited.
14. Indemnity
To the extent permitted by law, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Embark and Joshua Hoffman from third-party claims, damages, losses, and reasonable costs arising from your content, your unlawful or unauthorized use of the Service, or your material breach of these Terms. This obligation does not apply to the extent a claim results from our own unlawful conduct.
15. Disputes
Before filing a formal claim, you and Embark agree to try in good faith to resolve the dispute informally for 30 days. Send a written description of the issue and the resolution you seek to support@startembark.com. This requirement does not prevent either party from seeking urgent injunctive relief or using an available small-claims process.
These Terms are governed by applicable United States law, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, except to the extent the law where you live requires otherwise. Nothing in these Terms limits consumer protections or other rights that cannot be waived by contract.
16. General terms
We may update these Terms as the Service changes. We will post the revised Terms and update the effective date. If a change is material, we will provide additional notice when required. Your continued use after revised Terms take effect means you accept them; if you do not agree, you must stop using the Service.
You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them as part of a reorganization, financing, merger, acquisition, or transfer of the Service. If any provision is unenforceable, it will be limited to the minimum extent necessary and the rest will remain effective. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us concerning the Service, except for any additional terms presented for a specific feature or purchase.
17. Apple App Store terms
If you obtain Embark through Apple's App Store, Apple's Standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement (the "Apple Standard EULA") applies to your license to the iOS app. These Terms govern your Embark account, content, and use of the broader Service and supplement the Apple Standard EULA. If these Terms conflict with the Apple Standard EULA solely regarding your license to the iOS app, the Apple Standard EULA controls.
Apple is not a party to these Terms and is not responsible for operating, maintaining, or supporting Embark. Questions, complaints, or claims about Embark should be directed to us using the contact information below. Your use of the iOS app must also comply with applicable Apple Media Services terms and App Store usage rules.
18. Contact us
Embark is operated by Joshua Hoffman. Questions about these Terms can be sent to support@startembark.com.