Terms of Service

These terms govern your use of backroom.tools ("the Service"), operated by Backroom Tools ("we", "us"). By creating an account, you agree to these terms.

We've kept this short and readable on purpose. If something's unclear, email support@backroom.tools.

1. What the Service Does

Backroom.tools monitors the availability of your web services, servers, and endpoints. We make outbound HTTP, TCP, and SSL requests to targets you specify, record the results, and display them on public status pages. We also send you notifications when things go down or come back up.

Our monitoring requests originate from our server infrastructure. If you need to allowlist our IPs in a firewall, contact us.

2. Your Account

• You need a valid email address to sign up. You must verify it before you can create monitors.
• One account per person or organization.
• You're responsible for keeping your login credentials secure.
• You must be at least 16 years old to use the Service.

3. Acceptable Use

This is a monitoring service, not a penetration testing tool. You agree to:

• Only monitor systems you own or are authorized to monitor. Don't point monitors at someone else's infrastructure without their permission.
• Not embed secrets in monitor URLs. Don't put API keys, tokens, passwords, or other sensitive data in the target URLs you configure. Those URLs are stored in our database and visible in the UI.
• Not attempt to probe internal networks. We block requests to private IP ranges (10.x, 172.16.x, 192.168.x, localhost, link-local, etc.) for security reasons. Attempting to bypass these restrictions will result in immediate account termination.
• Not abuse the platform. This includes creating multiple free accounts, using the service to DDoS or stress-test targets, scraping public status pages at excessive rates, or any activity that degrades the service for other users.

4. Plans, Pricing, and Trials

Free tier

Includes 1 status page, 10 monitors, 5-minute check intervals, email notifications, and 7 days of check history. Free forever, no credit card required. Commercial use is fine.

Pro tier ($4/month)

Includes 5 status pages, 100 monitors, 1-minute check intervals, multiple notification channels, custom branding, custom domains, and 90 days of check history. Billed monthly via Stripe. Cancel anytime from your billing page.

14-day trial

Every new account gets 14 days of Pro features. No credit card required. When the trial ends, your account reverts to the free tier. If you have more than 10 monitors, the extras are paused — not deleted. Upgrade anytime to reactivate them.

Cancellation and refunds

You can cancel your Pro subscription at any time. Your Pro features remain active until the end of your current billing period. We don't offer refunds for partial months. If you cancel and later resubscribe, paused monitors are reactivated automatically.

5. Outbound Requests

The core of this service is making network requests to targets you configure. You should understand:

• We send HTTP GET requests, TCP connections, and SSL handshakes to your specified targets at the intervals you choose.
• These requests come from our servers, not your device.
• We block all requests to private/internal IP ranges to prevent server-side request forgery (SSRF).
• For HTTP checks, we follow up to 5 redirects and re-validate the target IP at each hop.
• Monitoring traffic can affect target systems (for example rate limits, access logs, or bandwidth usage), so make sure you're authorized and that the target service's terms allow automated monitoring when applicable.

6. Public Status Pages

When you create a status page, the monitor names, their current status, and uptime data you choose to display are publicly visible to anyone with the URL. This includes the JSON API endpoint. Don't put sensitive information in your monitor names or page titles.

Public status page data may be cached, indexed by search engines, or accessed programmatically by third parties. You control what appears on your public page by choosing which monitors to include and what to name them.

7. Webhooks

If you configure webhook notifications, we send HTTP POST requests to the URLs you specify. The same private-IP restrictions apply to webhook URLs. We support optional HMAC-SHA256 signing so you can verify webhook authenticity. We are not responsible for how your webhook endpoints handle the data we send.

8. Service Availability

We run this service with care, but we don't offer a formal SLA. The Service is provided "as is" without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.

We do not guarantee that:

• The Service will be available 100% of the time
• Monitoring checks will execute at exact intervals
• Notifications will be delivered instantly or at all
• Check results will be perfectly accurate

Don't rely on this service as your only monitoring solution for life-or-death systems.

9. Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability to you for any claims arising from your use of the Service is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim.

We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, including lost profits, lost data, downtime of your services, or damages resulting from missed or delayed notifications.

10. Termination

• By you: Delete your account from Settings at any time. Your data is deleted immediately.
• By us: We can suspend or terminate your account for violating these terms, particularly for abuse, SSRF attempts, or monitoring systems without authorization. We'll try to give you notice first, but reserve the right to act immediately for serious violations.

11. Service Discontinuation

We may discontinue the Service at any time, for any reason, with reasonable notice by email or in-app announcement.

If we discontinue the Service, all active subscriptions will be canceled effective on the discontinuation date.

12. Changes to These Terms

We may update these terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we'll notify you by email. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

13. Contact

Questions about these terms? Email us at support@backroom.tools.