The current version is 1.1. Your firm's signed copy is filed in your own documents, with its hash, and is never altered when a new version is published — the version you signed is the version that applies to you until an administrator acknowledges a newer one.
What has changed in the Terms and the Privacy Policy
Every version of the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy is numbered and dated. The copy your firm signed is kept exactly as it was signed, with its hash, in your account's documents. A new version never alters it, and nothing here changes what you signed until an administrator at your firm has acknowledged the new version.
This page is the plain-English summary of what changed and why. It is what the "the Terms have changed" notice links to.
Version 1.1 — August 2026
In one sentence: the money clauses now describe how ArcMichael actually charges — a plan with a fixed number of checks and a fixed number of people, and nothing billed by usage — because version 1.0 described a charging model that was removed from the product before anyone was charged under it.
1. No usage charges (Terms, paragraph 3)
Version 1.0 said: reviews and messages beyond the plan's monthly allowance ("overage") were billed monthly in arrears on the same invoice, at the rates on your Billing page, with the count and the rate on the invoice line.
Version 1.1 says: there are no usage charges of any kind. Nothing is metered and billed in arrears — not checks, not messages, not storage. The invoice for a period is the plan price for that period, plus VAT, and nothing else.
Why: a firm could not predict its bill. The first it would know of a busy month was a figure on an invoice arriving up to five weeks later, for work it had no chance to decline. The product stopped working that way in Phase 10; the Terms had not caught up. Nobody was ever charged an overage figure.
What happens instead: when the plan's monthly check allowance is reached, a new check is refused with one sentence and a link to change plan. Checks already queued or running finish. Nothing you already have is touched, and nothing is charged.
2. No paid extra seats (Terms, paragraphs 2 and 3)
Version 1.0 said: extra seats were billed monthly in arrears at the rates shown on your Billing page.
Version 1.1 says: people are included in the plan and are not sold one at a time. When the plan's number of people is reached, adding another is refused with the same one sentence and the same link to change plan.
Why: the same reason. The pricing page sold plans; the product quietly sold capacity by the unit. Only one of those could be true.
3. Upgrades are immediate and pro rata; allowance does not carry over (Terms, paragraph 3)
New in version 1.1, because it was previously described only on the billing page and not in the contract:
- an upgrade takes effect immediately and is charged pro rata for the rest of
the period you have already paid for. The figure is shown to you before you confirm, and that is the figure charged;
- a downgrade takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for.
Until then you keep everything your current plan includes;
- unused allowance does not carry over. The count resets at the start of each
calendar month.
4. How a change to the Terms is handled (Terms, paragraph 10)
Version 1.0 said: you would be asked to accept a newer version at sign-in.
Version 1.1 says exactly what that means: your signed copy is kept as signed; an administrator sees a notice at the next sign-in linking to this page; acknowledging it is recorded in your activity ledger with who, when and from where; nobody is locked out for not having acknowledged yet, and the Service is not withheld while a notice is outstanding. A change that materially reduces what you get or increases what you pay is also emailed to the account holder 30 days before it takes effect.
5. Privacy Policy 1.1
Three changes, none of them to what we do with anybody's data:
- the usage count (checks and messages used against the plan's allowance) is
named in the table of what we hold and why, with the note that it is never used to bill you;
- acknowledgements of a new version of the Terms are named alongside the signed
Terms, in what we hold and in the retention list;
- the ICO registration number is quoted, and it is stated plainly that
ArcMichael is a trading name of ArcGabriel Ltd rather than a separate company.
What did not change
The data protection terms (Schedule 1 to the Terms — the Article 28 processor agreement), the sub-processor list, the retention periods, the security measures, the liability position, the failed-payment ladder, cancellation, and the governing law are all unchanged from version 1.0.
Version 1.0 — August 2026
The first published version, signed by every firm that onboarded before version 1.1. It remains the version that applies to a firm until an administrator acknowledges 1.1, and the signed copy stays in the firm's documents for the statutory six years either way.
The full documents: Terms of Service · Privacy Policy.