Terms of Service

1. The agreement

These terms are an agreement between you and hiya (“we”, “us”), who operate hiya at hiya.page. They cover the website, the page editor, and every page published through it.

By signing in, redeeming an invite code or publishing a page, you accept these terms and our Privacy Policy. If you don't accept them, don't use the service.

2. Who can use hiya

• You must be at least 13 years old, and old enough in the country you live in to agree to terms like these without a parent's permission. If your country sets a higher minimum for online services, that age applies to you.
• You need a Discord account in good standing, because that is how signing in works.
• Normally you need an invite code from an existing member. We don't sell them. From time to time we open signups to everyone for a period — during those periods no code is needed, and the signup page says so. We can switch that back at any time, and doing so never affects an account that already exists.
• You must not be someone we have previously banned, or someone acting on a banned person's behalf.

3. Your account

You sign in with Discord — we never see or store a password for you. Your Discord account is the key to your hiya account, so keeping it secure is on you.

• One account per person. Extra accounts made to collect invites, hoard usernames or get around a ban may all be removed.
• Don't share or hand over your account. You can't sell it, rent it or transfer it to someone else.
• You're responsible for what happens on it, including anything published from it.
• If we suspend or ban an account, existing sign-ins for it stop working immediately.

4. Invite codes

Members are given a number of invite codes to pass on. The number is set by us and can change at any time, for everyone or for one person.

• Codes are a courtesy, not property. They have no cash value, and selling, auctioning or trading them is not allowed — we'll revoke codes and may close accounts over it.
• Each code works once. We can revoke unused codes at any time, including when signups are closed.
• We keep a record of who invited whom. If you invite someone who then abuses the platform, that's taken into account — repeatedly inviting bad actors can cost you your own access.

5. Your username

Your username is your address: hiya.page/yourname. You're allocated the use of it — you don't own it, and it stays with the service.

• Names that match our own routes, brand names or staff titles are reserved and can't be claimed.
• You can change your username from your account settings. Your previous name is then held for about 30 days so that nobody can immediately take it and impersonate you.
• We can reclaim or change a username that impersonates someone, infringes a trade mark, is being squatted on, or that we're legally required to release. Where we can, we'll tell you first.

6. Your content and who owns it

You keep ownership

Everything you put on your page — your words, images, links and design choices — stays yours. We don't claim ownership of it and we don't sell it.

What you let us do with it

To run the service at all, we need your permission to store your content and show it to people. So you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, copy, resize, cache and publicly display your content, purely for the purpose of operating hiya. That licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies already made by others, by search engines or in ordinary server backups.

What you're promising us

• You have the right to publish everything you upload.
• It doesn't infringe anyone's copyright, trade mark, privacy or other rights.
• Images of other people are used with their permission where permission is needed.
• A font you upload is one you're licensed to serve on a public website. Most open-licence fonts allow this; many fonts sold for print or for use in an app do not, and a licence that covers putting a typeface in a document is not the same as one that covers publishing the file itself. If you're not sure, don't upload it.

Your page is public once published

A published page is an ordinary public web page. Anyone with the link can read it, search engines can index it, and third parties can archive or screenshot it. Unpublishing takes your page down from us but cannot claw back copies that already exist elsewhere. Don't publish anything you'd need to be able to take back.

7. Templates

You can offer the page you've built as a template for other members to start from. Doing so is entirely optional and you can stop at any time.

What you're giving

Submitting a template grants hiya and its members a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to show the template on the templates page and to copy its layout, settings and example writing into other members' pages. It does not transfer ownership of anything, and it does not give anyone a licence to your images: a template preview displays your pictures and audio, and using the template gives the other person empty spaces where yours were.

If — and only if — you switch on let people download my pictures, you are additionally licensing the images shown on that template's preview for other members to download and publish on their own pages. That is a real permission you are giving to strangers, it cannot be recalled from copies already taken, and you must only switch it on for images that are yours to give away. It is off unless you turn it on.

What you're promising

• Everything in the template is yours to share on these terms, including anything you're making downloadable.
• It isn't a copy of someone else's design, and it doesn't include a font, photograph or other file you aren't licensed to pass on.
• It contains no personal information about anyone — your own contact details included. A template is a shape, not a page about you.

Review, and taking one down

Every template is read by us before it appears, and every later version is read again; until then the previously approved version stays listed. We are under no obligation to list a template, to explain a decision, or to list one within any particular time. We may take a template down at any time — for a rules breach, a rights complaint, or because it doesn't work — and a template we have taken down cannot be resubmitted.

You can withdraw your own template whenever you like, which removes it from the templates page. Pages other members have already built from it are their own copies and are unaffected: withdrawing a template, editing it, or deleting your account does not change anybody else's page.

Using someone else's template

A template is offered as-is by the member who made it, not by us, and listing one is not an endorsement of it. What you do with the page afterwards — including everything you write and upload onto it — is yours and is covered by the rest of these terms. Templates that need hiya Advanced to look the way the preview looks are marked as such; without Advanced you get the layout and the writing, and the parts that need Advanced simply don't apply.

8. Business pages

Besides your own page, you can apply for a business page at hiya.page/b/yourbusiness — for a studio, a shop, a server or a community. It works like your own page, with a few extra blocks made for businesses (a Discord server, Roblox games, a team, services and prices, an FAQ, stats and commission status).

• Every business page is approved by us first. We read the application and can say no without giving a reason. Applications can be closed at any time; closing them doesn't affect pages that already exist.
• We may ask you to prove you own the business's Discord server by signing in to Discord once more — the privacy policy explains exactly what that reads and keeps.
• There's a limit on how many business pages one person can run, and pending applications count towards it. We set the limit and can change it.
• You're responsible for the business page, including anything the people you add as editors publish on it. What it says about the business — who runs it, what it offers, its prices and its numbers — has to be true. Faking member counts, player numbers or reviews, or presenting a business you don't run as yours, is impersonation under section 9.
• Everything else in these terms applies to a business page exactly as it does to your own. Anything you sell through it is between you and your customers: hiya isn't a party to those sales and doesn't handle the money.
• We can suspend or remove a business page that breaks these rules, or reclaim its address on the same grounds as a username (section 5). Deleting your account deletes the business pages you own.

9. What you may not do

Using hiya, you must not:

• Publish anything illegal where you are or where we operate, or anything that encourages a serious crime.
• Publish sexual content involving anyone under 18, or any content that sexualises a minor. This gets an immediate permanent ban and a report to the authorities, with no appeal.
• Publish pornography, graphic sexual content, or gratuitously violent or gory material. There is no age gate here, so it doesn't belong.
• Harass, threaten, bully, stalk or incite violence against anyone, or publish someone's private information without their permission (doxxing).
• Attack people on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, disability, gender, gender identity or sexual orientation.
• Impersonate another person, a business, or hiya staff, or present yourself as endorsed by someone who hasn't endorsed you.
• Use your page for phishing, scams, fake giveaways, malware, cryptocurrency drainers, or any link intended to deceive or harm whoever clicks it.
• Sell or advertise anything unlawful, or run a storefront for stolen or pirated material.
• Infringe copyright or trade marks, including by hotlinking or re-hosting other people's work as your own.
• Attack, probe or overload the service: automated scraping, credential stuffing, denial-of-service, exploiting bugs rather than reporting them, or trying to reach data or accounts that aren't yours.
• Get around a suspension or ban, a rate limit, a storage quota or an invite limit.
• Use the uploader as general file storage or a CDN for things unrelated to your page.

10. Reports, moderation and enforcement

Anyone can report a page, signed in or not. We don't review pages before they go live, and we're not obliged to monitor everything published — but we do act on what's reported to us.

Depending on what we find, we may:

• Leave the page alone and dismiss the report;
• Edit or remove specific content;
• Unpublish a page so only its owner can see it;
• Suspend an account temporarily, which also signs it out everywhere;
• Ban an account permanently and delete its page and files;
• Reduce or remove someone's invite allowance;
• Pass information to law enforcement where we believe someone is at risk or a serious crime is involved.

We keep an internal record of moderation decisions and of the administrative actions staff take, and some events — reports, new accounts, invite codes, staff actions and pages going live — are also posted to our own private staff channels as they happen, so we notice them promptly. The privacy policy sets out exactly what those notices contain. If you think we got a decision wrong, email [email protected] and say so — we'll look again, though we can't promise a particular outcome or a deadline.

Reporting in bad faith — mass reports, reports as harassment, or reports you know to be false — is itself a breach of these terms.

11. Copyright complaints

If something on hiya infringes your copyright, email [email protected] with:

1. the page URL and which part of it you're complaining about;
2. what the work is, and where the original can be seen;
3. confirmation that you own the rights or are authorised to act for whoever does;
4. a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn't authorised by the rights holder or by law;
5. your name and contact details.

We'll look into it and usually remove or hide the content while we do. We tell the page's owner what was removed and who complained, and they can respond. If they show they had the right to use it, we may put it back. Accounts that keep infringing get closed.

12. Hiya Advanced

hiya is free. Hiya Advanced is an optional one-off payment of $6 that unlocks extra page features — currently your own background, colours and fonts (including uploading a font), page effects, a custom cursor, text animations, a music player and click-to-enter splash, your own subdomain or domain, visitor stats, more storage, more saved pages and more version history. The pricing page always has the current list. It is not a subscription: there is nothing to renew and nothing to cancel.

• There's no checkout on the site yet. Buying Advanced is arranged with us through our Discord server, and it's switched on by hand once paid. Whatever we agree there is part of this agreement.
• Each account can have one free trial of Advanced when we offer it. It costs nothing, needs no card and ends by itself; when it does, your page goes back to the standard themes exactly as described below. A trial doesn't come with the Hiya Advanced badge or the Advanced Discord role.
• It's tied to your account, not to you personally, and can't be transferred or resold.
• Which features are included may change. We may add to them; if we ever remove something significant we'll tell you first.
• Custom domains. You can only connect a domain you own or are allowed to use, and you're responsible for it and its DNS. The page it shows is still a hiya page, so these terms apply to it in full, and it always carries a small link back to hiya. We may turn a domain off if the page or the domain itself breaks these terms (for example, a name chosen to impersonate someone), if it causes technical problems, or if your Advanced ends. Turning a domain off doesn't affect your hiya.page address.
• If your account is banned for breaking these terms, Advanced goes with it and is not refunded.
• Losing Advanced never deletes your page. The Advanced-only parts stop displaying and the page falls back to the standard themes; your content, images and sections all stay exactly as they were.
• If we ever discontinue hiya entirely, we'll give reasonable notice. Given the amount involved we won't promise a pro-rata refund, but ask.

13. Badges

Some accounts show small marks next to their name. They're there so visitors can tell who's who, and they only mean something if they can't be faked or bought:

• Verified Staff Member and Owner mean someone runs or works on hiya. They come with the role and can't be bought or applied for.
• Verified is for trusted members of the community and people who are well known elsewhere — roughly 1,000 or more followers or subscribers. You can apply from your account settings; we check the application by hand and can say no without a detailed reason.
• Hiya Advanced comes with holding Advanced (not with a trial), and you can hide it. Inviter is given automatically once enough people have joined on your codes.
• The others — Partner, Verified Template Creator, Contributor, Early Supporter and Donator — are given by us, by hand.

Badges aren't for sale and can't be transferred. We can remove one if the reason it was given no longer applies, if it was got by misleading us, or as part of enforcing these terms. Imitating a badge — in your name, your page or your pictures — or otherwise presenting yourself as staff or verified when you aren't, is a breach of section 9.

14. Ideas and feedback

If you send us a suggestion or a bug report — from the roadmap page, through our Discord bot or anywhere else — thank you. We can use the idea however we like, change it or ignore it, without owing you payment or credit for it. You keep any rights you have in what you wrote; you're just letting us act on it. Please don't send anything confidential in a suggestion.

15. Availability, limits and changes

• It's free, and there's no uptime promise. We run this on a single server and we don't guarantee the service will be available, uninterrupted, or free of faults.
• Maintenance happens. We may pause editing, publishing and signups — and occasionally take pages offline — while we work on things. Where it's planned, we'll say so on the site.
• There are limits. Uploads are capped per account (currently15MB on the free tier and 25MB on Advanced), and we keep the last 10 published versions of your page for rollback, or 15 on Advanced. You can keep 2 saved pages (5 on Advanced), only one of which is ever live. There are also caps on how many sections a page can have and how many items go in one. All of these are settings we can change, up or down.
• Features change. We may add, alter or withdraw parts of the service. If we ever shut hiya down, we'll give reasonable notice so you can copy your content out.
• Keep your own copies. Version history is a convenience, not a backup service. Keep your images and text somewhere you control.

16. Ending the agreement

By you

Delete your account from your account settings, at any time, without asking us. That removes your account, your page and its drafts, your version history, your uploaded images, audio and fonts from our server, any templates you had shared, any business pages you own, and any invite codes you hadn't handed out. Pages other people built from your templates are their own copies and stay where they are. It can't be undone, and the record of which codes were already redeemed stays for the invite trail.

By us

We may suspend or close your account if you break these terms, if we're legally required to, or if keeping it open would put other people or the service at risk. For anything other than a serious or repeated breach we'll try to warn you first.

When the agreement ends, your right to use the service stops and your page comes down. Section 6 (your promises to us) and sections 17 (disclaimers), 18 (limits on liability) and 20 (governing law) survive.

17. Disclaimers

The service is provided as is and as available. To the extent the law allows, we make no warranties about it — express or implied — including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement.

We don't control what members put on their pages and we don't endorse it. Pages may link to other sites we have nothing to do with; following those links is at your own risk.

Nothing here takes away rights you have as a consumer that can't legally be taken away — including under the Consumer Protection Act in South Africa, or equivalent law where you live.

18. Limits on liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, hiya is not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, for lost profits, lost opportunities, lost data or lost goodwill, arising out of your use of the service — even if we'd been told such loss was possible.

Where liability can't be excluded, it is limited to the greater of what you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim (for a free service, that is nothing) or ZAR 1,000.

We don't exclude liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that can't lawfully be excluded.

19. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top changes when we do. For changes that materially affect you we'll give notice on the site before they take effect. Carrying on using hiya after that means you accept the new version; if you don't, delete your account.

20. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of South Africa, and the courts of South Africa have jurisdiction over any dispute. If you're a consumer somewhere else, this doesn't remove the protection of your local law or your right to bring a claim where you live.

21. Contact

Questions, complaints, appeals and legal notices: [email protected].

How we handle your personal information is covered separately in our Privacy Policy.