Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and SermonWave ("SermonWave", "we", "us"). They cover your use of the SermonWave website, dashboard, listener pages, capture devices, plugins, the church directory and related services (together, the "Service"). By creating an account, checking the box at signup, claiming a directory listing or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you accept them for a church or other organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to bind it, and "you" means that organisation.

1. The Service

SermonWave transcribes and translates sermons and other church services. Audio is captured by a web device (a browser on a computer at your church), by SermonWave hardware, or by our plugin for OBS Studio. We turn that audio into live captions, translated text and synthesized translated speech for listeners, and into an archive of recordings, transcripts, translations and summaries. We also publish church and sermon pages that search engines can index, and we operate a free church directory.

Some features are sold as add-ons or are still being built. We only owe you the features included in the plan you are actually paying for.

2. Accounts and security

• You must be at least 18 years old to create a church or organisation account (the dashboard). You must be at least 16 years old to create a free listener account. Either way, give accurate information and keep it current.
• You are responsible for your password, your users' access and your devices' credentials, and for everything done under your account, including by users you invite.
• Tell us right away at team@sermonwave.com if you think your account has been accessed without permission.
• You are responsible for choosing who at your church can see recordings, which may include private or sensitive things said in a service.

3. Free trial

New accounts start with a free trial of 14 days, with 1 capture device. No payment card is required to start a trial. Translation is included during the trial.

What happens when the trial ends. If you have not chosen a plan, live transcription and translation stop and you cannot record new services. Nothing is deleted. Your dashboard, your existing recordings, transcripts and translations, your public sermon pages and your listener pages stay up. Choose a plan whenever you are ready and live features switch back on.

We may change or withdraw trial offers for future signups, and we may limit trials to one per church.

4. Plans, billing and cancellation

Current plans, add-ons and prices are on our pricing page, which is part of these Terms. In summary: you pay a monthly base price that includes one capture device, you can add more devices, and translation is priced per language per device. Nothing is metered by the hour.

• Currency and billing period. Plans are billed monthly in U.S. dollars, in advance, until you cancel.
• Payments. Payments are processed by Stripe. By subscribing you authorise us, through Stripe, to charge your payment method each month. SermonWave currently bills through the Stripe account of Serve.Love, the platform SermonWave is built alongside, so your card statement or receipt may show "Serve.Love", "SermonWave", or both, depending on how our payment processor labels the charge at the time.
• Taxes. Prices exclude taxes. We may add sales or similar taxes where we are required to collect them, and you are responsible for any taxes you owe.
• Changes mid-period. If you add or remove a plan, device, language or add-on during a billing period, the difference is prorated and shown at checkout or on your next invoice.
• Cancellation. You may cancel at any time. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period and you keep access until then. Fees already paid are not refunded except as required by law or as stated below.
• Money-back. If SermonWave is not right for your church, contact us within 30 days of your first paid charge and we will refund that charge. We handle these by hand, so email us rather than looking for a button.
• Failed payments. If a payment fails we will retry and let you know. If your account stays unpaid for more than 14 days, we may stop live features until the balance is paid. As at trial end, your archive and public pages stay up.
• Price changes. We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice by email, effective from your next billing period after the notice. If you do not agree, cancel before it takes effect.
• Existing arrangements. Accounts created before self-serve plans launched may have separate arrangements with us, which continue to apply.

5. Your content and the licence you give us

"Customer Content" means the audio you capture and everything made from it or submitted by you: recordings, transcripts, translations, synthesized audio, summaries, quotes, outlines, images, speaker details and your church profile.

• You own your content. As between you and us, you (or your licensors) own your Customer Content. We claim no ownership of your sermons.
• The licence we need. You grant SermonWave a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, transmit, process, transcribe, translate, synthesize into speech, summarise, index, display, stream and distribute your Customer Content. We need this licence because the Service literally cannot work without it: translating a sermon means making copies of it, and publishing a sermon page means displaying it. The licence exists only to operate, secure, support and improve the Service for you, including on listener pages, your public pages, and any podcast feed you choose to turn on. If voice training is switched on for your organisation (see below), the licence also covers using your sermon audio and its transcripts to train generic SermonWave voices.
• It ends when you delete. The licence ends for a piece of content when you delete it from the Service, except for copies in backups for a limited period and anything we must keep by law.
• AI training: only for generic SermonWave voices. We do not use your Customer Content to train or tune AI models, with one exception:
  • SermonWave may use the sermon audio of churches and organisations, with its transcripts, to train SermonWave's own generic voices for translated audio. Each voice is blended from many speakers, and we check that it does not sound like any one of them.
  • We never clone or imitate any individual's voice this way. (A voice that sounds like your own preacher is a separate feature that needs that speaker's permission; see section 6.)
  • We use only the main speaker's part of a sermon. We leave out music, prayers and other voices in the room as far as we can, and we never use recovery or support-group meetings.
  • We never sell or share your audio, and we never give it to anyone else to train their models. Training runs on our own servers.
  • Your choice. We use your audio only while this is switched on for your organisation, because you gave us written permission or turned on Help build SermonWave voices in the dashboard (Settings). Otherwise it is off. A church admin can turn it off at any time in the dashboard, or by emailing team@sermonwave.com. From then on your audio is not used in any future training. A voice we have already built cannot "unlearn" your audio, but we will not use your audio in any new voice.
• Aggregated data. We may use aggregated and de-identified usage information, which does not identify you, your church or your listeners, to run and improve the Service.

6. Your promises about sermons, music and people

Please read this section carefully. It is the part most likely to matter to your church.

You represent and warrant that, for everything you capture or upload, you have all the rights, licences, permissions and consents needed for us to process, translate, synthesize, store and publish it as described in these Terms. In particular:

• Speakers. You have the permission of each preacher, guest speaker and anyone else whose voice is captured. If you use a voice feature that generates translated audio resembling a speaker's own voice, you have that speaker's specific, informed permission to clone their voice. We do not verify this and we rely entirely on you.
• Music and worship. Congregational singing, special music, backing tracks and performance of copyrighted songs are not covered by any licence we hold. If your capture includes music, you are responsible for the licences that your use requires — which for recording, podcasting or streaming a song is usually more than a basic performance licence. The safest course is to capture the sermon rather than the whole service. We do not provide music licences and we are not responsible for your music rights.
• Congregants. You are responsible for telling your congregation that services are recorded, transcribed, translated and may be published, and for obtaining any consent the law where you are requires. Recording laws differ by state and country and some require everyone's consent. We cannot advise you on your jurisdiction.
• Scripture, liturgy and other material. You have the rights to any third-party text, readings, images or video you include.
• Sensitive content. Do not capture or publish private or sensitive information about other people — for example, prayer requests naming someone's illness, pastoral matters, or anything about a child — unless you have the right to share it.

If you are not sure whether you have the rights you need, get permission or do not capture it.

7. Public pages and visibility

The Service can publish a church page, sermon pages, topic and scripture pages, listener pages and sitemaps so people can find your sermons, including through search engines and AI assistants. You control each sermon in your dashboard:

• Public: shown on your pages, may be in sitemaps and indexed by search engines.
• Unlisted: available to anyone with the link, but not listed or in sitemaps.
• Private: visible only to your account's users.

Once something has been public, search engines and other third parties may keep copies after you make it private or delete it. We cannot control that, and we cannot get those copies removed for you.

8. AI output: what it is and is not

Transcripts, translations, synthesized speech, summaries, titles and quotes are produced automatically by speech recognition, machine translation and other AI models. They will contain errors. Names, places, scripture references, doctrinal terms and figures of speech are all commonly mistranslated, and synthesized speech can mispronounce or misplace emphasis in ways that change meaning.

Translation accuracy is not guaranteed. The output is there to help people follow along. It is not a substitute for a professional human translator or interpreter, and it must not be relied on where accuracy matters: legal, medical, financial, immigration, emergency or safety-critical situations, or any setting where someone needs a certified or sworn translation. Do not use SermonWave as the interpretation channel for anything where a mistranslation could hurt someone.

You are responsible for reviewing AI output before you publish, print or rely on it, and for correcting it where your church's reputation or someone's understanding depends on it.

9. Devices and plugins

• Hardware is leased, not sold. SermonWave hardware is not currently sold on a self-serve basis. Where we provide a capture device, it is leased to you for use with your subscription, not sold: the device remains SermonWave's property at all times, and your right to keep it exists only for as long as the subscription it is tied to is active. When that subscription ends or is cancelled — by you or by us — you must return the device, within the period and by the method we specify to you in writing at that time. Until we specify otherwise, treat the request to return it as taking effect immediately on cancellation. The specific terms for a given device — any price for optional add-ons, shipping arrangements for delivery, and the return process described above — are given to you in writing when the device is provided, and those terms govern the hardware together with this section.
• Risk and care. From delivery until we receive the device back, you are responsible for keeping it safe, powered and connected, and for loss or damage beyond normal wear while it is in your possession. Do not open, modify or move it to another site without telling us.
• Software and voices on the device. The software, voices and AI models on a SermonWave device belong to SermonWave, or are open-source software under its own licence. They are there so the device can work with the Service. They are not given, sold or licensed to you. Without our written permission, do not log in to the device, and do not access, copy or extract any software, voice or model from it. Doing so breaks your lease of the device (this section and the device terms we give you in writing) and these Terms. Section 17 explains our voices and models and the rights open-source licences keep.
• Updates. Devices and plugins receive software and firmware updates automatically, including security updates. You agree to let them update; we may require a current version for the Service to work, and we may stop supporting old versions.
• Your network and equipment. Audio quality decides output quality. You are responsible for your microphones, sound desk, internet connection and power. A poor feed produces a poor transcript, and that is not a defect in the Service.
• The OBS plugin runs on your own computer and uses credentials stored there. You are responsible for that computer and for the accounts you connect through it.

10. Third-party platforms

If you connect SermonWave to another platform — a podcast app, a streaming service, YouTube, or anything else — you are using that platform under its terms and privacy policy, not ours. You are responsible for complying with them, for the content you send there, and for the rights that platform requires. We are not responsible for a third-party platform's acts, outages, policy changes, takedowns or removal of your content, and a platform may stop working with us at any time.

When you connect YouTube, SermonWave acts on your church's channel only as you direct it: it runs the live broadcasts your church streams with our OBS plugin, and it uploads the sermons you choose to publish. What appears on your channel is published by you, with your account, under your name. By connecting YouTube you agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service, and Google's use of your information is governed by the Google Privacy Policy. Our Privacy Policy sets out exactly what we access on your channel, including that we never delete a video. You can disconnect at any time in the dashboard, or remove our access from your Google account.

11. Church directory listings

We publish a free directory of churches compiled from public information. A church may be listed without signing up. Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect, the attribution we show, and who we exclude.

• Listings carry no charge and create no contract. A listing is not an endorsement by us, and a listed church is not affiliated with SermonWave unless the listing is marked Claimed.
• We credit every directory sermon to the church by name and link to the original. We do not claim ownership of it.
• Removal. Any church can ask us to remove its listing and sermons, or to correct them, using the Request removal link on the listing. A person reviews every request. We act on legitimate removal requests and then suppress the church so it is not listed again.
• Claiming. A church can claim its own listing free. Claiming turns the listing into a SermonWave account with a 14-day free trial and makes these Terms apply to you as an account holder. No payment is required to claim.
• Directory information is gathered from public sources and may be out of date or wrong. We make no warranty about it. Confirm service times with the church.

12. Listeners

People who listen through SermonWave listener pages may use them free of charge for personal, non-commercial purposes, and must not record, republish or redistribute a church's sermons except as that church allows. Anything a listener sends a church through a listener page — a prayer request, a contact request, a testimony — goes to that church, and that church is responsible for how it is used.

Listener accounts. You do not need an account to listen. If you want one to keep playlists and favourite churches and to see new sermons, it is free:

• You must be 16 or older. When you sign up you confirm this and agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy.
• Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what is done with your account.
• We send you only two kinds of email: one to confirm your address, and password-reset links you ask for. We never sell your data and never send you marketing.
• You can delete your account at any time with Delete my account on your account page. Our Privacy Policy explains what that removes.
• We may close an account that is used to break these Terms, or that belongs to someone under 16.

13. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Service to:

• break the law, or infringe anyone's intellectual property, privacy or publicity rights;
• record or clone a voice without the notice and consent the law requires;
• publish content that is unlawful, harassing, hateful or threatening, that incites violence, or that sexually exploits anyone;
• impersonate a person or a church, or misrepresent a translation as human or certified;
• upload malware, or try to gain unauthorised access to the Service, other accounts or our systems;
• interfere with the Service or place an unreasonable load on our infrastructure;
• reverse engineer the Service or our device software, except where the law or an open-source licence allows it;
• resell or sublicense the Service without our written permission; or
• scrape the Service, or use it to build a competing product.

We may remove content or restrict features that breach these Terms.

14. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect and how we use it, and is part of these Terms. For sermon content you are normally the controller and we are your processor. You are responsible for the notices and consents described in section 6. If you need a data processing agreement, ask us.

15. Availability, support and changes

We work hard to keep the Service reliable, but we do not guarantee that it will be uninterrupted, error-free or available at any particular time, and we offer no uptime commitment or service level agreement unless we have signed one with you in writing. We have not signed one with anyone as a standard term. Live features depend on your internet connection, your audio equipment and networks we do not control.

Support is provided by email at team@sermonwave.com and by phone at (918) 283-0005 during our normal working hours, on a reasonable-efforts basis. We do not promise a response time.

We may perform maintenance, and we may change, add or remove features. If we remove a material feature you are paying for, we will give you reasonable notice and you may cancel.

16. Our intellectual property and your feedback

We own the Service: our software, devices, models, designs, documentation and the SermonWave name and logo. Section 17 says more about SermonWave voices and AI models. These Terms give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service while your account is in good standing, and nothing more. Do not use our name or logo in a way that suggests we endorse you without our permission.

If you send us feedback or an idea, thank you — we may use it to improve the Service without obligation or payment to you. You keep whatever rights you had; you just do not get a claim on our product for having suggested something.

17. SermonWave voices and AI models

Some of the voices that read translations aloud were built by SermonWave. Their names end in "(SermonWave)", for example "Mateo (SermonWave)" and "Lucía (SermonWave)". Voices without that mark were made by others.

• They belong to SermonWave. SermonWave voices, the AI models behind them, their trained weights, and the methods and prepared data we used to build them are SermonWave's property and our confidential information. This includes voices we build in the future. We own them to the full extent that the law and the licences of the open data and software we built them with allow. That open material stays under its own licence, and its authors keep their rights in it (see our Credits page).
• They stay on our systems. We do not sell, publish or license SermonWave voices or models to anyone. They run only on servers we operate and on SermonWave devices, which remain our property while they are leased to you (section 9).
• What you get. While your account is in good standing, you may use SermonWave voices through the Service to make translated audio of your content. You get no ownership of the voices or models and no licence to them, including any copy that is on a device.
• What you may not do. Do not, and do not help anyone else to: access, copy, download or extract a SermonWave voice, model or its weights, from the Service or from a device; reverse engineer or decompile one; or use a SermonWave voice, or audio made with one, to train, fine-tune or improve any other speech or AI model, to build a speech data set, or to recreate or imitate a SermonWave voice. This adds to the rules in section 13.
• Your church can use the audio. Translated audio made for your church with any of our voices is Customer Content (section 5). Your church may use it for its ministry in the same way as the rest of its content: on its listener and sermon pages, on its website, in podcast feeds, on video platforms, and when it shares its sermons with others. The only limit is the one above: do not use it to train or recreate a voice. Our ownership of the voice gives us no extra rights in your sermons.
• How we train them. We train SermonWave voices only on speech data we have permission to use: data published under open licences and, only where an organisation has given permission, its sermon audio under section 5. Some voices start from voice models that were published openly. Each voice is blended from many speakers and checked so that it does not sound like any one of them. Our Credits page lists the data sets and open-source software we use, with the credit each licence requires.
• Other voices. Voices without "(SermonWave)" in their name were made by others. We do not claim to own them. Each stays under its own licence, as listed on our Credits page.
• Open licences still apply. If the licence of any open data or open-source software we use gives you or anyone else a right, these Terms do not take that right away. If these Terms and such a licence conflict, the licence wins for that part only.

18. Confidentiality

Each of us may learn non-public information about the other. We will each use the other's confidential information only to perform under these Terms, protect it with reasonable care, and not disclose it except to people who need it and are bound to keep it confidential, or where the law compels disclosure. This does not apply to information that is public, already known, independently developed, or lawfully received from someone else. Your Customer Content is your confidential information, and we treat it that way.

19. Publicity

We will not use your church's name, logo, sermons or a quote from you in our marketing without your permission. If you give us permission — for example for a case study or a logo on our website — you may withdraw it at any time by emailing us, and we will stop using it in new material. We may always state factually that we provide services to churches, and we may refer to your public sermon pages as the Service itself publishes them.

20. Suspension and termination

• You may stop using the Service and cancel at any time.
• We may suspend or terminate your access if you materially breach these Terms, if payment stays overdue past the grace period, if your use creates legal risk or infringes someone's rights, or if it is needed to protect the Service, other users or the public. Where reasonable we will warn you first and give you a chance to fix it.
• On termination, live features stop. You may ask us to export your Customer Content, and you may ask us to delete it. Public pages for a closed account may be removed.
• Sections that should outlast the agreement do: 5, 6, 8, 10, 16, 17, 18 and 20 to 26, plus any fees you already owe.

21. Disclaimers

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE AND ANY HARDWARE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED AND STATUTORY, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY AS TO THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS OR RELIABILITY OF ANY TRANSCRIPT, TRANSLATION, SYNTHESIZED AUDIO, SUMMARY OR DIRECTORY INFORMATION. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE OR ERROR-FREE, OR THAT ANY CONTENT WILL BE PRESERVED WITHOUT LOSS. Some jurisdictions do not allow these exclusions, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

22. Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, NEITHER SERMONWAVE NOR ITS AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES OR SUPPLIERS WILL BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, OR LOSS ARISING FROM A MISTRANSLATION OR AN INACCURATE TRANSCRIPT, EVEN IF WE WERE TOLD SUCH DAMAGES WERE POSSIBLE.

OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS ($100).

These limits apply to every theory of liability and are a fundamental part of the bargain between us: the price of the Service reflects them. Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these limits, so they may not fully apply to you. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, such as for fraud or personal injury caused by negligence.

23. Indemnity

You will defend and indemnify SermonWave and its affiliates, officers and employees against any third-party claim, and the resulting damages, losses and reasonable legal costs, arising from: your Customer Content; your lack of the rights, licences or consents promised in section 6, including music rights and speaker or congregant consent; your publication of content through or from the Service; or your breach of these Terms or of applicable law. We will tell you promptly about the claim, let you control the defence of it, and cooperate reasonably — and you will not settle in a way that admits fault for us or imposes an obligation on us without our consent.

24. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Oklahoma, U.S.A., without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and by applicable U.S. federal law. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Talk to us first. If something goes wrong, email team@sermonwave.com and give us 30 days to sort it out. Most problems are a misunderstanding or a bug.

If we cannot resolve it, the state and federal courts located in Rogers County, Oklahoma have exclusive jurisdiction, and both of us consent to their jurisdiction and venue and waive any objection based on inconvenient forum. Either of us may still seek an injunction anywhere to protect intellectual property or confidential information. Each of us waives any right to a jury trial and agrees to bring claims only individually, not as a class action or representative proceeding. You must bring any claim within one year after it arises, or it is waived, unless your local law gives you longer.

If your local consumer law gives you rights or a venue that cannot be overridden by agreement, this section does not take them away.

25. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. We will post the new version here and change the "Last updated" date. If a change is material we will notify account owners by email or in the dashboard at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you keep using the Service after the effective date, you accept the updated Terms. If you do not accept them, cancel before they take effect.

This version replaces the Terms dated 26 September 2026. It was rewritten to match current plans, to cover the OBS plugin, devices, podcast feeds and the church directory, and to spell out your responsibilities for music rights and speaker and congregant consent.

On 25 October 2026 we added free listener accounts: section 2 sets the minimum age for a listener account at 16 (church and organisation accounts stay 18+), and section 12 explains listener accounts and how to delete one.

Also on 25 October 2026 we changed section 5: SermonWave may now use sermon audio to train its own generic voices, blended from many speakers, never to clone or imitate anyone. This applies only to organisations that have agreed to it, in writing or with the switch in the dashboard, and each can turn it off at any time. For every other organisation nothing changes. That change affected nothing else.

Also on 25 October 2026 we added section 17, "SermonWave voices and AI models". The voices marked "(SermonWave)" and the models behind them belong to SermonWave and stay on our systems. Your church can use the audio made with them for its ministry, but may not copy the voices or use them, or their audio, to train other models. Other voices, and the open data and software we build with, keep their own licences, which our new Credits page lists. Section 9 now says the same about the software and voices on a leased device, and section 13 notes the rights that open-source licences give. Sections 17 to 26 are now 18 to 27. For accounts that existed before 25 October 2026, the new limits in sections 9 and 17 take effect on 24 November 2026.

26. General

These Terms, with the Privacy Policy, the pricing page and any written order or agreement with us, are the entire agreement between us about the Service and replace any earlier understanding. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stays in force and the provision is limited only as far as necessary. Not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent; we may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets. Neither of us is liable for delays caused by events beyond our reasonable control. Nothing here creates a partnership, agency or employment relationship. Notices to you may be sent to your account email; notices to us go to team@sermonwave.com. If these Terms are translated, the English version controls.

27. Contact

Questions about these Terms:

team@sermonwave.com
(918) 283-0005
sermonwave.com/contact

SermonWave
500 S. Lynn Riggs, PMB 299
Claremore, OK 74017