Terms of Service

1. Who we are

These terms govern your use of Proofwire, a service operated by Armillary Sphere LLC, a Texas limited liability company ("we", "us"). Our registered address is Austin, Texas, United States. You can reach us at hello@armillaryspherellc.com.

By placing an order you agree to these terms. If you are ordering for a company, you confirm you are authorised to bind it.

2. What we sell, precisely

We distribute press releases to a partner network of news and syndication outlets, and we then check what was published.

We guarantee submission. We do not guarantee publication. Whether any given outlet runs your release is that outlet's editorial decision, and no distributor can promise otherwise. Anyone who tells you they can is describing something they do not control.

We also do not promise:

• that a placement will remain online permanently — syndicated pages are routinely removed, and we report it when one is;
• any search-engine ranking, traffic or conversion outcome;
• that a link will pass search-engine credit. Most press links do not, and we label each one from the published page rather than from a rate card;
• that any AI assistant will cite your release.

3. Your content

You keep ownership of everything you send us. You grant us a licence to reproduce, format and transmit it to our partner network for the purpose of distributing it, and to display excerpts and the resulting URLs in the report we deliver to you.

You confirm that:

• you own the content or have permission to publish it;
• it is accurate and not misleading;
• it does not infringe anyone's rights, and does not defame anyone;
• you have permission for any third-party name, trademark, logo or quotation in it.

Releases run 250 to 1,200 words with one image and up to five outbound links. The word range and the link cap are the distribution network's own limits; the single image is ours, because the brief form collects one. A release under 250 words is refused at intake, so we will tell you before anything is sent rather than after.

4. Categories we do not accept

We do not distribute releases for gambling, adult content, or pharmaceutical and supplement products. Our payment processor prohibits some of these categories outright, and the networks we buy from reject the content. We would rather tell you before you pay than fail afterwards.

We also decline anything unlawful, deceptive, or that a network's editorial policy refuses. If we decline your release for any of these reasons before submitting it, you pay nothing.

5. Editorial review, and the order of things

Every release is reviewed against the network's editorial guidelines before it is submitted, at no charge. If it needs changing to be accepted, we will tell you and revise it without charge.

Payment comes first, then you send us the release, then review, then distribution. Our stated turnaround runs from when your release reaches us, not from payment — we cannot start a clock on copy we do not have.

6. Refunds

If we cannot submit your release to the network at all — our editorial review concludes it will not be accepted, or the network declines the category — we refund the order in full. That decision is made within 48 hours of your release reaching us, before any cost is incurred with the network.

If we have not submitted your release to the network within 48 hours of receiving final copy, you may cancel for a full refund, for any reason and without asking us why. We can offer that unconditionally because of when it applies: an unsubmitted release has cost us nothing with the network, so there is no case where honouring it is expensive enough to argue about. It covers the part of the process that is ours — our review and our submission. It does not cover how quickly the network then publishes, or whether a given outlet runs it, because neither is ours to promise.

Once a release has been submitted, the order is not refundable on the basis of which outlets chose to publish it. That is an editorial decision we do not control and cannot honestly sell against. Where you bought a specific named placement as its own line item and the network itself returns it as rejected, we refund that line.

7. What we report, and its limits

After distribution we open the published pages and check them. Every row in your report is marked with how we know it:

• verified — we opened the page and found your release on it;
• reported — the network told us it published and we could not open it to confirm;
• not placed — the outlet did not run it.

Some outlets exclude automated checks in their robots.txt, or answer automated requests with a challenge. We honour those exclusions. Those placements are confirmed by a person instead, and are never reported as missing on the basis that a machine could not reach them.

Domain ratings and link attributes are published only where we can attribute them to a source. Where we cannot, the report says so rather than printing a figure.

8. Payment

Payments are processed by Stripe. We never receive or store your card details. Prices are in US dollars and exclude any tax that applies to you.

9. Your account

Access to your orders uses a single-use link sent to your email address. Keep access to that mailbox secure; anyone who can read it can see your orders.

10. Liability

We provide the service with reasonable skill and care. To the extent the law allows, our total liability for any claim arising from an order is limited to the amount you paid for that order.

Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

We are not liable for an outlet's editorial decisions, for a publisher removing a page after publication, or for how a search engine or AI system treats a published page. None of those are within anyone's control.

11. Changes

We may update these terms. The version that applies to your order is the one published when you placed it. Material changes will be dated here.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, and disputes will be heard there.