DRAFT — not approved for public service use
Version: 2026-09-18.6
Effective: 2026-09-18

# Terms of Service

These Terms govern your use of **Free S3**, our free S3-compatible object-storage service. They are a contract between you and **Backends** ("we", "us" or "our"). The contract is in English. You can download and keep these Terms before registering.

## 1. Who provides the service

Our legal identity is Backends. Our legal status and registration details are: registered in England and Wales. Our business and correspondence address is 25 Thomas Road, Kegworth DE74 2DY, United Kingdom. Our VAT details, where applicable, are n/a.

Our website is https://frees3.backends.co.uk. Contact support at support@backends.co.uk, raise a privacy concern at privacy@backends.co.uk, or report abuse at abuse@backends.co.uk. Our [complaints procedure](/legal/complaints) also explains postal contact and independent rights of complaint.

## 2. Your agreement and eligibility

You must be at least 18 to open an account. This is our service eligibility rule, not a statement that all online storage services have a legal minimum age of 18. Do not register for someone under 18. If acting for an organisation, you confirm that you have authority to bind it; references to "you" include that organisation where appropriate.

You agree to these Terms and the [Acceptable Use Policy](/legal/acceptable-use) when you submit the registration form. Our acceptance occurs when we create your portal account. Bucket creation is a separate request, subject to verification and available capacity. You may correct registration details before submitting the form.

The [Service Description](/legal/service-description) describes the free plan and forms part of these Terms. The [Data Processing Agreement](/legal/data-processing) applies where we process personal data on your behalf. Our [Privacy Notice](/legal/privacy) and [Cookie Notice](/legal/cookies) explain data use; acknowledging those notices is not consent to marketing or a waiver of privacy rights.

The Data Processing Agreement takes priority on the processing it governs. These Terms otherwise take priority over the Service Description and Acceptable Use Policy. No document removes rights that the law does not allow us to limit.

## 3. The free plan

The price is **£0**. There is no credit-card requirement, minimum paid term, automatic paid upgrade or automatic overage charge.

The plan provides one randomly named bucket per account, private by default, with **10,000,000,000 bytes (10 decimal GB)** of storage, and up to 2 active access keys for credential rotation. You can ask the portal to change the whole bucket between private and public read-only mode. Public mode permits anonymous retrieval only when someone knows an exact object URL; it does not permit anonymous bucket listing, uploads, deletes or policy changes. You cannot create a second bucket or change ownership or access policies using customer credentials. Unless we expressly agree otherwise, you may hold one free account; do not create multiple accounts to pool allowances or evade restrictions.

The monthly download allowance is **50 decimal GB**, measured over a UTC calendar month where metering is available. The configured mode monitors transfer and does not automatically suspend an account for crossing the measured allowance. We may contact you or take proportionate manual action under the fair-use terms. Usage figures can lag or be unavailable. The allowance is a service-use condition, not a promise of unlimited traffic while a meter catches up. We will not charge for an overage without a separate agreement. For ordinary excess use we will explain the issue and give a reasonable opportunity to reduce it; urgent protection of the service may require immediate proportionate restrictions.

The storage quota is best-effort and scanner-based. Concurrent uploads, incomplete multipart uploads and delayed measurement may affect actual consumption. Temporary extra capacity is not a permanent entitlement. You should leave headroom, clean up unnecessary objects and abort unwanted multipart uploads.

## 4. What we provide, and what we do not

You access your bucket through the S3 endpoint shown in the dashboard using your own applications or the basic browser-based object manager. The object manager asks you for an existing S3 secret in the page and signs requests in that browser tab; the secret is not submitted to or retained by the portal application. You do not need access to the service's administrative interface. Compatibility does not mean support for every Amazon S3 feature or that Amazon operates or endorses this service.

The free plan has no contractual uptime percentage, response-time guarantee, recovery-time objective, recovery-point objective or service credits. We will provide the service with reasonable care and skill, but availability, capacity and the time to resolve faults can vary. Planned maintenance may interrupt access.

This is not a sole-copy archive, managed backup service, disaster-recovery guarantee or a service intended for safety-critical workloads. Keep an independent copy of any data you cannot afford to lose and test your own recovery process. This requirement does not excuse our failure to meet obligations that apply to us.

## 5. Accounts, keys and access

Provide an accurate email address, verify it and keep it current. Use a strong unique password, secure your email account and protect your devices and S3 credentials. Do not sell or transfer an account without our agreement. You may use keys in your authorised applications, but must not publish them or share the portal login.

The portal displays a new secret only once after password confirmation. An unrevealed secret is available for up to 24 hours and is then expired by the background process. Lost secrets require replacement keys. Rotation can overlap two keys; old keys remain usable until revocation is confirmed. Revocation and suspension are queued operations and are not immediate merely because you clicked a button.

Tell support promptly about suspected unauthorised use and revoke exposed keys. We will assess responsibility fairly: you are not automatically responsible for every action merely because it used a credential, including where the loss arose from our own breach.

## 6. Your content and permitted access

You retain ownership of your objects and other content. You give us only the rights needed to store, transmit, make operational copies of, secure, return and delete that content in order to provide the service, follow your instructions and meet legal obligations. We do not obtain ownership, a right to sell your content, or permission to use it to train AI models or for advertising.

You must have permission and a lawful basis to upload and use the content. The Acceptable Use Policy applies in both private and public modes. Where you are responsible for other people's personal data, assess whether this service and the Data Processing Agreement meet your requirements before uploading it or making it public.

Private does not mean end-to-end encrypted or inaccessible to the operator. Authorised personnel may access data where necessary for support you request, security, a proportionate abuse investigation or a lawful demand, subject to confidentiality and access controls. A person with a valid key or a working pre-signed URL may access the resources that credential authorises. In public mode, anyone who obtains an exact object URL can retrieve that object without authenticating and may copy or redistribute it; do not use public mode for confidential or personal data unless that disclosure is lawful and intended. Visibility changes are queued and take effect only when confirmed. Suspension removes anonymous access as part of the confirmed remote operation.

## 7. Availability, capacity and changes

We may close registration or decline new bucket requests when capacity is unavailable. We may maintain and improve the service and make reasonable changes for security, legal compliance, technical reliability or sustainability. We will not retrospectively impose charges.

For a material adverse change to the free plan or an ordinary planned closure of the service, we will normally give at least **30 days' advance notice** by email and provide a reasonable opportunity to export data or close the account. Urgent security, legal or third-party infrastructure circumstances may require a shorter period; we will explain and notify you as soon as it is lawful and practical.

We will identify material changes to these Terms and their effective date. Changes do not retrospectively alter accrued rights. If a change requires fresh agreement, we will seek it. You may end the service without charge rather than accept a material change. Merely changing a website document is not a substitute for any notice or agreement the law requires.

## 8. Restrictions and suspension

We may proportionately restrict access to investigate credible evidence of illegal use, significant security risk, account compromise, deliberate limit evasion or serious breach, or to comply with a lawful requirement. For a non-urgent breach capable of remedy we will normally explain it and allow at least **14 days** to remedy it before termination.

Immediate action may be needed to protect people, data, other customers or the service, or because notice would prejudice a lawful investigation. Where permitted, we will tell you what has been restricted, the principal reason and how to request a review. We will consider relevant evidence, mistakes and less restrictive alternatives rather than treating an unverified complaint as conclusive.

Suspension is not automatic deletion. We will consider safe export arrangements during a restriction where lawful and technically feasible; we will not release prohibited material, other customers' data or evidence that must lawfully be preserved. You may appeal at abuse@backends.co.uk using the [complaints procedure](/legal/complaints).

## 9. Leaving, return and deletion

You can stop using the service at any time. Download the data you need using your S3 client and contact support@backends.co.uk to request account closure. No special legal wording or cancellation fee is required. We may carry out proportionate identity checks before disabling or deleting an account.

Deleting an object, revoking a key, suspending access and closing an account are different actions. Removing keys alone does not delete your objects. After a confirmed closure or an agreed end-of-service export window, we will remove active customer objects within **30 days**, subject to lawful preservation requirements and the [Return and Deletion Policy](/legal/data-return-deletion). Ask for confirmation where you need a deletion record.

Infrastructure snapshots or backups, where they exist, follow the periods in the Privacy Notice and Data Processing Agreement. Data held solely to meet a legal obligation is restricted and is not returned to ordinary use. We do not promise recovery of an object you have deleted.

## 10. Responsibility and liability

We are responsible for loss that is a reasonably foreseeable result of our breach of these Terms or failure to use reasonable care and skill. Foreseeable means an obvious consequence or one that you and we reasonably contemplated when making the contract. We do not promise uninterrupted or error-free operation, but this does not exclude responsibility for our own legally actionable failures.

If you are a consumer, nothing in these documents excludes statutory rights, remedies, mandatory protections available where you ordinarily live, or liability which cannot lawfully be excluded. We do not make our liability zero merely because the service is free.

For a business customer, neither party is liable to the other for losses that are genuinely indirect or consequential, to the extent that exclusion is lawful and reasonable. This does not classify every loss of data, cost of reasonable recovery or direct loss as indirect. There is no general customer indemnity or numerical liability cap in these Terms.

Nothing excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other matter that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. The rights of individuals under data protection law are not restricted by these Terms. Both parties should take reasonable steps to reduce avoidable loss.

## 11. Complaints, notices and applicable law

Use our [complaints procedure](/legal/complaints). It does not prevent you seeking urgent relief, taking legal action or exercising a statutory right. We do not require binding arbitration or prevent collective or regulatory remedies where the law provides them.

Important service notices go to your account email and may also appear in the dashboard. You may contact us by the methods in section 1. Keep a copy of important correspondence.

These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. A consumer also retains mandatory protections and rights to bring proceedings in the courts of their place of residence where applicable; for example, a UK consumer resident in Scotland or Northern Ireland may use their local courts. For business disputes, the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction unless mandatory law requires otherwise.

If a provision cannot be enforced, the rest continues so far as legally possible. Not enforcing a right immediately does not waive it. Neither party may transfer contractual obligations in a way that unlawfully reduces the other's rights. If we propose transferring the service to another operator, we will explain the effect and provide any legally required notice, safeguards and opportunity to leave.