Terms of Service

By downloading, installing, or using SQLly (“the app”), you agree to these terms. If you don’t agree, don’t use the app - that’s genuinely the whole deal. These terms are a deal between you and me, the guy who built SQLly. No corporate entity, no team of lawyers, just a person and a pig mascot asking you to be reasonable.

1. What you’re getting

SQLly is licensed to you, not sold. When you pay for a license, you’re buying the right to use the app on its included number of registered devices - you’re not buying the app itself, the source code, the pig, or my undying gratitude (though you get that last one for free anyway). The license is for you personally or your organization, depending on what you bought. Don’t share your license key with the internet. If you do, I’ll revoke it, and then neither of us gets what we wanted.

Who owns a device does not decide which license can cover it. You may use a license you bought on a company-owned device. A license your company bought may cover a device you personally own, provided your company allows that under its own policies. For business use, however, licenses apply to devices, not users: every computer running SQLly for work must consume one of the license’s included registered device installs. Assigning a device license to a person does not make it a user license that follows them to every computer they use, and a business may not count people instead of registered devices to get around the install limit. Treating a device license as a user license for business use violates these terms. You may unregister a device and transfer its install to a replacement device.

2. The free tier and the nagging

You can use SQLly without paying. In exchange, the app will occasionally, gently, playfully remind you that paying is an option. This is the business model, as established in the privacy policy and probably a tattoo I’ll get someday. Paying makes the nagging stop forever. Not paying means the nagging continues forever, but the app keeps working. Those are the two paths. Choose wisely, or don’t - either way I’m not tracking your choice.

The free tier is built for hobbyists, side projects, and kicking the tires. It lets you save up to two servers - with as many databases on each as you like - and connect one RDS IAM or Azure cloud account. A paid license lifts both limits.

The free tier’s other real limit, and this one isn’t a joke: if your organization has more than 100 employees, using SQLly inside that organization on the free tier violates these terms - a company that size can afford a license, and the free tier isn’t for it.

3. Your databases are your problem (affectionately)

SQLly is a tool that runs SQL against databases you connect it to. This is powerful, and power is dangerous. Some things you should know:

• SQLly will run the queries you tell it to run. If you type DROP TABLE users; and hit execute, that is between you and your backups. The app does what you ask. That’s the point of it.
• Keep backups. Seriously. Before you run anything destructive against a production database, make sure you can undo it. I cannot un-drop your table. Nobody can. That’s why it’s called “drop.”
• You’re responsible for having permission to access the databases you connect to. Don’t use SQLly to poke at databases you’re not authorized to touch. That’s illegal in most places and rude everywhere.
• Your connection strings and credentials stay on your machine. I never see them, so I can’t lose them in a breach - but that also means if you lose them, I can’t recover them for you. That stays true with Cloud Relay: credentials live on the machine running your bridge, and the relay only routes end-to-end encrypted traffic it has no keys for.

4. Acceptable use

The short version: use SQLly to work with your own data, like a professional. The slightly longer version: don’t use SQLly to break the law, don’t use it to access systems you shouldn’t, don’t try to crack or redistribute the license system, and don’t reverse-engineer the app except where the law of wherever you live says you’re allowed to no matter what I write here. If you’re doing something with SQLly that would make me sad to read about in the news, stop doing that.

5. Payments and refunds

Prices are listed on the pricing page and processed by a real payment provider who handles your card details - I never see or store them. If you buy a license and something’s genuinely wrong - the app doesn’t work, the key never arrived, something broke on my end - email me and I’ll make it right, including a refund if that’s what makes sense. I’m one guy, not a dispute-resolution department, so just be a human about it and I’ll be a human back.

6. Intellectual property

SQLly, the name, the logo, the pig, and the code are mine. Your queries, your schemas, your data, and your query results are yours. If you send me feedback, bug reports, or feature ideas, you’re giving me permission to use them to make the app better - I can’t pay you for ideas, and if I could, I’d be writing a very different pricing page. Any third-party libraries in the app belong to their respective authors and are covered by their own licenses - every single one of them is listed on the Licenses page, because gratitude deserves receipts.

7. The app is provided “as is”

Here’s the legally required section where I use capital letters, except I’m going to say it like a person first: I do my best. I test the app, I fix bugs fast when people report them, and I genuinely want SQLly to be reliable. But I’m one person with a day job, and I cannot promise the app will be perfect, uninterrupted, or free of bugs. THE APP IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. Translation: I’m not promising the app is fit for your specific use case - you’re the one who knows your environment, so verify it works for you before you bet anything important on it.

8. Limitation of liability

More capitals, same honesty: if something goes wrong, my total liability to you is capped at what you paid me. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, I WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES - including lost profits, lost data, lost business, or that weekend you spent rebuilding a table - ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF THE APP. If you paid nothing, my liability is nothing, which feels fair. If you paid for a license, the most I owe you is the license price. Some jurisdictions don’t allow these limits, in which case this section applies only as far as your local law lets it.

9. Indemnification

If you use SQLly to do something you shouldn’t - break into a database you don’t own, violate someone’s rights, that kind of thing - and someone comes after me about it, you agree to cover my costs for dealing with it. This is a standard clause and also just a polite way of saying: don’t do crimes with my app and then make it my problem.

10. Termination

You can stop using SQLly whenever you want - delete the app and we’re done. I can revoke your license if you seriously violate these terms (sharing keys, redistributing the app, using it for crimes). If that happens, you stop using the app, and the sections about liability and indemnification still apply afterward, because lawyers say they have to.

11. Changes to these terms

If I change these terms, I’ll update this page and note it in the changelog - same promise as the privacy policy. I won’t quietly slip something awful in here. If the change is big, I’ll make it obvious. Continuing to use the app after a change means you accept the new terms; if you don’t accept them, stop using the app and email me if you want to talk about it.

12. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the place I live, which is the United States, and any disputes will be handled in the courts there. Before it ever gets to that, though: email me. I’m one person. There is no legal department, no escalation tree, no “your call is important to us.” We can almost certainly work it out over email like adults, and I’d much rather do that.

13. Contact

Questions about these terms, refunds, licenses, or anything else on this page: use the feedback link in the footer or reach out through the feedback page. I read everything. I answer most things. I’m faster than you’d expect from a company of one.