Terms of sale and use

Who you are buying from

Aly is made and sold by Quiet Machinery Private Limited, a company registered in Singapore (“we”, “us”). Buying Aly, starting a trial, or using the app means you accept these terms. If you do not, do not use Aly — and if you have already paid, the refund below is yours.

What a licence gives you

A $29 licence is a one-time purchase. It does not expire, it keeps working without checking in with us, and it covers the updates we release. It is for you — install it on the Macs you personally use, but do not share your key, resell it, or hand it to an organisation as a way of licensing several people.

A $2.99/month subscription is a rental of the same app. It works for as long as it is paid for, and it stops when payment stops.

Either way, you are licensed to use Aly, not sold the software itself. You may not copy it for redistribution, sell it, rent it out, or take it apart to build something competing with it, except where the law says you may regardless of what we write here.

The free trial

Seven days, no card, nothing to cancel. It needs an email address and a one-way identifier for your Mac — that identifier exists so a trial cannot be restarted forever, and the privacy page explains exactly what it is. One trial per Mac. When it ends, Aly stops dictating until you buy a licence or subscribe; nothing is charged and nothing is deleted.

Refunds — 14 days, no questions

If Aly is not for you, email hello@talktoaly.com within 14 days of your purchase and we will refund it. You do not have to give a reason, and we will not ask you for one. Refunds go back to the card you paid with, through Stripe, and usually take a few working days to appear.

Two consequences, so they are not a surprise: a refunded licence is cancelled and no longer licensed for use, and a gift code from that purchase stops working if it has not been redeemed. If it has already been redeemed by someone else, we will not take their copy away.

This 14-day promise is ours and it is in addition to whatever rights the law gives you where you live. If your local consumer law gives you more, you keep the more.

Cancelling a subscription

Cancel any time from your account. You keep access through the period you have already paid for, and are not billed again. We do not refund part of a month you are partway through, beyond the 14-day refund above. Because the app checks in roughly once a day and holds a licence good for about 35 days, access can take a little while to lapse after the paid period ends — that is the offline design working, not a billing error, and you are not charged for it.

Gift codes

A $29 licence comes with one gift code for a free second copy. Give it to whoever you like; they redeem it for a licence of their own. It works once, it has no cash value, and it cannot be exchanged for money or a discount. Subscriptions do not include one.

Updates, and changes to Aly

Aly updates itself, and updates are included. We may change, add, or remove features as the app develops — including removing something you liked. If we ever remove something central enough that Aly is no longer the product you paid for, tell us, and we will sort it out with you rather than point at this paragraph.

Your data

Your audio, recordings and transcripts never leave your Mac. What we hold is your email address and a one-way identifier for your Mac. The privacy page is the full account and forms part of these terms. Payments are handled by Stripe; your card details go straight to them and never reach us.

What we do not promise

Aly is speech recognition. It will sometimes get a word wrong, and it is not suitable as the sole record of anything that has to be exact — a medical note, a legal record, evidence. Check what it writes before you rely on it. We provide Aly as it is, without a promise that it is free of errors or fit for a particular purpose of yours.

Where the law allows us to limit what we owe you, our total liability to you is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before the problem arose, and we are not liable for lost profits, lost data or other indirect losses. Nothing here limits liability that cannot legally be limited — including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud — and nothing here takes away consumer rights you have under the law where you live.

Ending it

You can stop using Aly at any time. We may end your licence if you break these terms in a serious way — sharing or reselling keys, or trying to defeat the licensing — and we will tell you why. A payment reversed as a chargeback ends the licence it paid for.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as Aly changes. The date at the top says when they last changed. A change never applies backwards to a purchase you have already made, and if a change matters we will say so rather than quietly reposting the page.

Law and courts

These terms are governed by the laws of Singapore, and the courts of Singapore have jurisdiction over any dispute. If you are a consumer somewhere else, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory consumer laws of your own country.

Talking to us

Refunds, licence keys, gift codes, or anything that is not working: hello@talktoaly.com, or the contact page. A real person reads it.