Terms of Service

Effective date: September 30, 2026

Acceptance of Terms

By downloading, installing, or using PreserveAdvisor (the "app," "we," "us," "our"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the app.

These Terms govern your use of PreserveAdvisor on iOS, Android, and our website at preserveadvisor.app. They form a binding agreement between you and Christopher Hilmoe (the app's owner). Please read them carefully.

Description of Service

PreserveAdvisor is an advisor for home food preservation across eight methods: freeze drying, dehydrating, freezing, cold storage, sweet preserves (jam), vinegar pickling, oil and fat infusion, and alcohol infusion. It generates method-specific plans (Plan) — tray-time estimates, oxygen-absorber sizing, brine ratios, starter recipes, and similar numbers depending on the method — a doneness diagnosis mid-batch or after a cycle completes (Check), and a Finish step with failure-cause diagnosis when something went wrong (Finish), based on the details and photos you submit. It also keeps an ongoing Storage inventory of what you've put up: use-by reminders, "Is it still good?" checks, jar labels, notes that carry forward to your next batch, and a record of past batches.

PreserveAdvisor does not cover commercial-scale production, home canning, or any other food-preservation method outside the eight listed above.

The service is provided "as is." See the Food Safety, Generated Advice, and Disclaimers sections below for important limits on what the app's output represents.

Food Safety

Plan results, doneness and packaging guidance, and Storage use-by dates in PreserveAdvisor come from published references specific to each method, badged by confidence tier in the app. They are not a substitute for your own judgment.

You acknowledge and agree that:

  • Raw meat, poultry, and seafood must be fully cooked before freeze-drying or dehydrating. Removing moisture does not sterilize food the way cooking does. A raw product that's been freeze-dried or dehydrated is still raw, and PreserveAdvisor's guidance for these categories assumes the food was cooked first.
  • Package only once a batch is confirmed fully dry. Sealing a batch before it's actually done — on the strength of a cycle-complete signal alone — risks mold and spoilage in storage. This is the central reason Check exists: a machine's own "done" indicator is a timer, not a moisture measurement.
  • Doneness reads (crack test, interior cold-spot, weight-plateau) are advisory, not a guarantee. When in doubt about whether a batch is actually dry, the safer choice is always to run the check again or extend the cycle. PreserveAdvisor's reads are a second opinion, not a substitute for your own senses and your own reweigh.
  • Oxygen-absorber sizing matters for long-term storage. An undersized or stale absorber won't fully evacuate oxygen from a sealed container, which can allow spoilage over time even in a properly dried batch.
  • Vinegar pickling and infused oil carry their own hard safety floors. PreserveAdvisor prescribes acidity ratios and refrigerated or frozen handling for these methods rather than asking you to supply a safety number yourself; it does not offer a "lower or unsure" override.
  • Timelines are estimates. Cycle length and process time vary with your equipment, load size and thickness, and the food itself — PreserveAdvisor's numbers are a starting point for a batch you still check yourself, not a countdown to a guaranteed result.
  • "Is it still good?" and use-by reminders are advisory, not a guarantee. They tell you what published sources say about a typical shelf life for that food and method; they cannot detect spoilage that happened in your specific container. If something shows signs of spoilage, don't taste-test it.
  • PreserveAdvisor does not claim to make your food safe, and does not replace your judgment. It gives sourced guidance and, where the underlying data doesn't support a specific number, it says so rather than inventing one. PreserveAdvisor does not make shelf-life claims beyond what its sourced references support.

Accounts

Creating an account

PreserveAdvisor requires an account from your first use of the app — there is no anonymous or offline-only mode. Sign-in uses a passwordless email code: you enter your email address, we send an 8-character code valid for 15 minutes, and entering it signs you in (creating your account automatically if you're new).

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account. By creating an account, you confirm you meet this age requirement.

Account security

You're responsible for keeping access to your sign-in email account secure. Anyone with access to your email inbox can sign in to your PreserveAdvisor account by requesting a sign-in code.

If your email is compromised, secure your email account first, then contact us at privacy@preserveadvisor.app to secure or delete your PreserveAdvisor account.

Pro Subscriptions and Billing

Free tier

Every method has a set of free foods, listed in the app, that run the full Plan/Check/Finish/Storage loop without a subscription, plus a monthly allowance of checks and finish diagnoses on those free foods and a lifetime ceiling, both shown in the app and reset on the first of the month. The freezer-outage check is free on any food. Storage tracking and "Is it still good?" are free for your free foods. A Pro subscription is required for: every other food in every method, free-text "Other" plans, recipe import, and unlimited checks and diagnoses beyond the free allowance.

If your Pro subscription lapses, nothing already in your account is taken away — your existing batches and Storage items keep their dates, labels, and reminders, and you can still mark them used up or delete them. What stops is adding or checking locked foods.

Billing and renewal

PreserveAdvisor offers Pro subscriptions at $39.99 USD per year or $4.99 USD per month. Prices in other currencies are set by Apple or Google at platform-mapped rates and may differ from a direct USD conversion.

Subscriptions are billed by Apple (App Store) or Google (Play Store), not by us directly. By subscribing, you authorize the platform to charge your stored payment method for the subscription period and any auto-renewals.

Subscriptions automatically renew at the end of each billing period (annual or monthly) at the then-current price unless you cancel before the renewal date. Apple and Google will notify you in advance of any price change in accordance with platform policy; you may cancel before the change takes effect to avoid being charged the new price.

Cancellation

You can cancel a Pro subscription at any time through your Apple App Store or Google Play Store account settings:

  • iOS: Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions → PreserveAdvisor → Cancel Subscription
  • Android: Play Store → Profile → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions → PreserveAdvisor → Cancel subscription

Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. You retain Pro access until that period ends. We do not have the ability to cancel platform subscriptions on your behalf — only Apple and Google can.

Refunds

Refunds for App Store subscriptions are handled by Apple under their Media Services Terms (reportaproblem.apple.com). Refunds for Play Store subscriptions are handled by Google under their refund policy (play.google.com/store/account).

We do not issue refunds directly. If you believe a refund is warranted (accidental purchase, technical issue preventing use, etc.), contact Apple or Google support — they have full authority over platform-billed subscription refunds.

Affiliate Links

PreserveAdvisor includes affiliate links to supplies (such as mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, and canning jars) via the Amazon Associates program, on the app's gear screen and on this site. When you click an affiliate link and complete a qualifying purchase, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Our recommendations are selected because they're genuinely useful for the method they're attached to, not based on commission rates, and each one is cross-checked against preserving community and extension sources. Affiliate links never appear on a discard, use-by, decline, or "Is it still good?" surface.

If you prefer not to support PreserveAdvisor through affiliate purchases, you can search for the recommended products directly without clicking our links — the products themselves are widely available from many retailers.

See the Privacy Policy for details on what data is or is not shared with Amazon when you click an affiliate link.

Acceptable Use

You agree to use PreserveAdvisor only for its intended purpose: planning, checking on, logging, and tracking your own food preservation. Specifically, you agree NOT to:

  • Submit photos containing nudity, violence, or other inappropriate content (these will be rejected by the processing layer and may result in account suspension)
  • Submit photos or content belonging to others without permission
  • Reverse engineer, scrape, automate, or attempt to extract bulk data from the app or website
  • Use the app to harass, abuse, or harm any person
  • Resell or sublicense access to PreserveAdvisor or your Pro subscription
  • Attempt to bypass usage limits or otherwise interfere with the app's normal operation
  • Use the app for any purpose that violates applicable laws

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these rules.

Your Content

Ownership

You retain ownership of the photos you capture, the notes you write, and the batches and Storage items you save. Your content is yours.

License to us

To provide diagnosed checks and logs, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to transmit and process the description (and photo, if any) you submit for that one request, and to store the resulting text history and your Storage items in your account, solely for the purpose of operating the PreserveAdvisor service for you.

This license covers sending a submitted photo to our processing partner (Anthropic) for that single diagnosis request — the photo itself is not retained by us afterward, see our Privacy Policy — and storing your batch history and Storage items in our backend infrastructure (Cloudflare).

This license does NOT cover: using your content for AI model training, selling your content to third parties, or displaying your content publicly without your explicit permission. If you delete specific content or your account, this license terminates with respect to that content.

Generated Advice

PreserveAdvisor's Plan results — tray-time estimates, oxygen-absorber sizing, brine ratios, starter recipes, and the other method-specific numbers — are computed from a curated, sourced reference dataset, confidence-badged in the app, and are never generated by AI. Check and Finish diagnoses use artificial intelligence (Anthropic's Claude API) to read your description and any photo and generate a response, with the deterministic reference data stamped onto it afterward so it always matches the sourced tables regardless of what the model said.

You acknowledge that:

  • Generated output is advice, not authority. The analysis can still be incorrect, incomplete, or surprising, even with the deterministic data stamp in place.
  • PreserveAdvisor is not a substitute for your own judgment — especially on food safety. When a photo-based read and your own checks disagree, or you're simply unsure, run the check again or discard the batch.
  • Following PreserveAdvisor's advice is your choice. Outcomes — an under-dried batch, spoilage in storage, wasted ingredients — are not warranted by us.
  • Diagnosed reads require sending your description, and any photo, to Anthropic's servers for that one request. See our Privacy Policy for what data is shared, how it's protected, and your rights to access or delete it.

Intellectual Property

PreserveAdvisor (the app, the website, the pantry-cabinet logo, the Plan / Check / Finish / Storage mode names, and all original UI/UX) is the intellectual property of Christopher Hilmoe. You may not copy, modify, distribute, or create derivative works of these elements without written permission.

Third-party trademarks (Apple, Google, Amazon, Anthropic, Cloudflare, Resend, RevenueCat, and others) belong to their respective owners and are used here under standard nominative-use principles.

Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

Warranty disclaimer

PRESERVEADVISOR IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE APP WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT GENERATED ADVICE IS ACCURATE, RELIABLE, OR SUITABLE FOR YOUR SPECIFIC FREEZE-DRYING NEEDS.

Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL PRESERVEADVISOR OR ITS OWNER BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, USE, GOODWILL, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, RESULTING FROM (A) YOUR USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE APP; (B) GENERATED ADVICE, ESTIMATES, OR READS; (C) FAILED OR SPOILED BATCHES, INGREDIENT WASTE, OR FOODBORNE ILLNESS ARISING FROM YOUR OWN FOOD HANDLING; OR (D) ANY OTHER MATTER RELATING TO THE APP.

OUR TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF PRESERVEADVISOR SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF: (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID TO US FOR PRO SUBSCRIPTIONS IN THE 12 MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM, OR (B) $100 USD.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or limitations of liability; in those jurisdictions, the above limitations apply to the extent permitted by law.

Termination

You can terminate your relationship with PreserveAdvisor at any time by deleting the app from your device and requesting account deletion per the Account Deletion section of our Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or terminate your access to PreserveAdvisor at any time if you violate these Terms, if your account is used for fraud or abuse, or if continued operation poses risk to other users or our infrastructure. We will notify you of termination via your account email when reasonably possible, but reserve the right to terminate immediately in cases of serious violation.

Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wisconsin, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any dispute arising from these Terms or your use of PreserveAdvisor shall be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

If you reside in a jurisdiction whose mandatory consumer protection laws provide rights that override this choice (for example, certain EU consumer-law provisions), those rights apply notwithstanding this section.

Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms as the app evolves. When we make material changes, we will update the effective date at the top of this page and notify active account holders by email (using the address associated with the account). Continued use of PreserveAdvisor after an update means you accept the revised Terms.

If you do not agree with the revised Terms, your remedy is to stop using the app and (optionally) request account deletion.

Contact

Questions about these Terms? Get in touch:

Email: support@preserveadvisor.app