Hey Church

Terms of Service

Effective date: October 27, 2026

These terms govern use of the Hey Church website (heychurch.co) and the Hey Church app (app.heychurch.co) by a church or other organization that creates an account ("you," "the church"). "Hey Church," "we," and "us" refer to the operator of Hey Church.

By creating an account or using Hey Church, you agree to these terms and to the Privacy Policy. If you are accepting for a church, you confirm that you have authority to bind that church.

The service

Hey Church is a tool for sending church announcements.

  • You write an announcement and send it to your contacts by email and, where available, by SMS.
  • You add contacts by manual entry, CSV upload, a QR sign-up, or a one-time Planning Center import. That import is a one-time copy. It is not an ongoing sync, and later edits in Planning Center are not applied in Hey Church automatically.
  • You may have an announcement rewritten by AI. That rewrite is performed by OpenAI. If you do not use AI rewrite, the announcement goes out in the wording you wrote.
  • Email is delivered by SendGrid.
  • SMS, where available, is delivered by Twilio. See SMS messaging below.
  • Paid plans are billed by Stripe.

A send goes to contacts who have consented. Hey Church does not send an announcement to a group or segment within your list, does not include an analytics dashboard for your account, and does not offer a free trial.

Accounts

You are responsible for the accuracy of your account information, for keeping login credentials confidential, and for all activity under your account. Tell us at legal@heychurch.co if you believe your account has been misused.

Acceptable use

You may use Hey Church only to send announcements your contacts have agreed to receive. You will not use Hey Church to send spam.

  • Consent is required. You must have the contact's consent before you email them, and separate explicit consent before you text them. You record that consent in Hey Church. You may not mark a contact as consented unless they actually agreed.
  • No purchased or scraped lists. Do not upload lists of people who did not agree to hear from your church, including purchased, rented, or scraped lists.
  • Honor opt-outs. Do not re-add or keep messaging someone who unsubscribed from email or replied STOP to SMS, unless they later give fresh consent.
  • Identify your church. Your announcements must accurately identify your church as the sender and, where the law requires it, include your church's valid postal address.
  • Lawful content only. Do not send content that is illegal, deceptive, infringing, or harassing, and do not use the service in a way that harms the deliverability of other churches on the platform.
  • Your contacts, your responsibility. You are the sender of messages to your congregation. You are responsible for the content of your announcements and for the lawfulness of your list, including consent and any information about minors.

We may refuse, block, or stop a message, or suspend the account, if we believe a send breaks these rules or puts the email or SMS program at risk with our providers or carriers.

SMS messaging

If you text contacts through Hey Church, the messages are sent by Twilio. You, the church, are responsible for opt-in. These program terms apply to every SMS sent through the service:

  • Opt-in. Opt-in is explicit consent captured by the church for its contacts. You collect that consent directly from the person and record it in Hey Church before the first text. Email consent is not SMS consent.
  • Opt-out. A contact may opt out by replying STOP. You must not send further SMS to that number unless the person opts in again.
  • Help. A contact may get help by replying HELP. Support is also available at legal@heychurch.co.
  • Frequency. Message frequency varies.
  • Rates. Message and data rates may apply.
  • No sharing for marketing. Mobile numbers and SMS opt-in data are never shared or sold to third parties or affiliates for marketing.

You will not use SMS for anything other than announcements your contacts agreed to receive from your church.

Plans, billing, and cancellation

Hey Church offers a Free plan and paid plans. There is no free trial.

  • The Free plan includes up to 250 contacts and 500 emails per month.
  • Paid plans raise those limits. The price and limits in effect are shown in the app when you upgrade. We may change plan prices or limits with at least 30 days' notice before the change applies to your next billing period.
  • Paid plans are billed in advance through Stripe on a recurring basis until you cancel.
  • You can cancel a paid plan at any time by emailing legal@heychurch.co. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and you keep paid features until then. Fees already paid are non-refundable, including for partial billing periods, except where the law requires otherwise.

If a payment fails, we may suspend paid features until Stripe collects the amount due. Taxes may be added where required.

Your content

You keep ownership of the announcements and contact information you submit. You give Hey Church permission to host, process, and send that material, and to send announcement text to OpenAI when you use AI rewrite, solely to provide the service. AI output may be similar to output produced for others and may be wrong. You are responsible for reviewing a rewritten announcement before you send it.

Indemnification

You will defend and indemnify Hey Church against claims, fines, and costs (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from your announcements, your contact list, your lack of required consent, or your breach of these terms.

Disclaimers and liability

Hey Church is provided "as is" and "as available." We do not guarantee that a message will be delivered, opened, or read, or that email and SMS providers will accept every send. Carrier filtering, recipient settings, and provider outages can block a message.

To the fullest extent the law allows, Hey Church disclaims implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Hey Church will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or lost-profit damages, or for lost goodwill or data. Our total liability arising out of or relating to the service is limited to the greater of the fees you paid us for Hey Church during the twelve months before the claim or US $100.

Some places do not allow these limits. In those places, the limits apply only as far as the law allows. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot legally be limited.

Termination

You may stop using Hey Church and close your account at any time by emailing legal@heychurch.co. We may suspend or close an account if you break these terms, if a payment is overdue, or if we stop offering the service. If we stop the service entirely, we will give account holders reasonable advance notice where possible.

Sections that by their nature should survive, including acceptable use as it relates to messages already sent, indemnification, disclaimers, liability, and governing law, survive after the account closes.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms by posting a new version on this page and changing the effective date. If a change is material, we will notify account holders by email or in the app before it applies. If you keep using Hey Church after the new effective date, the updated terms apply. If you do not agree, close your account before that date.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Before filing a claim, each party will first try to resolve the dispute informally by written notice to the other, allowing 30 days to resolve it. The state and federal courts located in Clark County, Washington have exclusive jurisdiction, except that either party may seek injunctive relief in any court of competent jurisdiction for misuse of the service.

Contact

Questions about these terms: legal@heychurch.co

Privacy details are in the Privacy Policy.