Terms of Service

These terms cover two things:

• your use of thearkhq.com; and
• any subscription you buy directly through our online checkout, including through a link printed on conference material.

If we have signed a separate Service Agreement with your school, that agreement governs the engagement and prevails over this page wherever the two differ.

When you buy online you are asked to agree to these terms before paying. That tick is the point at which they bind you.

We sell to schools and other organisations. We do not sell to consumers, and the section below sets out what that means for your purchase.

Your contract is with Ark Innovative Technologies & Services Limited, trading as Ark HQ, a company registered in Ireland (CRO 600940), registered office Cube Building, Monahan Road, Cork, T12 H1XY. Our VAT number is IE3468561JH.

Contact: hello@thearkhq.com. Billing queries: sales@thearkhq.com. Data-protection queries: dpo@thearkhq.com.

Our products are sold to schools, Education and Training Boards, patron bodies and other organisations, for use in their work. They are not offered to consumers, and we do not sell for personal, family or household use.

By buying a subscription you confirm that:

• you are buying for a school or other organisation, in the course of its business or public function, and not as a consumer;
• you are authorised to commit that organisation to this contract — in most schools that authority rests with the Board of Management rather than with an individual member of staff; and
• the organisation, not you personally, is the customer under this contract, whatever card or account the payment is made from.

Consumer protection law, including the statutory cancellation rights that apply to consumers buying at a distance, therefore does not apply to this contract. Nothing in these terms removes a right or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded.

If you are not buying on behalf of an organisation, please do not use the checkout. Email sales@thearkhq.com instead and we will tell you whether we can help.

Our online checkout sells annual subscriptions to our software products:

A subscription gives your school the right to use the product for the term you paid for, for your own school’s purposes. It is not a transfer of ownership and it is not transferable to another school without our agreement.

Setup normally begins within one week of your payment clearing. What onboarding and training include for your subscription is confirmed to you in writing when you buy.

An AskArk licence is assigned to a named member of staff rather than to a post, so each licence covers one person. If that person leaves or changes role, ask us and we will reassign the licence to someone else at your school. Licences may not be shared between people, and we may decline reassignments that amount to sharing one licence across several staff.

Our checkout is hosted by Stripe. You give your email address, your school’s name and roll number, a billing address and a payment method. We accept card, Revolut Pay and SEPA Direct Debit.

The contract is formed when your payment is authorised and we confirm the order. If a payment fails or is reversed, no contract is formed and we may withhold access.

In placing the order you give the confirmations in Business customers only above — in particular that you are authorised to commit your school, and that the school rather than you personally is the customer.

Prices are shown excluding VAT. Irish VAT at the standard rate, currently 23%, is calculated and added at checkout, and the total you confirm before paying is the amount we take.

Our checkout does not ask for a VAT number, so every online sale is treated as a supply within Ireland. For that reason the checkout is for schools and organisations established in Ireland. If your school is outside Ireland, or needs a VAT invoice showing its own VAT details, or is buying on a purchase order, email sales@thearkhq.com and we will invoice you instead of taking payment through the checkout.

If you use the checkout from outside Ireland anyway, Irish VAT will be charged on the sale and we are not obliged to re-issue it under another country’s VAT treatment.

Subscriptions bought online are annual and renew automatically. We take the first payment when you buy, and a further payment on each anniversary, using the payment method you gave us, until the subscription is cancelled. This is what you authorise at checkout.

We will email you a reminder at least 60 days before each renewal is taken — in time for the notice period below — so a renewal is never a surprise. We send it to the billing contact you gave us at checkout, so please keep that address current and tell us when the person in the role changes.

If a renewal payment fails we will tell you and try again. If it cannot be collected we may suspend access until it is paid.

Some prices are introductory — offered below our standard price to schools who commit early, including through a conference offer.

Where we offer an introductory price we say so at the time, and the Giraft introductory price for primary schools is held for a minimum of three years from your first payment. We will not raise it inside that period. After it the price is reviewed, and any change is subject to the notice in the section below — so you hear about it before it takes effect, and can cancel instead of accepting it.

A conference offer is open only for the period stated with it. The IPPN 2026 offer closes on 18 December 2026.

We may change the price of a subscription at renewal. If we do, we will tell you at least 30 days before the renewal date, and you may cancel before it takes effect rather than accept it.

This section does not override an introductory price we have committed to holding. While that commitment runs, the held price stands.

You can cancel a subscription by emailing sales@thearkhq.com. Cancelling stops the next renewal. It does not shorten the term you have already paid for: your access runs to the end of that term.

We ask for 60 days’ notice before the renewal date so we can stop the payment in time.

We may suspend or end a subscription if payment is not made, or if the product is used in breach of these terms. Where we end it for our own convenience we will refund the unused part of the term.

Payments are not refundable. There is no money-back period, and we do not refund part of a term if you cancel or stop using the product part-way through it — cancelling stops the next renewal rather than ending the term you have paid for.

The one exception is where we end a subscription for our own convenience. There we refund the unused part of the term, as the section above says.

This is a business-to-business contract, as Business customers only above sets out, so the statutory cancellation rights that apply to consumers buying at a distance do not apply to it.

We may suspend or end your access to a product if:

• a payment is not made when it falls due;
• the product is used in breach of these terms;
• we are required to by law, or by a provider we depend on withdrawing a service; or
• continuing would expose us, your school or a third party to a legal or security risk.

Where we can give notice before suspending, we will, and we will tell you what has to happen for access to resume. Suspension does not reduce what you owe for the term.

You may end a subscription at any time for a material breach by us that we have not put right within 30 days of your telling us about it in writing. In that case we refund the unused part of the term.

Use the site and the products lawfully. Do not attempt to disrupt them, scrape them at scale, misrepresent your identity, share login credentials outside the licences you bought, or use them to infringe anyone’s rights.

Our products assist your staff; they do not replace your school’s own judgement. Decisions about a child, an employee or a statutory duty remain the school’s, and output should be reviewed by a person before it is acted on.

We aim to keep the products available and to fix faults promptly, and we will give notice of planned maintenance where we can. We do not promise uninterrupted service on these terms.

Support is available from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, Irish time, and we aim to respond within two working days. Where a Service Agreement sets service levels, those apply instead.

We develop our products continuously, so features change. We may add, alter or withdraw a feature, and we may change the providers we build on.

We will not make a change that removes a material part of what your subscription was sold as without telling you first. If we do, and it matters to your school, tell us within 30 days and you may end the subscription and take a refund of the unused part of the term. That is your remedy for such a change.

How we handle personal data is set out in our Privacy Policy. For personal data your school processes inside our products, your school is the controller and we are a processor under a Data Processing Agreement — ask us for one at dpo@thearkhq.com. Our data-protection posture is summarised on our Trust & Compliance page.

The site, the products, their content, and the Ark HQ, SafeSchool, Ark Academy, Giraft and AskArk names and marks are owned by Ark Innovative Technologies & Services Limited or its licensors. You may not reuse them without permission. Content your school puts into a product stays your school’s.

We promise to provide the products with reasonable skill and care, to the description given when you bought, and to handle personal data as our Data Processing Agreement requires.

Beyond that, and to the extent the law allows between businesses, the products are provided as they are. We do not promise that they will be uninterrupted or error-free, that they will meet a requirement we have not agreed in writing, or that any particular outcome will follow from using them.

Our products help your staff do their work. They do not provide legal advice and they do not discharge a statutory duty. Responsibility for a decision about a child, an employee or a statutory obligation stays with the school, and output should be reviewed by a person before it is acted on.

Website content is provided for information. To the extent the law permits, our total liability under or in connection with a subscription, taken together across all claims, is limited to the fees you paid for that subscription in the twelve months before the claim arose.

We are not liable for any of the following, however it arises: loss of profit, revenue, savings or business; loss of or damage to data, except to the extent it results from our failure to meet our obligations as a processor; loss of goodwill or reputation; business interruption; wasted management time; or any indirect or consequential loss.

We are also not liable for a decision your school takes using our products, for the accuracy or completeness of the content your school puts into them or asks them to produce, or for the acts, omissions or availability of a third-party service our products connect to or embed.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

The site links to and embeds third-party services, including our payment provider and our booking schedulers. We are not responsible for their content or their own handling of your data, which is governed by their terms.

Neither of us is in breach of these terms, or liable for a delay or failure to perform, because of something outside our reasonable control — including the failure of a utility, network or hosting provider, a cyber attack, an act of government, industrial action, or a natural event. We will tell you if one affects your subscription, and if it continues for more than 60 days either of us may end the subscription, with a refund of the unused part of the term.

The whole agreement. These terms, together with what was shown to you at checkout, are the whole agreement for an online subscription, and replace anything said or written beforehand. Where we have signed a Service Agreement with your school, that agreement prevails over this page wherever the two differ. Nothing here limits liability for fraudulent misrepresentation.

If part of this fails. If a court finds any part of these terms unenforceable, that part is treated as narrowed only so far as needed, or struck out if it cannot be, and the rest continues in force.

Not insisting is not giving up. If we do not enforce a term, or delay in doing so, we keep the right to enforce it later.

Transferring the contract. We may transfer our rights and obligations to another business that takes over ours, and will tell you if we do. You may not transfer yours without our written agreement — which includes a transfer to another school, trust or patron body.

Nobody else can enforce it. These terms are between your school and us. No other person may enforce them.

Notices. We write to the billing contact given at checkout; you write to sales@thearkhq.com. Email is a valid notice under these terms for both of us.

These terms are governed by the laws of Ireland, and the Irish courts have jurisdiction.

We may update these terms; the date above shows when they were last reviewed. The terms that apply to your subscription are the ones you agreed when you bought or last renewed it. Questions: hello@thearkhq.com.