Terms

What you get, what it costs, and what we promise. Written to be read — if anything here is unclear, ask us before you buy.

1. Who you are dealing with

Sprout Media Limited is the developer and licensor of Doghouse: a private company limited by shares, registered in Ireland, company number 525040, registered office 26 Upper Pembroke Street, Dublin D02 X361, Ireland. VAT number IE2975141FH. Contact us through our contact form.

Polar Software, Inc. is the merchant of record for every purchase. That means you buy the licence from Polar as an authorised reseller — Polar takes payment, issues your invoice, handles VAT and sales tax, and processes refunds under its own buyer terms. Your right to use the software is licensed to you by us, under this document.

2. The free version

Doghouse is free to use with one vault, for as long as you like. Every feature is included. It is a licence, not a trial: nothing expires, nothing is time-limited, and we will not ask you to pay. No account is required and the free version collects no personal data as payment in kind.

3. The paid licence

A single payment grants you a perpetual, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to create unlimited vaults, activated on up to three Macs at a time that you own or control.

• Three concurrent activations — not three forever. You can free a slot at any time in Settings → Deactivate This Mac, or from your Polar purchase portal, and then activate a different Mac. Replacing or retiring a Mac costs you nothing.
• The licence is for one person. Using it in a business is fine; sharing keys publicly is not.
• It is a one-time payment. There is no subscription and no renewal.

4. Nothing you have made ever stops working

This is a commitment, not a courtesy:

• Vaults you have already created keep opening and keep working — whatever happens to your licence, including if it lapses, is refunded, or you never buy one. The limit only ever prevents creating new vaults.
• The app does not re-check your licence to open a vault. Once activated it works offline, permanently, without contacting us or Polar again.
• If we ever discontinue the licence activation service, or Sprout Media Limited ceases to trade, we will publish a build that does not require activation, so that existing customers are never left unable to use what they paid for.
• Vaults are standard Apple encrypted disk images. Even without Doghouse installed, macOS Disk Utility can open them with your password.

5. Encryption, and the fact that there is no way back

Doghouse encrypts your files with AES-256 using Apple's encrypted disk image format. There is no back door, no master key, no recovery code and no reset.

If you lose or forget a vault's password and it was not saved to your Keychain, the contents of that vault cannot be recovered — not by you, not by Sprout Media Limited, not by Apple, not by anyone. This is a deliberate property of the product and the reason it is worth using. It is not a defect, and we accept no obligation to recover encrypted data.

Because of this, please: save your password in the Keychain when you create a vault, or record it somewhere safe that is not inside the vault, and keep backups of anything you cannot afford to lose. By using Doghouse you accept this specific characteristic of the software.

6. What you may not do

You may not redistribute, resell, rent or sublicense Doghouse, share or publish licence keys, or circumvent the licensing mechanism.

Except — and this exception overrides the sentence above — you keep every right that the law gives you regardless of what a licence says. In the European Union that includes making a back-up copy, observing, studying and testing how the software works, and decompiling it where necessary for interoperability (Articles 5 and 6 of Directive 2009/24/EC). Nothing here restricts those rights, and we do not object to good-faith security research.

7. Ownership

Doghouse is licensed, not sold. All intellectual property in the software remains with Sprout Media Limited. Versions 1.0 to 1.8 were published under the MIT Licence; the rights granted to anyone who received a copy under that licence continue to apply to those versions, and nothing here withdraws them. Version 1.9 and later are proprietary.

8. Updates and support

Your licence covers all updates to Doghouse that we release, at no extra cost. We intend to keep Doghouse working on macOS versions Apple actively supports, and to provide security-relevant updates for as long as you can reasonably expect for a product of this kind. Updates are optional: the version you have keeps working if you never install another.

9. Price, tax, and your right to cancel

The price shown at checkout is the total you pay, in your local currency, with VAT or sales tax included where it applies. Polar collects it and issues your invoice.

If you are a consumer in the EU or EEA you have 14 days to cancel your purchase, from the day the contract was concluded, without giving a reason. To cancel, tell us through our contact form or contact Polar; a clear statement is enough, and you may use the model cancellation form set out in Irish and EU consumer law. We will refund you within 14 days of being told.

The one exception the law allows: if you asked for the licence to be supplied immediately, expressly agreed to that, and acknowledged that you would lose the right to cancel by doing so, then once supply has begun the cancellation right no longer applies. Where that consent has not been obtained, your 14 days stand.

Beyond your legal rights, we offer a simple promise: if Doghouse is not for you, tell us within 30 days of purchase and we will refund you. You do not need a reason. We would rather have an honest refund than an unhappy customer — and the free version means nobody needs to pay to find out whether the app suits them.

10. Our legal obligation to supply working software

We are legally required to supply digital content that conforms to the contract — that it works as described, is fit for purpose, and comes with the updates needed to stay that way. These rights are not affected by anything in this document. If Doghouse does not conform, you are entitled to have it put right and, where that is not possible or not done in reasonable time, to a price reduction or a refund.

For consumers in Ireland, the period during which you may seek a remedy is six years from supply under the Consumer Rights Act 2022, and for the first twelve months it is for us — not you — to show that the software conformed. Consumers elsewhere in the EEA have at least the two-year guarantee period their national law provides.

11. Warranty and liability

What we never exclude. Nothing in this document limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Consumers. If you are a consumer, the disclaimer and limitation above apply only so far as the law of your country allows. They do not affect your statutory rights, including those described in section 10. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, in which case they simply do not apply to you.

12. Ending the licence

You may stop using Doghouse at any time. We may end your licence only if you materially breach these terms — for example by publishing your key or circumventing licensing — and only after telling you and giving you a fair chance to put it right. Even then, vaults you have already created continue to work and their contents remain yours.

13. Export and sanctions

Doghouse is mass-market encryption software. By downloading or buying it you confirm that you are not located in, and are not acting on behalf of anyone in, a country or territory subject to comprehensive trade sanctions, and that you are not on any restricted-party list. You are responsible for complying with the export and import rules that apply where you are.

14. Privacy

How we handle personal data — including the licence activation described above — is set out in our privacy policy.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms for future purchases and future versions. Changes are not retroactive: the terms you accepted when you bought your licence continue to govern that licence, and we will not use an update to take away something you already paid for. Material changes will be posted here before they take effect.

16. Disagreements

If something goes wrong, tell us first through the contact form. We commit to trying to resolve it informally within 30 days, and in our experience that is enough.

Nothing here requires you to give up going to court, and there is no compulsory arbitration and no class-action waiver in these terms. You may always bring a claim in your local small-claims procedure.

17. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Ireland.

If you are a consumer, this choice does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory consumer law of the country where you live, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of that country. We will bring any claim against a consumer only in the courts where that consumer lives.

If you are a business customer, the courts of Ireland have exclusive jurisdiction.

18. The rest

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the remainder continues to apply. Our not enforcing something immediately does not mean we have waived it. These terms, together with the privacy policy and the Polar buyer terms that govern the sale itself, are the whole agreement between us — but nothing in this paragraph excludes liability for fraudulent misrepresentation.

Sprout Media Limited · Registered in Ireland, company number 525040 · 26 Upper Pembroke Street, Dublin D02 X361 · VAT IE2975141FH
Version 1.0 · Effective date: 30 August 2026