Terms of Use

1. Who you are agreeing with

Rootmates is operated by Tamir Tzion Heyman, an individual sole proprietor established in Israel ("Rootmates", "we", "us", "our"). These Terms of Use are the agreement between you and us for the Rootmates apps, the Rootmates website and everything behind them.

You accept these Terms when you create an account or tick the box that says you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not create an account. The Community Guidelines are part of these Terms, and the Privacy Policy explains what we do with your data - it is a separate document and it is not a consent form.

On iOS, Apple's Standard End User Licence Agreement also applies to the app you downloaded. These Terms govern the Rootmates service - your account, your squads, your content and our moderation of it.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to create or use a Rootmates account. By creating an account you confirm that you are. If the law where you live sets a higher age for agreeing to something like this, or requires a parent or guardian to agree for you, that law applies and you need to meet it.

If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 13, we will suspend it and delete it along with its personal information.

3. Your account

You sign in with an email address, with Sign in with Apple, or with Google Sign-In. Keep your sign-in method to yourself: what happens under your account is treated as done by you. Tell us at feedback@root-mates.com if you think someone else got in.

Give a display name that is yours to use. One account per person - do not create accounts to evade a block, a suspension or a ban.

4. What Rootmates is

Rootmates is a habit and accountability app. You define daily habits and check them off; you can join a squad, see each other's progress, chat, comment, react, send a nudge, run challenges together, keep a private journal, and store private progress photos. Features change as the product changes.

5. No medical advice

Rootmates is a habit and accountability service. It is not a medical device, a healthcare provider, or a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Nothing in the app - a habit template, a streak, a reminder, another user's message - is medical, psychological, nutritional or fitness advice. Talk to a qualified professional before starting or changing anything that affects your health, and never ignore professional advice because of something you read here. If you may be having a medical emergency, contact your local emergency services.

6. Your content stays yours

You own the content you create in Rootmates - your habits, notes, comments, messages, journal entries and photos. We do not claim it.

You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce and display your content only to the extent necessary to operate, secure and provide the Rootmates service and to honour the sharing choices you make. That is the whole licence. We do not use your content to advertise, we do not license it to anyone else, and it ends when you delete the content or your account - other than copies in backups, which expire on the cycle described in the Privacy Policy.

Only post content you have the right to post. If a photo has someone else in it, that is your responsibility.

7. What you may not post or do

There is no tolerance for objectionable content or abusive users on Rootmates. You may not post, send, upload or share, and you may not use Rootmates to do, any of the following:

• Harassment and bullying - targeted abuse, pile-ons, degrading or humiliating another person.
• Threats and violence - credible threats of harm, incitement to violence, glorification of violent or extremist acts.
• Hate - attacks on a person or group because of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, disability, disease, age, sex, gender identity or sexual orientation.
• Child sexual abuse and exploitation - any sexual content involving a minor, any sexualisation of a minor, and any sexual solicitation of a minor. This is reported and referred, not merely removed.
• Non-consensual intimate imagery - intimate or sexual images of anyone shared without their consent, including threats to share them. Pornography and sexually explicit content do not belong here either.
• Encouraging serious self-harm - promoting suicide, self-injury or disordered eating. Habit content that glorifies harming yourself is not accountability.
• Doxxing and privacy violations- publishing someone's private information, or content that invades their privacy.
• Impersonation - pretending to be another person, or misrepresenting your affiliation with anyone.
• Scams and deception - fraud, phishing, fake offers, deceptive schemes.
• Illegal activity - anything unlawful where you or the people you are talking to are, including trading in illegal goods or services.
• Spam and malware - bulk or unsolicited messaging, link spam, viruses, malicious code, scraping, or attempts to break, overload or reverse-engineer the service.
• Infringement- content that infringes someone else's copyright, trade mark or other rights.

8. What we can do about it

We may remove or restrict content, limit functionality, suspend or terminate accounts, preserve evidence where legally appropriate, and refer matters to competent authorities where that is necessary to protect users or to comply with the law. We can do this with or without a report, and we take context, severity and repeat behaviour into account.

Our target is to act on a report within 24 hours - remove the content and remove the account behind it where the report is founded. Reports that involve child safety or a credible threat jump the queue and are escalated immediately. We will tell you if we act on something you reported or something you posted, where we can.

If you think we got a decision wrong, reply to us at feedback@root-mates.com and a person will look at it again.

9. Reporting and blocking

Every piece of content another person can see has a report action on it - a chat message, a photo in chat, a comment, and a user's profile. Reporting takes seconds and the person you reported is not told who reported them.

You can also block another user from their profile. Blocking hides their content from you and yours from them, and stops them interacting with you directly. You can leave a squad at any time.

The Community Guidelines say the same thing in fewer words. To reach a human: feedback@root-mates.com.

10. Private content

Journal entries and private progress photos are built to stay yours: they are not shown to squadmates, and access is enforced in the database, not just in the interface. Task notes are not private - your squadmates can read them.

Be realistic about the rest. Anything you send into a squad can be screenshotted or repeated by the people in it, and no internet service can promise absolute security.

11. Challenges and pledges

Rootmates lets you and your squad make informal accountability pledges around a challenge. That is a promise between people, and it is all it is.

Rootmates does not process, hold, transfer, escrow, enforce or settle money between users and is not a party to any arrangement between users. Users may not use Rootmates to organize illegal gambling, wagering, prize schemes or other unlawful financial activity.

If you pledge something to your squad, it is entirely between you and them, off the platform, at your own risk. We will not adjudicate it, collect it, or refund it.

12. Paid features

Rootmates is free today. Rootmates may introduce optional paid features or subscriptions. Where a subscription is offered through the Apple App Store or Google Play, the price, billing interval, trial terms and renewal terms will be disclosed before purchase. Billing, cancellation and any applicable refunds are administered under the relevant app-store rules, except where applicable law requires otherwise.

13. Our intellectual property

The Rootmates name, logo, design, software and content are ours or our licensors'. These Terms give you a personal, non-transferable, revocable right to use the service as it is intended, and nothing more. Do not copy, resell, or build a competing product out of it.

14. Availability and changes

We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of Rootmates. We will give reasonable notice of a change that materially reduces what you get, where we can. The service is provided as it is at the time - there is no uptime promise, and there will be outages, because there always are.

15. Ending it

You can stop using Rootmates whenever you like and delete your account from Settings / Profile → Delete account in the app, or at root-mates.com/delete-account.

We may suspend or terminate your account if you break these Terms or the Community Guidelines, if we are required to by law, or if keeping it open would put other people at risk. Where it is appropriate and lawful, we will tell you why. Sections that by their nature should survive termination - ownership, disclaimers, liability, governing law - do.

16. Disclaimers

Rootmates is provided "as is" and "as available". To the extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free or secure, that data will never be lost, or that other users will behave.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties. Where that is the case, this section applies only as far as the law allows.

17. Limitation of liability

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data or lost goodwill, arising out of your use of Rootmates. Our total liability for any claim relating to Rootmates is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred US dollars.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law - including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or under consumer protection rules that apply to you.

18. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of Israel, and the competent courts of Tel Aviv-Jaffa have jurisdiction over disputes arising from them.

This does not deprive you of the protection of any mandatory consumer-protection rules of the country where you live, and does not take away your right to bring proceedings in your local courts where the law gives you that right. If you are a consumer in the EU or the EEA, the consumer law of your country of residence continues to apply to you.

19. Changes to these Terms

This version is effective 31 August 2026. If we change these Terms in a way that matters, we will update the effective date and tell you in the app before the change takes effect. If you keep using Rootmates after that, the new version applies. If you do not agree with it, delete your account.

20. Contact

Tamir Tzion Heyman, sole proprietor, Israel - operating as Rootmates.
feedback@root-mates.com