Terms of Service

1. These terms are a contract

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are a binding agreement between you and Survey Forward, LLC (“Survey Forward,” “we,” “us”). By creating an account, accessing, or using Survey Forward (the “Service”), you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

If you use the Service on behalf of a firm or other organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization. In that case, “you” and “Customer” mean the organization, and you are responsible for everyone who uses the Service under your workspace.

2. Who we are

Survey Forward, LLC is a South Carolina limited liability company based in Charleston, South Carolina. Contact: hello@surveyforward.com.

3. What the Service is — and is not

Survey Forward is business software for land-survey firms. It helps firms manage projects, field operations, and proposals, and look up county and GIS parcel information. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to use the Service for your internal business during your subscription or authorized trial. We retain all rights in the Service, including software, design, and documentation. We do not deliver source code or an on-premises copy.

The Service is not:

• a licensed land survey, boundary survey, or survey plat;
• a title search, title opinion, or legal description;
• professional surveying, engineering, or legal advice; or
• a substitute for the independent judgment of a licensed professional.

Nothing in the Service creates a professional-client relationship with Survey Forward. We are a software vendor, not your surveyor, engineer, or lawyer.

4. Accounts and your workspace

The person or role that administers your workspace (the company admin) is responsible for the users on that tenant: who is invited, what they can see, and what they do. Keep credentials confidential. Do not share logins. You are responsible for activity under your accounts, except activity caused by a third party exploiting a vulnerability in the Service itself.

Tell us promptly at hello@surveyforward.com if you believe an account has been compromised. We may suspend access to protect the Service or other customers.

5. Your data

You own the data, files, and content you and your users put into the Service (“Customer Data”). You grant Survey Forward a limited license to host, process, transmit, display, and back up Customer Data solely to operate, secure, and support the Service, and as you request. That license ends when we delete the data as described below.

You represent that you have the rights needed to put Customer Data in the Service and to grant us that license. We do not sell Customer Data. We do not use Customer Data to train foundation models or other AI models. We do not run advertising pixels or sell ads. See our Privacy Policy.

We own usage, performance, and aggregated data about how the Service runs, provided it does not identify you or reveal Customer Data to third parties.

6. Acceptable use

You will not, and will not allow others to:

• use the Service for any unlawful purpose;
• attack, scrape, or overload the Service, or try to break tenant isolation or bypass access controls;
• probe or test security except through a coordinated report to hello@surveyforward.com;
• upload malware or content you do not have the right to use;
• use the Service to scrape or harvest third-party systems in violation of law or those systems' terms;
• reverse engineer the Service except to the limited extent applicable law prohibits that restriction;
• resell, sublicense, or provide the Service to third parties as your own product; or
• use the Service to store or process data that requires a regime we have not agreed to in writing (including HIPAA protected health information or PCI cardholder data).

7. County records and GIS

Parcel, owner, GIS, deed, and plat information shown in the Service is a convenience. It is compiled from public records and third-party sources. It is not survey-grade. It is not a boundary survey. It is not a title search. It is not a legal description. It does not locate corners on the ground.

You must independently verify source records with the county, register of deeds, or other official office before you rely on them for a survey, plat, proposal, or legal conclusion. Survey Forward is not the county and is not the custodian of official records.

Direct in-product links to recorded deeds and plats are currently available for Greenville County, South Carolina only. Charleston County and North Carolina jurisdictions remain county-primary for parcel data; where deeds or plats are not readily available in-product, we show contact information for the office that holds them. Spartanburg County and other South Carolina counties use Regrid or office contact information. We do not ingest new deed or plat collections for those counties as part of the current product.

County coverage, links, and source quality change. We may add, remove, or change a jurisdiction without promising completeness.

8. Third-party records and vendors

County sites, GIS layers, recorded instruments, and vendor datasets (including Regrid and Mapbox) are provided by others. We pass them through as a convenience. They are provided AS IS and AS AVAILABLE. We do not warrant their accuracy, completeness, currency, or fitness for surveying or title work. We do not indemnify you for errors, omissions, or delays in county or third-party data. Claims about those records belong with the source, not with Survey Forward.

Vendors that help us run the Service are listed on Subprocessors.

9. Professional responsibility stays with you

If you are a licensed land surveyor, engineer, or other professional, your license, standards of practice, and professional liability remain yours. Using Survey Forward does not shift that responsibility to us. You are solely responsible for your surveys, plats, field work, calculations, legal descriptions, deliverables, and advice to your clients. Your clients' claims about that work are your claims to defend.

10. Fees, cancellation, and export

If you purchase a paid plan, fees are as presented at the time of purchase or in an order we both accept. You may cancel at any time. Unless the law requires otherwise, fees already paid are not refundable, and you remain responsible for amounts owed through the cancellation date.

You may export Customer Data while your account is active, using the export tools in the product or by emailing hello@surveyforward.com. We do not lock you into a term beyond what you have already agreed to pay.

11. Warranty disclaimer

The Service, including county records, GIS layers, maps, and third-party data, is provided AS IS and AS AVAILABLE. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Survey Forward disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, and any warranty that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or accurate. We do not warrant that parcel, deed, or plat information is correct, complete, or current. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain disclaimers; those disclaimers apply only to the extent permitted.

12. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Survey Forward will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, business interruption, cost of substitute software, or the cost of remaking a survey, plat, or other professional deliverable, even if we have been advised those damages are possible.

Survey Forward's total liability for all claims arising out of the Service or these Terms will not exceed the fees you paid to Survey Forward in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred U.S. dollars (US $100) if you have paid no fees.

These limits apply to the maximum extent the law allows, including if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose. They do not limit liability that South Carolina law does not permit us to limit — in particular, our own fraud, willful misconduct, or gross negligence, to the extent a court would refuse to enforce a cap on that conduct. We do not expand that exception beyond what the law requires.

13. Indemnification

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Survey Forward and its officers, members, and employees from third-party claims, damages, and reasonable legal fees arising from: (a) Customer Data; (b) your surveys, plats, field work, proposals, or other professional work product; (c) your misuse of the Service or violation of these Terms; or (d) your failure to verify county or GIS records. We will notify you of a covered claim and you will control the defense, provided you do not settle in a way that admits fault by Survey Forward or imposes obligations on us without our written consent.

Survey Forward does not indemnify you for errors, omissions, or unavailability in county records, GIS data, recorded instruments, or other third-party datasets.

14. Suspension, termination, and deletion

We may suspend or terminate access for abuse, a material breach of these Terms, nonpayment, or to protect the Service or other customers. You may stop using the Service and ask us to close the workspace at any time.

After termination or workspace closure, you should export Customer Data promptly. We will delete or de-identify Customer Data within 90 days, except where we must retain it for a legal hold, dispute, or required record. Residual copies in encrypted backups may persist until those backups cycle. Sections that by their nature should survive (including ownership, disclaimers, limits of liability, indemnification, dispute resolution, and this sentence) survive termination.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms by posting the revised version on this page and changing the date above. For a material change, we will try to email the account owner on file. Continued use after the effective date is acceptance. If you do not agree, stop using the Service and export your data.

16. Informal resolution

Before either of us files a claim, the complaining party will send a written notice to the other describing the dispute in reasonable detail. Notice to Survey Forward goes to hello@surveyforward.com. Notice to you may be sent to the admin email on the account. We will then try in good faith to resolve it for 30 days, including by phone or video. This step does not apply to a request for temporary injunctive or other equitable relief to protect intellectual property, confidential information, Customer Data, or unauthorized access to the Service.

17. Mediation

If the dispute is not resolved in that 30-day period, either party may require non-binding mediation before a lawsuit is filed. Mediation will take place in Charleston County, South Carolina, or by video if both sides agree. The parties will try to agree on a mediator. If they cannot agree within 14 days, the mediation will be administered under the commercial mediation procedures of JAMS or the American Arbitration Association, and a mediator will be appointed under those procedures.

The parties will share the mediator's fees equally and pay their own lawyers. Unless both sides agree otherwise, they will participate in at least one mediation session. Mediation is confidential settlement discussion. It is not binding unless we sign a separate written settlement. Either party may then proceed to court. This section does not apply to the equitable-relief requests described above.

18. Courts, class-action waiver, and jury waiver

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of South Carolina, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. After the informal-resolution and mediation steps above, the state and federal courts located in Charleston County, South Carolina have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes arising out of the Service or these Terms. Each party consents to that venue and waives any argument that it is inconvenient. We do not require binding arbitration.

You and Survey Forward may bring claims against each other only in an individual capacity. You and Survey Forward waive any right to a class, collective, consolidated, or representative action, or to participate as a class member. A court may not consolidate claims of more than one customer without both parties' written consent. If this class-action waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim must be severed and litigated in court on an individual basis, and the waiver still applies to the rest.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, you and Survey Forward waive any right to a jury trial for any dispute arising out of the Service or these Terms.

Either party may still ask a court for temporary injunctive or other equitable relief to stop unauthorized use of the Service, misuse of data, or infringement of intellectual property, without first mediating that request.

You must bring any claim arising out of the Service or these Terms within one year after it accrues, or it is permanently barred, except where a longer period is required by law that cannot be waived.

19. General

• These Terms, plus any order we both accept and the policies linked from this legal section, are the entire agreement on the subject. They replace prior discussions.
• If a court finds a provision unenforceable, the rest remains in effect, and the provision is modified only as needed to make it enforceable.
• A failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of that right.
• You may not assign these Terms without our consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of substantially all assets.
• We are independent contractors. These Terms do not create a partnership or agency.
• Notices to us go to hello@surveyforward.com. Notices to you may be sent to the admin email on the account or posted in the Service.

20. Contact

Survey Forward, LLC · Charleston, South Carolina
hello@surveyforward.com

Related: Privacy · Security · Subprocessors