Terms of Service

Version 2026-10-24.4

Effective 24 October 2026. These Terms are an agreement between you and WANG PENG YUAN, an individual business operator in Japan trading as Hibira (formerly Hikibi; "Hibira", "we"), for use of the Hibira realtime messaging service, the hibira.io website, the customer portal and the API (the "Service"). If you accept them for an organization, you confirm you may bind it, and "you" means that organization.

1. Accounts

  1. You must be at least 18, or the age of majority where you live, and give a valid email address.
  2. Keep your password and app secrets confidential. You are responsible for activity under your account and your apps' keys.
  3. Tell us at [email protected] without delay if you suspect unauthorized access.
  4. The Service is for business and developer use. It is not offered to consumers for personal or household purposes.

2. The Service

  1. Hibira relays realtime messages between your servers and your end users' devices using a protocol compatible with Pusher Channels. We are not affiliated with Pusher Ltd. or MessageBird; "Pusher" is their trademark.
  2. We pass message content through to subscribed clients and do not store it, except briefly in memory or queues while delivering it.
  3. We may change or improve features. We will give at least 30 days' notice before removing a feature that paid plans depend on.

3. Plans, limits and fees

  1. Each plan sets a number of apps and, for your account as a whole, peak concurrent connections, published messages per day and push subscribers, as listed on the pricing page. These limits are shared by all of your apps: the usage of every app counts towards them. Daily quotas reset at 00:00 UTC.
  2. When you reach a limit, new connections are refused and publishing is rejected until the limit resets or you upgrade. Hard limits are a normal part of the Service, not an outage. While prepaid credits are on (section 3.9), usage past a limit is paid from your credits instead, up to twice the limit.
  3. Paid plans are billed in advance, monthly or yearly as you choose, in US dollars, through our payment processor Stripe. Any amount shown in another currency is an estimate; your bank may apply its own exchange rate and fees. Prices include any Japanese consumption tax that applies. If you are outside Japan, you are responsible for VAT, GST or similar taxes due in your country, unless we show them at checkout.
  4. Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled. You can cancel in the portal at any time; cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period.
  5. Fees are non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise or where we end the Service without cause (section 9.3).
  6. If a payment fails, we keep your paid plan for a grace period while Stripe retries. If it still fails, your account moves to the Free plan and apps over the Free allowance are disabled, not deleted.
  7. We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice. A change applies from your next billing period after the notice.
  8. Enterprise plans follow the order form you sign, which prevails over these Terms where they conflict.
  9. Prepaid credits. On an active paid plan you may buy prepaid credits through Stripe. While you hold credits and have not paused them, usage past your plan's limits, up to twice those limits, is paid from your balance at the unit prices on the pricing page at the time of use. When the balance reaches zero, the plan's limits apply again; we do not bill usage afterwards. Credits are valid for 6 months from purchase, are used in order of expiry, and lapse when unused at expiry or when your account is closed. Credits can be used only for the Service, have no cash value, cannot be transferred and are not refundable except where the law requires otherwise. If you turn on auto top-up, you authorize us to charge your saved card for the pack you chose whenever your balance falls below your threshold, up to your monthly cap; you can turn it off at any time. We may change unit prices under section 3.7; credits you already hold keep their value in US dollars.
  10. Outbound data. Each plan includes an amount of outbound data a month, listed on the pricing page, for all the apps of your account together. It counts the data the Service sends to your end users' connections and resets on the 1st of each month at 00:00 UTC. When it is used up, publishing is rejected until the next month or until you upgrade. While prepaid credits are on, data past the allowance, up to twice it, is paid from your credits at the unit price on the pricing page.
  11. When your limits drop below what your apps use, for example after a downgrade or when prepaid credits run out or are paused, we may close the connections above the new limit, newest first and gradually. A plan change in the portal takes effect at once, and the prorated difference for an upgrade is charged at once.

4. Acceptable use

You must not use the Service to:

  • send unlawful, infringing, fraudulent, harassing or sexually exploitative content, or malware;
  • send unsolicited bulk messages;
  • probe, overload or attack the Service or other customers, or get around limits, for example by spreading one workload across several free accounts;
  • resell the Service as a standalone realtime service without a written agreement;
  • run systems where a failure could cause death, injury or serious environmental damage;
  • break export control or sanctions laws.

Report abuse of the Service to [email protected]. We may suspend an app or account that breaks this section or puts the Service at risk. Unless the risk is urgent, we will tell you first and give you a chance to fix it.

5. Your content and data

  1. You keep all rights in the messages, channel names and other data you or your end users send through the Service ("Customer Data"). You give us the rights needed to run the Service for you.
  2. You are responsible for having a lawful basis and giving any notices your end users need for the data you send through the Service.
  3. Where we process personal data in Customer Data on your behalf, the Data Processing Agreement applies and forms part of these Terms.
  4. Our own handling of account and billing data is described in the Privacy Policy.

6. Availability and support

We aim for high availability and publish incidents at status.hibira.io. Free, Starter, Pro, Business and Scale plans have no uptime commitment. Enterprise plans include a monthly uptime commitment of 99.9%, as set out in the order form. If monthly uptime falls below 99.9%, you receive a service credit of 10% of that month's fees; below 99.5%, 25%; below 99%, 50%. These credits are your only remedy for downtime.

7. Intellectual property and feedback

We own the Service, the Hibira name and logo, and our documentation. Open-source components are licensed under their own licenses. If you send us feedback, we may use it without obligation to you.

8. Warranties and liability

  1. Apart from what these Terms expressly say, the Service is provided "as is" and we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement, to the extent the law allows.
  2. Neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, or for lost profits, revenue or data, even if told they were possible.
  3. Each party's total liability under these Terms is limited to the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or USD 100 if you are on the Free plan.
  4. These limits do not apply to your payment obligations, your breach of section 4, either party's fraud or wilful misconduct, or liability that the law does not allow to be limited.

9. Term and termination

  1. You can close your account at any time in the portal or by emailing [email protected].
  2. We may suspend or end your account if you materially breach these Terms and do not fix it within 14 days of notice, or at once for non-payment after the grace period or serious breach of section 4.
  3. We may end the Service for convenience with 90 days' notice and refund any prepaid fees for the period after termination.
  4. After termination you can export your data for 30 days. We then delete it as the Privacy Policy describes.

10. Indemnity

You will defend us against third-party claims arising from Customer Data or your breach of section 4, and pay resulting damages and reasonable costs, if we tell you promptly and let you control the defence.

11. Changes to these Terms

We will give at least 30 days' notice of material changes by email and in the portal. If you keep using the Service after the change takes effect, the new Terms apply. If you do not agree, you may cancel before then.

12. General

  1. Governing law: the laws of Japan. The Yokohama District Court has exclusive jurisdiction in the first instance, except that either party may seek urgent relief anywhere. Mandatory consumer or data protection rights in your country are not affected.
  2. Neither party is liable for delays caused by events beyond its reasonable control.
  3. You may not assign these Terms without our consent, except to a successor of your business. We may assign them to an affiliate or successor.
  4. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stays in force. Not enforcing a right is not a waiver.
  5. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, the DPA and any order form are the whole agreement. The English version controls over translations.
  6. Notices to us: [email protected]. Our address and phone number are given without delay on request, as stated in our Notice under the Specified Commercial Transactions Act (hibira.io/legal/tokushoho).