Terms of Service
Last updated: August 1, 2026
These Terms govern your use of ShowHive — our websites, mobile apps, and related services (together, the "Service"). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the Service.
1. Who may use ShowHive
- You must be at least 13 to hold an account. If you are under the age of majority where you live, a parent or guardian must agree to these Terms on your behalf and is responsible for your use.
- You must be at least 18 (or the age of majority where you live) to create an organization, run a paid event, or receive payouts.
- You must provide accurate information and keep it current.
- You are responsible for your account credentials and for everything done through your account. Tell us promptly at support@showhive.io if you believe your account has been compromised. We strongly recommend enabling two-factor authentication, particularly for organizer accounts, which control a payout connection.
2. What ShowHive does — and does not — do
ShowHive provides tools for event registration, classification, judging, People's Choice voting, awards, results, and — optionally — collecting entry fees.
ShowHive does not:
- Organize, host, sponsor, insure, or supervise any event
- Select judges, set judging criteria, or determine who wins
- Hold, forward, or take a percentage of entry-fee money
- Guarantee that any event will take place, or take place as advertised
Events are run by their organizers. Disputes about an event — its conduct, its results, its refunds, or its prizes — are between the participants and that organizer.
3. Plans, subscriptions, and fees
Current plans and prices are shown on our Pricing page and in the app. In summary:
- Community — free. Limited to 3 events per year and 50 entries per event. People's Choice voting only; no formal judging and no paid registration.
- Single Event — a one-time purchase unlocking judging and paid registration for one event, priced by entry count.
- Subscription — monthly or annual, unlimited events and entries.
- Charity Events — discounted or waived pricing for verified 501(c)(3) organizations.
Plan limits are enforced by the Service, and we may prevent actions that would exceed them. We may change prices, and will give notice before a change affects your renewal. Refunds are covered by our Refund Policy.
Automatic renewal — please read
Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel. Specifically:
- A monthly subscription renews every month, and an annual subscription renews every year, at the then-current price, charged to your payment method on file.
- It will keep renewing for successive terms of the same length unless you cancel before the renewal date.
- To cancel, open the app and go to Profile → Plan & Billing → Manage billing, which opens the Stripe billing portal, or email support@showhive.io and we will cancel it for you. There is no phone call and no retention process.
- When you cancel, your plan features continue until the end of the period you have already paid for, and you are not billed again.
- Annual subscriptions are not refundable once the term has begun — see the Refund Policy. Please make sure an annual term is what you want before it renews.
Charity pricing
Charity pricing requires a valid U.S. 501(c)(3) organization and verification of your EIN. You affirm that fees collected support your charitable purpose. Misrepresenting charitable status is a material breach, and we may reprice the account to standard rates or terminate it.
4. Entry fees — the organizer is the merchant of record
Where an organizer charges entry fees, payments are processed by Stripe and settle directly to the organizer's own Stripe account. ShowHive is not a party to that transaction, does not hold the funds, and takes no percentage of it.
Consequences that follow from this, which we want to state plainly:
- The organizer — not ShowHive — is the merchant of record.
- The organizer is responsible for issuing refunds, handling chargebacks, and meeting any tax obligations on money they collect.
- ShowHive cannot reverse, refund, or redirect an organizer's charge. If you need a refund for an entry fee, contact the organizer of that event.
- Organizers must complete Stripe's identity verification before a paid event can open registration. That information goes to Stripe, not to us.
- Use of Stripe is also subject to Stripe's own agreements.
Card-fee pass-through (surcharging)
Organizers may optionally pass card processing costs to entrants. ShowHive limits any pass-through to recovering the actual processing cost, caps it at the applicable card-network ceiling, and takes no portion of it. The amount is disclosed to the entrant before payment.
Surcharging is regulated, and the rules vary by state and card network. An organizer who enables this feature must separately accept ShowHive's surcharge terms in the app, which are incorporated into these Terms by reference. In short: the organizer is solely responsible for complying with applicable surcharging laws, card-network rules, registration requirements, caps, and restrictions on surcharging debit cards. ShowHive does not provide legal advice and does not verify whether surcharging is permitted for a given event, location, or card mix.
Organizers running events in Georgia should note that Georgia permits a card fee only where the merchant also accepts at least one payment method with no such fee (for example cash or check at on-site registration), where the fee does not exceed the merchant's actual cost of accepting the card, and where the amount is disclosed before the transaction and identified as non-refundable. Surcharging debit cards is prohibited. ShowHive's on-site registration supports fee-free cash entry, but whether you offer it — and whether you comply generally — is your responsibility, not ours.
5. Organizer responsibilities
If you run an event on ShowHive, you are responsible for:
- The event itself — permits, venue agreements, insurance, safety, staffing, and compliance with applicable law
- The accuracy of your event listing, including dates, location, fees, classes, and rules
- Awarding and delivering any prizes or trophies you advertise
- Handling entrant questions, cancellations, and refunds
- Any personal information you receive about entrants, and using it only to run your event
- Sponsor links. You are responsible for ensuring each sponsor link is correct, points to the intended sponsor, and is safe. ShowHive does not verify sponsor URLs and is not responsible for external sites or for any damages, data breach, or cyber incident resulting from them.
6. Judging and results integrity
Judging outcomes are determined by the organizer and their judges. ShowHive provides the scoring tools and computes totals from the scores entered; it does not decide winners and does not adjudicate disputes about results.
To protect the integrity of the tools, the Service enforces certain rules — for example, a judge cannot score their own entry, and duplicate scorecards for the same entry by the same judge are rejected. You agree not to circumvent these controls, manipulate votes or scores, or use multiple accounts or devices to vote more than once.
Organizers may reveal results when they choose. Once revealed, results and awards form part of that event's public record.
7. Your content
You keep ownership of the content you upload — photographs, vehicle or entry details, event descriptions, and so on. You grant ShowHive a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, and display that content for the purpose of operating and promoting the Service, including showing it on public event pages, placards, and results where you or the organizer have made it visible.
You confirm that you have the rights to the content you upload and that it does not infringe anyone else's rights. We may remove content that violates these Terms or the law.
Awards attach to the winning entry and remain part of that entry's record.
8. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- Break the law, or use the Service to facilitate illegal activity
- Post content that is unlawful, infringing, deceptive, harassing, hateful, or obscene
- Impersonate anyone, or misrepresent your affiliation with an organization
- Manipulate voting, scoring, or results
- Create events you do not intend to run, or use free plans through multiple accounts to evade plan limits
- Scrape, harvest, or bulk-export other users' data
- Probe, scan, overload, or interfere with the Service or its infrastructure
- Reverse engineer the Service except where that restriction is prohibited by law
- Resell or provide the Service to a third party as if it were your own
Each subscription covers one organization. Sharing an account so that unrelated organizations run their events under a single subscription is a breach of these Terms.
9. Availability, and what "offline" means
The Service is provided on an "as available" basis. We do not promise uninterrupted or error-free operation, and we may modify, suspend, or discontinue features.
ShowHive's judging is designed to work without a network connection: scores are saved on the device and synchronised when connectivity returns. This is a genuine design goal and we have built carefully for it — but it depends on your device, its storage, and its condition. We cannot guarantee that data held only on a device will survive device loss, damage, or uninstallation. Sync when you can.
10. Third-party services
The Service relies on third parties including Stripe (payments), Amazon Web Services and Cloudflare (infrastructure and email), Expo (app delivery and push notifications), and Apple and Google (app distribution and optional sign-in). Your use of those services may be subject to their own terms. We are not responsible for third-party services or for external sites linked from ShowHive, including sponsor links added by organizers.
11. Suspension and termination
You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time by emailing support@showhive.io.
We may suspend or terminate an account that breaches these Terms, creates legal risk, or is being used abusively. Where practical we will give notice and an opportunity to fix the problem. If we terminate your account without cause, we will refund any prepaid, unused subscription fees.
On termination, your right to use the Service ends. Records of completed public events may remain as part of that event's historical record, and we may retain information as described in our Privacy Notice.
12. Disclaimers
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.
Without limiting the above, ShowHive does not warrant that any event will occur or be conducted as described, that judging or results will be free of human error, that data stored on a device will always sync successfully, or that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.
13. Limitation of liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, SHOWHIVE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, OR BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE.
SHOWHIVE'S TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE IN ANY TWELVE-MONTH PERIOD WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID SHOWHIVE IN THAT PERIOD, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS ($100).
Because entry fees are paid to organizers rather than to ShowHive, they are not amounts "paid to ShowHive" for the purpose of this cap. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations of liability, so parts of this section may not apply to you.
14. Indemnification
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless ShowHive and its officers, employees, and agents from any claims, damages, liabilities, and reasonable legal fees arising from your use of the Service, your content, an event you organize, your handling of entrant information or entry fees, sponsor links you add, or your breach of these Terms or of applicable law.
15. Apple App Store — additional terms
If you obtained the ShowHive app from the Apple App Store, you acknowledge that these Terms are between you and ShowHive only, not with Apple; that Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the app; that in the event of any failure of the app to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price (if any), and Apple has no other warranty obligation; that Apple is not responsible for addressing any claims relating to the app; and that Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you.
16. Governing law and disputes
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in the State of Georgia, and you consent to their jurisdiction. Nothing here prevents either party from seeking injunctive relief where appropriate, or from bringing a claim in small-claims court.
Please contact us first. Most issues are resolved quickly at support@showhive.io without any formal process. Separately, if you intend to bring a claim under the Georgia Fair Business Practices Act, that statute requires you to give us at least 30 days' written notice of your claim before filing suit (O.C.G.A. § 10-1-399(b)), so that we have an opportunity to resolve it.
17. General
- Changes. We may update these Terms. We will change the date above and, for material changes, give notice in the app or by email before they take effect. Continuing to use the Service after that means you accept the updated Terms.
- Entire agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Notice, the Refund Policy, and any surcharge terms you accept in the app form the entire agreement between us.
- Severability. If any provision is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect.
- No waiver. Not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it.
- Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.