KihonThe short version: Kihon is month to month, every feature is included, you can export your data anytime, and you can cancel online without calling anyone. These terms spell out the details.
1. Agreement to these terms
These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a contract between you and Kihon HQ LLC ("Kihon," "we," "us"), and they govern your use of our website, our demo, and the Kihon service (together, the "Service"). By using the Service or signing up, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.
If your school has signed a Kihon Plan Agreement or a Pilot Agreement, that signed agreement governs where it differs from these Terms.
2. What Kihon is
Kihon is software that helps martial arts schools (and later other studios and gyms) manage members, billing, attendance, ranks, grading events, and communication. We provide the Service on a subscription basis as described on our pricing page.
The Service includes our apps: Kihon Staff, Kihon Portal, and Kihon Driver. They are clients of the same service rather than separate products, so everything in these Terms applies to them, and section 11a below adds the licence terms specific to an installed app.
3. Who can use it
You must be at least 18 years old to create an account. If you sign up on behalf of a school or business, you confirm that you are authorized to accept these Terms for that organization, and "you" then means both you and that organization.
The one exception is a teen account. A parent or guardian may invite their child aged 13 to 17 to a Kihon Portal account of their own, which shows the child's own training only and has no messaging. The parent or guardian who sends the invitation is responsible for that account. No one under 13 can have a Kihon account.
4. Your account
You are responsible for the accounts and access you create, for keeping login details secure, and for the activity that happens under your account. Tell us promptly if you believe an account has been used without permission. You are also responsible for having the right to store the information you put into Kihon, including obtaining any consents you need from members and families.
5. Acceptable use
Please use Kihon lawfully and decently. Do not use it to break the law, to infringe someone's rights, to send unlawful or deceptive messages, to upload malware, to attack or probe the Service, or to attempt to access data that is not yours. We may suspend or limit access if use of the Service threatens its security, integrity, or availability, or violates these Terms.
6. The demo
Our interactive demo is a preview that runs in your browser using fictional sample data. It is for evaluation only, it is not your live account, and the sample school and people in it are made up. Nothing you do in the demo is stored on our servers.
7. Pricing and billing
Kihon is one dollar per active member per month, with a floor of $79 and a cap of $249 per month, billed month to month. Every price we publish is before tax. Where sales tax applies to what Kihon charges, your school pays it, and it appears as its own line on your bill. There is a one-time $299 enrollment fee, which covers a guided setup done with you and live training for your staff. Moving your members into Kihon is done by your school, with our help. Founding schools (the first 25) receive a $200 credit toward it, so they pay $99. Every feature is included on every plan, with no feature gating. The monthly fee is billed after each calendar month ends, on the first of the next month, for the average number of active members across that month. For example, a school that averaged 102 active members in August is billed $102 on September 1. Fees, once billed, are non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise or we say so in writing. Published prices may rise over time, and we will give reasonable notice before any change. Founding schools are protected from those increases: a founding school's rate is locked in at the price it joined at, for as long as its account stays active. This is a founding-school benefit only. A school that joins later pays the published price at the time it joins and is not rate-locked.
Usage-based costs (for example text-message credits) are billed in addition to the subscription, at the rates we publish. There are no unpublished usage fees.
The Kihon Pilot is a paid, hands-on evaluation of the Service with up to three contacts. A contact is a member, a lead, or a driver. Staff are not counted. The Pilot fee is a one-time $49, charged at signing, and it is non-refundable, because the Pilot is real, working software you use from day one. If you continue to a full membership, the $49 is credited in full toward your one-time enrollment fee. The Pilot does not auto-renew and does not convert into a paid subscription on its own. If you do nothing after your Pilot, you are never charged anything further. The Pilot Agreement you sign before paying governs the Pilot and repeats these terms.
Kihon Done For You. Kihon Done For You is a separate, one-time service, not a plan, in which we build and run your school's website from Kihon, set up its listings, review pages and email, coach you for 90 days, and, if you are switching to Kihon, move your members in. It is governed by its own agreement, which states what is included and any promise about when your school will be live.
8. Payments and processing
Payments are processed by Stripe through Kihon Payments, where we apply a small, publicly published application fee on top of Stripe's own processing fees. For founding schools (the first 25) that fee is 0.5%, locked for as long as the account stays active. A school that joins later pays the application fee published at the time it joins. Your school remains the merchant of record and Kihon never holds your funds. We may add to or change the payment options we offer over time. Your use of Stripe is also subject to Stripe's own terms.
9. Cancellation, export, and your data
You can cancel your subscription online at any time, without a phone call and without a penalty. When you cancel, your subscription ends at the close of your current billing month. Because the fee is billed after the month, you receive one final bill for that last month. After that final bill, we never bill you again. You can export your data at any time, during your subscription and around cancellation. We will never hold your data hostage to keep you as a customer. After cancellation we retain data only as long as needed to wind down your account and to meet legal and tax obligations, and then we delete or anonymize it.
10. Your content and who owns it
Your school's data is yours. You keep all rights to the information and content you put into Kihon. You grant us only the limited permission we need to host, process, back up, and display that content in order to provide the Service to you, and to do so through the service providers listed in our Privacy Policy. We do not sell your data, and we do not use your members' data for our own marketing.
11. Our intellectual property
Kihon, including the software, design, and brand, belongs to Kihon HQ LLC. These Terms do not give you ownership of the Service, only the right to use it while your account is in good standing. Please do not copy, resell, reverse engineer, or create a competing product from the Service.
11a. Your licence to use our apps
While your school's account is in good standing, we grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use the Kihon apps on devices you own or control, solely to use the Service. You may not copy, modify, reverse engineer, redistribute, or rent them, and you may not use them to build a competing product.
Apps obtained from the App Store carry Apple's standard licence terms in addition to these. Where the two conflict on a point Apple requires, Apple's terms govern for that point. Two consequences worth stating plainly, because Apple requires them said: this agreement is between you and Kihon HQ LLC and not with Apple, and Apple has no obligation to provide support or maintenance for a Kihon app. Support is ours, and you can reach a person through the support form. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms as they apply to an app licensed through the App Store, and may enforce them.
There are no in-app purchases and no subscriptions sold inside our apps. Every app is included in your school's Kihon subscription at no extra cost, and nothing in an app is gated behind a payment. Tuition, event fees, and store purchases a family pays through Kihon are payments for real-world goods and services provided by your school, not digital content, and your school is the merchant of record for them.
An app may stop working, or lose access to your school's data, if your school's account is closed or suspended. That is the account ending rather than the app failing, and section 9 covers what happens to your data when it does.
12. Third-party services
Kihon relies on third-party providers such as Cloudflare, Stripe, Resend, and Supabase. We are not responsible for those providers' own services, and your use of features that depend on them may be subject to their terms.
13. Disclaimers
We work hard to keep Kihon reliable and accurate, and we are a founder-run company that answers its own support email. That said, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that it will meet every need.
14. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent allowed by law, Kihon HQ LLC will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, or data. Our total liability for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the amount you paid us for the Service in the three months before the event that gave rise to the claim. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of these may not apply to you.
15. Indemnification
You agree to defend and hold harmless Kihon HQ LLC from claims and costs arising out of your unlawful use of the Service, your violation of these Terms, or your violation of the rights of a third party, including your members and their families.
16. Changes to the Service and to these Terms
We may improve, change, or occasionally discontinue parts of the Service. We may also update these Terms as Kihon grows. When we make a meaningful change to the Terms, we will update the date above, and for significant changes we will give notice on the site or by email. If you keep using the Service after an update takes effect, you accept the revised Terms.
17. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The exclusive venue for any dispute that is not resolved informally will be the state or federal courts located in Texas, and you and Kihon consent to that jurisdiction. We would always rather sort out a problem with a conversation first, so please reach out before anything formal.
18. Contact
Questions about these Terms? Write to us through the support form, or by post at:
Kihon HQ LLC
5900 Balcones Drive, Ste 100
Austin, TX 78731
United States