Terms of Service

Effective date: October 24, 2026 · Contact: [email protected]

1. The service

Hanzi Steps is an online course for learning Chinese, delivered as web pages at hanzi-steps.com. HSK 1 is free; the remaining levels require a one-time purchase ("Lifetime") or an active subscription.

2. Accounts

You sign in through Google (or Meta). You are responsible for keeping that account secure.
Do not share your access. Accounts used by many people at once may be suspended.

3. Payments and billing

Payments are processed by Paddle (paddle.com), which acts as merchant of record: Paddle charges you, issues the invoice, and handles VAT / sales tax.
Lifetime — a one-time payment of $19. Access does not expire.
Subscriptions — $0.9 a month, $2.4 every 3 months, $4.5 every 6 months, or $7.9 a year. They renew automatically until you cancel. Cancel any time (payment email or contact us); access continues to the end of the period already paid for.
Prices are in USD and may be shown in your local currency at checkout.

4. Refunds

Subscriptions — cancel any time; you keep access until the end of the paid period. A renewal charged by mistake is refunded if you tell us within 14 days of the charge.
Lifetime — full refund within 14 days of purchase if you have not consumed a substantial part of the paid content.
EU/EEA/UK consumers additionally have the statutory 14-day right of withdrawal for digital purchases. Refunds are issued by Paddle to the original payment method.

5. Acceptable use

Do not copy, redistribute, scrape or resell the course content.
Do not attack, overload or reverse-engineer the site.

6. Intellectual property

The course materials are owned by us. You get a personal, non-transferable licence to use them for your own learning. Chinese characters and public language data belong to no one; our lesson design, examples and code do belong to us.

7. Availability and changes

We work to keep the site available but do not promise uninterrupted service. Content, features and prices may change; price changes never affect a period you have already paid for.

8. Liability

To the extent permitted by law we are not liable for indirect or consequential damages. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law (for example for fraud). Statutory consumer rights are not affected.

9. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the seller's place of business. If a dispute arises, contact us first — we aim to resolve things directly. Consumers may also use the courts of their home country; mandatory local consumer law always applies.

10. Contact

Questions about these terms: [email protected].