Terms of Service

Last updated: 13 October 2026

1. These Terms

1.1 These Terms of Service (Terms) are a legally binding agreement between you and Vella Labs Pty Ltd (ABN 20 701 816 202) (Vella Labs, we, us or our) governing your use of the Vella mobile application and its web version (the App), the website at vellaapp.com.au (the Website), our places service known as VellaMaps, and the content, features and services made available through them (together, the Service).

1.2 By creating an account or using the Service you agree to these Terms and to our Community Guidelines at vellaapp.com.au/community, which form part of these Terms. If you do not agree, you must not use the Service.

1.3 Our Privacy Policy at vellaapp.com.au/privacy-policy explains how we handle personal information. It is not part of these Terms, but you should read it.

1.4 In these Terms, Content means anything you create, upload, post, send or store on the Service, including journal posts, photos, comments, challenges, map pins, reviews, ratings, visits and messages; User Content means Content created by users of the Service, including you; and Vella Content means everything on the Service that is not User Content.

2. Eligibility and your account

2.1 Minimum age. You must be 17 or older to use the Service. You must give us your real date of birth when you create an account. If we learn that an account is held by a person under 17, we will close it.

2.2 One person, one account. You may hold one account, for yourself, in your own name or a username of your choosing. You must not create an account for anyone else, impersonate anyone, or use a username that is misleading or infringes another person's rights.

2.3 Accurate details. You must give us accurate information and keep it up to date.

2.4 Security. You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for everything that happens on your account. Tell us at support@vellaapp.com.au as soon as you become aware of any unauthorised use.

2.5 Refusal. We may refuse to open an account, or suspend or close an account, in accordance with section 11.

3. The Service

3.1 What Vella is. Vella is an application for recording travel: a map you fill in with places you have been, journals you write, challenges you take on, and messages with other travellers.

3.2 A new service. Vella is new and is still being built out. Features may be added, changed or withdrawn, and you may encounter faults. We will tell you in the App when a change is significant.

3.3 Free of charge. The Service is currently provided free of charge. If we introduce paid features we will tell you in advance, and nothing you already have will become paid without your agreement.

3.4 Not a navigation or safety service. The Service is a record of travel, not a guide to it. Places, routes, conditions and reviews come from our own records and from other users, and may be inaccurate, incomplete or out of date. You must not rely on the Service for navigation, for your safety, or for decisions about where it is safe or lawful to go. Check official sources before you travel, particularly in remote areas, and take your own precautions.

3.5 Licence to use the App. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use the App on a device you own or control, for your personal, non-commercial use. Your use of an App Store or Google Play version is also subject to that store's terms.

4. Your Content

4.1 You own your Content. You keep every right you have in the Content you create.

4.2 Licence to us. So that the Service can work, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt (for example by resizing a photo), display and distribute your Content, solely for the purposes of operating, providing, securing and improving the Service and showing your Content to the audience you have chosen for it. This licence does not permit us to sell your Content or to use it in advertising, and we will not do either.

4.3 Duration. The licence in section 4.2 continues for as long as your Content remains on the Service. It ends for a piece of Content when you delete it, except that: (a) a copy may remain in backups for up to 30 days; (b) Content another user has already shared or quoted may remain in their Content; and (c) we may retain a copy where the law requires it or where it is the subject of a report.

4.4 Your account and your Content. What happens to your Content when you delete your account is set out in our Privacy Policy and at vellaapp.com.au/delete-account.

4.5 Your promises about your Content. You represent and warrant that, for all Content you post: (a) you own it or have every right you need to post it and to grant the licence in section 4.2; (b) it does not infringe any person's intellectual property, privacy or other rights; (c) any person who appears in it has agreed to appear; and (d) it complies with these Terms, the Community Guidelines and the law.

4.6 Feedback. If you send us ideas or suggestions about the Service, you agree that we may use them without any obligation to you.

4.7 Our right to remove. We may remove or restrict access to any Content that we reasonably consider breaches these Terms, the Community Guidelines or the law, in accordance with section 6.

5. Acceptable use

5.1 You must not use the Service to:

• post, send or store anything that is unlawful, defamatory, or that harasses, bullies, threatens, intimidates or incites hatred against any person or group;
• post, send or store sexual material involving a person under 18, or any sexual or pornographic material;
• post or send another person's personal or private information without their consent, or impersonate any person or organisation;
• post Content that you do not have the right to post, including copyrighted material belonging to someone else;
• post deliberately false, misleading or fabricated places, reviews, ratings, visits or trip records, or manipulate challenges or rankings;
• encourage or depict unsafe or unlawful activity, including trespass on private or closed land, driving offences, or damage to natural or cultural sites;
• advertise, promote or conduct a business, or send unsolicited commercial messages, without our prior written agreement;
• interfere with, overload, disrupt or gain unauthorised access to the Service, any account, or any connected system or network;
• scrape, harvest or collect information or Content from the Service by automated means, or circumvent any limit, filter or security measure; or
• reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to extract the source code of the App, except to the extent the law permits.

5.2 The Community Guidelines explain these rules in more detail and give examples. Where the Guidelines and this section differ, the stricter rule applies.

6. Reporting, moderation and enforcement

6.1 Report and takedown. We moderate the Service by report and takedown. We do not scan Content before it appears. The Service provides a Report function on posts, comments, challenges, messages and places, and a Block function on profiles.

6.2 Review by a person. Every report is reviewed by a person. We aim to review reports within 24 hours of receiving them, and reports involving the safety of a child or a threat of harm as a matter of priority.

6.3 Actions we may take. Where we reasonably consider that Content or conduct breaches these Terms, the Community Guidelines or the law, we may, without limiting any other right: remove or restrict access to the Content; remove a person from a conversation; suspend the account responsible; or close the account under section 11.

6.4 Notice. If we remove your Content or suspend your account, we will tell you, unless the law prevents it or telling you would put another person at risk. The person who made a report is never identified to the person reported.

6.5 Review of our decision. If you believe we have made a mistake, email support@vellaapp.com.au and a different person will review the decision.

6.6 Records. We keep a record of every report and every decision, and may provide those records to a regulator or law-enforcement body where the law requires or permits it, including to the eSafety Commissioner under the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth).

7. Other users' Content and third-party services

7.1 Most Content on the Service is User Content created by other users, not by us. We do not review User Content before it appears, we do not endorse it, and we do not guarantee that any place, review, rating or trip record is accurate, complete or safe to act on. Your dealings with other users are between you and them.

7.2 The Service uses third-party services to provide maps, messaging, GIFs, photo storage and notifications. Those services are governed by their own terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for them.

7.3 The Service may contain links to websites or resources that we do not control. We are not responsible for their content or availability.

8. Our intellectual property

8.1 The Service and all Vella Content, including the App's software, design, text, graphics, logos, the Vella name and marks, and the compilation of places and data in VellaMaps, are owned by or licensed to Vella Labs and are protected by copyright, trade mark and other laws.

8.2 Except for the licence in section 3.5 and as permitted by law, you must not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, publicly display or create derivative works from any part of the Service or Vella Content, or use the Vella name or marks, without our prior written consent.

8.3 If you believe that Content on the Service infringes your copyright or other rights, email legal@vellaapp.com.au with your contact details, a description of the work, the location of the Content on the Service, and a statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorised. We will review the notice and act on it.

9. Privacy

9.1 We collect, hold, use and disclose personal information in accordance with our Privacy Policy at vellaapp.com.au/privacy-policy and the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

10. Availability, changes and ending the Service

10.1 We will use reasonable efforts to keep the Service available, but we do not promise that it will be available at all times, uninterrupted or free of faults. We may suspend the Service for maintenance, security or operational reasons.

10.2 We may add, change or remove features of the Service at any time. We will tell you in the App when a change is significant.

10.3 We may stop providing the Service. If we do, we will give you at least 30 days' notice where practicable, and a reasonable opportunity to obtain a copy of your Content before the Service closes.

11. Suspension and termination

11.1 By you. You may close your account at any time at Settings → Delete Account.

11.2 By us. We may suspend or close your account, immediately and without liability to you, if: (a) you breach these Terms or the Community Guidelines; (b) we are required to by law or by a regulator; (c) we reasonably believe that doing so is necessary to protect the safety of any person or the integrity of the Service; or (d) your account has not been used for 24 months, after we have given you 30 days' notice by email.

11.3 Notice. If we suspend or close your account under section 11.2(a), (b) or (c), we will tell you why, unless the law prevents it. You may ask for a review under section 6.5.

11.4 Effect. On termination, your right to use the Service ends. Sections 4 (to the extent of Content that remains), 7, 8, 12, 13, 14 and 15 survive termination.

12. Consumer guarantees and liability

12.1 Australian Consumer Law. Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts or modifies any consumer guarantee, right or remedy conferred by the Australian Consumer Law (Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth)) or any other law that cannot be excluded, restricted or modified by agreement. Those rights apply regardless of anything else in these Terms.

12.2 Service provided as is. Subject to section 12.1, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", and we exclude all conditions, warranties and guarantees that are not expressly stated in these Terms, including any warranty that the Service, or any place, route or information on it, is accurate, reliable, safe or fit for a particular purpose.

12.3 Exclusion of certain loss. Subject to section 12.1, and to the extent permitted by law, we are not liable to you for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss or damage, loss of data, loss of opportunity, or for any loss arising from your reliance on the Service or on User Content, or from your travel, however arising.

12.4 Limit of liability. Subject to section 12.1, and to the extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability to you for all claims arising out of or in connection with these Terms or the Service, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), statute or otherwise, is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you have paid us for the Service in the 12 months before the claim arose and (b) A$100.

12.5 Where liability cannot be excluded. Where a law implies a guarantee, condition or warranty that cannot be excluded but permits liability to be limited, our liability is limited, at our option, to resupplying the Service or paying the cost of having it resupplied.

13. Your responsibility to us

13.1 To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify Vella Labs and its officers, employees and contractors against any loss, liability, cost or expense (including reasonable legal costs) arising from a claim by a third party to the extent that it is caused by your Content, your use of the Service in breach of these Terms, or your breach of any law or of any person's rights. This indemnity is reduced to the extent that we caused or contributed to the loss.

14. Disputes and governing law

14.1 Talk to us first. If you have a dispute with us, please contact us at support@vellaapp.com.au first and give us 30 days to resolve it with you.

14.2 Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia. You and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Victoria and the courts entitled to hear appeals from them.

14.3 Nothing in this section prevents you from making a complaint to a regulator, or from bringing a claim in a court or tribunal of competent jurisdiction where the Australian Consumer Law or another law gives you that right.

15. General

15.1 Entire agreement. These Terms, the Community Guidelines and any notice we give you under them are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service.

15.2 Severability. If any part of these Terms is invalid or unenforceable, it is to be read down or severed to the extent necessary, and the rest of these Terms continues in force.

15.3 Waiver. A failure or delay by us to exercise a right under these Terms is not a waiver of that right.

15.4 Assignment. You may not transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms. We may transfer ours to a successor of the Service, on notice to you.

15.5 Notices. We may give you notices in the App, by email to the address on your account, or by posting them on the Website. You may give us notice by email to legal@vellaapp.com.au or by post to the address in section 17.

15.6 Interpretation. Headings are for convenience only. "Including" means "including without limitation". A reference to a law includes any amendment or replacement of it.

16. Changes to these Terms

16.1 We may change these Terms from time to time. The current version is always at vellaapp.com.au/terms and in the App, and the date at the top shows when it last changed.

16.2 If a change is significant, we will give you at least 14 days' notice in the App or by email before it takes effect, unless the change is required by law or is needed to address a security or safety risk, in which case it may take effect immediately.

16.3 If you continue to use the Service after a change takes effect, you accept the changed Terms. If you do not accept them, you must stop using the Service and may close your account under section 11.1.

17. Contact us

Vella Labs Pty Ltd (ABN 20 701 816 202)
C/- MOR Accountants, 406 Dana Street, Ballarat VIC 3350, Australia

Questions and support: support@vellaapp.com.au
Legal notices: legal@vellaapp.com.au