Terms of use

These terms describe how PrintFlows actually works today, and are written to be read rather than to impress. A licensed Québec lawyer should review them before PrintFlows takes orders from the public.

These terms are an agreement between you and PrintFlows ("PrintFlows", "we", "us"), based in Montréal, Québec, Canada. They apply every time you use printflows.org or any part of the service. If you don't accept them, don't use the service.

You accept these terms when you create an account, send a quote request, send a quote, or place an order. We record which version you accepted and when.

Reach us at [email protected].

1. What PrintFlows is, and what it isn't

PrintFlows is a marketplace. We connect people who need something 3D printed ("customers") with independent people and businesses who own printers ("makers"). We also act as a payment intermediary: the customer pays us, we hold the money, and we release it to the maker when the conditions in section 6 are met.

What that means in practice:

• We don't print anything. We own no printers. Every part is made by an independent maker.
• The contract for the part is between the customer and the maker. We're not a party to it. We're the marketplace it happened on and the party holding the money.
• Makers are not our employees, agents or partners. They set their own prices, choose their own equipment and materials, decide which jobs to accept, and run their own businesses.
• We do check makers before they can take work (section 4), and we hold money and mediate disputes (sections 6 and 9). None of that makes us the manufacturer.

Where these terms say something is between the customer and the maker, that's where responsibility sits.

2. Who can use PrintFlows

You have to be at least 18 and able to enter a contract under Québec law. If you're using PrintFlows for a company, you're confirming you can bind that company.

We serve Canada. Orders ship within Canada. Pickup is possible when the maker and the customer both agree to it. We don't ship internationally.

One account per person. Keep your password to yourself, and tell us at [email protected] if you think someone else has it. Anything done through your account is treated as done by you until you tell us otherwise.

We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, that we reasonably believe is being used for fraud, or that puts other users at risk. Where we can, we'll tell you why and give you a chance to fix it first.

3. Accounts, files and your content

3.1 You keep your rights

You keep every intellectual property right you had in the files you upload. Uploading a file to PrintFlows doesn't give us ownership of the design, and it doesn't give us the right to sell it, publish it, or print it ourselves.

3.2 What you let us do with it

You give PrintFlows a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store your file, display it back to you, run automatic geometry analysis on it, and pass it to the specific makers you send it to. That licence exists so the service can work. It ends when the file is deleted, except for copies a maker still needs to finish an order in progress, and copies inside backups until those backups rotate out.

You give a maker you send a file to a limited licence to print that file, once, for the quantity in your order. Nothing more. A maker may not keep printing your part, sell it, publish it, or pass it to anyone else.

3.3 What you promise about your files

By uploading a file you're confirming that you own it or have the right to have it printed. If you upload something you don't have the right to reproduce, that's on you, and section 11 applies.

3.4 Files a maker receives

Makers must delete customer files once the order is complete or cancelled, must not reproduce them beyond the order, and must not share them. This obligation survives the maker leaving PrintFlows.

4. Makers

4.1 Before a maker can take work

A maker cannot receive quote requests, and cannot be paid, until all four of these are true:

1. Their profile is complete (shop name, location, what they print, delivery range).
2. They've listed at least one printer with its build volume and the materials they stock.
3. Stripe has enabled both charges and payouts on their connected account.
4. PrintFlows has verified their identity, and where applicable their business registration.

We check identity documents against the name on the Stripe account. We may ask for a photo of a finished print. We can withdraw verification if what we relied on turns out to be wrong, and requests stop reaching that maker immediately.

Verification means we checked who someone is. It is not a guarantee of print quality, and we don't say it is.

4.2 What makers agree to

A maker who sends a quote agrees to:

• Quote only work they can actually do, on equipment they actually have.
• Deliver the part described in the quote, in the material and quality quoted.
• Meet the lead time they quoted, or tell the customer before it slips.
• Ship with a real, trackable number, or hand the part over in person for a pickup order.
• Not contact the customer to arrange payment outside PrintFlows.
• Refuse anything on the prohibited list (section 5), and anything they don't have the right to reproduce.
• Handle customer files as set out in section 3.4.
• Meet any legal obligations that apply to them, including their own tax registrations and reporting.

Makers are responsible for their own taxes. PrintFlows doesn't file on a maker's behalf. Stripe provides annual documents; a maker should talk to an accountant about GST/HST and QST registration.

Repeated late shipping, quoting work that doesn't get delivered, or trying to move payment off-platform can lead to suspension.

5. What can't be made through PrintFlows

You may not upload, quote, or print:

• Firearms and firearm parts. Receivers, frames, magazines, suppressors, conversion devices, and any component of a firearm, whether or not it would be legal for you to own the finished item.
• Weapons more broadly: knuckle dusters, switchblades, and anything designed primarily to injure a person.
• Anything designed to defeat a safety or security device, including lock-bypass tools, key copies made from photographs, ATM skimmers and card readers.
• Counterfeits: anything carrying someone else's trademark, or a copy of a product presented as genuine.
• Anything you don't have the right to reproduce, including copyrighted models and patented designs.
• Medical or dental devices meant to be used on a person, unless the maker holds the licences Health Canada requires.
• Anything illegal in Canada or in the province where it will be made or delivered.

Makers must refuse these. PrintFlows removes them, and may report them where the law requires. If you're not sure whether something is on this list, ask us before you upload it.

6. Money

6.1 Prices

An estimate is calculated in your browser from the geometry of your file. It's a range, it's not a price, and nobody is bound by it.

A quote is a price a specific maker committed to for your file. That's the number that becomes an order.

Prices are in Canadian dollars. The minimum order is $5.00. Prices for an accepted quote are fixed at the moment you accept: later changes to a maker's rates don't affect an order already placed.

6.2 Taxes and shipping

GST, HST, QST or PST is calculated on the part and the shipping together, at the rate for the province the order is delivered to. Pickup orders use the maker's province. The tax amount and the shipping amount are both shown on the checkout screen before you pay, and appear on your receipt.

6.3 Our fee

PrintFlows keeps 15% of the part price. The fee is paid by the maker, out of the quoted part price. It is never applied to shipping or to taxes, and the customer is never billed for it separately.

There are no listing fees, no subscription, and no charge for asking for or receiving quotes.

6.4 How payment is held and released

This is the mechanism, stated plainly:

1. When you accept a quote and pay, your card is charged by PrintFlows, not by the maker. The money sits with PrintFlows.
2. The maker is told to start. No money has reached the maker at this point.
3. When the part is delivered, one of two things releases the money:
   • You press Confirm delivery on the order page; or
   • 5 days pass after a carrier-tracked delivery, with no dispute open. A delivery the maker records by hand waits for your confirmation or a staff decision.
4. On release, a payout is scheduled and transferred to the maker's Stripe account. Stripe then pays it to the maker's bank on that account's own schedule, which PrintFlows does not control.
5. A dispute can be opened within 14 days of delivery. Money still with PrintFlows stays there; if we decide in your favour after the maker was paid, we recover the refund from the maker (section 9).

We're calling this "held", not "escrow" or "protection". Funds held by PrintFlows are held in the ordinary course of our business. They are not held in trust, they are not segregated in a separate account, and they don't earn you interest. In an insolvency, they would not be treated as your property. We say this here because it's true, and because the earlier version of these terms said something different.

6.5 Payment processing

Card payments run through Stripe. Card numbers go directly to Stripe; PrintFlows never receives or stores them. Using PrintFlows means you also accept Stripe's terms for the part of the transaction Stripe handles. Makers receive payouts through Stripe Connect Express and have their own agreement with Stripe.

6.6 Promotional codes

Discount codes are issued by PrintFlows and are normally paid for out of our 15% fee, so the maker's payout is unaffected. A code funded by a specific maker reduces that maker's payout instead, and says so when it's created. Codes can be withdrawn at any time; orders already placed keep the discount they got.

7. Cancellations

Before the maker marks the order as started, a customer can cancel for any reason, at no cost. The full amount (part, shipping and taxes) is refunded.

After the maker has started printing, cancellation is no longer free, because material and machine time have already been spent. A customer who wants out at that point opens a dispute (section 9), and the outcome depends on what actually happened.

A maker may cancel before shipping if they can't do the job. The customer is refunded in full. Repeated cancellations by a maker lead to suspension.

PrintFlows may cancel and refund an order where the maker becomes unable to complete it, where we suspect fraud, or where the order breaks section 5.

8. Delivery, risk and confirmation

The maker chooses the carrier and sets the shipping price, which the customer sees before paying. Delivery estimates are estimates; carriers miss them, and neither the maker nor PrintFlows controls that.

Risk of loss passes to the customer on delivery to the address given at checkout, or on handover for a pickup order. A package a carrier marks delivered but which the customer never received is a dispute (section 9), and tracking is the starting point.

If a customer neither confirms nor disputes a carrier-tracked delivery, the five-day auto-confirm in section 6.4 applies. A delivery the maker records by hand instead waits for the customer's confirmation or a staff decision. Neither changes the customer's 14-day dispute window in section 9.

9. Problems and disputes

9.1 Talk to the maker first

Most problems get fixed in the order's message thread. That's not a legal requirement, it's just what works.

9.2 Opening a dispute

A customer can open a dispute up to 14 days after delivery. Grounds include: never arrived, arrived damaged, wrong part or wrong material, quality far below what was quoted, dimensions materially off, or materially not what the quote described.

While a dispute is open, any money still held stays with PrintFlows. If we decide in the customer's favour after the maker was paid, we recover the refund from the maker by reversing the transfer where possible or taking it from future payouts.

9.3 How we decide

Both sides get a chance to respond. We ask for photos, tracking, messages and anything else relevant. Not responding within the time we give tends to go against the side that didn't respond.

We decide on one of four outcomes:

• Full refund to the customer;
• Partial refund, where part of what was ordered was delivered acceptably;
• Reprint by the maker, at their cost, as a linked order;
• No action, where we don't find grounds.

We write down why. Both sides get that reasoning.

Our decision settles how PrintFlows releases or refunds money. It is not an arbitral award, and it doesn't stop either party from going to court or to a consumer protection body.

9.4 Chargebacks

Asking your bank to reverse a charge before opening a dispute with us costs everyone more and usually takes longer. If you do, we'll respond to your bank with the evidence we hold, and the amount stays frozen until the card network decides.

10. Warranties, and the ones we can't exclude

10.1 The legal warranty applies

If you're a consumer in Québec, the Consumer Protection Act gives you a legal warranty that the goods you buy are fit for the use they're normally intended for and will last a reasonable time. Nothing in these terms limits, excludes or waives that warranty, and nothing in these terms should be read as trying to. Similar consumer protection legislation applies in other provinces, and the same goes there.

10.2 The service itself

Beyond what the law requires of us, the PrintFlows platform is provided as it is. We don't promise it will be available without interruption, or free of errors. We don't warrant that any particular maker will quote your file, that a quote will be within any particular range, or that a part will meet a tolerance nobody agreed to in writing.

10.3 Estimates

Estimates are computed from the geometry of your file using generic material and machine assumptions. They can be significantly wrong, particularly for parts that need a lot of support material. An estimate is not an offer and creates no obligation for anyone.

11. Liability

To the extent the law allows:

• PrintFlows isn't liable for the quality, safety, legality or fitness of anything a maker makes. That sits with the maker.
• PrintFlows isn't liable for how you use a printed part. 3D printed parts fail differently from moulded or machined ones. Don't use one where a failure would hurt someone unless you've had it engineered and tested for that purpose.
• PrintFlows isn't liable for indirect, incidental or consequential loss, including lost profit, lost data, or the cost of a delayed project.
• Where we are liable, our total liability for any order is capped at the amount you paid for that order.

None of this limits liability for anything that can't be limited by law, including gross negligence, intentional fault, bodily injury, and the consumer warranty in section 10.1.

You indemnify PrintFlows against claims arising from files you uploaded that you didn't have the right to have printed, from your breach of these terms, and from your use of a printed part.

12. Privacy

How we handle personal information is set out in our Privacy policy, which forms part of these terms. In short: we're subject to PIPEDA and to Québec's Law 25, we have a named privacy officer, analytics cookies stay off until you turn them on, and you can request an export or a deletion of your data at any time.

13. Changes to these terms

We can change these terms. When we do, we bump the version, update the date at the top, and keep the old version available.

For changes that materially affect your rights (fees, the payment-hold mechanism, the dispute process, the cancellation window), we'll email registered users at least 30 days before they take effect. Orders already placed run under the version in force when they were placed.

Carrying on using PrintFlows after a change takes effect means you accept it. If you don't, close your account.

14. Suspension and closing your account

You can close your account at any time from your settings, once no orders are open. We keep order and payment records for the retention period in the privacy policy, because tax and accounting law requires it.

We can suspend or close an account for a breach of these terms, for fraud, or where an account puts other users at risk. Suspension doesn't cancel obligations under orders already in flight: a suspended maker still has to finish or properly cancel their open orders, and a refund still gets paid.

15. Governing law and where disputes go

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Québec and the federal laws of Canada that apply there.

If we end up in court, the courts of the judicial district of Montréal, Québec have jurisdiction. If you're a consumer, this doesn't take away your right to bring a claim where the law lets you bring it, and nothing here waives any right you have under the Consumer Protection Act.

16. Language

The parties have requested that these terms and all related documents be drawn up in English. Les parties ont demandé que les présentes conditions et tous les documents s'y rattachant soient rédigés en anglais.

A French version of these terms is available at /fr/conditions. We keep both versions saying the same thing. If a genuine conflict of meaning ever appears between them, tell us at [email protected] and we'll fix the drafting. We won't use a translation gap against you.

17. The rest

Whole agreement. These terms, the privacy policy, the cookie policy and the refund policy are the whole agreement between you and PrintFlows about the service.

Severability. If a court finds one clause unenforceable, the rest stays in force.

No waiver. Not enforcing something once doesn't mean we've given it up.

Assignment. You can't transfer your account. We may transfer these terms as part of a merger or sale of the business, and we'll tell you if that happens.

Notices. We reach you at the email on your account. You reach us at [email protected].

PrintFlows · Montréal, Québec, Canada · [email protected]