ShieldedStack Evaluation and Trial Agreement

Effective on the date ShieldedStack first provides access to an evaluation environment or issues an on-premises trial License Key, as applicable.

This Agreement covers two distinct evaluation options: a temporary ShieldedStack-operated portal evaluation and a customer-operated on-premises software trial. The option offered to you, and its scope, will be confirmed when access is arranged. A request is reviewed manually; submitting one does not automatically provision an environment, create an account, issue a License Key, or guarantee access. Website descriptions are informational and are not legal advice; this Agreement governs evaluation use.

The parties are ShieldedStack ApS, a company incorporated in Denmark ("we", "us"), and the organisation identified in the evaluation or trial request ("you", "your organisation").

1. Portal evaluation

If we approve and arrange a portal evaluation, we will provide access to a separate, temporary ShieldedStack installation for seven (7) days, beginning when we provide the access credentials, unless access is suspended or ended earlier under this Agreement. We operate and administer this environment and may access it to provide, secure, support, and decommission the evaluation.

The Portal contains synthetic dependency activity generated inside the evaluation deployment. The synthetic requests and findings are illustrative and do not represent your packages, systems, policies, security posture, or production results. You may explore the Portal, review synthetic requests and decisions, and manage package policy within the permissions assigned to your evaluation account. You will not be given access to the Proxy or its API keys, or to the underlying infrastructure or administrative credentials.

The portal evaluation is for evaluation only. It does not validate your package-manager configuration, CI integration, networking, identity-provider integration, private registries, production topology, or operational requirements. Do not submit sensitive, personal, confidential, or proprietary information, or connect your production systems.

At the end of the evaluation period, access may be disabled. We will manually decommission the evaluation environment and remove its data after the evaluation; this is an operational process and is not an automated access or cleanup guarantee. You must not rely on the environment for storage, production, or continued access to data.

2. On-premises software trial

If we separately approve and issue an on-premises trial License Key, we grant you a free, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to install and run the ShieldedStack software ("Software") on infrastructure controlled by your organisation for thirty (30) calendar days from the date that License Key is issued, solely to evaluate the Software. This is a separate customer-operated trial, not the ShieldedStack-operated portal evaluation described in section 1.

You may connect the on-premises trial to real package registries, repositories, and CI/CD pipelines where necessary for evaluation. It is not a paid production licence and does not include production warranties, indemnities, support SLAs, or operational commitments. If you place trial software in a production path, you do so at your own risk. Production deployments are customer-operated in your environment under the Software License Agreement and applicable Order Form.

Within a single on-premises trial installation, there are no limits on tenants, workspaces, or projects unless agreed otherwise in writing.

3. Data and access

Portal evaluation: We operate the temporary environment and can access its evaluator account and identity information, access and service logs, and synthetic activity and findings. We use this information to operate, secure, support, and administer the evaluation. Its synthetic package activity is not your production or proprietary package traffic. The privacy practices for request data and evaluation data are described in our Privacy Policy.

On-premises trial: The Software does not transmit usage data, scan results, package metadata, vulnerability findings, identities, or other operational information to us during normal operation. License Key validation is local. All data the Software processes remains on your infrastructure. We are not a processor or sub-processor of that data under the GDPR because no processing relationship exists for your customer-operated installation. We may generate ordinary access logs when you choose to pull artifacts from our private registry or contact us for support; those are not Software telemetry. Personal data we hold in connection with the request, registry access, and support is handled under our Privacy Policy.

4. On-premises trial expiry

On day 31, the on-premises trial License Key expires. Trial expiry is different from paid licence expiry; the paid licence has a post-expiry operational warning period under the Software License Agreement, while the trial licence does not.

After trial expiration, the Software may block package proxying, scanning, policy enforcement, and mutating administrative operations until the trial is extended or converted to a paid licence. The control plane may remain available read-only so you can review historical data, export configuration, or decommission the installation. If you decide not to license, stop using the Software and remove the trial License Key when it expires.

If you decide to license, we may issue a paid License Key under the Software License Agreement and a signed Order Form. Your on-premises trial installation may be carried forward after licensing, subject to your production-readiness review and any configuration changes needed for your environment.

5. On-premises trial feature scope

Unless otherwise agreed in writing, the on-premises trial gives you access to Standard-tier features. Enterprise- and Sovereign-tier features (including FIPS-validated builds, air-gapped operation modes, custom SLAs, and dedicated support) are not included by default. If you need to evaluate Enterprise or Sovereign features, contact contact@shieldedstack.com to discuss a scoped trial.

6. Use restrictions

For either evaluation option, you must not:

(a) redistribute the Software or an on-premises trial License Key to anyone outside your organisation;

(b) reverse engineer the Software except where mandatory law allows it (EU Directive 2009/24/EC, articles 5 and 6);

(c) use the Software, Documentation, or our non-public technical information to copy or develop a substantially similar commercial product for external distribution. This does not prevent you from developing internal tools, integrations, policies, workflows, or security controls for your own use; or

(d) use an evaluation environment or Software in violation of applicable law.

You must keep any on-premises trial License Key confidential. Open source components shipped with the Software remain subject to their applicable licences; a list is at https://shieldedstack.com/legal/oss-attributions.

7. No warranty and liability

Both evaluation options are provided for evaluation without warranties, support SLAs, indemnities, or operational commitments. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Software and portal evaluation are provided "as is" and "as available," without express or implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for purpose, production readiness, and non-infringement. No evaluation should be treated as a production service or as a substitute for your own security and operational assessment.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, our total liability arising from either evaluation is capped at €100. This cap and exclusions do not apply to liability that cannot be excluded or limited under mandatory applicable law.

8. Confidentiality

Both parties may exchange non-public information during an evaluation. Each party will treat the other's non-public information as confidential, use it only to support the evaluation, and not disclose it to third parties without consent. This obligation lasts two (2) years after the evaluation ends. The on-premises trial License Key is our confidential information and must not be shared outside your organisation.

9. Ending an evaluation

You may stop using either evaluation at any time. We may suspend or end access, or revoke an on-premises trial License Key, if we reasonably believe the evaluation is being misused or these terms are breached. Where practicable, we will notify you before doing so; we may act without advance notice where needed to prevent abuse or protect the environment.

10. Governing law

This Agreement is governed by the laws of Denmark. Disputes go to the Copenhagen City Court (Københavns Byret), subject to mandatory applicable law.

11. Relationship to the Software License Agreement

This Agreement governs the evaluation options described above. If you sign an Order Form for a paid on-premises licence, the Software License Agreement and Order Form govern paid use from their applicable effective date. Conduct during an earlier evaluation remains governed by this Agreement.

Questions about this Agreement should be directed to contact@shieldedstack.com.