<!-- https://heartongue.com/guide -->

# Heartongue guide

Heartongue gives churches and small events live AI interpretation in the browser. The speaker is heard through a laptop at the sound desk; listeners scan a QR code and hear a translated voice and read captions on their own phones. Nobody installs an app.

- Website: https://heartongue.com
- App: https://app.heartongue.com
- Contact: team@heartongue.com

## What it does

- Listens to a speaker in **English** and interprets live into **Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish and Chinese** (Mandarin voice, simplified Chinese captions).
- Each listener chooses a language and gets a **synthesized voice** in their earphones and **captions** on screen. Either can be turned off.
- Typical delay between the speaker finishing a sentence and the listener hearing it is about 2 seconds.
- Works on any modern phone browser. On iPhone, audio keeps playing with the screen locked.

## Who it is for

Churches with immigrant or multilingual congregations, conferences, retreats, weddings, community meetings and small events where hiring human interpreters for every language is not practical. Heartongue is machine interpretation: it is not a certified interpreter and should not be used for legal, medical, emergency or other safety-critical communication.

Accounts are for people aged 18 or older who organize broadcasts. Listeners do not need an account.

## How it works

1. **Create your organization** at https://app.heartongue.com (email and password, or Google). Your church or event name is what listeners see.
2. **Create a room** for each service or event. Choose the languages to offer. Each room has a permanent QR code and link, so you can print it once.
3. **Go live** from the room's Broadcast page on a laptop at the sound desk. Pick the microphone or the mixer's output as the input.
4. **Listeners scan the QR code**, choose their language and tap Join. They hear the interpretation and see captions until the broadcast ends.

## Setting up a room

- **Languages:** pick any of Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish and Chinese. Listeners only see the languages you offer.
- **PIN (optional):** a 4–8 digit code for closed meetings. Listeners must enter it to join; repeated wrong guesses are blocked.
- **Glossary:** names and terms that must always be translated the same way (for example a pastor's name, a book of the Bible, a ministry name). Add the English term and the translation for each language.
- **Saved transcripts (Ministry plan):** keep the English text and every translated caption of each broadcast for 90 days, then they are deleted automatically.

## Broadcasting

- Use Chrome, Edge or Safari on a laptop. The page must be allowed to use the microphone.
- Feed the cleanest audio you have: a line from the mixer is better than a laptop microphone in the room.
- The Broadcast page shows what the speaker is saying, how many people are listening in each language, and your remaining hours.
- If the network drops, the page keeps up to 30 seconds of audio and reconnects automatically; listeners see "waiting" until it is back.
- Only one device can broadcast to a room at a time.

## Listening

- Scan the QR code or open the room link. Choose a language, keep "Read aloud" on for voice, and tap Join.
- Use earphones in a shared room.
- The app's own interface is available in English, Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish and Chinese, with light and dark themes.

## Team and roles

- **Owner and admins:** manage rooms, glossary, members and billing.
- **Members (operators):** start and stop broadcasts and view history; they cannot buy hours or change rooms.
- Invite people by email from the Members page. One person can belong to several organizations and switch between them.

## Pricing

Heartongue is priced in **language-hours**: one hour of broadcasting translated into one language that had at least one listener. A one-hour service interpreted into Vietnamese and Korean uses 2 language-hours. Languages nobody is listening to are not charged, and the English source is never charged.

| Plan          | Price (USD)          | Includes                                                         |
| ------------- | -------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Free trial    | $0                   | 2 language-hours, no card, once per new organization             |
| Pay as you go | $4 per language-hour | Purchased hours never expire                                     |
| Chapel        | $49 per month        | 15 language-hours per month, 1 room                              |
| Church        | $99 per month        | 35 language-hours per month, 3 rooms                             |
| Ministry      | $249 per month       | 100 language-hours per month, unlimited rooms, saved transcripts |
- Usage is counted per minute, per language with listeners. A final partial minute under 30 seconds is not counted.
- Monthly plan hours renew each billing period and do not roll over. Purchased pay-as-you-go hours never expire. Plan hours are used first.
- **A live broadcast is never cut off for running out of hours.** The Broadcast page warns when about 10 minutes remain; the balance can go below zero and is settled by the next purchase or renewal.
- Upgrades take effect immediately. Downgrades take effect at the next renewal.
- The trial and pay-as-you-go are limited to 1 room.
- Payments are processed by Paddle, our merchant of record, which also handles invoices and sales tax/VAT. Prices may include tax depending on your country.
- Payments are final and non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise: see https://heartongue.com/terms#refunds.

## Privacy in short

- Audio is processed live and never stored.
- Listeners need no account and get no tracking cookies.
- Transcripts are saved only when an organization on the Ministry plan turns them on, and are deleted after 90 days.
- Neither we nor our AI providers use your content to train AI models.
- Full policy: https://heartongue.com/privacy

## Frequently asked questions

**Do listeners need to download an app?** No. They scan a QR code and use the phone's browser.

**Which languages can the speaker use?** English. More source languages may come later.

**How accurate is it?** Good enough to follow a sermon or talk in most cases, but it is machine interpretation and can make mistakes, especially with names, quotes and poor audio. Use the glossary for names and terms that matter.

**What happens if we run out of hours during a service?** Nothing visible to listeners. The broadcast continues and the balance goes negative.

**Can several rooms run at the same time?** Yes, up to your plan's room limit, each from its own laptop.

**Can we keep a record of what was said?** Yes, with saved transcripts on the Ministry plan, downloadable per language as text for 90 days.

**Is there a contract?** No. Monthly plans can be cancelled any time from the billing page and stay active until the end of the paid period.

## Getting help

Email team@heartongue.com. Terms: https://heartongue.com/terms. Privacy: https://heartongue.com/privacy. Refunds: https://heartongue.com/terms#refunds.

---

<!-- https://heartongue.com/terms -->

# Terms of Service

Last updated: 27 October 2026

These Terms govern your use of Heartongue, including the website at heartongue.com and the app at app.heartongue.com (together, the "Service"). The Service is operated by **Heartongue** ("Heartongue", "we", "us"). You can reach us at team@heartongue.com.

By creating an account or using the Service you agree to these Terms. If you use the Service for a church, company or other organization, you agree on its behalf and confirm you are authorized to do so; "you" then means both you and that organization.

## 1. Who can use Heartongue

- You must be at least **18 years old** to create an account. Accounts are for the people who set up and run broadcasts.
- Listeners join a broadcast through a link or QR code and do not need an account. The organization running the broadcast is responsible for its audience (see section 7).

## 2. The Service

Heartongue captures a speaker's audio from a browser, transcribes it, translates it with machine translation and speech synthesis, and delivers voice and captions to listeners' browsers in near real time. Features, languages and limits are described at https://heartongue.com/guide and may change as the Service improves.

## 3. Accounts and organizations

- Keep your login details secure and tell us at once if you suspect unauthorized use.
- An organization has owners, admins and members. Owners and admins control the organization's rooms, members and billing, and are responsible for the people they invite.
- Give us accurate information and keep it up to date.

## 4. Plans, language-hours and the free trial

- Usage is measured in **language-hours**: one hour of broadcasting translated into one language that had at least one listener, counted per minute. The source language and languages without listeners are not counted.
- The **free trial** gives 2 language-hours to the first organization created by a user with a verified email address. One trial per person; creating accounts or organizations to obtain more trials is not allowed.
- **Pay-as-you-go hours** never expire. **Monthly plan hours** are available for the billing period in which they are granted, do not roll over, and are used before purchased hours.
- A broadcast in progress is not stopped for lack of hours. Your balance may become negative; the negative amount is deducted from your next purchase or renewal, and new broadcasts cannot start while the balance is zero or below.
- Plan limits (such as the number of rooms and saved transcripts) are shown at https://heartongue.com/pricing.

## 5. Payment through Paddle

Our order process is conducted by our online reseller **Paddle.com**. Paddle.com is the **Merchant of Record** for all our orders. Paddle provides all customer service inquiries about payments, handles invoices, sales tax and VAT, and handles returns. Your purchase is also subject to Paddle's Buyer Terms: https://www.paddle.com/legal/checkout-buyer-terms.

- Subscriptions renew automatically each month until cancelled. You can cancel at any time from the billing page or the Paddle customer portal; the plan stays active until the end of the paid period.
- Upgrades start immediately and are charged at the new plan's full price; downgrades take effect at the next renewal.
- We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice for existing subscriptions.

<a id="refunds"></a>

## Refunds

All purchases and subscription payments are **final and non-refundable**, including unused hours and unused monthly plan hours. This does not affect any right to cancel or withdraw that the law of your country gives you as a consumer (for example the 14-day right of withdrawal in the EU, EEA and UK, which ends once you start using the Service with your consent); such requests are handled by Paddle under its refund policy (https://www.paddle.com/legal/refund-policy). Cancelling a subscription stops future renewals; the plan stays active until the end of the paid period.

## 6. Your content

- "Customer Content" means the audio you broadcast and the text produced from it (transcripts, translations, captions), plus glossary entries and room settings.
- You keep all rights to your Customer Content. You give us a limited license to process it only to provide, secure and support the Service for you.
- Audio is processed in real time and not stored. Transcripts are stored only if your organization turns on saved transcripts, and are deleted after 90 days or earlier when you delete them.
- We do not use your Customer Content to train machine-learning models, and our AI providers are contractually not allowed to either.

## 7. Your responsibilities

You are responsible for how your organization uses the Service, including that:

- you have the right to broadcast the content (for example sermons, readings, songs and recordings) and to have it transcribed and translated;
- you tell speakers and the audience that live AI interpretation is in use, and obtain any consent required by law where you are;
- you decide who may access your broadcasts, including minors, and comply with the laws that apply to your audience; the Service is not designed or marketed for children, and you must not use it in a way that is directed at children;
- you do not broadcast speech of children where the law requires parental consent unless you have it.

## 8. Acceptable use

Do not use the Service to:

- break the law, infringe others' rights, or broadcast content you are not allowed to share;
- record or interpret people covertly, harass, threaten or promote hatred or violence;
- distribute malware, probe or overload our systems, bypass usage limits, PIN protection or billing, or scrape the Service;
- resell or sublicense the Service without our written permission, or reverse engineer it except where the law allows;
- generate or broadcast content that breaks the usage policies of the AI services we rely on (for example content that is sexually explicit, promotes violence or harms minors).

## 9. Machine interpretation and accuracy

The Service uses automated speech recognition, machine translation and synthesized voices. Output can be **incomplete, delayed or wrong**, including names, numbers, quotations and meaning. It is not a certified interpreter and must not be relied on for legal, medical, financial, emergency, safety-critical or other high-stakes communication. Listeners should be told that the interpretation is automatic.

## 10. Third-party services

The Service relies on third-party providers for hosting, AI processing, email and payments (described in our Privacy Policy). Their availability can affect ours. Signing in with Google is also subject to Google's terms.

## 11. Availability and changes

We work to keep the Service available and reliable, but we do not guarantee it will be uninterrupted or error-free. We may change, add or remove features. If we make a change that materially reduces what a paid plan includes, we will tell you in advance and you may cancel.

## 12. Suspension and termination

- You may stop using the Service and delete your organization's data at any time by contacting us.
- We may suspend or close an account that breaks these Terms, puts the Service or others at risk, or is used fraudulently. Where reasonable we will warn you first.
- When an account is closed we delete its data as described in the Privacy Policy. Sections 6, 9, 13, 14 and 15 continue to apply.

## 13. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

- the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied;
- we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data or goodwill;
- our total liability for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the amount you paid for the Service in the 12 months before the claim arose.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, or your statutory rights as a consumer.

## 14. Indemnity

You agree to compensate us for claims, losses and costs arising from your Customer Content or your breach of these Terms, except to the extent caused by us.

## 15. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Before starting any formal proceedings, please contact us so we can try to resolve the issue. If you are a consumer, you also keep the protection of the mandatory laws of the country where you live.

## 16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. We will post the new version here with a new date and, for material changes, notify account owners by email at least 14 days before they take effect. Continuing to use the Service after that means you accept the changes.

## 17. Contact

Heartongue — team@heartongue.com

---

<!-- https://heartongue.com/privacy -->

# Privacy Policy

Last updated: 27 October 2026

This policy explains how **Heartongue** ("Heartongue", "we", "us") handles personal data when you visit heartongue.com, use the app at app.heartongue.com, or listen to a Heartongue broadcast. Contact: team@heartongue.com.

## 1. Our role

- We are the **controller** for account, organization, billing-contact, support and website data.
- For the content an organization broadcasts (live audio, transcripts, translations and glossary), the **organization is the controller** and we act as its **processor**: we process it only to provide the Service on its instructions. Organizations that need a data processing agreement can request one at team@heartongue.com.

## 2. What we collect

**Website visitors**
- Standard server and CDN logs (IP address, browser, pages requested, time) used for security and to keep the site running. We use no advertising or analytics cookies on heartongue.com.

**Account users** (people who sign up to run broadcasts)
- Name, email address, password (stored only as a secure hash), language preference, and the organizations and roles you belong to.
- If you **sign in with Google**, we receive your name, email address, profile picture and Google account ID. See section 4.
- Invitations: the email address of the person invited and who invited them.
- Session records (IP address, browser, sign-in time) to keep your account secure.

**Organizations**
- Organization name, rooms (names, languages, optional PIN, settings), glossary entries, members, broadcast history (start and end time, languages, listener counts), and usage and balance records.

**Billing**
- Payments are processed by **Paddle**, our merchant of record. Paddle collects your payment details, billing address and tax information as an independent controller under its own privacy policy (https://www.paddle.com/legal/privacy). We receive from Paddle the customer and subscription identifiers, plan, amounts and transaction status, never your card number.

**Broadcast content**
- **Live audio** from the Broadcast page is processed in real time to produce captions and translated voice. **Audio is never stored.**
- **Text** (the transcript and translations) is kept only while it is delivered, unless the organization turns on **saved transcripts**, in which case it is stored for **90 days** and then deleted automatically. Organizations can download or delete saved transcripts at any time.

**Listeners**
- Listeners need no account. We do not ask for their name, email or age and set no tracking cookies. To deliver audio and captions we process their IP address and connection details, and limited security data to protect PIN-protected rooms. The app may store the listener's chosen language and theme in their own browser.

## 3. Why we use it (purposes and legal bases)

| Purpose                                                                                   | Legal basis (GDPR / UK GDPR)                       |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| Creating and running your account and organization, delivering broadcasts, metering usage | Performance of our contract with you               |
| Billing and tax records (with Paddle)                                                     | Contract; legal obligation                         |
| Security, fraud and abuse prevention, preventing repeated free trials, logs               | Our legitimate interest in a safe, working service |
| Service emails (verification, password reset, invitations, important changes)             | Contract; legitimate interest                      |
| Answering support requests                                                                | Contract; legitimate interest                      |
| Product news by email (only if you opt in)                                                | Consent, which you can withdraw at any time        |

We do not sell personal data, do not use it for advertising, and do not use broadcast content or personal data to train machine-learning models.

## 4. Google user data

If you choose to sign in with Google, we request only the basic scopes `openid`, `email` and `profile`. We use the name, email address, profile picture and account ID we receive **only to create and secure your Heartongue account and to show your name to the organizations you belong to**. We do not use Google user data for advertising, do not sell it, and do not share it except with the infrastructure providers listed below that we need to run the Service. You can disconnect Heartongue from your Google account at https://myaccount.google.com/permissions. Heartongue's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

## 5. Who we share data with

We share personal data only with service providers that help us run Heartongue, under contracts that limit their use of the data to providing their service to us:

- **Infrastructure and hosting** providers that run our servers, database, website and email forwarding.
- **AI service** providers that turn speech into text, translate it and produce synthesized voice, in real time.
- **Paddle**, our merchant of record, for payments, invoices and sales tax (see section 2).
- An **email delivery** provider for account, password and invitation emails.
- **Google**, only if you choose to sign in with Google (see section 4).

Neither we nor our AI service providers use your content to train AI models. Providers may keep limited data briefly where their terms require it to prevent abuse. A current list of our service providers is available on request at team@heartongue.com.

We may also disclose data if required by law, to protect rights and safety, or as part of a sale or reorganization of the business (in which case this policy continues to apply).

## 6. International transfers

Our service providers may process data in countries other than your own, including the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States. When personal data from the EU, EEA or UK is transferred to countries without an adequacy decision, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, or the provider's certification under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, as applicable.

## 7. How long we keep data

| Data                                | Kept for                                                                      |
| ----------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Live audio                          | Not stored                                                                    |
| Saved transcripts                   | 90 days, or until the organization deletes them                               |
| Account and organization data       | While the account exists; deleted within 30 days after you ask us to close it |
| Broadcast history and usage records | While the organization exists                                                 |
| Billing records                     | As long as tax law requires (Paddle keeps its own records)                    |
| Server and security logs            | Up to 30 days                                                                 |

## 8. Cookies

The app uses only cookies that are strictly necessary to keep you signed in and secure. The website uses no tracking or advertising cookies. Your language and theme choices may be saved in your browser's local storage.

## 9. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to the processing of your personal data, to receive a copy in a portable format, and to withdraw consent. To use these rights, email team@heartongue.com; we reply within one month. If your data is part of an organization's content (for example a transcript), we will pass your request to that organization.

- **EU/EEA and UK:** you can also complain to your local data protection authority (in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office).
- **California and other US states:** we do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we do not use sensitive personal information to infer characteristics. We give the same rights to all users regardless of location.
- **Vietnam:** we process personal data in line with Vietnam's Personal Data Protection Law, and you may exercise the rights it grants by contacting us.

## 10. Children

Heartongue accounts are only for people aged 18 and over, and the Service is not directed at children. Listeners do not create accounts and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Organizations decide who attends their broadcasts and must not broadcast children's speech where the law requires parental consent unless they have it. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

## 11. Security

We protect data with encryption in transit, secure password storage, access controls by organization and role, and protection against unauthorized access to rooms. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your personal data we will notify you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

## 12. Changes

We may update this policy. We will post the new version here with a new date and notify account owners by email of material changes.

## 13. Contact

Heartongue — team@heartongue.com