The Four Principles Behind Our Software Agreement

What it means to own your data, hold your pricing, and keep the freedom to leave

Every engineering firm and utility has a stack of signed agreements somewhere, and most of them got signed faster than they got read. Software contracts tend to be the worst offenders, because the parts that matter most to you are usually buried where they are easy to skim past: who owns the data, how much the price can climb, and what it takes to walk away.

We wrote our software agreement so those answers are short, plain, and in your favor. The reason comes down to how our business actually works. We make money when your team does real work inside Katapult Pro, not when we monetize what you collect or trap you in a contract you cannot leave.

That single fact shaped four principles, and each one removes a worry that the standard SaaS agreement quietly leaves in place.

If you want to see how the platform fits the work before getting into the terms, you can book a Katapult Pro walkthrough and we will show you the workflow first.

Principle 1: Your team owns all the data you collect and upload

The first principle is the one that sounds obvious right up until you read most software contracts: your team owns all the data collected and uploaded to our software.

The standard language usually runs the other way. It gives the vendor wide latitude to train AI on your data or sell insights drawn from it, and that grant tends to sit in a paragraph that is hard to find on purpose. Our agreement does the opposite, and it says so plainly. You collect it, you own it. If you leave Katapult Pro, you take it with you. We do not keep a copy, sell it, or use it to build something else.

That ownership matters most when you are an OSP consultant signing an MSA with a pole owner. Their contract sets the rules for the data you collect on their behalf: who owns it, where it lives, and what happens to it at project close. Because our agreement is written so those answers come from your customer rather than from your software vendor, you are not stuck reconciling two contracts that disagree. If the pole owner needs the data migrated to their system, we help migrate it. If they need it destroyed, we destroy it. You sign the MSA without wondering whether the fine print on the software side contradicts what you just promised.

Principle 2: We won't jack your rates

The second principle protects the number you build your budget around. Our agreement specifies that software pricing will not increase by more than 2% per year.

A 2% cap reads like a modest detail until you have watched a renewal come in 30% higher than the year before. Most software contracts give the vendor full discretion over annual increases, so every renewal turns into a conversation with finance and IT about whether to absorb the jump or rip out a platform your team already depends on. Once your people are trained up and the work is flowing through the software, that is not much of a choice, which is exactly what discretionary pricing counts on.

A capped increase changes the math for anyone running pole attachment work on a multi-year program. The number you budget for a seat this year is close to the number you will budget for it three years from now, so your bid holds across a 3- or 5-year window. When your margin on that work is built around an assumed software cost and that cost jumps 30% at renewal, the margin disappears and there is nowhere to recover it. With the cap in place, the productivity your team picks up along the way shows up in your margins instead of ours, which is where we think it belongs. Your growth is a good outcome for us too.

When you are pricing a pilot or a multi-year program, the software line has to hold. Predictable, capped pricing means the bid you win is the bid you can still profit from in year three. See how teams running joint use and make ready programs build their cost model around Katapult Pro.

Principle 3: You can cancel anytime

The third principle was written so that neither you nor your data is ever held captive. You can cancel anytime.

Most enterprise software contracts are built to keep you in: annual or multi-year commitments, fixed seat counts that only ratchet upward, and renewal cycles timed for the moment you have the least room to walk away. Ours runs the other direction, and the flexibility is built into how you use it day to day. Add or remove users any time, change your subscription tier between projects, or cancel altogether. Moving your data out or sending it to cold storage is your call, and it is easy to do.

Your business does not run on a flat line, so your software cost should not have to. A 40,000-pole audit needs a very different user count than a steady annual joint use program. When the work shrinks, your software spend should shrink with it, and when the work disappears entirely, you should be able to step away without negotiating an exit. We win when you win, so we will help you wind down between active projects rather than holding you to seats you are not using.

Principle 4: Protection from being removed

The fourth principle answers a question most teams never think to ask until it bites them: what actually stops a vendor from kicking you off the platform. In Katapult Pro, the only thing that does is breaking the agreement.

This reads like a footnote until you consider what it protects against. Most software contracts give the vendor broad discretion to terminate accounts, and that discretion turns into a pressure point the moment your business and the vendor's start to overlap, or the moment the vendor gets acquired by a competitor. Our agreement spells out the specific terms that justify removal, and they are the ones you would expect: failure to pay, stealing or reverse-engineering our IP, illegal use of the software. Competing with us is not on that list. Switching vendors for part of your work is not on it either, and neither is operating as both our customer and our competitor at the same time.

That protection mattered most back when we were a privately held company that could be acquired, because the agreement meant a customer would never wake up to find their software vendor had been bought by their biggest competitor. We are now wholly owned by an Employee Ownership Trust, which takes that acquisition scenario off the table entirely. The principle stays in the agreement anyway, because the point was never one ownership structure. The point is that your access to your own work does not depend on staying on a vendor's good side.

Why the agreement reads this way

These four principles are not concessions we make grudgingly. They follow directly from a business model built on the belief that you should pay us because we are delivering value, not because you are contractually stuck.

Katapult is run by people who do this work, which means we have seen plenty of one-sided software contracts ourselves. When a vendor's revenue depends on lock-in, the incentive is to make leaving painful. When it depends on your data, the incentive is to keep that data and quietly find more uses for it. We took both incentives off the table on purpose, so the only way we keep your business is by being worth keeping. We view this as an opportunity for mutual wins, and the agreement is where that shows up in writing rather than just in a sales conversation.

Frequently asked questions about our software agreement

Do I really own the data I collect and upload to Katapult Pro? Yes. The agreement states that your team owns all data collected and uploaded to the software. If you leave, you take your data with you, and we help you export or migrate it.

Does Katapult train AI on customer data or sell insights from it? No. We do not keep a copy of your data after you leave, we do not sell it, and we do not use it to build something else. Our revenue comes from your team doing work in the software, not from monetizing what you collect.

How much can my Katapult Pro pricing increase each year? The agreement caps software price increases at 2% per year, so the cost you budget for a seat stays close to the same figure across a multi-year program.

Is there a long-term contract or a cancellation penalty? No. Katapult Pro is month-to-month. You can add or remove users, change your subscription tier between projects, or cancel altogether without an early-termination penalty.

What happens to my data if I cancel? It stays yours. You can export it, move it to cold storage, or have it migrated to another system.

Can Katapult remove my access if I also compete with your engineering team? No. Competing with us, switching vendors for part of your work, or operating as both a customer and a competitor are not violations. The only things that justify removal are spelled out in the agreement: failure to pay, IP theft or reverse-engineering, illegal use of the software, etc.

See the agreement for yourself

A software agreement should make the next few years easier to plan, not harder. When you own your data, your pricing holds, you can leave whenever the work calls for it, and your access does not hinge on staying out of a vendor's way, the contract stops being a risk you carry and starts being one less thing to manage. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and we are glad to walk through it line by line before you commit to anything.

Book a Katapult Pro walkthrough and we will show you the platform and the terms together, or talk to our team about how the agreement fits a program you're running now.