Terms

What you get, and what you don’t

Who you are buying from

Your payment is taken by Polar Software Inc. as merchant of record: Polar charges your card, issues the receipt, works out and pays any VAT or sales tax, and processes refunds. The minute, the page, the card and the certificate are made and run by Keep a Minute, which is Juan Bernado, Tarragona, Spain. Prices are in US dollars; any tax is shown at the checkout before you pay. The line on your statement will read Polar, not Keep a Minute.

You must be 18 or over to buy, or have a parent or guardian buy for you.

What a minute is here

A minute is a place on the calendar: 13 May at 18:42. Not a slot in one particular year — the same minute, every year, for as long as this site runs. There are 525,600 of them, and each one carries one story here.

Three of them are ours, shown on the front page as examples, and are not for sale.

It carries no timezone, because a memory does not have one. 18:42 means 18:42 wherever you are standing, which is also why the front page shows a kept minute once a year in every part of the world, as each part gets there.

29 February is the exception. It does not come round every year, so nothing we promise about a minute would be true of it, and we do not sell it.

What you are buying

One entry in this website’s record, naming a single minute of the calendar, the first name you give us, and the words you write. Some of it is yours outright. Some of it depends on us still being here. We would rather tell you which is which than let you find out later.

Yours to keep, whatever happens to us — once you save it

Both are ready the moment you pay, and both live on our servers until you save them. Do it the day you buy:

• the card — an image with the minute, the name and your line on it, which you download and own like any other file;
• the certificate, on the gift ($19.99) and the time capsule ($29.99) — a page laid out for one sheet, which you print or save as a PDF from your own browser.

Both are on the page you land on after paying, and the card again from your minute’s own page. We do not email them to you. The only email you will get is the receipt from Polar, our payment provider — keep it, because the order number on it is how we find your purchase.

Yours while Keep a Minute is running

• the public page for your minute, at its own address;
• our commitment that no second story is sold for that same minute;
• the yearly turn on the front page, for the sixty seconds your minute is happening on each visitor’s own clock;
• a place on that hour’s list of kept minutes;
• a sealed message, if you bought one, held apart and opened on its date.

We intend all of that to last, and we will not resell a minute that has a story. But they are things this site does, so they last as long as this site does — we are one person and a small project, and we are not going to promise a hundred years of hosting we cannot underwrite. That is the ordinary shape of a symbolic dedication, and we would rather say it plainly than bury it.

The three plans

The minute is $9.99: the minute, its page and its card. The gift is $19.99 and adds the printable certificate. The time capsule is $29.99 and adds a sealed message, described below. Every minute costs the same as every other minute; we do not charge more for one because its digits are tidy.

A set is two to five minutes kept at once, under one name and the same words, at the the gift price for each. Each minute in a set is kept exactly as a minute bought on its own in that plan — its own page, card and certificate — but the set is paid for as one order. Cancelling, and the refund we give anyway, apply to that order as a whole: they release every minute in the set, and opening any one of its certificates counts as opening them all. There is one exception: if somebody keeps one of those minutes before your payment lands, that minute is not yours. Write to us and we will refund the whole set and release it, and you can keep the rest again straight away — today we cannot refund one minute of an order without releasing the others, and we would rather say that than let you discover it.

The time capsule

A time capsule adds a second message to your minute, sealed until a date you choose — the same minute, in a later year. Until then nobody can read it: not a visitor, not a search engine, and not us in passing. It is stored apart from everything else on the page and is only ever loaded once its date has passed.

Four things about that promise, and none of them is small.

• It opens at that minute in UTC. An instant has to be one instant, so a capsule set for 13 May 2044 opens at 18:42 UTC that day, which on the reader’s own clock can be as much as half a day earlier or later than 18:42, depending where they are.
• It opens if we are still here. You can set it up to thirty years out, and most websites do not last a tenth of that; we are not going to pretend otherwise. What the price pays for is the message being sealed and held now, apart from the page, and our intention to open it. It does not buy a guarantee that this site exists on that day, because nobody can sell you one. We will do what we can, including telling you before we go if we can.
• Copy it somewhere of your own before you pay. Once you have paid, nobody sees it again until its date — not you, and not us. Your copy is the only one that is certainly not ours to lose.
• It is not encrypted. Nothing on the site shows it and nothing searches it, but we could read it by going into the database deliberately. We will not.

The sealed message is held to the same content rules as everything else, and it can be up to 1200 characters. If you want it taken down before its date, email keepaminute@gmail.com and we will delete it.

What you are not buying

You are not buying the minute. Nobody can sell you a minute of time, and we are not pretending otherwise. You get no legal right, title, property interest, trademark or licence over that minute, over the words describing it, or over anything anybody else does during it. The rest of the world will use 18:42 on 13 May exactly as it would have anyway.

This is a keepsake and a gift. Its value is that it is yours, it is public, and it is the only one on this site. That is the whole of it.

If we ever shut down

If we can, we give you notice first. We would like to publish the record of kept minutes before we go, so it outlives us, but that is an intention and not a promise. The only things certain to survive us are the card, the certificate and the sealed message you saved — which is why we keep telling you to. A card nobody downloaded goes down with the site.

Cancelling, and the box you tick

Your card and certificate are ready the second you pay, which is the point of them. Under EU and UK consumer law that immediate delivery is a case where the fourteen-day right to change your mind does not apply — but only if you asked for it and were told what you were giving up. So at the checkout you tick this, in these words:

“I want my card (and, where my tier includes one, the certificate) delivered immediately, and I accept that once delivery begins I lose the statutory right to withdraw from the purchase of digital content.”

We record the moment you tick it and the address you tick it from. The words you ticked, and when, are printed on your certificate and shown on the page after payment; that is your copy of the consent. If you would rather keep the statutory right, do not tick the box — but then we cannot sell you the minute, because there is no version of this where delivery waits fourteen days.

The sealed message is different: holding it is something we have not done yet, so for the first fourteen days you keep the right to cancel that part whatever you ticked. In practice the refund below covers it — ask, and the whole order is refunded and released.

The refund we give anyway

Losing the statutory right does not leave you with nothing. For fourteen days we will refund you as a matter of courtesy, no reason needed: email keepaminute@gmail.com, and we return the full amount and put the minute straight back on the shelf.

This is ours to give, and there are four things that end it:

• Your minute has come round. Once your story has taken the front page on its minute, the thing you bought has happened and cannot be taken back.
• You have opened the certificate. On the plans that include one, opening the certificate page counts as taking it, whether or not you then print or save it. We keep our own record of the page being opened and of its print button being used, and we go by that record. If you think it is wrong, tell us and we will listen.
• We removed the story for breaking the content rules below. That is a removal, not a purchase you are unhappy with, and it is not refunded.
• A pattern of abuse — buying and refunding repeatedly, or holding minutes to stop other people having them.

Outside those four we will still listen. If something is wrong with your card, tell us and we will fix it.

What “come round” means, exactly: your story occupies the front page while your minute is happening. That is the whole of it. We do not promise anybody is looking, we do not count views for you, and no number of visitors is part of what you bought.

If a purchase is undone

Any refund, full or partial, releases the whole order — the minute, or every minute in a set — the moment our payment provider confirms it to us, automatically. A chargeback through your bank releases it too, but that news reaches us by hand rather than by wire, so it can take days.

Either way the minute’s page says it was kept and then let go, the minute goes back on the shelf for anyone else, its certificate address reads revoked, and any sealed message on it is deleted. A certificate printed before the release stops recording anything.

A story we remove for breaking the content rules is released the same way: the page says so, the certificate address reads revoked, and the minute goes back on the shelf. The fee is not refunded.

If two people somehow pay for the same minute, the first payment we record keeps it. We detect that automatically; the refund of the second payment is done by hand, usually within a couple of days. The minutes either side may well still be free.

There is a ceiling of ten checkouts opened from one network address in any twenty-four hours, whether or not they are paid for. It is there so nobody can sit on a stretch of the calendar to keep it away from other people. If you honestly want more than ten, write to us.

What can go on a page

A first name, up to 24 characters; a line, up to 40; and a story, up to 240. No surnames, no addresses, no phone numbers, no handles, no advertising. Nothing hateful, and nothing about somebody else that they would not want made permanent and public.

One link, and only in the link field: https, no shorteners, no bare IP addresses, and shown on your page as the bare domain rather than as words you chose, so it cannot claim to be somewhere it is not. It is marked nofollow, so it passes no search standing to anybody, and it never appears on the card. Links written into the line or the story are refused at the till.

Every page has a report link. We remove anything that breaks these rules; a removal is not a refund, and “the refund we give anyway” above says why. Please do not write anything here that identifies a person who has not agreed to it — including a child’s full name.

Nothing can be edited once it is paid for — not the words, not the name, and not the card style you chose. Read the card in the preview before you buy. Inside fourteen days, a refund puts the minute back and you can keep it again with the wording you meant. If you want your own story taken down later than that, email keepaminute@gmail.com — we will unpublish it, though the fee is only refundable in the first fourteen days.

By submitting a name and a story you give us permission to show them on this site, on the card and certificate, and in previews of those pages elsewhere, for as long as the site runs. You confirm you have the right to write what you wrote, and that anyone you name would be content to see it here.

If we help you write it

Some pages offer to suggest three ways of saying what you have already typed. If you use it, what you typed, the kind of moment and the date are sent to Anthropic, whose model writes the suggestions. Anthropic’s terms for that service say it does not use what we send to train its models and keeps it only briefly for safety checks; that is their promise, which we pass on and cannot check ourselves. We note that the button was pressed and from which network address, so nobody can press it a thousand times. The suggestions are drafts: you choose one or none, you can edit it, and nothing is submitted for you. What ends up on your page is what you pressed the button on, and it is yours.

What we keep

The name and story you submit, which are public by design. The email address our payment provider passes us with the order, so we can find your purchase when you write to us. The moment you ticked the consent box, and the network address and browser you ticked it from — a copy of which travels with the order to our payment provider, along with the name and the story. Any sealed message, until its date or until you ask us to delete it — and, for the seconds between your writing it and your payment landing, a holding copy that is destroyed the moment the order reaches us, or swept within a week if you never pay.

We also record the same address and browser when a card is downloaded, a certificate is opened or printed, or a page is shared. That record is what we answer a payment dispute with, and it is what the ceiling above counts. If a purchase is refunded we keep the record that it was made and released, so the page can go on saying what happened.

Page views and a handful of steps — searched, found, started writing, reached the till — are counted for us by Vercel, without cookies and without your name. A minute’s address and a plan name are the most any of them carries.

We do not ask for your postal address, and we have no use for it.

We keep the records above for as long as the site runs, and payment records for as long as tax law asks. Polar sees the order and the consent; our hosting and database providers store the data for us. You can ask us what we hold about you, and ask us to correct it or delete what is not needed to keep the record of a sale, at keepaminute@gmail.com. The name and story are public by design; once published they may be copied or cached by others, and we cannot recall those copies. This site sets no cookies at all, which is why there is no banner asking about them; the payment page, on polar.sh, has its own.

The rest of the small print

We run this site with care but without guarantees of uptime. If we fail you, the most we owe you is what you paid for the order. Nothing here limits liability that the law does not let us limit.

These terms are governed by the law of Spain. If you are a consumer in the EU or the UK, nothing here takes away rights your own country’s law gives you and cannot be signed away, and you may bring a claim in your own courts.

We may change this page for future purchases. What you bought stays as it was described on the day you bought it. The date at the bottom says when it last changed.

Refunds, takedowns, corrections and complaints all go to keepaminute@gmail.com; we answer within a few days.

Back to the 525,600 minutes

Keep a Minute is Juan Bernado, Tarragona, Spain. Payments are taken by Polar Software Inc. as merchant of record. This page was last changed on 4 September 2026.