Terms of Membership

New Horizon Networking Group ("New Horizon", "we", "us") is operated by Araptus LLC, a Texas limited liability company. These Terms of Membership are an agreement between you and Araptus LLC. They cover the website, the member dashboard, the member directory, our events, and any advertising or sponsorship you buy from us. Our Privacy Policy is part of this agreement.

New Horizon is a curated group, not an open sign-up. You can apply through the website, or join at a meeting using the code we hand out there. Either way an administrator reviews the account, and we may decline or remove an application without giving a reason — most often because a business competes directly with a member who is already here, or because we cannot verify it is a real business. Joining at a meeting approves you immediately so you appear in the room's directory that day; that convenience does not waive our right to review the account afterwards. You must be at least 18 and give accurate information about yourself and your business.

Free — a directory listing, event registration, and open groups. Pro ($149/year) — everything in Free, plus the full directory including other members' contact details, member-to-member recommendations, and member ad pricing. Featured ($299/year) — everything in Pro, plus a business page published on the public website and a placement on it. A limited number of founding seats are offered at a reduced rate; when they are gone, they are gone. We may change what a tier includes, and if a change removes something material from a tier you are already paying for, we will tell you before it takes effect and you may cancel for a pro-rata refund of the unused term.

Paid memberships run for a term of one year and the full annual fee is charged upfront, not monthly. Payments are processed by Stripe; we never see or store your card details. Your rate does not change mid-term, and we will tell you before a renewal at a different rate. Prices shown exclude any applicable taxes.

Membership fees are non-refundable, including where a membership is cancelled part-way through its annual term. Event tickets, sponsorships and advertising placements are likewise non-refundable once purchased. Because of that, come to a meeting as a guest before you join — you should know what you are buying. Two exceptions: the pro-rata refund described under membership tiers, and anything applicable law gives you that cannot be waived.

We will contact you and give you a grace period to fix it. If the payment is still outstanding when that period ends, the account drops to Free rather than being closed — you keep your listing and your history, and you lose the paid features until it is settled. We do not delete a member's data for non-payment.

Being in a directory means being findable, so it is worth being precise about who sees what.

Public, on the open web: your name, business name, industry, job title, headline, and your business website. If you are a Featured member, your business page and your approved recommendations are also published publicly and can be indexed by search engines.

Members only: your email address and phone numbers, which are shown to Pro and Featured members and never published publicly.

Never published: your personal interests. They are visible inside the member directory as a conversation starter and are deliberately kept out of every public feed.

You control all of it from your profile, and you can hide or remove your listing at any time. Do not put anything in a public field that you would not want a competitor or a search engine to read.

This is a room, not a mailing list. We expect free members to attend an in-person meeting at least once a calendar quarter. We may enforce that by hiding a free member's card from other free members until they next attend — paid members are never hidden for non-attendance. That rule is not switched on today. We will not start enforcing it without telling members first, and it will only ever judge quarters that begin after we do. Attendance is recorded when you check in from your dashboard at the meeting, or when the host marks you present.

Pro and Featured members can write recommendations for other members and read the ones written about them. Every recommendation is reviewed by an administrator before it appears, and we may decline or remove one — a recommendation is a member vouching for another member's work, and it stops being worth anything the moment it is traded or bought. Write only about businesses you have genuine experience of. A Featured member's approved recommendations are published on the public website. If you leave, recommendations you wrote about others stay; recommendations written about you go with your listing.

Some events are free and some are ticketed, with a limited number of seats. A ticket is for the named member and is not transferable without asking us. If we cancel an event, we refund tickets for it; if you cannot make it, the ticket is non-refundable, so tell us early and we will do what we can. We record who attended.

Ad space is sold per surface — the homepage, the member directory, the events pages, or all three — by the month, with a discount for longer runs. Each surface holds a limited number of advertisers at a time, so a surface can genuinely sell out. Every creative is reviewed before it runs, and we may refuse or pull one that is misleading, unlawful, adult, or simply not a fit for the group. The price you paid is locked for your term: if we raise a rate, your running placement is not re-priced. Placements are non-refundable, we do not guarantee any level of traffic, clicks or business, and we may move or resize a placement as the site changes.

Your profile, logo, photos, recommendations and ad creatives stay yours. You give us a non-exclusive licence to display them on the website, in the dashboard, in our newsletter, and in ordinary promotion of the group — that is what publishing a directory requires. You are telling us you have the right to everything you upload, including any logo, photograph or copy you did not make yourself. We may remove anything that breaks these terms, and we will tell you why.

New Horizon works because people refer business to people they trust. Do not spam other members, harvest the directory for a mailing list, misrepresent your business, or use a referral to pitch something else. Do not scrape the site or attempt to reach data you are not entitled to. Harassment or abuse of members, guests, staff or venue is grounds for immediate removal with no refund. For anything less severe we will raise it with you once, in writing, before acting.

We do not guarantee you will get business, referrals or introductions from being a member — that depends on you and on the room. We do not vet members' work, endorse them, or take part in what you agree with another member. A recommendation on this site is one member's opinion, not our verification. Do your own diligence before you hire, refer or pay anyone you meet here.

You can cancel at any time from your account, and your membership runs to the end of the term you paid for. We may suspend or end a membership for a breach of these terms, and for a serious breach we may do it immediately; otherwise we will give you notice and a chance to put it right. When a membership ends we archive the account rather than erasing it, so we keep a record of the relationship — you can ask us to delete your personal data, and the Privacy Policy explains how.

We update these terms as the group and the platform change. For a material change we will ask you to read and accept the new version the next time you sign in, and we keep a record of which version you accepted and when. Small corrections that do not change what you are agreeing to are made without interrupting you. If you do not accept a new version, you can cancel; we will not hold you to terms you have not agreed.

The website and the dashboard are provided as they are. We do not promise they will be uninterrupted or error-free, and we are not liable for indirect, special or consequential loss, including lost business, revenue, profits or data. Where we are liable, our total liability to you is capped at what you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing here excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas. Talk to us first — most things are fixed with an email. If that fails, disputes are resolved by binding arbitration in Harris County, Texas, under the Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association, before a single arbitrator, with the prevailing party entitled to reasonable legal fees and costs. Either of us may still bring a claim in small claims court. You and Araptus LLC each waive the right to a jury trial and to bring claims as part of a class action.

The site's content, layout, design, databases and graphics belong to Araptus LLC or its licensors, apart from the material members provide. Do not copy, republish or resell them without our permission. The member directory in particular is our database: reading it as a member is the point, and extracting it is not.

Questions about these terms, or anything else: kris@araptus.com. Araptus LLC, Houston, Texas.