Terms of use

1. About these terms

These terms are an agreement between you and [OPERATOR LEGAL NAME], who runs Kolom (“we”). By using the site or creating an account you accept them, together with the privacy policy, the payments and refunds terms (if you buy something) and the cookies and storage notice. If you do not agree, please do not use the site.

If you use Kolom for an organisation, you confirm you may accept these terms for it.

2. Who can use it

Anyone can read the free lessons. To create an account you must be at least 13. If you are under 18, or under the age at which you can agree to online services yourself where you live, you need a parent’s or guardian’s permission, and they accept these terms for you. Only an adult (18 or over) can make a payment, so a parent or guardian must pay for anything a younger learner buys.

3. Your account

• Give true details. Use your real name if you want certificates in your name.
• One account per person. Do not share it, sell it or sign in as someone else.
• Keep your password and sign-in links to yourself, and tell us at support@kolom.io if you think someone else has used your account. You are responsible for what happens under your account unless it was not your fault.
• Your username is public on anything you choose to make public. Do not pick one that is offensive or pretends to be someone else.
• You can delete your account at any time in Settings.

4. Our content and what you may do with it

The lessons, podcasts, diagrams, simulators, exercises, exams, labs and the rest of the site belong to us or the people who licensed them to us. You may use them for your own learning, at home or at work, and share links to them freely. You may use short code snippets and commands from the lessons in your own work.

Please do not, without our written permission:

• copy and republish whole lessons, podcasts, cheat sheets or courses, or sell them;
• share, publish or collect exam questions, answers, hidden tests or lab solutions;
• download the site in bulk (scraping) or use it to build a competing course or to train an AI model.

Mangrove Market, the company in every example, is made up. Any resemblance to a real business is a coincidence.

5. What you post and submit

You keep ownership of what you write and build here: comments, notes, lab projects, exam answers, capstones and feedback. You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, free licence to store, copy, show and process it as needed to run the site: for example to save your work, show your public comments, grade your answers (including with AI feedback when that is switched on) and keep backups. The licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies we must keep by law or that are in backups until they roll over.

Only post what you have the right to post. Comments must be kind and on topic: no spam, harassment, hate, sexual content, personal data of other people, or anything illegal. We may hide or remove content that breaks these terms and, for serious or repeated cases, suspend the account.

6. Learner reviews

• After you finish a lesson, half a course, work in a lab or part of a role path, you can write a review with stars and a short text. It appears on the site only if you tick the consent box and our team approves it. It then shows your name, the role you typed, your Google photo or your initials, and your current learning stats (the stats only while your profile is public).
• Write about your own experience. No fake reviews, reviews for someone else, paid or swapped reviews, other people’s personal data, or anything offensive.
• We read every review before it appears and may reject it (with a reason you can see), hide it or stop featuring it. We never change your words; an edited review goes back for a new check.
• You can edit or delete your review at any time in Settings. Deleting it withdraws your consent and takes it off the site at once. Deleting your account deletes your reviews.

7. Messages with our team

You can write to our team from your account (the inbox), and we may reply or write to you there about your account, a payment, mentoring or a problem. Please keep messages about Kolom and polite; we may close a conversation that is abusive or off topic. Staff may add internal notes to a conversation (for example to hand it over to a colleague). These are not shown in your inbox, but you can ask for them as part of a request for your data. How long we keep messages is in the privacy policy.

8. Using the site fairly

Do not:

• cheat on exams or skill tests, take them for someone else, or let anyone take them for you;
• try to get into accounts, data or parts of the site that are not yours, read answer keys, or get round limits, payments or plan checks;
• overload, attack or disrupt the site, or use bots to earn XP, climb leaderboards or submit forms;
• submit fake payment details or someone else’s TrxID;
• upload malware, or use the site to break the law, including Bangladesh’s Cyber Security Act 2026 and the laws where you are.

9. The labs and the security lab

The SQL, code, QA, DevOps, design and security labs are sandboxes. Your code runs in a sandbox in your browser, and graded work is re-run in an isolated sandbox on our server. Every system, company and person in them is fictional.

• Learning only. The security lab teaches how attacks work so you can defend against them. Use what you learn only on the practice targets inside the lab, or on systems you own or have written permission to test.
• Never attack real systems. Do not use lab techniques against any website, network, device or person without permission. Unauthorised access, hacking and similar acts are crimes under Bangladesh’s Cyber Security Act 2026 and in almost every other country, and we will cooperate with lawful requests from the authorities.
• Do not try to break out. Do not try to escape the sandboxes, reach our servers or other learners’ data, mine cryptocurrency, or use the labs to send traffic to other sites.
• Found a real problem? If you find a security weakness in Kolom itself, tell us at privacy@kolom.io with the details. Do not look at other people’s data, change anything or tell others until we have had a reasonable time to fix it.

10. Exams and certificates

Final exams are taken alone, without sharing questions. A Kolom certificate shows that the named account completed the course and passed its exam (and, where a course has one, its reviewed capstone) on our site, on the date shown. Anyone can check it with its code on the verify page.

A certificate does not prove the holder’s identity (we do not check identity documents), and it is not a degree, a university credit, a professional licence or an accredited qualification. It does not promise a job or a pay rise. Employers decide for themselves what weight to give it.

We may revoke a certificate earned by cheating or by breaking these terms; the verify page then shows that it was revoked. If you delete your account, your certificates stop verifying.

11. Free, Plus and Premium

Kolom has three tiers. What each one includes and costs is on the plans page and at checkout.

• Free: every lesson, podcast, exercise, final exam and certificate, and the open labs within their free limits. No payment and no time limit.
• Plus, paid for a number of days: every lab challenge, unlimited exports and bigger limits, and the weekly issue (tasks and a project of the week) on the This week page.
• Premium, paid for a number of days: everything in Plus, a 1:1 mentor session every two weeks, a monthly online seminar and invitations to in-person gatherings.

• Prices are in Bangladeshi taka (৳). The price that applies is the one shown at checkout when you pay. [VAT STATEMENT, e.g. "Prices include VAT at 15%." or "We are enlisted for turnover tax; no VAT is added."]
• You pay with bKash and enter the TrxID, and you can put coins and a coupon towards the price. A paid tier starts when our team has verified the payment, or at once when coins and a coupon cover the whole price. Nothing renews automatically: to continue, pay again.
• A new Plus period starts after any Plus or Premium time you already have; a new Premium period after any Premium time you already have.
• Live cohort seats, 1:1 mentoring and team seats bought before keep the terms they were sold with until they end.
• How we verify payments, issue invoices and handle refunds, failed and duplicate payments is in Payments and refunds.
• We may change prices, tiers and features for future purchases. A change does not affect a period you have already paid for.

12. The free first month of Plus

• When you finish half the lessons of any published course (and at least 5 lessons in all) on the site while signed in, you get 30 days of Plus, after any paid time you already have.
• It is given once per account and once per e-mail address. To keep to that, we keep a keyed hash of the address that received it (not the address itself), also after the account is deleted, so a new account with the same address does not get it again (see the privacy policy).
• It is a gift with no cash value. It cannot be exchanged for money, coins or another plan and is not refundable. Staff and test accounts do not get it, and we may withdraw it if it was obtained by abuse, for example several accounts for one person.

13. Coins

• Coins are a promotional credit. The only way to earn them is to watch a rewarded ad on the Earn coins page, the only place on the site where ads will appear. No ads run there yet, so no coins can be earned today; we will update these terms and the privacy policy before the first ad runs. Staff may correct a balance (for example coins credited by mistake), always with a recorded reason.
• Coins can only be put towards Plus or Premium at checkout, at the rate shown there (1 coin = ৳1 unless the checkout says otherwise).
• Coins are never cash: they cannot be withdrawn, exchanged for money, sold or sent to another account, and they are not refundable.
• When you submit a payment, the coins you applied are held while we check it. They are spent when the payment is approved and come back to your balance if it is not verified or is later refunded.
• We may remove coins obtained by abuse (for example faked ad views). Coins end when your account is deleted.

14. Coupons

Coupons are optional and follow the rules shown with them: the plans, dates and number of uses they are valid for, and whether one learner can use them more than once. One coupon per payment. Coins and coupons never take the price below zero, and coupons have no cash value. If a payment is not verified or is refunded, the coupon use is given back.

15. Premium mentoring

• While Premium is active you can book one session of up to 60 minutes in each fixed two-week cycle, with a mentor we suggest or another one from the department you chose. A session not booked in a cycle is not carried over.
• You can move or cancel a session until 24 hours before it starts. After that it uses that cycle’s session.
• A session you do not join is marked missed and counts as held. Two missed sessions in a row pause booking for one cycle. If the mentor misses it or we cancel it, it does not count: book another time, or see Payments and refunds.
• The meeting link appears on the Mentoring page shortly before the session. Do not share it, and do not record a session without the mentor’s agreement.
• You can add an agenda before the session and rate it afterwards. The mentor keeps short session notes; you and our staff can see them, and they help the next session.
• Mentors are independent professionals who give their own views. Their advice is not a guarantee of a job, a result or a pay rise. Their contact details are only for your sessions. We may change your mentor (for example if they become unavailable) and tell you why.

16. Seminars and gatherings

• Premium members (and Plus members where an event says so) can reply to the monthly online seminar and to in-person gatherings on the Events page. Places are limited and given in the order of replies; when an event is full you can join the waiting list and move up automatically when a place frees.
• The seminar link or the gathering address is shown only to people who are going, a short time before the event. Do not pass it on.
• Reply “not going” if your plans change, so someone on the waiting list can come. Dates, places and speakers may change, and we may cancel an event; we tell everyone going or waiting.
• At gatherings, the conduct rules of these terms apply in person: be respectful, follow the venue’s rules and the organisers’ instructions, no harassment, no recording people without their agreement, and no selling. We may refuse entry or ask someone to leave, and a serious breach can lead to a suspension (see suspension). You are responsible for your own travel and belongings.

17. The weekly letter and notifications

We send account holders a weekly letter: the week’s issue, suggestions for what to learn next and our announcements. If you fill in your career profile in Settings (industry, current role, years of experience, target role and a short goal), we use it to choose what the letter suggests and which mentors we suggest to you. You can switch the letter off at any time in Settings or with the link in each e-mail. We keep a record of which letter and announcements were delivered to you, how and whether it worked.

Service messages (sign-in links, payment results, session and event reminders, notices about your account) are part of the service and are sent even if you switch the letter off; by e-mail only while e-mail is switched on for the site, and always in the notifications bell.

18. AI feedback and the AI Lab

When it is switched on, some feedback on written exam answers, capstones and lab hints comes from an AI model (see the privacy policy). AI feedback can be wrong. Pass or fail is decided by our rules from the scores, and you can ask a person to look again by writing to privacy@kolom.io.

The AI Lab uses no paid AI service and sends nothing you type there to an AI provider. Its optional model runs only on your own device: if you choose to use it, your browser downloads the model files (a few hundred megabytes) from Hugging Face and keeps them in its storage until you delete them in the lab. It works only on devices that support it, may be slow, and its answers can be wrong or odd: treat them as practice material, not advice.

19. Analytics

We count page views without identifying you. Only if you click Allow do we also keep a browser id, where you came from and which buttons you click, and load Google Analytics where it is set up. Our host Vercel counts visits and page speed without cookies. You can change your choice at any time. The details are in the privacy policy and the cookies notice.

20. Changes to the site

We keep improving Kolom, so courses, lessons, features and labs may change, move or be retired. We will try to give notice before removing something that people rely on. If we stop offering a paid feature you have paid for before your plan ends, we will offer you a refund for the unused part or something of equal value.

21. Suspending or closing accounts

You can stop using Kolom and delete your account at any time. Deleting it does not by itself refund a paid plan; see Payments and refunds.

We may suspend an account if it breaks these terms in a serious or repeated way (for example cheating on exams, abusing payments, coins or the free month, attacking the site, or harassment, including at a gathering), if the law requires it, or to protect other learners or the site. While an account is suspended you are signed out and cannot sign in, and nothing sent from it is accepted (progress, comments, reviews, messages, payments, exams, labs, bookings and replies). Your data is kept, not deleted, while we look into it. We may also revoke certificates earned by cheating, or close the account for good.

Where it is safe and lawful, we tell you why and give you a chance to respond: write to privacy@kolom.io. A person on our team decides every suspension, and the reason is recorded. If we lift it, everything works as before. If we close an account for reasons other than your breach of these terms, we refund the unused part of any paid plan.

For short maintenance we may pause saving for everyone; the site says so at the top of every page while it lasts.

22. Accuracy and disclaimers

We work hard to make every lesson correct, and every query and command in the technical lessons was run. Software changes, though, so check the official documentation before relying on a detail in production. The lessons are for education. They are not professional, legal, financial or career advice.

The free site is provided “as is”: we do not promise that it will always be available, error-free or suitable for a particular purpose. Nothing in these terms limits rights you have under consumer protection law that cannot be limited by contract.

23. Limits on our liability

As far as the law allows:

• we are not responsible for losses that were not foreseeable, for indirect losses, or for lost profits, business, data or opportunities, including from relying on lesson content or a certificate;
• our total liability to you for any claim about the site or a paid plan is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim.

These limits do not apply to death or personal injury caused by our negligence, to fraud, or to anything else the law does not allow us to limit.

24. Other services

Google sign-in, bKash, Hugging Face (the AI Lab’s optional model files), meeting tools used for mentoring and seminars, and other sites we link to are run by others under their own terms. We are not responsible for them, but tell us if something goes wrong with a payment and we will help.

25. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.

If something goes wrong, please contact us first at privacy@kolom.io. We reply within 72 hours and aim to settle it fairly. If we cannot, you may complain to the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection in Bangladesh, and either of us may take the dispute to the courts of [CITY OF THE COURTS, e.g. Dhaka], Bangladesh.

If you live outside Bangladesh as a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory laws of your country, and you may also be able to bring a claim in your local courts.

26. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms, for example when the law or the site changes. We update the date at the top and list what changed, and if a change matters we will say so on the changelog and e-mail account holders at least 14 days before it applies. If you do not agree with a change, you can delete your account before then. Continuing to use the site after that means you accept the new terms; we do not ask you to click to accept each update.

If something on these pages is wrong or urgent (for example a mistake in a refund rule or a new legal requirement), we may correct it at once. The page then shows the new date and a version number, and a correction never takes away rights you already had for a payment made before it.

27. Contact and operator details

If any part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies. If we do not enforce a term straight away, we can still do it later.

Operator

[OPERATOR LEGAL NAME]

Legal form

[LEGAL FORM, e.g. sole proprietorship or private limited company]

Address

[REGISTERED ADDRESS]

Trade licence

[TRADE LICENCE NUMBER AND ISSUING AUTHORITY]

Digital Business ID

[DIGITAL BUSINESS ID (DBID), IF ISSUED]

e-TIN / VAT BIN

[e-TIN] / [VAT BIN, IF REGISTERED]

Privacy and legal e-mail

privacy@kolom.io

Data protection and complaints officer

[DATA PROTECTION AND COMPLAINTS OFFICER NAME]