The BambooHR Terms of Service are the master contract for its hosted service. They define the agreement as the Terms of Service “together with any applicable order forms and addendums”, made between the customer and Bamboo HR LLC, its subsidiaries as applicable and/or BambooHR Payroll LLC.[1] The Legal Hub lists the addenda that attach to it.[2] This article follows the sections that matter most for subscription management.
Editions
The Terms do not use editions. They distinguish two subscription types on the Order Form: a Month-to-Month Subscription and an Extended Term Subscription.[1] Many provisions come in a two-row table, one for each type. The pricing page makes the same point commercially: the customer can “choose flexible month-to-month terms or an extended term for added certainty”.[3] The packages themselves (Core, Pro, Elite) and the add-ons are covered in separate articles.
Metrics
Section 5.3 sets the fee base: customers pay “fees for all non-terminated employees in the Service” in accordance with the Order Form, by automatic debit, with subscription fees payable at the start of each Subscription Term.[1] The wiki records this as Non-terminated employee, and the pricing notation in section 5.4 as Per-Employee-Per-Month (PEPM).
Section 5.6 adds two minimums to extended term subscriptions. The Employee Minimum is “the minimum employee count specified in the applicable Order Form”, and the Product Minimum is any “minimum committed package and product quantities or minimum headcount per product specified in the applicable Order Form”.[1] Because a Product Minimum can be set by product headcount, a customer who buys Payroll for a subset of employees can have a different minimum for Payroll than for the core platform.
Counting and floors
The floor language is direct: “Your minimum bill will be based on the Employee Minimum and all applicable Product Minimums for the duration of the Extended Term Subscription, regardless of actual usage, changes to product configurations, or any reduction in the number of your non-terminated employees or users below the Employee Minimum or any Product Minimum.”[1] Growth is billed as it happens: the customer owes “the greater of” the minimum and “your actual number of non-terminated employees or product-specific users”, and “any decrease in your employee count or product-specific headcount below the Employee Minimum or any Product Minimum will not reduce the fees owed”.[1]
Practical points for licence managers follow from these words. First, headcount reductions during an extended term do not reduce the bill below the minimum, so a restructuring needs to be planned against the Order Form and not against the pricing page. Second, the Terms as read contain no audit clause. The count is taken from the employee records in the Service, which suggests that the customer’s records and the vendor’s billing basis are the same data; that is commentary, not a BambooHR statement. Third, a “True-up” in the sense of a retrospective charge is not described, but billing “based on your actual counts” for periods when the count exceeds the minimum is functionally the same effect, applied during the term.
Month-to-month subscriptions have no such minimum in the Terms, but the pricing page’s flat monthly rate for 25 employees or fewer acts as a small-customer floor.[3]
Term, renewal and termination
For month-to-month customers, “You may terminate your subscription at any time. The effective date of any such termination will be the last day of the subscription month in which you canceled your subscription.”[1] The customer is “solely responsible for the proper termination of your subscription”. BambooHR may terminate a month-to-month account that has not been used for 180 days (paid) or 60 days (free).[1]
For extended term customers the subscription “is non-cancelable until the end of the Term” and fees are non-refundable; an attempted termination without cause leaves the customer owing unpaid fees for the remainder. The sole remedy for an uncured BambooHR breach, after 30 days’ written notice, is termination with a refund of prepaid fees for the unused portion.[1] The subscription renews automatically for twelve-month terms, and to stop renewal the customer must give “a minimum of sixty (60) days notice before the expiration of your existing Term”.[1]
After expiry or termination, the customer can download its Customer Data for thirty days, after which BambooHR may delete it, except that payroll data may be kept for seven years for legal and tax requirements.[1]
Price and agreement changes
Section 5.4 limits price changes by subscription type. Month-to-month: BambooHR “may at any time, upon notice of at least sixty (60) days, or a longer period if required by Applicable Law, change the price of your subscription or any part thereof, or institute new charges or fees”, but “we shall not change the price of any subscription package (e.g. Core, Pro, Elite, Payroll, BenAdmin) more than once in a calendar year”.[1] Extended term: “BambooHR may not change the price of your existing subscription during the Term (other than standard price fluctuations that may occur if you change employee headcount or add additional services)”, and renewal price changes need 60 days’ notice before expiry.[1] The limits apply to PEPM list pricing and not to changes in fees from usage.[1]
The Agreement itself can change. BambooHR may modify it at any time; for material modifications it gives 30 days’ notice and asks for affirmative agreement. For month-to-month customers changes take effect after 30 days, and for extended term customers they take effect at the next renewal term, except that changes for new products or services apply automatically when the customer begins using them.[1] Failure to accept may lead to termination or suspension.
Usage rights and restrictions
The grant is “a limited, revocable, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive right to access and use the Service” for internal business use through a browser or device the customer owns or controls.[1] Restrictions in section 4.2 include reverse engineering, penetration testing, duplicating or exploiting the Service without written permission, using robots or spiders (other than exporting Customer Data as documented), renting, leasing, distributing or reselling the Software, and using the Service “for developing a competitive solution”.[1] Recent text also prohibits extracting prompts, model weights or orchestration logic from BambooHR AI by methods such as prompt injection, jailbreaking or distillation.[1]
Credentials are for the customer’s authorized users only and cannot be sold, transferred, shared or sublicensed, and the customer is responsible for ensuring that all users enable multi-factor authentication.[1] API keys may be used only in the customer’s own systems and “may not be used for any third-party integrations under any circumstances”; third-party programmatic access must use BambooHR’s OAuth framework through the developer portal or marketplace.[1] A trial or test account must not hold live data.[1]
Virtualization and partitioning
Not applicable. The Terms state that BambooHR is not obliged to deliver copies of the software used to provide the Service.[1]
Cloud and BYOL
No bring-your-own-licence rule applies. Affiliates that want a separate instance must buy their own subscription and accept the Agreement, and assignment, including by change of control, requires BambooHR’s prior written consent, which “shall not be unreasonably withheld”.[1] The change-of-control clause matters in mergers because a customer that is acquired cannot transfer the subscription without that consent.
Programs
The Terms define the Beta Service license (limited, revocable, as-is), allow a Prepayment discount with forfeiture rules, and list the Additional Services (Payroll, Benefits Administration, Compensation Management, HR Consulting and Managed Payroll, BambooHR AI, eNPS and E-Signature) in section 14, recorded as Additional Services and Addenda.[1] The eNPS statement is of interest: use of eNPS “is subject to a separate license from its owner, which BambooHR obtains on behalf of the Service”, and its availability can change “at any time and without notice”.[1]
Ownership and data terms are balanced unevenly. The customer “retains all right, title and ownership interest in and to Customer Data”, but BambooHR owns “all operational and performance data related to your use of the Service” and may use it for purposes including industry benchmarking and “training and improving AI offerings”.[1] Liability is limited to the fees collected or payable in the preceding twelve months, with stated exceptions, and the governing law is that of Utah with proceedings in Utah courts.[1]
Out of scope
This article does not cover addendum terms (payroll, benefits, time clocks, AI, developers), package prices, or negotiated terms. It does not interpret enforceability of any clause, which depends on jurisdiction and the Order Form.