Effective: October 3, 2026 · Last updated: October 28, 2026
These terms cover your use of Next Step, its optional Cloud Backup account and, for clinicians, the clinician portal. By creating a Cloud Backup account, you agree to them.
Next Step is operated by Cipher Haus, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company ("we", "us"). You can reach us at [email protected].
Next Step is a support tool for people in eating disorder recovery. It isn't medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, and it doesn't replace your doctor, therapist, dietitian or treatment team. The app's prompts and suggestions are general, not medical advice made for you. If something in the app doesn't match your care team's guidance, follow your care team, and talk with a doctor or your care team before changing anything about your care.
Next Step isn't an emergency service. If you're in danger or need urgent medical help, call 911 in the US, or your local emergency number. The crisis lines in the app and on our Support page are there to listen and support you; for a medical emergency, call your emergency number. The app's Call and Text buttons only work on a device that can make calls and send texts. On a tablet, or if a call or text doesn't start, the app shows the number to use from another phone.
Messages to clinicians and emails to us aren't watched around the clock, and the app doesn't alert anyone when you send one. Please don't rely on them in an emergency.
You can use the app on your phone without an account. To create a Cloud Backup account, you must be 13 or older. The app asks you to confirm this when you sign up (or, for an account our staff created, when you set your password, or at your next sign-in if you haven't confirmed it yet), and we record when you did; we don't verify it. We delete accounts we learn belong to children under 13. If you're under 18, we encourage you to use Next Step with the support of a parent, guardian or your treatment team.
Next Step offers meal and snack check-ins with a pacing timer, grounding and breathing tools, crisis helplines, recovery goals, a challenge ladder and reminders. These work on your phone, offline. With an optional Cloud Backup account you can also back up and sync your data, connect with clinicians and message them. Clinicians use the same account to sign in to the clinician portal. We may change, add or remove features over time.
Cloud Backup is optional and free. After you sign in on a phone, the app syncs when you make changes and when you tap Sync Now. Its first sync downloads your account, merges it with what's on the phone and uploads the result. Your sign-in renews itself as the app syncs, for up to 180 days from when you signed in or last changed your password. If it ends, backup stops until you sign in again, and the app tells you. Check "Last synced" in Cloud Backup from time to time. We can't promise that every change is backed up, so for anything you can't lose, keep an encrypted backup file and a photo ZIP as well (Backup tab, Manual Backup). Backup files don't include photos, and the photo ZIP isn't encrypted. How we handle your data is explained in our Privacy Policy.
If you're a clinician: you're responsible for your own professional obligations, including whether and how you use Next Step with clients. Don't rely on Next Step for urgent contact or as a clinical record. If you delete your account, each client you were connected with keeps their whole conversation with you, your messages and meal comments included, to read only, shown as from "a former clinician", and your messages in practice chats stay too (unless you're a practice's only member: that practice and its chats are deleted with your account). Questionnaires you sent clients stay with them, with their answers, and so do changes you made in a client's account with Edit access and check-in question sets you sent them. Your notes about clients are deleted. If you'd rather a client didn't keep a message, delete that message before you delete your account: deleting a chat on your side doesn't remove it from theirs.
You agree not to use Next Step to:
If someone is making you uncomfortable, you can revoke their access in Care Team, and please tell us at [email protected].
What you put into Next Step is yours. You give Cipher Haus, LLC permission to store, back up, sync and show it to the people you choose (such as the clinicians you connect with), only so that we can run Next Step for you. That permission ends when you delete your account, and for an item when you delete it in the app. Some copies last longer. Deleted items stay in the trash, and removed photos stay in cloud storage, until they're deleted as our Privacy Policy describes. The copies described on our Delete your account page, such as database backups, stay until they expire.
You can delete your Cloud Backup account at any time in the app (Settings, then Cloud Backup, then Profile, then Delete Account) or by email (see Delete your account). We may suspend or close accounts that break these terms or put other people at risk.
Next Step is provided "as is" and "as available." We don't promise that it will always work, be free of errors, or never lose data. Crisis-line details can change; check with the line itself if something doesn't work. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Cipher Haus, LLC is not liable for any indirect, incidental or consequential damages, or for lost data, arising from your use of Next Step. Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law doesn't allow us to limit.
These terms, and any dispute arising from them or your use of Next Step, are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any such dispute will be heard in the state courts in Los Angeles County, California, or the federal courts for the Central District of California, and you and we agree to those courts' jurisdiction. This doesn't take away any protection the law where you live gives you that can't be waived by agreement, including any right it gives you to bring a claim in your local courts.
If any part of these terms can't be enforced, the rest still applies.
If we change these terms, we'll publish the new version on this page and update the "Last updated" date above. Continuing to use Next Step after a change takes effect means you accept the updated terms. If you don't agree with a change, you can stop using Next Step and delete your account.
Questions about these terms: [email protected]. Help with the app: Support.