Legal
Terms of service.
These terms govern your purchase and use of the practice examination products sold by Grindstone Prep (“we”, “us”, “our”). By completing a purchase or by signing in to the service, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not purchase and do not sign in.
1. What we sell
Grindstone Prep sells access to a web-based practice examination application. Each product is a bank of practice questions with written explanations, prepared by us, together with the software that presents them.
Our products are study aids. They are not certification examinations, they do not confer any credential, and passing a practice exam has no bearing on the result of any real certification examination. We do not represent that our questions reproduce, resemble, or correspond to the content of any certification examination, and we do not promise any examination outcome. See also section 10 and the non-affiliation notice at the foot of every page of this site.
2. License scope
What you buy is a time-limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access the product through our service. You are not buying a copy of anything, and nothing in a purchase transfers ownership of any content to you.
| Product | Access term |
|---|---|
| Fortinet NSE 4 — FortiOS 7.6 Administrator | 180 days from the date access is granted |
| Fortinet NSE 5 — FortiAnalyzer 7.6 Analyst | 180 days from the date access is granted |
| Fortinet NSE 6 — FortiManager 7.6 Administrator | 180 days from the date access is granted |
| Cisco CCNA 200-301 v1.1 | 180 days from the date access is granted |
| Fortinet NSE track bundle | 365 days from the date access is granted |
| All-access | 365 days from the date access is granted |
Access begins when your license is activated, which normally happens within minutes of a successful payment. Access ends automatically at the end of the term. There is no perpetual license, no downloadable copy of the question bank, and no offline version. Once your term ends you lose access to the material, including any material added during your term.
We may add, revise, correct, or remove individual questions during your term — for example when Fortinet releases a new software version, or when we find an error. We do not guarantee that any particular question remains available for the length of your term.
Version successors. Certification exams are periodically replaced by a new version of the same exam. If, while your access term is running, we publish a practice question bank for a newer version of an exam your license already covers, that newer bank is included in your existing license for the remainder of your term at no additional charge, and you do not need to buy anything again. This only adds to what your license covers. It does not extend your access term, and it does not reduce or replace anything you already have. Where this applies to a product currently on sale, it is stated on that product’s entry on the exams page, which you should read before you buy.
Your license permits you to sign in and use the product for your own study, to take practice sessions as often as you wish within the limits of section 6, and to make brief notes for your own personal use. It does not permit anything in section 5.
3. Accounts
You need an account to use the product. Accounts are created and held by a third-party authentication provider, using an email address or a linked sign-in account.
We never create, receive, or store a password for your account. Authentication is handled entirely by the authentication provider. There is no password of yours on any system we operate, which is also why we can never email you one.
You are responsible for keeping access to your email address and sign-in method secure, and for everything done under your account. Tell us promptly at contact@grindstoneprep.com if you believe your account has been used without your permission.
You must be old enough to form a binding contract where you live. If you are buying on behalf of an employer or other organization, you confirm you have the authority to bind it.
4. Payment, price, and tax
Purchases are processed by our merchant of record, which is the seller of record for your transaction. Your contract of sale for payment purposes is with the merchant of record; these terms govern your use of the product itself. The merchant of record’s own terms and privacy notice apply to the payment, and its legal entity name — not necessarily “Grindstone Prep” — may be what appears on your card statement.
Prices are stated at checkout. The merchant of record calculates, collects, and remits any sales tax, value-added tax, or equivalent that applies where you are. Depending on your location, tax may be shown separately or included in the displayed price.
The current list price, which we may change for future purchases at any time, is $19.99 USD for the Fortinet NSE 4 — FortiOS 7.6 Administrator product with a 180-day access term, $19.99 USD for the Fortinet NSE 5 — FortiAnalyzer 7.6 Analyst product with a 180-day access term, $19.99 USD for the Fortinet NSE 6 — FortiManager 7.6 Administrator product with a 180-day access term, $19.99 USD for the Cisco CCNA 200-301 v1.1 product with a 180-day access term, $49.99 USD for the Fortinet NSE track bundle product with a 365-day access term, and $59.99 USD for the All-access product with a 365-day access term. A price change never affects a license you have already bought.
5. Acceptable use and no redistribution
The questions, explanations, source citations, and software are our property or are licensed to us, and they are protected by copyright.
You may not:
- copy, reproduce, republish, post, transmit, sell, license, rent, lend, or otherwise distribute any part of the question bank or explanations, in any form, to anyone;
- extract, scrape, harvest, or systematically download questions, whether manually or by any automated means including scripts, crawlers, headless browsers, or recording tools;
- circumvent, disable, or interfere with any access control, rate limit, session limit, or security measure in the service;
- share, publish, or resell your account credentials, license key, or session token;
- use the material to create, train, or improve a competing product, question bank, or derived dataset;
- reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the software, except to the extent that this restriction is unenforceable where you live;
- use the service in a way that degrades it for other customers, or that breaks any law that applies to you;
- use the service in a way that would breach the certification program rules or candidate agreement that apply to you. Those rules are between you and the certification body, and complying with them is your responsibility.
Buying one product does not entitle you to any other product. Attempting to access material you have not bought is a breach of these terms.
If you breach this section we may suspend or terminate your access without refund, in addition to any other remedy available to us. Where a breach is minor and apparently inadvertent, we will normally warn you first; we are not obliged to.
6. Account sharing and the concurrent-session limit
A license is for one person. Do not share your account or license key with anyone, including colleagues, classmates, or members of your household.
To make that workable rather than punitive, the service allows up to two simultaneous active sessions per license. That is intended to cover one person studying across, for example, a laptop and a tablet. It is not a second seat.
If a third session is opened, the service refuses it, and you will be asked to close another session or wait for it to expire. Repeatedly hitting this limit, or a pattern of use indicating the license is being used by more than one person — for instance simultaneous use from distant locations — may be treated as a breach of section 5.
We do not install anything on your device, we do not fingerprint your hardware, and we do not apply digital rights management. The session limit is the only sharing control we operate, and we would rather occasionally be taken advantage of than treat every customer as a suspect.
7. Refunds and the pass-or-refund guarantee
Two separate things. Both are set out in full, with every condition, on the refunds and guarantee page, which forms part of these terms. In summary:
- A 48-hour refund window. Write to us within 48 hours of purchase and we refund you in full, no reason needed, provided your account has not revealed the answer or explanation for more than 10 questions in total, in any mode, and has not completed a full timed session.
- Your statutory rights are unaffected. If consumer law where you live gives you a right to a refund or to withdraw from the contract, you keep it. The window above is in addition to that, not instead of it.
- A pass-or-refund guarantee. If you study with the product, sit the corresponding certification examination during your access term (or within 30 days after it), and do not pass, we refund what you paid for that exam — its whole price for a product covering one exam, or the bundle price divided by the number of exams it covers for a bundle, and subject to the eight conditions listed on the refunds page.
We do not promise that you will pass. The guarantee is a refund of our fee and nothing more. It is not a prediction, a warranty of outcome, or advice about your readiness to sit an examination.
8. Availability
We aim to keep the service available but we do not promise uninterrupted access. We may take the service down for maintenance, and we may change how it works. If we withdraw a product entirely during your access term and cannot offer a reasonable equivalent, we refund the unused portion of your term pro rata.
9. Our content standards, and errors
We prepare questions and explanations from Fortinet documentation, published examination blueprints, Fortinet knowledge-base articles, release notes, and hands-on verification. Each explanation carries a source citation. The full method is published on the methodology page.
Documentation changes and mistakes happen. If you believe a question or explanation is wrong, tell us at contact@grindstoneprep.com and we will check it against the cited source and correct it if it is wrong. We treat this as important and we would rather hear about it.
We do not warrant that the material is free of error, complete, or current with Fortinet’s latest release.
10. Disclaimers
The service and its content are provided “as is”. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.
We do not warrant that use of the service will result in passing any examination, obtaining any credential, or achieving any professional or commercial outcome.
Nothing in these terms excludes or limits any right you have as a consumer that cannot be excluded or limited under the law that applies to you.
11. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability to you arising out of or relating to the service or these terms is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim.
We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or lost opportunity, including a failed examination or its career or financial consequences.
12. Suspension and termination
You may stop using the service at any time. Stopping does not by itself entitle you to a refund outside sections 7 and 8.
We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these terms, if we are required to by law, or if we reasonably believe your account is being used fraudulently. Where the breach is under section 5 or section 6, we may do so without refund.
Sections 5, 10, 11, 13, and 14 survive termination.
13. Changes to these terms
We may change these terms. If we make a material change, we will give notice by email to the address on your account and post the new version here with a new version number and date. Changes apply to purchases made after the change takes effect. If a change materially reduces what you bought, and you tell us within 30 days that you object, we refund the unused portion of your term.
14. Governing law and disputes
Grindstone Prep is operated from the United States, and these terms and any dispute arising out of them are governed by the law applicable to us as a United States business, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. No specific state forum is designated and neither of us is required to bring a claim in a court of our choosing rather than one that would otherwise have jurisdiction.
Nothing in this section deprives you of the protection of the mandatory consumer-protection rules of the place where you live. If you are a consumer, you keep every right those rules give you, including any right to bring proceedings locally.
Before anything reaches a court, write to us. Almost everything a buyer of a $19.99 to $59.99 study product could reasonably be in dispute with us about is something we would rather simply refund than argue over.
15. General
- Entire agreement. These terms, together with the refunds page, the privacy policy, and the non-affiliation notice, are the whole agreement between you and us about the service.
- Severability. If any part is unenforceable, the rest stays in force.
- No waiver. If we do not enforce a right, we do not waive it.
- Assignment. You may not assign your license. We may assign these terms to a successor of the business.
- Force majeure. Neither of us is liable for a failure caused by something outside our reasonable control.
16. Contact
Grindstone Prep
Grindstone Prep, LLC
A United States company
contact@grindstoneprep.com
Related: the refunds and guarantee page, the privacy policy, and the sourcing methodology.