Terms of Use and Sale

Effective October 15, 2026

These terms apply to the LearnSCADA store at learnscada.com and its online courses (the "store"), run by Mountaintop Solutions Inc ("LearnSCADA", "we"). By using the store or buying from it you agree to them. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle your information.

Your account

A free account needs only an email address; we sign you in with a one-time link sent to it, or a password if you set one. Keep access to that mailbox and your password to yourself: anyone who can sign in as you can use your purchases. Tell us at [email protected] if you think someone else has used your account.

What the store sells

The store's own checkout sells PDF editions of books, online courses, the Pro Library membership, access to the PLC Simulator and, for some books, printed paperbacks (see Printed books). Prices are in US dollars. Payment is taken by Stripe. Sales tax is added at checkout where it applies, based on the address you give Stripe (for a paperback, the shipping address).

Printed books

• Paperbacks sold here. When a book's page has a Buy the paperback button, you buy the printed book from us. Our print partner prints it and ships it directly to you. One copy per order. The price on the book page is what you pay for the book; signed-in Free Readers and Pro Library members get the member price shown there.
• Shipping. Shipping within the United States is a flat rate, shown on the book page and at checkout. For the other countries we ship to, checkout shows the shipping price for the address you enter before you pay. Shipping is by standard mail unless only another method is available to your country. Sales tax, where it applies, is charged on the book and the shipping. Import duties or taxes your country charges on delivery, if any, are yours to pay.
• Your address and phone number. Checkout asks for your shipping address and a phone number, which the delivery carriers require. Please check the address: we ship to the address you give. If our print partner cannot accept it (for example, a street or city line that is too long), we will contact you to correct it before the book is sent to print.
• Printing and delivery. Your order is sent to our print partner right after payment, and printing starts about two hours later. Printing usually takes a few business days, and delivery time depends on the destination and carrier; dates are estimates, not guarantees. We email you when the order is placed and again, with the tracking link where the carrier provides one, when it ships. Your account page shows the order's status.
• PDF with a paperback. A paperback includes the PDF edition only when the book's page says so.
• Cancelling. To cancel, email [email protected] as soon as you can. Until printing starts we can cancel the order and refund it in full. Once the book is being printed or has shipped, the order cannot be cancelled.
• Damaged, misprinted or lost copies. If your book arrives damaged or with a printing fault, or does not arrive, email [email protected] within 30 days of delivery (or of the expected delivery date), with a photo of any damage, and we will send a replacement or refund you, including shipping. Apart from damaged, misprinted or lost copies, we do not take returns of printed books, but you can write to us about any problem.
• Elsewhere. When you choose Order direct on a book page, you buy from that seller, and its terms, prices, shipping and returns apply. Books bought on Amazon or Audible are sold under their terms.

Digital products

• When you buy a PDF or a course, you get a personal, non-transferable license to read, download and use it for your own learning and work, including printing copies for yourself.
• You may not share, resell, upload or redistribute PDFs, course material or downloads, or share your account to give others access.
• Your purchases stay in your account so you can download them again. If we ever stop operating the store, we will give members reasonable notice to download what they have bought.

Pro Library membership

• Yearly Pro renews automatically each year at the then-current price until you cancel. You can cancel at any time from your account page with the Manage subscription button, which opens Stripe's secure subscription page; you can also email [email protected] to cancel. Cancelling stops the next renewal: you keep Pro benefits until the end of the year you paid for, and the year already paid is not refunded except as described under Refunds.
• Pro for life is a one-time payment for Pro benefits for as long as the store offers them.
• Pro benefits (discounts and items included free) are described on the Join page and may change over time; anything you already own stays yours.

PLC Simulator

• A one-time purchase. Access to the PLC Simulator at sim.learnscada.com is sold separately for a single payment of $97 (plus sales tax where it applies). It is not a subscription. Pro membership does not include the simulator and there is no member discount, but buying the simulator includes Pro Library membership for life (see below). Anyone with a store account can buy it from the simulator page, and you open it from the store while signed in to that account.
• Pro included. Buying the simulator includes Pro Library membership for life (the same benefits as Pro for life). If you pay for annual Pro when you buy it, your annual plan is set to end at the end of the period you've paid for, so you aren't charged again; there is no partial refund of the annual plan. If the simulator purchase is refunded, the Pro membership that came with it ends too, unless you bought Pro separately.
• Founding members. The one-time purchase with lifetime access is a founding-member offer, available for a limited time. We plan to sell new simulator access as an annual subscription later. When that happens, everyone who bought the one-time lifetime access keeps it, with no subscription to pay. Lifetime access still means for the life of the simulator service, as described below.
• Free trial. Anyone with a free store account can try the simulator free, once per account, for 2 hours of run time in total, used over as many sessions as you like. A trial simulator is private like an owner's, but its Modbus port comes from a shared range and may change between sessions, a limited number of trials run at once (separately from owners' simulators), and it stops after 10 minutes with no dashboard open and no Modbus connections. When the trial time is used up, the simulator can't be started again unless you buy it; buying keeps your trial simulator and its settings. If you don't buy it, its workbooks and settings are deleted 30 days after it last ran. No payment details are needed for the trial, and we may change or end the trial offer at any time.
• Lifetime access means for the life of the simulator service: for as long as we operate it, not for your lifetime. If we stop operating the simulator or the store, we will give owners reasonable notice, as described under Digital products.
• Refunds. The Refunds section below applies. A refunded simulator purchase ends your access: your simulator is stopped and disabled, and its workbooks and settings are deleted 30 days after the refund. You can buy it again later; buying again within those 30 days restores your simulator as it was.
• Your own simulator, on shared capacity. Your simulator is a private instance with its own permanent Modbus port; only you (and the administrator, for support) can open its dashboard. Simulators run on shared server capacity with a limited number of slots, so only a limited number of owners' simulators can run at once. You start yours when you want it. When all slots are in use, your simulator may be briefly unavailable until one frees up. A running simulator stops on its own after a period with no dashboard open and no Modbus connections (currently 30 minutes), and when it reaches its maximum run time (currently 12 hours); you can start it again for another run whenever a slot is free. Stopping never deletes your workbooks or settings.
• Provided as is. The simulator is for practice only, with no guarantee of uptime or availability; it may be slow, interrupted or changed, and it is not for monitoring or controlling real equipment. Do not try to disrupt it or other users' use of it; we may suspend access that does.

Refunds

If a download is faulty, you cannot get access to something you paid for, or you were charged by mistake, email [email protected] within 30 days and we will fix it or refund you. Because digital products cannot be returned, other refund requests are considered case by case. A refunded purchase is removed from your account; refunding the PLC Simulator ends your access to it. A partial refund (for example, a credit on shipping) leaves the purchase in your account. Cancelling a paperback, and damaged or misprinted copies, are covered under Printed books; a full refund of a paperback that has not gone to print also cancels its print order. For printed books bought elsewhere, that seller's return policy applies.

Free content and samples

Sample chapters, free books and free courses are offered as they are and may be changed or withdrawn at any time.

Use of the material

The books and courses are for education. Industrial control systems can injure people and damage equipment. Always follow your site's safety procedures, lockout and tagout rules, the equipment manufacturer's instructions and applicable codes, and test changes safely before using them on a live system. You are responsible for how you apply what you learn.

No warranty, and limits on liability

We work to keep the material accurate and current, but the store and everything in it are provided "as is", without warranties of any kind, to the extent the law allows. LearnSCADA is not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential losses, or for losses arising from applying the material to real systems. Our total liability for any claim is limited to what you paid us for the product concerned. Some places do not allow these limits, so they may not all apply to you.

Intellectual property

All books, courses, text, graphics, code samples and the LearnSCADA name and logo belong to LearnSCADA or Charles Vance unless stated otherwise. Product names such as Ignition, AVEVA, Wonderware, Allen-Bradley and Modbus belong to their owners and are used only to describe what the material covers.

Acceptable use

Do not attack, overload or try to get around the security of the store, scrape it in bulk, or use it to break the law. We may suspend accounts that do.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules.

Changes

We may update these terms. The version in effect when you buy something applies to that purchase. Changes are posted here with a new effective date.

Contact

Mountaintop Solutions Inc, LearnSCADA: [email protected]