Change Severity

What is change severity?

Change severity is a judgment of how much a change to a vendor's legal document matters to you. A fixed typo and a removed promise both show up as edits. Severity tells you which one to read first.

A simple way to judge it is to ask one question: does this change make things better, worse or no different for you as the customer? That gives three groups.

• Negative: the vendor takes more rights or gives you fewer. For example, Replit dropped its no-training promise for Pro customers.
• Positive: the vendor gives you a new protection or a clearer promise. For example, Contentstack now keeps your data out of public AI training.
• Neutral: the meaning stays the same, such as reworded sentences, a new address or a new section number.

Inside those groups, it helps to name what kind of change it is. Useful categories include:

• Expands data usage: the vendor may use your data for more purposes, such as AI or ads.
• Lowers privacy: more sharing, longer retention or fewer controls.
• Adds billing risk: new fees, wider price change rights or stricter refund rules. For example, Kustomer now adds a 20% fee to WhatsApp on usage-based plans.
• Shifts liability to the user: you carry more of the risk. For example, Stripe legitimized agentic commerce and shifted liability to users.
• Reduces transparency: less notice, vaguer wording or a removed disclosure.
• Adds a feature: new terms for a new product, which may or may not affect you.
• Clarifies language: clearer wording with the same meaning.

Why it matters to you

Vendors change their documents for many reasons. Some edits matter a lot, and others change nothing. If every edit gets the same alert, people stop reading them, and the important one gets lost.

Severity also helps you act in time. Some change clauses give a short window to object or cancel. GitHub, for example, gives at least 30 days' notice of material changes such as price increases (GitHub Terms, section R). A negative change on billing or data use is the kind to read on the day it arrives, not at the next quarterly review.

Remember that the vendor's word "material" is the vendor's own judgment. Your judgment can differ. See material change.

What to check

• For each change, ask first: better, worse or the same for you?
• Then ask what it touches: money, data, liability, notice or a feature you use.
• Check whether the change applies to you. A new term for a product you do not use may be neutral for you.
• For negative changes, look for a deadline to object or cancel in the notice of changes clause.
• Look at the exact wording in a redline before you decide. A summary can miss a deleted word.

How Venpo helps

Venpo watches your vendors' terms, privacy policies, DPAs and other public legal pages and emails you a plain-English alert when one changes. Each alert says what changed and why it matters, so you can judge quickly whether a change makes things worse for you.