Some aspects of BibleStudy.tools have nothing to do with the Bible, but are just technical site details you might wonder about. This page tries to help with that by discussing three areas: how you access the site, how you're charged for paid services, and how your online stuff is secured.
Access the site with your web browser using a computer, a tablet, or a phone. There are advantages to using a computer, for example the screen is bigger and you might have two or more screens for opening the site in mulitple windows at once, you have a keyboard and mouse for easier typing of studies and copying and pasting of Bible passages, and viewing PDFs is usually easier.
You need an Internet connection and you need to be logged in to your account to access your notes and documents on the site. You can download your generated documents and store them any place you want, but to get at them from the site you need to be online. The same is true of the Bible search tools like the concordance, although previous search results are cached in your browser and you can call up those old results again without being online, if you use the same device you looked them up from.
The site isn't available as an app from an app store or as software to install on your computer. If you don't like typing your password to use the site you can login once per device and choose to remember that login for up to a year, or you can use a password manager. (Password managers are usually a good idea for overall security of all your online accounts. Do your own research.)
All paid services are metered. This is explained more on the Pricing page and on the Payment Methods page, and it's not the typical way Internet-based companies charge. Instead of choosing from a few different fixed monthly subscription fees for different tiers or service levels, you accrue micro charges for each individual action you perform, and you immediately see the effect via a "Balance" indicator near the top of every page that has paid services. This balance is displayed with four decimal places, a precision of one hundredth of a cent. Behind the scenes the balance is kept to more precision than that, so if you perform an action that costs less than half a hundredth of a cent and don't see your balance go down at all, know that everything is being kept track of. There are several ways to pay these charges, and you can pay in advance or in arrears.
There's no free trial period for new users. Some services are always free, and paid services are always charged for. If you like to "try before you buy" and feel hindered because there's no free trial, here are some ways to feel comfortable about paying:
Read all the help, including the Pricing page, to learn what the paid services do. Explore the site and open up any "Help" option you see at the top of a page. Note that on the Payment Methods page the help option is called "Payment Terms." Read that to feel comfortable will all the payment options.
Create an account then make a small payment and give the site a try. The minimum online payment is $3.00, just because of how online card payments work, but there's no mimimum if you mail in your payment or if you pay in person. Most paid services cost only a few cents or a fraction of a cent, so even a small payment can last a long time. (Note that the Generate tool is the most expensive, possibly bringing your balance down by about forty-five cents.)
Create an account and set up payment in arrears with a spending limit. This is called the "Automatic Online" method on the Payment Methods page, and is explained in the payment terms there.
To feel comfortable using this site you should feel comfortable that your online Bible study stuff is kept safe from prying eyes. This breaks down into two areas, privacy and security. Privacy is covered in the privacy policy so you can go there to read about that. The rest of this page discusses security, which is a joint responsibility: you're responsible for your password and your device, and this site is responsible for everything else.
Password managers help you use a unique strong password for each of your online accounts, and if you don't already use one, do your own research and consider it. As far as your device goes, updates are the main thing. Regularly update both your device itself and your web browser app. Then, learn what special security options your browser has. If you already use your browser for things like shopping and banking then anything you learn and practice here will benefit you in those areas, too.
The responsibities of this site are broken down into a few areas below. There's nothing you can do to change how these work, but they're discussed to help you feel comfortable with how this site protects you and how protection might improve going forward.
All communications between your web browser and the backend are encrypted. This means that Internet bad guys have a hard time reading them. The site doesn't accept unencrypted connections, and if you attempt one (that is, if you try to access the site using "http" instead of "https") then the connection is automatically changed to an encrypted one, and if your browser doesn't support that encryption then it won't be allowed to connect. This has been the Internet standard for some years, so any modern browser should be fine.
Sometimes backend services need to communicate with each other, and encrypted connections are used for all that, too. Backend services don't accept unencrypted connections, whether from a web browser or from another backend service.
Your notes, studies, and generated documents are all stored encrypted. This means that if someone managed to steal your data from a backend storage device they wouldn't be able to read it. Your data is backed up to protect against data loss and replicated to protect against service disruptions, and the backups and replicas are also encrypted.
Your password is your secret. You're the first line of defense in keeping this secret, but this site plays a part, too. Logins use the Secure Remote Password protocol, which helps both the frontend and the backend keep your password secret.
Frontend here means the pages where you type your password: the Sign Up page, the Login page, and the Change Password page. None of these pages store your password or remember it after you type it, and the login page doesn't even send your password to the backend. The only time your password goes over the network is when you set a new password, that is, when you first sign up, when you change your password, or when you reset your password because you forgot it. Ideally you don't do this often, and even when you do, the network itself is still always encrypted.
The backend keeps your password safe by never storing it, not even in encrypted form. This means that even if a bad guy stole the data from the login server and the data's encryption keys from the key management server, he still wouldn't have your password.
Other login options are possible for the future. Two-factor authentication, or 2FA, is where in addition to your password you need to enter a one-time code from a code-generating app, from a text message or email, or maybe from a hardware security token plugged into your computer or held next to your phone. This would be optional and also could be turned off on a device-by-device basis. Finally, passkeys are an alternative to passwords and are generally safer and easier to use. They're not as well known and understood as passwords, but over time they'll likely become the standard login method for most sites, including this site.