08 January 2021
Terms and Conditions are legally-binding rules that apply to your business and its customers. Every serious business has a Terms and Conditions agreement, or some other form of contract, governing its relationship with its customers.
Many of us scroll through Terms and Conditions agreements without really reading them, when installing a piece of software or paying for services. But these documents are important, and you must take great care when creating Terms and Conditions for your business.
What is the purpose of a Terms and Conditions agreement?
The main purpose of a Terms and Conditions agreement is to set clear expectations around what your business will provide and what your customers will do in exchange.
Our Terms and Conditions Generator makes it easy to create a Terms and Conditions agreement for your business. Just follow these steps:
Enter your email address where you'd like your agreement sent and click "Generate."
You'll be able to instantly access and download your new agreement.
A Terms and Conditions agreement should set out:
Your Terms and Conditions can also include rules about:
You don't need a Terms and Conditions agreement by law (unlike a Privacy Policy). But you should absolutely have a Terms and Conditions to help manage your relationship with customers if you:
Again, although you might not "need" Terms and Conditions in a legal sense, there are many benefits to having a clear set of Terms and Conditions, both for your business and its customers.
There are many benefits of having a Terms and Conditions agreement, including:
Let's look at a hypothetical example of how a Terms and Conditions agreement can help both you and your customers.
Say you offer a 30-day free trial of your service. You request each customer's payment card information before allowing them to start their trial. Your website states that, unless they cancel before the trial is up, you'll be taking payment after 30 days.
You can expect a few customers to be charged because they forgot to cancel or misunderstood the trial. But if the rules are made clear in your Terms and Conditions agreement, and you asked them to read and agree to these before signing up, then you're protected against complaints or legal claims from unhappy customers.
Without a Terms and Conditions agreement, you might actually be breaking consumer protection law by taking payment from a customer's account in this way. You're also needlessly creating the potential for misunderstandings, dissatisfaction, and reputational damage.
It's important to note, however, that the courts will not enforce your Terms and Conditions unless they are:
You'll notice that most businesses have at least two legal documents displayed on their website or in their app: a Terms and Conditions agreement and a Privacy Policy. These are very different documents.
A Privacy Policy explains how your business collects, uses, stores, and shares personal information.
One key difference between a Terms and Conditions agreement and a Privacy Policy is that a Privacy Policy is required by law. Wherever your business operates, there is almost certainly a law requiring you to create a Privacy Policy.
For example:
These laws vary significantly in what they require a business to disclose in its Privacy Policy.
Most Privacy Policies will need to cover, at a minimum:
Failing to create a Terms and Conditions can lead to legal issues if you ever need to take a customer to court, or if a customer ever takes your business to court. But failing to create a Privacy Policy can be a crime in itself.
To summarize, a Terms and Conditions agreement is an optional yet beneficial legal agreement that helps businesses maintain control over their websites and services, while setting user expectations and limitations.
You'll keep your customers informed and limit your own legal liability by having an informative Terms and Conditions agreement that your users agree to before interacting with your site or service.
This article is not a substitute for professional legal advice. This article does not create an attorney-client relationship, nor is it a solicitation to offer legal advice.