Startups! How did you create your T&S and Privacy statement?
Hello, I have a large chance of getting my first client in a few months. I am wondering when I need to add the privacy and the Terms and Service documents to my website.
Also, how can I get them generated? Do I need a lawyer? Is there an online tool that helps?
Privacy Statement: https://www.iubenda.com/en
Terms of Service: https://termly.io
These both have worked pretty well for me, though linking people to the privacy statement is kind of annoying, since it happens off my site.
Hey Tommy, thanks for mentioning iubenda (came here via the Indiehackers newsletter) - you can actually embed your policy into any pages anytime and thus the linking part is kind of solved for you (also I think it's a feature that's more useful for mobile apps and app store pages).
btw. there are a lot of upgrades coming:
GDPR tools,
design improvements and a
terms generator as well.
generating terms is such a pain. definitely looking forward to that 😊
so am I 🎉 :)
So, termly, seemed like the best one! Thank you!
Hey Phillip,
I would suggest using Docracy.com, it's good for small startups that are wanting to see examples and not have to spend so much time on creating your own. I would look around for the best document that you can find based on what your product/service is and what it needs.
The website is going to be shut down sometime this year, although there are still some great terms of service, privacy policies, and other legal documents that can be used.
Hopefully this helps!
Really interested to see who could step into the docracy void once it's gone.
Definitely has potential. If replaced and expanded, I could see it continuing to be open source but turned into a marketplace as well for people that want more defined legal documents rather than just what is provided.
I believe they are closing it down because a lack of funds/no advertisers. Meaning if someone could find a way to make money from it. It might have opportunity!
@philipimperato I'm biased since I used to work at GitHub, but I know the care that the legal team put into the terms... and it's completely open source !
It's located at https://github.com/github/site-policy licensed under the most permissive Creative Commons CC0-1.0 license so there's no obligations at all. My startup has adapted some of their language and it's been a huge time saver.
It's a great idea to use open source licenses for legal documents. Do you know some more?
Hmm, the only other one I know for sure is the Wordpress TOS. It's provided under a creative commons share alike license so it requires attribution: https://en.wordpress.com/tos/
The GitLab terms/privacy are based on the Wordpress terms (https://about.gitlab.com/privacy/)
Oh, cool. Thanks for sharing this.
@philipimperato Give Shopify's generators a try:
Terms and Conditions - https://www.shopify.com/tools/policy-generator/terms-and-conditions
Privacy Policy - https://www.shopify.com/tools/policy-generator
They might be more suited to an e-commerce context, but still, with small changes you can adapt them.,
I just used them. Pretty neat way!
I'm glad they were useful 👍🙂
Hey Philip,
I personally use https://termsfeed.com for my projects.
I haven't viewed the generated document yet but it definitely feels like it's going to produce something good.
I went through the generation process and it's gonna cost about $60 for a fairly standard Privacy Policy.
This looks nice!
You need to add the privacy and terms and conditions to your website before you accept payment from a customer or, in the case of a business client, before you enter into a contract with them to provide your service.
Do you need a lawyer? Not necessarily.
All big corporations have terms and conditions and privacy policies. Download some of them and see what they have to say. Then you simply keep what you need and discard the rest.
Key points to note :
(This has the additional advantage of making it harder for remote clients to sue you because they will have to navigate an unfamiliar legal system at huge cost to themselves.)
State that your service is not mission-critical and should not be relied upon even though you will obviously make every endeavour to maintain the service 24 / 7.
State that you are not liable for consequential losses, no matter how they may be caused.
That last one is important. If you neglect to include it, a client could potentially come after you and claim that, because your service was not working or was not working properly, they incurred losses in some other matter as a direct or indirect result.
You really do not want to be paying damages to a client for their screw-ups further down the line, over which you have no control!
You don't mention what line of business you are in but, for God's sake, take out the appropriate product liability insurance. The cost of the premiums is as nothing compared to the cost of defending yourself against an irate client some time in the future!
Thank you! Very helpful.
My product is a Saas for the insurance agency field. I'll try to find similar competitors' docs and move on from there.
Then you definitely need product liability insurance - and talk to a broker before you buy!
oh boy, okay. Well, instead of posting a entirely new question. do you mind walking me through this process? Do you know of a broker that sells liability insurance and what they would cover me for? something you have used?
I see you're based in New York. There are plenty of insurance brokers that can help.
"Broker" sounds more intimidating than it is. In reality, it is no different from shopping around for vehicle insurance. All a broker does is match client needs and supplier offerings. The broker takes a commission which, ultimately, you pay for in your premiums.
The reason for going to a broker, at least the first time around, is that brokers know the market. Some are tied to particular insurance suppliers; others are "freelance" in the sense that they can sell products from more than one company.
A broker not only knows the insurance market but can also sit down with you and help you to understand the likely risks to your business. For example, a bricks and mortar business might need to take out insurance against a product catching fire; that would obviously not apply to you as a software business.
So the broker will sit down with you and learn about your business. Based on those findings, he will agree with you which risks you need to cover, which are "nice to haves" and which ones you probably don't need at all. He will also look at factors such as your client base and likely growth. Obviously, you have a lower risk of failure if you have 10 clients than you have 10,000.
Based on what is discovered, the broker will then match your needs with the policies he can sell and tell you what the policies will do and how much they will cost. You say "thank you very much" and take your notes with you to the next broker to see what they have to say.
I would recommend you call two or three brokers to get a good average view of what you need and then choose from the best of the policies you are offered.
I just Googled "public liability insurance brokers". Because I am in the UK, I got about a million results more relevant to the UK than the US but I did find - at random - this one:
https://seinewyork.com/about/
The video on this page explains how this particular company does things.
There will be thousands more in New York State!
Thanks everyone for all the suggestions. I'm impressed that github maintains their policies in a public repository. It's great that we can easily track changes and see the discussion that drives it. (See the closed issues here: https://github.com/github/site-policy/issues.) This is an excellent resource for indiehackers – legal costs shouldn't be a hurdle for early stage experiments.