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Ask IH: How do you write terms of service and privacy policy for your SaaS?

Hey fellow Indie Hackers,
I'm getting ready to take my colour search engine lipcolourmatch.com to the next stage of the journey and launch a paid offerring. However, I'm wondering about all the privacy policy, terms of service etc that I have to take care of first. Does anyone have any good guides/how-tos that they used when writing terms of service and privacy policies for their SaaS? What should I take into account? Many thanks in advance!

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    I used https://www.iubenda.com/ for cookie notice and privacy policy. It's a cool product - you can easily select the integrations/services collecting data on your site and it updates the policy for you so it makes it really easy.

    They also have a terms generator, but I used a copy and paste thing for that as it is slightly more expensive. However, I probably will use it sooner or later.

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      Simon from iubenda here, happy to answer any questions anyone might have. :)

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      Thank you very much! Will check these out!

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        No problem! Hope it helps

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      Thanks for sharing!

      When do I need to start adding these policies? I'm "building in public" and have an alpha product online but hadn't even though of adding any of these policies yet.

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        Hey David. Not sure but I'm in the same boat. Prioritizing validation above all else.

        Came across this post by @benediktdeicke last night:

        https://benediktdeicke.com/2017/04/features-your-product-does-not-need-to-launch/

        He doesn't mention policies but I think the idea is to focus on value and fill in the gaps as you go.

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          Great summary of the general idea, @dru_riley!

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          Great, I'll check that out!

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        NP John. Hope it helps!

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    Basecamp has open-sourced their policies under CC BY 4.0, which means you can use those as long as you include the attribution (see README).

    I have used one of the paid products in the past (for ToS and Privacy Policy), and while they were fine, I ended up modifying the generated policies.

    When/if you reach a certain scale, it will make sense to find a lawyer who can customize those policies for your business (or even draft new ones).

    Whichever option you end up using, make sure it's suitable for commercial use.

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