Terms of service

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Who these terms are between

They are between you, the business taking the subscription, and Kitso Ltd, trading as Kitso, a company registered in England and Wales with company number 17371967, with its registered office at 74 Lanehouse Road, Stockton-on-Tees, TS17 8EA. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under number ZC263453. In these terms "we", "us" and "Kitso" mean that company, and "you" means your business.

You accept these terms when you tick the box at the end of signing up, and we record which version you accepted and when. You cannot open an account without accepting them. If you are agreeing on behalf of a business, you confirm you are allowed to.

The privacy policy, the cookie policy, the cancellation policy and the data processing agreement form part of these terms. Where they disagree, the data processing agreement wins on anything about your customers' personal data, and these terms win on everything else.

Write to hello@kitso.co.uk about anything in them.

This is a service for businesses

Kitso is sold to businesses, sole traders included, for use in their business. By signing up you confirm you are buying it for your business and not as a consumer. Some consumer protection law therefore does not apply, such as the legal right to cancel something bought online within 14 days, and we have written the parts that matter most to you, such as the 14 day refund and cancelling whenever you like, into these terms anyway.

If the law treats you as a consumer despite that, nothing in these terms takes away a right the law gives you and does not let you give up.

You must be 18 or over to open an account.

What the service is

We design, build, host and look after a website for your business, from the details you give us. The subscription also gives you a portal, on the web and as an app, for running the work your website brings in: enquiries, bookings, customers, jobs, your diary, quotes, invoices, payments, reviews, your team and the numbers behind your site.

There are two plans, Core and Kitted. What is in each, and what each costs, is set out on the pricing page and in the checkout at the moment you pay, and that is what you are buying. Prices are in pounds sterling and include VAT where it applies.

We may improve, change or retire a feature over time. We will not take away something central to the plan you pay for without telling you first and letting you cancel.

Signing up

You can tell us about your business by letting us read a Facebook page you manage or the website you already have, or by answering questions on screen.

Whichever way you choose, what we find is put in front of you to confirm or correct before it is used. You are responsible for checking it.

Nothing to pay until you have seen it

We build a preview of your website from your answers and email you its address. Nothing is charged until you have seen what you are buying and decided to go ahead.

The preview stays up for 24 hours from the moment we send it, so you can look at it properly and tell us what you think. If you do not go ahead in that time, the preview is taken down, and you owe us nothing. The cancellation policy says what happens to your answers.

What you pay and when

The subscription is monthly or yearly, taken by card through Stripe, and it renews automatically at the end of each month or year until you cancel. A yearly plan pays for ten months and runs for twelve, and we email you before it renews.

Some extras, such as a business email inbox that is not included in your plan, are billed separately at the price shown when you switch them on, and renew monthly until you turn them off.

If a payment fails we will tell you and Stripe will try again. Your website stays up for 14 days while we do. If we still cannot collect at the end of that, the site is taken offline until the payment is sorted. Nothing is deleted when that happens.

If you move up to the Kitted plan, we charge the difference for the rest of the current period straight away, and Kitted switches on once that payment goes through. If you move down to Core, the change takes effect at the end of the period you have paid for, and we do not refund the difference.

We may change our prices. If we do, we will tell you at least 30 days before it affects you, and you can cancel before it does.

We may sometimes give you a credit, a free month or a refund, for example to put something right. Doing so once does not oblige us to do it again.

Referrals

If somebody you refer becomes a paying customer, you may earn a credit against your subscription. The amount and the rules are shown in your portal when you share your link. Credits have no cash value, and we may withhold one where a referral looks abusive, such as referring yourself.

Cancelling, and your refund

Cancel from your billing screen at any time. There is no minimum term, no cancellation fee, no phone call and no retention flow.

If you cancel within 14 days of your first payment we refund it in full. After that your site stays up until the end of the period you have already paid for, and comes down then rather than on the day you cancel. We do not refund part of a period already started.

The cancellation policy sets out what happens to your site, your domain, your business email and your data.

Deleting your account is a different thing. It cancels your subscription and removes your website and your records straight away, and it cannot be undone. The data deletion page sets out what goes and what is kept.

Your domain

Your plan includes a domain. After your first payment, you choose an available address and we arrange registration. We pay for it while you are a customer. You are named as its registrant, so it is yours. You must give us accurate registrant details, because the registry requires them and can suspend a domain registered with false ones.

If you leave, or delete your account, the domain is not deleted. We will transfer it to you on request, and you then pay for its renewal yourself. If you do not ask for it, we stop renewing it and it will eventually lapse.

If you already own a domain and ask us to use it, it stays registered wherever it is and keeping it renewed is up to you.

Using what you give us

To provide the service we need to store, copy, adapt, publish and otherwise process what you give us. By accepting these terms you allow us to do that with your business details, words, photographs, logos, files and anything else you send us or add to the portal, for as long as we provide the service and for the retention periods in the privacy policy.

That permission covers building, hosting and changing your website, running your portal and apps, preparing the material your plan includes, keeping backups, keeping the service secure, and showing your website as an example of our work unless you tell us not to. We use your details for nothing else.

Where what you add to the portal is about other people, such as your customers or your team, we handle it as your processor under the data processing agreement.

Your content, and who owns what

What you give us stays yours: your business information, your photographs, your logo and your words.

Your domain, your own words, photographs and logo, and your customer data are always yours. The design and build of your website, and words we write for it, are licensed to you while you subscribe. They become yours to keep and take elsewhere when you have paid for twelve months, fourteen days after you pay for a yearly plan, or when you buy them from Billing. If you leave before then, the licence ends when your subscription does.

What stays ours is the software that runs the service, the portal and the apps, our own components and templates, and everything on our marketing site. While you have a subscription you may use the portal and the apps for your own business. Stock photographs we add are licensed for use on your website only and are never presented as your own work.

What you confirm about what you give us

Your website says what you tell us, and you are responsible for it being true. By accepting these terms, and each time you send us something or approve a change, you confirm that:

• Everything you tell us about your business is true, accurate, up to date and not misleading.
• You own, or have permission to use, every photograph, logo, font, piece of writing and file you give us. Do not send us somebody else's work without their permission.
• Any photograph you present as your work shows work done by your business. Where a photograph shows a person, or something that identifies a person or their home, you have their permission to publish it.
• Every review you give us is genuine: it was written by a real customer about your business, you have not written, changed or paid for it, and it was not given in return for anything unless you have told us so.
• Every accreditation, registration, membership, licence or qualification you mention is real, held by you or your business, and current, and the number you give is yours. Several are criminal to claim falsely, gas work and the protected titles among them.
• Any insurance cover, guarantee or warranty you mention is in place on the terms you state, and any price you give is one you will honour.
• You hold every licence, registration and insurance the law requires for the work you advertise, and you show anything your trade's regulator requires you to show, such as a rating or a statutory statement, whether it flatters you or not.
• You will tell us straight away if any of this stops being true, such as an accreditation lapsing or a price changing, so we can take it down or change it.

How we treat claims on your site

We will not write a claim you did not make. We do not invent an accreditation, an insurance figure, a guarantee, a price, a review, a rating, a number of jobs done or a year you started trading. Where you have given us none of those, the page says nothing rather than filling the gap.

We publish an accreditation only with the registration number that proves it, a price with the date you last confirmed it, and a review with the reviewer's name, roughly when it was, and your confirmation that it is genuine, which we keep as a record.

We may ask you for evidence of any claim, and we may decline, remove or hold back anything we reasonably believe is untrue, unlawful, infringing or in breach of the advertising codes. We are the publisher of your website as well as you, so we carry that exposure with you.

How we use artificial intelligence

We use AI tools in parts of the service, such as suggesting your business details from what you give us at sign up, helping our team plan, design and write your website, checking photographs before they are shown, reading a receipt you photograph, preparing material for you or our team to approve, and running Kit. The privacy policy says what is sent to the companies that provide those tools, and how you say no.

AI output can be mistaken. Website design and edits are shown for approval. Blog posts require our internal approval. With blog autopilot on, we publish them without asking for your approval too; with it off, they wait for your approval. The blog section below explains that process. All output is held to our rules about claims. Check material sent for your review and request changes if something is wrong.

Moderation, and when we would suspend a site

Everything you send us and every change you ask for is checked before it can reach a live site. We block sexual content, nudity, violence, hate, illegal goods and services, and regulated trade claims you cannot evidence.

When something is blocked we tell you plainly and it goes to a person to look at.

We may suspend a site while we review it if it carries something illegal, or something our moderation blocked that you cannot evidence. We will tell you why.

Accounts you connect to us

You can connect other accounts to the service, such as a Facebook page you manage, the website you already have, your Google Business Profile, your Stripe account or your accounting software. Each is optional. When you connect one, you confirm you are allowed to, and you authorise us to do what that connection is for, which is shown to you when you connect it.

When you connect your Facebook page and Instagram account for messages, we receive the messages people send them and send only the replies you write. Otherwise we only read a Facebook page or an existing website. We never post to your page or your profile and never read a page you did not pick.

Those accounts are run by other companies under their own terms, which apply to you as well. We are not responsible for what they do, for their availability, or for a change on their side that stops a connection working, and we will tell you when one stops.

Kit

Kit is the assistant in your portal on the Kitted plan. It can read your website and your portal records, including your customers, jobs, diary, quotes and invoices, so it can answer you and do what you ask. You can type to it or talk to it.

Kit never acts on its own. Every change to your website, and every message, booking, quote, invoice, payment request or invite it prepares, is shown to you first and happens only when you press the button. Pressing it is your instruction and the result is yours.

Kit cannot create a new page or a new section. A change needing either is written up for a person to do.

There is a fair use limit on Kit. If you reach it we will tell you rather than quietly stopping.

Business email, your Google profile and the rest of Kitted

Depending on your plan, the service includes help with your Google Business Profile, a business email inbox on your domain, branded posts for social media, a monthly blog post, review requests, and designed documents and templates. A few things about those are worth saying plainly:

• Your Google Business Profile stays yours. Where you add us as a manager, you authorise us to keep its details in step with your website, read its reviews and figures, and make the changes or replies you ask for. You can remove our access at any time, and Google's own terms apply.
• A business email inbox is provided through a third party email provider, whose terms also apply. You are responsible for what is sent from it. When the inbox ends, because you turn it off, your plan no longer includes it or you leave, the inbox and the emails in it are deleted, so save anything you need first.
• We prepare social posts for you to publish yourself. We do not post to your social media accounts.
• Kitted includes one blog post per month. Every post requires our internal approval before publication. You can turn blog autopilot on or off. With it on, we publish the internally approved post without requiring your approval. With it off, we send the post to you for approval and it remains unpublished until you approve it.
• We do not promise that anything we prepare will bring you work or improve where you appear in search.

Jobs, quotes, invoices and messages to your customers

The portal lets you keep customer records, take bookings, run jobs and send quotes, invoices, reminders and review requests. You are responsible for what they say, for the prices and any VAT on them, for the work itself, and for keeping whatever records the law requires of your business. We are not your accountant and nothing in the portal is tax, legal or financial advice.

When you send something, or switch on something that sends automatically, such as an invoice reminder, an appointment reminder, a booking confirmation or an instant reply to an enquiry, we send it by email on your behalf, in your business's name, with replies going to you. You can switch the automatic ones off. You are responsible for having the right to contact the person it goes to and for what it says, and you must not use the portal to send marketing to anybody who has not agreed to receive it.

A quote, an invoice or your calendar feed can be opened by a private link. Anybody with the link can open it, so share it only with the person it is for. We record when a quote or invoice is opened so we can tell you.

The personal details of your customers that you put into the portal, or that reach you through your website, are yours. You are the controller of them and we are your processor, under the data processing agreement.

Taking payments from your customers

You can take payments from your own customers through the portal and the app. This section applies only if you switch that on.

• Payments are processed by Stripe, through a Stripe account in your business's name that you control and can log in to yourself. To open one you accept Stripe's Connected Account Agreement, which is between you and Stripe, and Stripe decides whether to approve your account and may ask you for identity checks.
• Each payment is made by your customer straight to your Stripe account, and from there it goes to your bank on Stripe's schedule. The money never passes through us and we never hold it.
• Our fee is 0.2% of each payment, so 20p on a £100 payment. It comes off that payment automatically when it is made, and shows as its own line in your Stripe account. There is no other charge from us for taking payments. If you refund a payment, in full or in part, our fee on it is not returned.
• Stripe's own processing fees are separate from ours. Stripe charges them to your business at its published rates under your agreement with Stripe, and none of that money comes to us.
• Because the payments are yours, refunds, disputes and chargebacks with your customers are yours to handle with Stripe, as is anything Stripe charges for them. If one of them leaves money owed on your Stripe account, that is between you and Stripe under your agreement with them, and we neither hold it nor pay it.
• We will tell you before our fee changes, and a new fee applies only to payments made after the date we give you.
• We do not offer credit or finance, and nothing in the service is a regulated financial product.

Accounting software

If you connect your accounting software, we send it the invoices you create from then on, with their customer, lines and VAT, and keep them in step when you change or delete one. Payments are not sent, because your bank feed brings them in.

Your books remain your responsibility. Check what arrives, and tell us if something looks wrong. We are not responsible for how the other software treats what we send, and you can disconnect it at any time.

Team members

You can invite people who work with you to their own login and decide what each of them can see and do. You are responsible for who you invite, for what they do with their access, for removing them when they leave, and for telling them how their details, including the hours they record, are used. Each person keeps their own login to themselves.

The apps

The portal works in a browser, can be added to your phone's home screen, and where we offer one is available as an app from an app store. The app is free, nothing is sold in it, and you sign in to it with the account you already have. These terms apply to it.

While you have an account we give you a personal licence, which you cannot pass on, to use the app on phones you own or control, within the rules of the app store you got it from. That store's terms apply to how you download and use it, and so do any other terms that apply while you use it, such as your mobile network's.

The company that runs the app store is not part of this agreement. We alone are responsible for the app and what is in it, for maintaining and supporting it, and for dealing with any claim about it, including product liability, a claim that it does not meet a legal or regulatory requirement, a claim under consumer protection or privacy law, and a claim that it infringes somebody else's intellectual property. The store has no duty to maintain or support the app.

Where you got the app from Apple's App Store, Apple asks us to add three things. Apple and its subsidiaries are third party beneficiaries of these terms as they relate to the app, and may enforce them against you. If the app fails to meet a warranty that applies to it, you may tell Apple, which will refund the price you paid for the app, if any, and has no other warranty obligation for it as far as the law allows. And you confirm that you are not in a country under a United States government embargo or one it has designated as supporting terrorism, and are not on any United States government list of prohibited or restricted parties.

Our name and address are at the top of these terms, and questions, complaints and claims about the app go to hello@kitso.co.uk.

Keeping your account safe

Keep your login details to yourself and tell us straight away if you think somebody else has them. You are responsible for what is done through your account, including by your team.

To support you, a person here can open your portal as it looks to you. Every time that happens it is recorded, and we use it to help you and to run the service, and for nothing else.

What you must not do

You must not use the service to break the law, to publish anything misleading, defamatory or infringing, to send spam or unwanted marketing, to harass anybody, or to try to get into another customer's account or our systems. You must not copy, resell or take apart the software, the portal or the apps, or use them to build a competing service.

Data protection

Each of us will comply with UK data protection law. For your own account we are the controller, as the privacy policy explains. For your customers' and your team's details in the service, you are the controller and we are your processor, as the data processing agreement explains, and you are responsible for having a lawful basis to give them to us and for telling those people what you do with their details.

Availability, and no promises about results

We work to keep your site and the portal up and fast, and we do not promise they will never be unavailable. Hosting, domains, email, payments, app stores and the networks in between are provided by third parties and we will tell you when something is wrong.

We do not promise any position in search results, any amount of traffic, any number of enquiries or any amount of work. Search engines, social networks and the people using them are outside our control.

What we are liable for

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

Otherwise, our total liability to you for everything arising under or in connection with these terms, in any twelve month period, is limited to what you paid us in that period. We are not liable for lost profits, lost business, lost goodwill, lost opportunity, indirect or consequential loss, or lost data that could reasonably have been kept elsewhere, or for anything caused by a third party service we do not control.

What you are liable for

You will cover us for any claim, fine, loss and reasonable cost, legal costs included, that we face because of:

• Anything you gave us or approved that was not true, not yours to use, or broke what you confirmed above.
• Messages, quotes, invoices and payment requests sent to your customers on your instruction.
• Your work, your prices, your dealings with your customers, and any refund, dispute or chargeback.
• Your use of other people's personal data, including your customers' and your team's.
• Anything done through your account, by you or by somebody you gave access to.

Things outside anybody's control

Neither of us is responsible for a delay or failure caused by something outside our reasonable control, such as a major outage at a provider we rely on. We will tell you and do what we can to limit the effect.

Ending it from our side

We may end this agreement, with reasonable notice and a refund of anything you have paid for time you will not get, if you stop paying, if you use the service for something illegal, if you break these terms in a serious way, or if you repeatedly ask us to publish things we cannot. Where something is illegal, untrue in a way that could harm somebody, or puts other people at risk, we may take the site down first and tell you why straight after.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects you we will tell you at least 30 days beforehand, and you can cancel before it takes effect. If you carry on using the service after that, the new terms apply. The date at the top is when they last changed.

Complaints

If something has gone wrong, tell us at hello@kitso.co.uk. We will acknowledge it, look into it and tell you what we are going to do.

The legal small print

These terms, with the documents named at the top, are the whole agreement between us about the service. We may transfer this agreement to another business that takes over the service, and will tell you if we do. You may not transfer it without our agreement. Nobody else has a right to enforce it, apart from the app store's owner as set out under The apps. If we do not enforce a right straight away, we have not given it up.

We will contact you by email at the address on your account, and you can contact us at hello@kitso.co.uk.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.

Which law applies

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction.