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As a business owner, you must adhere to a variety of laws, regulations, and service provider requirements in order to legally operate a commercial business. If you don’t post proper terms and conditions, a liability disclaimer, or a notice that cookies are being used, it could cost you a lot in the form of fines or a costly legal action. 

To protect both the website owner and the people who visit, it’s important to make sure all legal information is clear and easy to find. However, doing so does not completely shield you from liability. 

According to the American Bar Association, a cookie consent banner or warning message that a user must click to establish consent and understanding of your terms, data collection and privacy, and liability disclaimer. 

Trying to abide by all of these rules on your own is a hassle and a risk. Fortunately, with the aid of Termly, you can solve these problems with ease while saving thousands on attorney fees.

Key Takeaways:

• Governments have implemented policy to allow consumers to control how much of their data may be collected, and failure to comply can expose your business to an unacceptable level of risk
• Through a tiny snippet of code, Termly auto-populates your website with terms and conditions, confidentiality documents and consent management that you’ve set in your account dashboard to keep you compliant and legally protected
• Termly offers a free legal policy version generator and a fully compliant and updated monthly plan for only $15 per month

Termly Review

David Reynier started Termly.io in 2017 in Seattle, Washington. The company helps businesses all over the world manage their terms and conditions and data privacy with an all-in-one solution to get them—and keep them—universally compliant with the law. 

Automate All Your Important Legalese: Terms and Conditions With a Single Click

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Read the fine print,” stressing the importance of being aware of all the details of any product or service you intend to buy. These days, it’s often commonly referred to as “legalese.”

What is legalese? 

The word “legalese” is made up of the word “legal” and the ending “ese,” like in Chinese or Japanese, to show that the modern world has become so litigious and focused on lawfare that it has its own language, which is often seen as negative. 

With younger and more tech-savvy people in Congress and the EU/Canadian Parliaments, lawmakers have been more aggressive in regulating the web and making laws to stop fraud, deception, and crime related to vulnerable personal data.

Termly protects you from some very important laws that, if neglected, can result in hefty fines that could damage a growing small or medium-sized business.

Termly Features: Generate Terms of Service, Disclaimers, Shipping and Return Policies, and More

Termly is an all-in-one terms and conditions generator and compliance management tool for:

• Cookie Compliance and Consent: shows the legal requirements for websites to inform users about the use of cookies and obtain their active consent before collecting any personally identifiable information. This is an important aspect of data privacy and protection, and failure to comply with these regulations can result in penalties and legal action. 
• Terms and Conditions: is a legal agreement that outlines the rules and guidelines for using a particular service or product. It is important for businesses to display the terms prominently, but implementing a clickable banner will guarantee consent is genuinely given by a potential visitor.
• Liability Disclaimer: is a common practice for businesses to protect themselves from potential legal action. It informs customers that they are using the business’s products or services at their own risk and releases the business from any liability for damages or injuries that may occur. 
• Shipping Policy: helps customers of ecommerce stores understand the shipping options available to them, including delivery times and costs. It sets clear expectations for when their order will arrive and can help reduce customer inquiries and complaints related to shipping. 
• Return, Replacement and Refund Policy: is important to clearly state the conditions and requirements for returns, replacements, and refunds to avoid confusion and dissatisfaction among customers for online and offline stores. It can also be a great way to qualify your customers to avoid a sudden spike in returns, which can hurt your business’s reputation with bad customer ratings and reviews.
• Privacy Policy and Data: crucial for building trust with your customers and complying with data protection regulations. These documents should clearly outline how you collect, use, and protect customer data, as well as provide information on their rights and how to contact you with any concerns. 
• FTC and Affiliate Disclosure: The FTC requires that any website or blog that promotes affiliate products or services must disclose this relationship to its readers. An affiliate disclosure statement should be prominently displayed on the website, preferably on the homepage and any pages that contain affiliate links (just like the one at the beginning of this post).
• Confidentiality Disclaimer: is usually displayed at the beginning of a document or email to indicate that the information contained within is intended only for the recipient and should not be shared or distributed without permission. It is an important tool for protecting sensitive information and maintaining privacy.  
• The Fine Print: should contain important information such as the terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, and any disclaimers or legal notices. It is crucial to ensure that this information is clear, concise, and easily accessible to users. 

Termly has every angle covered for your business and automatically keeps your policies updated with the times and any changes in your business.

Rules, Regulations and Laws Termly Keeps You Compliant With

U.S. CAN-SPAM Act

According to the FTC, the CAN-SPAM Act is a piece of legislation that sets rules for commercial emails, gives people the option to stop getting emails from you, and spells out harsh punishments for breaking the rules. The law defines a commercial message as “any electronic mail message, the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service.”

It can be expensive to not comply with the CAN-SPAM Act because each individual email that does so is subject to fines of up to $50,120.

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) 

is a state-wide data privacy statute that controls how organizations from all over the world are permitted to handle the personal data (PI) of California residents. No matter where they are located in the world, for-profit companies that process the personal information of more than 50,000 California residents annually, make more than $25 million in gross annual revenue, or get more than half of their annual income from selling the personal information of California residents are subject to the CCPA. 

Businesses that break the CCPA can be fined $7,500 per violation and have to pay $750 per affected user.

U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)

Operators of websites or online services that are targeted toward children under the age of 13 are subject to specific requirements under COPPA, as are operators of many other websites or internet services that have direct notice that they are gathering personal information from children under the age of 13 online.

EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and ePrivacy

The GDPR is a privacy protection law in the European Economic Area (EEA) that grants people the right to request that organizations delete their personal data, also known as the “right to erasure.” However, organizations are not always required to do it. The purpose of the GDPR fines is to make non-compliance an expensive error for both big and small businesses. 

The Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA):

A Canadian law that says how private organizations can collect, use, and share personal information for business purposes. Additionally, it gives people the right to access and request changes to the personal information these organizations hold about them. 

Termly Pricing Plans and Monthly Cost

Termly makes compliance easy. They ask you a bunch of questions about your business, you fill out the form, and it creates a compliance policy of your choosing. But they also take care of the coding challenges by giving you the ability to copy/paste an embed code into your website.

It really is that simple. 

Termly offers a free version for one legal policy, the ability to edit it up to four times, and a clickable consent banner for up to 10,000 monthly visitors. After that, if you want to keep Termly, you can get an affordable monthly plan with more features:

• Termly Starter – $10.00/month for up to 100,000 visitors with 2 policies and 10 edits
• Termly Pro+ – $15.00/month for unlimited visitors, policy edits and automatic weekly updates to keep your policies active and current. Also offers segmented regional consent rules for different visitor profiles and demographics. And, you get the Termly logo removed from your compliance display.
• Termly Agency – Call for pricing. This plan is good starting for 5 different websites, perfect for the web developer or marketing agency managing a client’s online presence

Getting automatic, updated compliance for less than $20 per month seems like a good deal to me, especially if you have a sophisticated business structure or risk to lose money by not stating information in higher-risk verticals.

Termly Pros and Cons

Termly is one of the highest rated business software apps that we’ve reviewed on this site.

Termly Pros

• Termly makes it easy and relatively cheap, to gain basic compliance for your business in its online marketing and communications, according to many of its customers
• Termly automates the process for you so updates take place in the background without needing a lot of coding or constant web updates. 
• Termly is an all-in-one compliance solution hailed by web developers too

Termly Cons

• The biggest complaint is that you have to pay every month to have your policy available, rather than being able to download it in your first month and then cancel.
• Difficulty when adding your own custom wording to policies
• Some customers are still not sure if you are 100% compliant since Termly denies liability for any wrongdoing in the event of a compliance issue or lawsuit.

Termly more or less delivers, those some more prominent complaints have been difficulty with getting a call back from customer service or response to trouble tickets.

Termly Customer Reviews and Ratings 

Termly has a lot of happy clients around the web. Most complaints are based on a misunderstanding of how Termly.io provides a service while remaining profitable itself, or a need for greater specialization. Below you can see their customer reviews and ratings at popular tech sites, as well as some alternatives for businesses that need a more comprehensive auditing solution as well.

Termly BBB Rating

Termly is rated A+ with the BBB.

Termly Trustpilot and GetApp Score

Termly gets a 4.7/5 with GetApp and a somewhat troubling score of 4.3/5 on TrustPilot.

Termly Alternatives

Termly.io is not the only terms and compliance solution for your website. There are several others available that are equally-rated and appreciated: 

• DocTract – All steps in the policy and procedure process are automated by DocTract. There are built-in notifications for every significant step, including adding and editing documents, getting feedback, completing approvals, and conducting periodic reviews.
• TermsFeed – Does the same thing as Termly but offers a one-time price, which may or may not be good depending on whether they continue to update their product during periods of lower sign-ups
• AuditBoard – SOC, ISO, PCI, NIST, CMMC, GDPR, NYDFS, and other information security compliance standards can all be streamlined for the enterprise with the help of a single integrated solution.

Unfortunately, none of the above options offer transparent pricing, and some seem to do way more than compliance, which may not be exactly what you need right now. That’s completely up to you and your business’s needs, which you should identify now and be prepared to scale later on.

Conclusion: Termly Review

Termly solves a very real potential problem: stating terms and conditions, gaining consent from web visitors, and making your entire business’s normal sales process understandable and transparent. Unfortunately, just posting a policy on your website and hoping someone sees it doesn’t always pass the legal test in court for certain cookies and data collection, as the case law has shown. 

Getting a clickable terms banner and consent management tool to protect yourself may seem unnecessary now, but when you consider the cost of a class-action lawsuit against your company or constantly working with your attorney and web developer to gain and maintain compliance for $15/month is still much cheaper, it appears to be a solid move to us.

Check out Termly.io and see if they can help your business today.

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Frequently Asked Questions: Termly Review