Terms of Service

These terms are an agreement between you — the person or business using the service — and the company that runs The Main Course (the "service"): "we", "us" and "our" in these terms. By creating an account or using the service you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

The short version

This summary is here to help you read the terms. It is not a replacement for them; if the summary and a section below ever disagree, the section wins.

• You use the service for your business. It is not for consumers.
• The AI builds your website, but you approve it and you are its publisher. Check the prices, hours, and claims on it before you put it online — especially anything about allergens or dietary suitability.
• Your content and your website stay yours; the service's own software and design templates stay ours. You give us permission to store and process your content so the service can work, including sending it to the AI companies that generate text and images.
• Reservations and food orders are between you and your guest. We provide the tool; we are not a party to any reservation or sale, and a guest paying by card pays into your own Stripe account, not ours (section 10).
• Connecting your own web address changes your domain's settings. Done one way, it moves your email routing too. We show you what will move and ask you to review it; the responsibility for that review is yours, and so is moving the settings back if you leave or we close.
• You pay through Stripe, our payment provider, and we never see your card. Plans renew until you move off them, and moving off leaves the period you have paid for running to its end (section 4).
• Moving to a smaller paid plan is never refused, and takes nothing offline. If it covers fewer websites than you have, you choose which ones it covers; the rest stay online and keep taking reservations and orders, but stop taking new work (section 4.4).
• If your subscription ends, or you move to the free plan, your published websites go offline until a paid plan is active again, and then come back just as they were. Nothing is deleted. While our payment provider is still retrying a failed payment, your websites stay online (section 4.5). (Apart from that, a website only comes down under sections 11 and 15: a closure of the service, a serious breach, or an account abandoned for over a year — and the abandonment one never happens without long notice.)
• If we ever close the service, we will try to give you notice and your published website is built to keep working for a while without us. The service does not give you your website as a file, so treat a closure notice as the moment to arrange a new home for it. Some things — reservations and food orders taken through us, and any domain whose settings we look after — need action from you when that day comes.
• We don't promise your website will bring you customers, and our total liability to you is capped (section 13). Nothing in these terms takes away rights the law says we cannot exclude.

1. Who these terms are for

The service is made for restaurants, cafés, bars, and similar food-and-drink businesses. By opening an account you confirm that:

• you are using the service in the course of a business, not as a consumer;
• you have the authority to accept these terms for that business; and
• you are at least 18 years old.

If you are accepting on behalf of a company or partnership, "you" means that business.

2. What the service is

The service builds and publishes a website for your restaurant. Depending on your plan, it can: generate pages and images from your answers using artificial intelligence; publish the result as a website on a hosting platform; connect your own web address; take table reservations, either through our built-in reservation system or through a third-party reservation provider you connect; take food orders for collection or delivery through your website, paid when the food is handed over or by card into your own Stripe account; email your guests about their reservations and orders; show your menu; add links to your takeaway or delivery services; write your website in other languages; show you how often your website is visited; and check your pages for search and AI-assistant visibility.

We are always improving the service, which means it changes. We may add, alter, or withdraw features. Where we withdraw something material that you actively use, we will aim to tell you in advance (see section 11). A feature we label as new, a preview, or a test is there for you to try: it may change or be withdrawn without that notice, and section 13 applies to it with particular force.

3. Your account

Keep your sign-in details safe and your account email address current — the email address on your account is where notices under these terms go, including the ones in sections 11 and 15, and section 18.6 says what else counts as giving you one. You are responsible for everything done through your account. Tell us straight away if you believe someone else has access to it.

4. Plans, allowances, and payment

4.1 Plans. The service offers the plans shown in the app, each with allowances (such as pages built, changes made, and logo designs) and a number of websites. The current plans, allowances, and prices are shown inside the service and are part of these terms. The free plan lets you build your homepage to judge the quality of what we make; its allowances are given once, for the life of the account, and do not renew — a paid plan's renew every month. What the free plan does not include is shown on screen, locked, in the place where each thing would be — so the current list is always the one in front of you rather than one written out here.

4.2 Allowances. Your plan includes an amount of each of the things that cost us money to do for you: pages built, changes made, logos designed, new photographs made, and checks of how your pages look to Google and to AI assistants. On a paid plan that amount renews each month; on the free plan it is a single amount for the account, given when the account is made and not topped up. Looking at your website, putting it online, and undoing something never count against any of them. Work we never sent to our AI providers is not charged: if we refuse a request, or it fails before we ask them, the allowance it would have used is returned. Once they have answered we have paid for that answer, so a request can still count where the answer came back cut off, in a form we could not use, or where we could not put the result on your website — that covers changing a single part of a page, and it covers photographs, which are paid for the moment they are made rather than when they reach your page. Anything set aside and not used is still returned: a request that made four photographs out of six counts four. You get told what happened and what to try instead. If you believe your allowance has been counted wrongly, tell us and we will check our records and correct the count; correcting the count — and refunding or crediting anything you were charged because of the mistake — is the remedy for a metering mistake.

4.3 Price and plan changes. We may change prices and plan contents. Price increases take effect from your next billing period and we will give you at least 30 days' notice first (section 18.6). If you do not accept a price increase, you may cancel before it takes effect.

4.4 Upgrades and downgrades. An upgrade takes effect immediately. A downgrade takes effect when the period you have already paid for ends. A downgrade is never refused, and nothing is deleted. A downgrade to another paid plan takes nothing offline; a move to the free plan, which does not include putting websites online, takes them offline as section 4.5 describes. If you have more websites than the new plan covers, you choose which ones it covers; the rest stay online, keep taking reservations and orders and stay readable, and you can still undo, take one offline, or disconnect its web address. What stops is new work on them: changes and new pages, putting one online again, connecting a web address or a reservation system, designing a logo, and the Google and AI check — until you move back up to a bigger plan, choose different websites for the plan to cover, or delete the ones you no longer need.

4.5 If your subscription ends or a payment fails. If a payment fails, your plan, and your published websites, carry on for as long as our payment provider keeps your subscription open while it tries the payment again. Once the subscription ends, or a move to the free plan takes effect, your published websites go offline: each of their web addresses shows a short page saying the website is not available, in place of your website, until a paid plan is active again. Nothing is deleted: your websites, their web addresses, and the reservations and orders already taken are kept, and when a paid plan is active again your websites come back just as they were, normally within minutes and at the same addresses. (The other situations in which a website can come down — closure of the service, serious breach, or a long-abandoned account — are sections 11 and 15.) While no subscription is active, your account has the free plan's allowances (whatever of that one-time amount the account has not already used), anything the free plan does not include, such as putting your website online, is locked, and if that plan covers fewer websites than you have, section 4.4 applies in the same way: you choose which ones it covers. Undoing changes, taking your site offline yourself, and disconnecting a web address remain available on every plan, including a lapsed one.

4.6 Refunds. Fees are non-refundable except where these terms say otherwise (sections 11.4, 15.2, and 18.5) or where the law requires a refund.

4.7 Taxes. We are the seller of your plan. The checkout shows the full amount you will pay, including any tax it adds, before you pay it. You are responsible for any taxes on your use of the service other than taxes on our income.

4.8 How you pay, and who holds your card. Payment is taken by our payment provider, Stripe (Privacy Policy, section 9). You pay on Stripe's own page and we never see or store your card — what reaches us is which plan and billing period you are on, whether your subscription is running, and when its period ends. A paid plan renews for the same period each time until you move off it. You can move to the free plan from the plan screen at any time: that stops the next payment and leaves the period you have already paid for running to its end. Moving up to a bigger plan, or from monthly to yearly billing, takes effect straight away and is charged at once, less what is left of the period you had already paid for; if that charge is refused, nothing changes. Stripe's own page, reached from the plan screen, is where you change your card and read your receipts. If a payment fails, section 4.5 says what happens — and what does not.

4.9 Add-ons. Some features are sold as an add-on on top of a paid plan rather than as part of one; at the moment those are email marketing to your guests, and online ordering, which is priced for each restaurant it covers. An add-on's price and what it includes, such as a number of emails a month, are shown in the app and are part of these terms. It is paid for together with your plan, over the same billing period, in the way section 4.8 describes. Adding one takes effect straight away and is charged at once for what is left of the period you have already paid for; if that charge is refused, nothing changes. Removing one takes effect when that period ends, and it keeps working until then. Where an add-on comes in more than one size, moving to a bigger size is charged like adding one, and moving to a smaller size takes effect when the period ends, like removing one; adding or removing a restaurant from online ordering works the same way. An add-on ends when your plan moves to the free plan or your subscription ends. Removing or losing an add-on deletes nothing: the guests who asked for your news stay on your list, and a restaurant's online ordering keeps taking and serving orders as it was last set up while its website is online, though it can no longer be changed.

5. Your content and your website

5.1 It stays yours. Everything you give us — your restaurant's details, menus, photos, logos, text — and the website built from it belongs to you. We claim no ownership of it. This does not transfer to you any rights in the service's own software, designs, or templates (section 5.7): your website is yours; the tools and templates it was built with are not.

5.2 What you allow us to do with it. You give us permission to store, copy, process, adapt, display, and transmit your content, but only as needed to run, secure, and improve the service — including generating your pages, publishing your website, and sending content to the service providers described in section 7. This permission ends when the content is deleted from the service, except for copies in routine backups until those cycle out.

5.3 Your promises about it. You promise that you have the rights to everything you upload (including photos and logos), that your content is accurate, and that it breaks no law and no one else's rights.

5.4 You are the publisher. Your website is your statement to your customers. You are responsible for what it says — prices, opening hours, dishes, dietary and allergen information, and any claims about your business. Once you approve or publish a page, the whole of it — including text and images the AI generated — is your content for the purposes of sections 5.3 and 14, exactly as if you had written it yourself; reviewing it before approving (section 6.1) is how you accept that.

5.5 Uploads are publicly readable. Files you upload to the service (menus, photos, logos) are stored at addresses that anyone who has the address can open. Do not upload anything confidential.

5.6 Content we may remove. We may remove or refuse to publish content that breaks section 12 or the law. Where practical we will tell you and say why.

5.7 What stays ours. The service itself — its software, its design templates, the components pages are built from, and its name and branding — belongs to us and our licensors. We give you permission to use it, through the normal features of your plan, while these terms are in force. Your website may be built from templates and components we also use for other customers, and nothing gives you exclusive rights in a design or layout. What comes out — your website, carrying your content — is yours under section 5.1: you may host, use, and change it anywhere without further permission from us. Two things in it belong to somebody else and stay under their own licences (section 8.3): the typefaces your pages load, and the open-source software that styles them, a copy of which we normally ship inside your website. The ready-made photographs are ours to give you, and section 6.4 says so.

If you send us ideas or feedback about the service, we may use them without restriction or payment. Your restaurant's own content is never "feedback".

5.8 Complaints that a website infringes someone's rights. If you believe a website published through the service infringes your copyright, trademark, or other rights, tell us with the page's address, the right infringed, and your contact details. We may remove or unpublish material in response to a well-founded complaint or a legal order, will tell the website's owner where the law allows, and may close the accounts of repeat infringers under section 15. Knowingly false complaints can make you liable to the website's owner.

6. The AI that writes your website

6.1 It can be wrong. The service uses artificial intelligence to write pages, lay them out, and generate images. AI output can be inaccurate, incomplete, out of date, or simply made up — a page can state a wrong price, a wrong opening time, or a claim about your food that is not true. You must review every page before approving or publishing it, and review it again after significant changes. Pay particular attention to anything about allergens, dietary suitability, and prices.

6.2 What we do to a page automatically. Before a page goes online the service runs a set of automatic passes over it. Among other things it takes off forms that could not work, moves text colours until they are readable against what is behind them, takes off a phone number or address that did not come from you (or puts yours in its place), adds the button that opens the page's menu on a phone, keeps the year in the footer current, adjusts how wide the content sits, keeps your logo where the page already carries it, and swaps out a small number of typefaces we do not use. These run every time you publish, including on pages you approved earlier, so a page can change slightly after you approved it. They reduce mistakes; they do not catch all of them, and we do not promise that they will.

6.3 Where the AI runs. Text and images are generated by third-party AI providers (see section 7). Your answers, menus, and photos are sent to those providers to do that work.

6.4 Images and ready-made photographs. Generated images are created for your website. The ready-made photographs the service falls back on when you have none of your own were made for us with an AI image tool and are hosted by us — they are not stock photographs bought in under another company's licence. You may keep using them on your website, including if you take your website somewhere else, on the same footing as section 5.1. You are still responsible for what a photograph is used to say: a picture of a dish is not a promise that it is the dish you serve.

6.5 Logos and branding. The service can design logos for you. We do not check names, logos, or generated images against trademarks, trade names, or anyone else's rights, anywhere. Before adopting a generated logo or name as your branding, checking that it is free to use is your responsibility, and section 14 applies to claims that it was not.

6.6 AI output is not advice. Nothing the service generates — including its search and AI-visibility suggestions — is legal, regulatory, or professional advice about your business.

7. The other companies the service runs on

The service is built on third-party providers: the hosting platform that serves published websites and sends the service's emails, the database and file storage behind your account, the AI providers that generate text and images, the payment provider that takes payment for plans and, where you take cards, for your food orders, the styling and font services that published pages load, the reservation providers you can connect, the takeaway and delivery services your website links to, and the domain registrars we can point you to. We choose these providers with care and may change them. We do not control them. Their outages, changes, moderation decisions, and pricing are theirs, and section 13 and section 18.1 apply to failures caused by them. Where you connect your own account with a third party (a reservation provider, a registrar), your relationship with that company is direct and governed by their terms, not ours. Where your website or the service links to another company's site, that site is theirs; we are not responsible for it.

8. Publishing and keeping your website online

8.1 No uptime promise. We aim for the service and published websites to be available and working, but we do not promise uninterrupted or error-free operation, and we offer no service-level guarantee. The builder may be unavailable during maintenance or outages, including outages of the providers in section 7.

8.2 Your free web address. Every published website gets a free web address on our hosting platform's domain. It works alongside any web address of your own that you connect — but it is an address on the platform's domain, not one you own, and it cannot move with you (section 11.2). If you want an address you can take anywhere, connect your own (section 9).

8.3 Built to outlast us — as a goal, not a guarantee. Published websites are built so that the pages and their photos are stored together with the website itself rather than fetched from our systems. This is measured at each publish and is best-effort: an individual publish can leave some images depending on our storage, and published pages still load their typefaces from another company's font service either way. The software that styles the page is normally shipped inside the website itself, so losing it does not follow from losing us. Section 11 explains what this means if the service closes.

9. Your own web address, its settings, and your email — read this section

This section matters more than it looks. Done one way, connecting a web address (a "domain") moves the settings that route your email. A restaurant whose email stops working can miss suppliers, reservations, and staff — so read this section before connecting anything.

9.1 We are never the seller of a web address. If you buy a web address through a link in the service, the sale is between you and the registrar (the company that sells web addresses). The registrar takes your payment, holds your details, sets the price, and handles renewals and refunds under its own terms. We never own, hold, or control the registration, and we take no payment for it. We may earn a commission from the registrar when you buy through our link. Any availability or name suggestions we show are informational only — whether a name is actually available is decided at the registrar's checkout.

9.2 Connecting a subdomain (for example www.). You add one record at your own registrar. Your domain's settings stay entirely under your control, and you are responsible for the records you keep there.

9.3 Connecting a bare domain. Serving your website at a bare domain (for example yourrestaurant.com without the "www.") can happen one of two ways, depending on how the service is set up: it needs one extra record at your own registrar — in which case your domain's settings stay entirely under your control and section 9.2 applies — or it needs the domain's settings moved so that we look after them. Where neither is available, the service connects the www. form of your address instead, and tells you it has done so.

Moving your domain's settings to us is never something that just happens. It is offered to you as a separate step, and what it does — including what it does to your email — is described before you choose it.

Where the settings move to us, what moves is the records that tell the internet where your website and your email live. Before anything changes we show you the records we found, email records first, and ask you to review them and confirm. In that case you understand and accept that:

• the copy of your records we obtain is best-effort and can be incomplete — a record the copy missed will stop working when the move happens, and "no email records found" is not proof your domain has no email;
• the review is yours to do. You (or whoever runs your email) are responsible for checking the list against reality before confirming, and for confirming your email still works after the move;
• the move itself, its timing, and the security certificate that makes browsers show your website as secure are handled by third parties, and the change can take from minutes to hours, during which your website or email may be inconsistent;
• while we look after your domain's settings, you cannot change the records yourself, and the service does not currently offer a way to change them for you — if you need a record added or changed (for example, for a new email provider), take your domain's settings back first (section 9.6);
• while we look after your domain's settings, your domain — including its email routing — depends on systems we run. If the service closes, only you can move it back (sections 9.6 and 11.3), and if the closure is abrupt, that may happen with little or no notice (section 11.2); and
• you can take your domain's settings back at any time, free, on every plan (section 9.6).

9.4 One website per address. A web address can be connected to only one website on the service, first come, first served. If you believe someone else has connected an address they have no right to, contact us; we may disconnect an address in response to a well-founded complaint or a legal order.

9.5 Your own records are your own. Where records live at your registrar (sections 9.1, 9.2), mistakes in them — stale records, wrong entries, settings that make your website unreachable for part of your audience — are yours to fix, though the service will try to point them out where it can see them.

9.6 Leaving — and the order that matters. Disconnecting a web address, or ending the arrangement where we look after your domain's settings, is free and available on every plan, including a lapsed or suspended one. It never affects who owns the registration.

Where we look after your domain's settings (the second of the two ways in section 9.3), ending that arrangement has an order to it: change the nameserver entries at your registrar first, then tell us to stop. (The nameserver entries are the setting at your registrar that says who looks after your domain's settings.) When you tell us to stop, we first check whether your domain still points at us; while it does, we keep answering for it and show you the entries to change back. Once the check finds it no longer does, we stop answering for your domain straight away. The check sees only what the public internet reports at that moment, and a change to the nameserver entries takes time to reach everyone, so for a while after we stop, your website and your email can be unreachable for anyone the change has not reached yet. Getting that order right remains your responsibility. Where your domain's settings stayed with you (the first way), none of this applies: you remove the record you added, your email was never involved, and there is no order to get wrong.

9.7 Deleting a website. Deleting a website from your account disconnects every web address connected to it. The registration itself is untouched — you still own the name at your registrar. But if we were looking after your domain's settings (section 9.3), deleting the website does not end that arrangement or move your settings back: your domain, including its email routing, continues to depend on systems we run until you change the nameserver entries at your registrar. Do that as part of deleting the website — after the deletion there may be no screen left in the service to manage the domain from, we may have no record connecting it to you, and the notice and help described in section 11.3 may not be able to reach you. The same applies if you close your account (section 16).

10. Table reservations and food orders

10.1 We are a tool, not a party. A reservation made through your website — through our built-in reservation system or a third-party provider — is an arrangement between you and your guest. We are not a party to it. You are responsible for honoring reservations your website accepts, and your guest is responsible for turning up; we are not liable to either of you for the other's failure.

10.2 Your settings decide your capacity. The built-in reservation system takes reservations according to what you configure: your service hours, how many seats you can serve at once, party sizes, lead times, and closures. Wrong settings can double-book your room or turn away guests you had space for, and keeping them right is your responsibility. The reservation system is also software, and section 13 applies to it like everything else: even with correct settings it can malfunction — accepting more reservations than you have room for, fewer, or none. Checking your reservation sheet against your actual room (section 10.3) is your protection.

10.3 Emails help; your sheet is the record. A guest who gives an email address when they book through the built-in system is emailed about that reservation in your name: when it is made, when you confirm it, turn it down, move it or cancel it, and, unless you turn reminders off, about a day before the table. A reservation you enter yourself sends the guest nothing. You are emailed, at the address on your account, about reservations waiting for your answer, or about every reservation a guest makes, changes or cancels if you choose that, or not at all if you switch it off. Email can arrive late, be filtered as spam or not arrive at all, so new reservations and cancellations always appear on your reservation sheet, and checking it is part of running your service.

10.4 The guest's manage link. A guest who books gets a private link to change or cancel their reservation. It is shown once on screen and, where the guest gave an email address, also carried in the emails about their reservation while it stands. A guest who has lost it will need to contact you directly.

10.5 Guest history is inference. The service groups past reservations into guest histories by matching contact details. This is a best-effort estimate and can split one guest in two or, rarely, merge two guests. A missed visit is only ever what you marked, and marking it accurately is your responsibility.

10.6 Third-party reservation providers. If you connect a reservation provider, your reservations and your guests' data live with that provider under your own agreement with them. Their availability, pricing, and features are theirs; we only display what you connected and store the connection details you give us.

10.7 Built-in reservations need our systems. Taking reservations online through the built-in system works only while our systems are running. Websites published after reservations are set up also carry a replacement page: when our systems cannot be reached, your website is built to show guests that page — your contact details, where your website has them — instead of a reservation form. It degrades to "call us"; it does not pretend to book. The replacement page is placed on your website when it is published, so republishing after turning reservations on is what puts it there — that republish costs nothing against your allowances, though putting a website online at all is part of a paid plan; and it is served by the hosting platform, so section 8.1 applies to it like everything else. Section 11 covers a permanent closure.

10.8 Food orders: you are the seller. When a guest orders food through your website, the sale is between you and your guest. We are not a party to it and we are not the seller. You are responsible for the food and what your menu says about it — prices, allergens, dietary suitability — for preparing the order and, where you offer delivery, delivering it, for any tax on what you sell, and for whatever the law requires of you towards your guests, refunds included. A guest's order is priced from the dishes and prices you set in the service, so a wrong price there is the price your guest is asked to pay.

10.9 Card payments go to your own Stripe account. If you take cards, you connect an account of your own with our payment provider, Stripe, which you hold with Stripe directly and under Stripe's terms. A guest pays on Stripe's own page, straight into that account: the money never passes through us and we take no share of it. That account, and anything Stripe charges or asks of you, is between you and Stripe. When you turn down or cancel an order that has been paid for, the service refunds it through your Stripe account. A card order is never accepted before it has been paid for, and one that has not been paid within fifteen minutes stops holding its time. Stopping card payments in the service does not close your Stripe account.

10.10 Your settings decide what you take. Your dishes and prices, where you deliver, your fees and minimum order, when you take orders, whether orders are accepted automatically and whether guests can add a tip are yours to set and keep right. Wrong settings can take orders you cannot make or turn away ones you could. A tip a guest adds is part of what they pay you for the order. The ordering system is software, and section 13 applies to it as it does to reservations (section 10.2).

10.11 Your orders board is the record. New orders appear on your orders board. The service can also email you when one comes in, which you can switch off, but checking the board is part of running your service. A guest who gives an email address is emailed about the order in your name: when it is taken, when a card payment for it arrives, and when you accept it, turn it down, cancel it, have it ready to collect or send it out. Email can arrive late, be filtered as spam or not arrive at all.

10.12 Online ordering needs our systems. Ordering through your website works only while our systems are running. Unlike reservations (section 10.7), there is no replacement page: when our systems cannot be reached, the ordering panel on your website does not work, and a guest's link to their order does not open. Section 11 covers a permanent closure.

11. If the service changes or closes down

This section is the one to read twice. It says what we may change, what happens if we shut the service down for good, what we will try to do for you, and what you must do yourself.

11.1 Changing or withdrawing features. We may change or withdraw any feature. If we withdraw something material that your account actively uses, we will aim to give you at least 30 days' notice (section 18.6).

11.2 Closing the service. We may discontinue the service entirely — for commercial, legal, or insolvency reasons. If that happens:

• Notice. We will give you as much notice as circumstances reasonably allow, and we will aim for at least 30 days. In some situations — insolvency proceedings, legal compulsion, the failure of a provider we depend on — the notice may be shorter, or in extreme cases not possible.
• What we will try to do. During the notice period we intend to: publish each published website once more so that, as far as we can measure, its pages and the photos they show travel with it — we check the result for each website and give one that fails the check another pass where we reasonably can; produce a copy of each owner's website — pages, images, and the answers you gave us — and send it to them; and help owners whose domain settings we look after move them back (section 11.3). These are our good-faith intentions for an orderly wind-down; in an abrupt ending (such as insolvency) some or all of them may not happen — the service offers no self-service copy in the meantime, so a copy reaching you depends on this wind-down being an orderly one.
• What stops. The builder, your dashboard, your reservation sheet and your orders board stop working when the service closes. Reservations taken online through the built-in system stop: a website carrying the replacement page (section 10.7) then shows guests your contact details instead of a reservation form, a website without it shows an error, and guests' private manage links stop working either way. Online ordering stops too, with no replacement page (section 10.12), and so do guests' links to their orders; your own Stripe account is yours and is not affected. Before closure, save a copy of your upcoming reservations and orders from your reservation sheet and orders board — after closure we cannot retrieve them for you.
• Your published website. Published websites are designed to keep serving without the builder, and our wind-down plan is to leave them running for as long as we reasonably can. But we cannot promise any particular period, and pieces degrade over time: your typefaces load from another company's font service; any image a publish left depending on our storage stops loading when that storage closes; and the picture shown when your website's link is shared in a message or on social media normally loads from our storage. In an orderly wind-down we intend to publish each website once more so that picture travels with it too; in an abrupt ending it will stop appearing, even on a website whose pages carry all of their own photographs. The free web address (section 8.2) cannot move with you — only a web address you own (section 9) can — so if your printed menus or listings use the free address, connecting your own before you need it is the protection. Treat a closure notice as the moment to arrange a new home for your website elsewhere.
• Your data. After closure we delete the data the service holds — your answers, page history, reservation and order records, and account. This is work we do by hand rather than something the service does on a timer, so it happens as part of the wind-down rather than at a fixed moment. Once deleted it cannot be retrieved, and no future operator can rebuild your website from our side.

11.3 Domains whose settings we look after — you must act. If we look after your domain's settings (section 9.3), only you can move them back: nameserver entries (section 9.6) can be changed only by the registrar account holder, and that is you. If a closure is announced, change the entries at your registrar back to your own or another provider's promptly, following the instructions we give. If the service stops answering without notice having reached you, do it as soon as you become aware. Until you do, your domain — including its email routing — depends on systems that are closing, and if you have not moved it by the time they close, your domain and your email can stop working entirely. We will provide instructions and reasonable help during any notice period, but our help depends on being able to identify and reach you — if you deleted the website or closed your account while your registrar still pointed your domain at us (sections 9.7 and 16), we may be unable to do either. We are not liable for the consequences of a move you did not make, including where the circumstances described in section 11.2 meant notice or instructions could not be given. Your ownership of the registration is never affected — the name stays yours at your registrar throughout.

11.4 Your money back. If we discontinue the service entirely, we will refund the part of any fees you have prepaid for time after the closure date, in proportion to the time not used. This refund, plus what section 11.2 provides, is your sole remedy for a closure of the service, to the maximum extent the law allows and subject to section 13.5.

11.5 A successor instead of a closure. Instead of closing, we may transfer the service and these terms to a successor who takes over running it (section 18.4). A transfer is not a closure and does not trigger section 11.4; we will tell you if it happens, and your right to cancel is unaffected.

12. Acceptable use

Use the service only for its purpose: building and running websites for real food-and-drink businesses you are authorized to represent. You must not use it to publish unlawful, infringing, or deceptive content; to misrepresent who you are; to send malware or attack anyone; to scrape, resell, or white-label the service; to build volumes of sites unrelated to a real business; or to work around allowances, plan limits, or technical safeguards. You must not probe, scan, or test the service for weaknesses or try to get around its security without our written permission; try to reach accounts, data, or systems that are not yours; or copy, decompile, or reverse-engineer the service except where the law gives you that right. You may not use the service if you, or anyone you act for, are subject to sanctions or export restrictions that apply to us. We may suspend or close accounts that break this section (section 15).

13. What we don't promise, and the limit of what we owe you

This section allocates risk. It is the reason the service can be offered at its price, and it applies to every claim connected with the service, whatever its legal basis — contract, tort (including negligence), statute, or otherwise. It is subject to section 13.5 in all cases: nothing here excludes what the law does not allow us to exclude.

13.1 The service is provided as it is. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE, EVERYTHING IT GENERATES, AND EVERY WEBSITE PUBLISHED THROUGH IT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, SATISFACTORY QUALITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, OR UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE OPERATION.

13.2 No promise of business results. We do not promise that your website will bring you customers, reservations, revenue, or visibility in search engines or AI assistants; that AI-generated content will be accurate or suitable; that any third-party service the service depends on will keep operating; or that your website, web address, or email will be available at any particular time.

13.3 Losses we are not liable for. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, NOR FOR ANY: LOSS OF PROFITS OR REVENUE; LOSS OF BUSINESS, CUSTOM, CUSTOMERS, OR GOODWILL; LOSS OF ANTICIPATED SAVINGS; LOSS OF OR DAMAGE TO DATA OR CONTENT; LOSS OF RESERVATIONS OR ORDERS; INTERRUPTION OR LOSS OF EMAIL OR OTHER COMMUNICATIONS; LOSS OF USE OF A WEB ADDRESS OR DOMAIN; WASTED EXPENDITURE; BUSINESS INTERRUPTION; OR COSTS OF SUBSTITUTE SERVICES — in each case even if we were advised such loss was possible, and whether arising from the service working, failing, changing, or closing; from AI-generated content; from a change to your domain's settings; or from the acts or omissions of a third-party provider.

13.4 The cap. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR CONNECTED WITH THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF: (a) THE FEES YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE FIRST CLAIM; AND (b) $100. Multiple claims do not enlarge this cap.

13.5 What these terms never exclude. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for: death or personal injury caused by our negligence; fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; or any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited by applicable law. If, despite section 1, a law treats you as a consumer, nothing in these terms affects rights that law gives you which cannot be waived.

13.6 Fair allocation. You agree this allocation of risk is reasonable: the service is a low-cost tool, the biggest risks (what your website says, your domain, your reservations and the food you sell) are matters you control, and the price would be materially higher if we bore them.

14. Your responsibility to us (indemnity)

You will defend and compensate us — including our reasonable legal costs — against any third-party claim arising from: your content or your website (which includes AI-generated pages you approved — section 5.4), including anything it says about prices, allergens, or dietary suitability; your dealings with your guests, including reservations and orders your website accepted and the food you sold them; your uploads or your branding infringing someone's rights; your handling of your guests' personal data in breach of law; your domain, registrar, or DNS decisions; or your breach of these terms or the law. We will tell you promptly about any such claim. You may conduct its defense with lawyers we reasonably approve, and we may join in with our own lawyers at our own cost. You may not settle a claim without our written consent unless the settlement fully releases us, admits no fault on our behalf, and requires nothing of us. If you do not defend the claim, we may defend it ourselves at your reasonable cost.

15. When we can suspend or close your account

15.1 Why. We may suspend or close your account, remove content, or unpublish a website if: you materially breach these terms (including section 12); your content or website exposes us or others to legal risk or harm; the law requires it; or your account is used to abuse the service or its allowances. For breaches that can be put right, we will normally warn you and give you a chance to fix it first; for serious or unlawful ones we may act immediately.

15.2 What happens. Where we close your account under this section we will, unless the law or the seriousness of the breach prevents it, give you 30 days before we delete your website and data. Disconnecting your web addresses and taking your domain's settings back (section 9.6) remain available while an account is suspended and during that window after it is closed — we never use your domain's settings as leverage — and section 11.3 applies as if a closure had been announced for your account. If we close your account under this section for a reason that is not a breach by you (for example, because the law requires us to stop serving you), we will refund the part of any fees you have prepaid for time after the closure, in proportion to the time not used. Non-payment is not handled under this section — it is handled by section 4.5, which takes your published websites offline until a paid plan is active again and never deletes them.

15.3 Long-abandoned websites. Separately from any breach, if your account has had no active subscription and no sign-in for at least 12 months, we may, but are not obliged to, retire its published websites and delete its data, after giving at least 60 days' notice (section 18.6). This is the one way an unpaid account's websites are retired rather than only taken offline until it pays again (section 4.5); unpublishing for breach or legal risk is separate — section 15.1. It never happens without notice, and disconnecting your own web address first (section 9.6) is always available, so your domain simply stops pointing at us.

16. Ending it yourself

You can stop using the service at any time. You can take a website offline, delete a website (section 9.7 covers its web addresses), or close your account entirely by contacting us. Closing an account is something we do by hand when you ask: we take your websites offline and delete your data within 30 days of your request (the Privacy Policy's section 13 says exactly what that covers) — and if we look after your domain's settings, change your nameserver entries back before you close the account (sections 9.6 and 9.7): once the account is gone we may have no record connecting your domain to you and no way to reach you, so the help described in section 11.3 may be impossible. Deletion is permanent. If you have prepaid for a period you do not use, section 4.6 applies.

17. Your guests' personal data

Where guests book through the built-in reservation system, or order food through your website, we store the details they give (name, contact details, party size or what they ordered, notes, and for a delivery the address) on your behalf, to run your reservation sheet and your orders; and where a guest asks you for your news, we keep their email address, and the first name and birthday they choose to give, on your behalf too, to run your list. For that data, you are the business responsible for it (the controller) and we act for you (the processor). You are responsible for telling your guests how their data is used, for handling their requests about it, and for your own privacy notice. The service gives you the means to act on a deletion request yourself: you can delete a guest's details from one reservation or from every reservation they have ever made with you, or from one order, and you can set a standing rule that deletes those details once a reservation reaches an age you choose. That rule is carried out while you are using the service rather than at a fixed moment, so it is a rule about what is kept rather than a promise about exactly when. None of it can be undone. Where you take cards, a guest's payment is taken by Stripe for your own Stripe account (section 10.9), under your own agreement with Stripe; what we pass Stripe for it is listed in the Privacy Policy's section 9.

For that data, we commit that: we act only on your instructions as given through the service and these terms; we do not contact your guests, except that a guest who gives an email address with a reservation or a food order is sent emails about that reservation or order in your name (when it is made, when it changes, and for a reservation a reminder the day before unless you turn reminders off), which is part of the reservations and ordering you switched on, and that a guest who asked you for your news and confirmed it is sent the messages you write or switch on, in your name; and we never use their data for our own purposes beyond running and securing the service; the people who work on the service are bound to confidentiality; we protect it with security measures appropriate to it; the providers we use to store and run it (section 7) handle it under terms that protect it, we remain responsible for them, and the current list is in our Privacy Policy's "Who receives data" section at /privacy — we will tell you before that list changes so you can object; we help you, with the information we hold, when a guest asks about their data or the law requires an answer from you; we tell you without undue delay if we become aware of a breach affecting this data; we delete it when your account closes or the service does (sections 11.2 and 16); and we make available the information reasonably needed to show we do all of this.

Your news to your guests. What your messages say, and the rules on sending news where you and your guests are, are yours. The service adds a guest to your list only after they confirm from their own inbox, and puts your postal address and a way to stop in every email; none of that makes a message lawful where what it says, or who it goes to, is not. Your news goes by email only: the service no longer sends texts. How many emails the email marketing add-on includes each month is on the plans page.

Details of what we store and for how long are in our Privacy Policy at /privacy, which forms part of these terms.

18. The general legal terms

18.1 Events beyond our control. We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including failures of hosting, DNS, CDN, AI, email, payment, or reservation providers; registrar or registry actions; internet or power failures; strikes; or acts of governments. Section 13 applies to such events in any case.

18.2 Entire agreement. These terms, the plan details shown in the service, and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us about the service, and they replace any earlier discussions. Neither of us relies on any statement not written in them, but nothing in this clause limits liability for fraud.

18.3 Severability and waiver. If part of these terms is found unenforceable, that part is limited to the minimum extent necessary or removed, and the rest stands; the disclaimers, exclusions, and the cap in section 13 apply independently of one another and survive even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose. Not enforcing a term is not a waiver of it.

18.4 Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these terms without our written consent (not unreasonably withheld for a sale of your restaurant). We may transfer ours to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of the service, provided the successor honors these terms (see section 11.5).

18.5 Changes to these terms. We may update these terms. For material changes we will give you at least 30 days' notice (section 18.6) before they take effect. If you do not agree to a material change, you may cancel before it takes effect, and we will refund the part of any fees you have prepaid for time after your cancellation, in proportion to the time not used. Using the service after the date a change takes effect means you accept it; a published website merely staying online is not "use" for this purpose.

18.6 Notices. We give notices to the email address on your account, and we may also give them by a prominent message inside the service; either counts as given, and a notice is treated as given the next business day. Keeping your account email address current is your side of that (section 3). The same address is where the service tells you about your own work: reservations (section 10.3), orders (section 10.11), a month's allowance running low, and a change to your plan. You give us notices by writing to us; they count as received the next business day.

18.7 No third-party rights. These terms are between you and us. Your guests, and anyone else, have no rights under them.

18.8 Independent businesses; no set-off. Nothing in these terms makes either of us the agent, partner, or employee of the other. You must pay fees in full, without deducting amounts you believe we owe you — a claim against us is handled as a claim, not as a deduction.

18.9 Time limit for claims. To the extent the law allows, any claim connected with the service must be brought within 12 months of the date you became aware, or reasonably should have become aware, of the events giving rise to it. This does not apply to anything section 13.5 says we never exclude.

18.10 Survival. Sections that by their nature should survive the end of this agreement do so — including sections 4.6, 5.3, 5.7, 6, 9, 10.1, 10.8, 10.9, 11, 13, 14, 17, and 18.

18.11 Disputes. Before either of us starts legal proceedings (other than for urgent injunctive relief), we will each try to resolve the dispute by contacting the other and negotiating in good faith for 30 days.