A Terms and Conditions agreement is the agreement that includes the terms, the rules and the guidelines of acceptable behavior and other useful sections to which users must agree in order to use or access your website and mobile app.

Our free Terms and Conditions template will get you started with creating your own custom Terms and Conditions agreement.

What are Terms and Conditions Agreements?

A Terms and Conditions agreement acts as legal contracts between you (the company) who has the website or mobile app, and the user who accesses your website/app.

Having a Terms and Conditions agreement is completely optional. No laws require you to have one. Not even the super-strict and wide-reaching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Your Terms and Conditions agreement will be uniquely yours. While some clauses are standard and commonly seen in pretty much every Terms and Conditions agreement, it's up to you to set the rules and guidelines that the user must agree to.

You can think of your Terms and Conditions agreement as the legal agreement where you maintain your rights to exclude users from your app in the event that they abuse your app, where you maintain your legal rights against potential app abusers, and so on.

Terms and Conditions agreements are also known as Terms of Service or Terms of Use agreements. These terms are interchangeable, practically speaking.

Check out our Terms and Conditions FAQ for more helpful insight into these important agreements.

You can use this agreement anywhere, regardless of what platform your business operates on:

• Websites
• WordPress blogs or blogs on any kind of platform: Joomla!, Drupal etc.
• E-commerce shops
• Mobile apps
• Facebook apps
• Desktop apps
• SaaS apps

Desktop apps usually have an EULA (End-User License Agreement) instead of a Terms and Conditions agreement, but your business can use both. Mobile apps are increasingly using Terms and Conditions along with an EULA if the mobile app has an online service component, i.e. it connects with a server.

Is a Terms and Conditions Agreement Required?

A Terms and Conditions is not required and it's not mandatory by law. Unlike Privacy Policies, which are required by laws such as the GDPR, CalOPPA and many others, there's no law or regulation on Terms and Conditions.

However, having a Terms and Conditions gives you the right to terminate the access of abusive users or to terminate the access to users who do not follow your rules and guidelines, as well as other desirable business benefits.

It's extremely important to have this agreement if you operate a SaaS app.

Here are a few examples of how this agreement can help you:

• If users abuse your website or mobile app in any way, you can terminate their account. Your "Termination" clause can inform users that their accounts would be terminated if they abuse your service.
• If users can post content on your website or mobile app (create content and share it on your platform), you can remove any content they created if it infringes copyright. Your Terms and Conditions will inform users that they can only create and/or share content they own rights to. Similarly, if users can register for an account and choose a username, you can inform users that they are not allowed to choose usernames that may infringe trademarks, i.e. usernames like Google, Facebook, and so on.
• If you sell products or services, you could cancel specific orders if a product price is incorrect. Your Terms and Conditions can include a clause to inform users that certain orders, at your sole discretion, can be canceled if the products ordered have incorrect prices due to various errors.
• And many more examples.

FAQ: Terms and Conditions

Here is a list of frequently asked questions that you may find useful.

What Information to include in a Terms and Conditions Agreement

In your Terms and Conditions, you can include rules and guidelines on how users can access and use your website and mobile app.

Here are a few examples:

1. An Intellectual Property clause will inform users that the contents, logo and other visual media you created is your property and is protected by copyright laws.
2. A Termination clause will inform users that any accounts on your website and mobile app, or users' access to your website and app, can be terminated in case of abuses or at your sole discretion.
3. A Governing Law clause will inform users which laws govern the agreement. These laws should come from the country in which your company is headquartered or the country from which you operate your website and mobile app.
4. A Links to Other Websites clause will inform users that you are not responsible for any third party websites that you link to. This kind of clause will generally inform users that they are responsible for reading and agreeing (or disagreeing) with the Terms and Conditions or Privacy Policies of these third parties.

5. If your website or mobile app allows users to create content and make that content public to other users, a Content clause will inform users that they own the rights to the content they have created. This clause usually mentions that users must give you (the website or mobile app developer/owner) a license so that you can share this content on your website/mobile app and to make it available to other users.

   Because the content created by users is public to other users, a DMCA notice clause (or Copyright Infringement ) section is helpful to inform users and copyright authors that, if any content is found to be a copyright infringement, you will respond to any DMCA takedown notices received and you will take down the content.

6. A Limit What Users Can Do clause can inform users that by agreeing to use your service, they're also agreeing to not do certain things. This can be part of a very long and thorough list in your Terms and Conditions agreement so as to encompass the most amount of negative uses.

Here's how 500px lists its prohibited activities:

If you operate a SaaS app, a "Termination clause" will be very important. The relationship with your customers can end for any number of reasons, from a customer changing careers to a new and better SaaS option becoming available or just general dissatisfaction with a service.

But as the owner of the app, you should have a way to actively end a relationship with a customer under certain circumstances.

SurveyMonkey has included sections in its Terms of Use that outlines what happens in the event of termination of service by either party. First, here's how users can terminate accounts and what the result of this will be:

Here's a list of questions that can help you determine what to add in your own Terms and Conditions agreement:

• Can users create an account on your website or app?
• Can users create or publish content on your website or app?
• Is the content published by users available publicly?
• Can users send you copyright infringement notices?
• Is your website or app an ecommerce store?

How to Enforce Terms and Conditions Agreements

While creating and having a Terms and Conditions agreement is important, it's far more important to understand how you can make the Terms and Conditions enforceable.

You should always use clickwrap to get users to agree to your Terms and Conditions. Clickwrap is when you make your users take some action - typically clicking something - to show they're agreeing.

Here's how Equifax does this. Users cannot continue with creating an account until clicking the box that shows they agree to the Terms:

The legal page is simple and follows the design of The Guardian's website. But the agreement is lengthy and it has multiple clauses that are useful for The Guardian:

• Registration
• Termination of registration
• Use of material appearing on the Guardian Site
• Disclaimer of liability
• Third party advertising on the Guardian Site
• User content
• Apps
• Data protection
• Changes to these terms and conditions of use
• Governing law & jurisdiction (except for US users)
• Indemnification
• No waiver

The Terms and Conditions includes a short introduction that helps set the stage for the rest of the content.