How To Write Terms of Service

Terms are necessary to protect you and your business. But how do you write a professional Terms Of Service, and what should it include to be legally valid?

In this post, we’ll show you how to write Terms of Service step by step.

What are Terms of Service & When Do You Need Them?

Terms of Service – also known as Terms and Conditions, Terms of Use, End User License Agreement (EULA) – are a document that is meant to protect you, the business owner, by setting your rules. Terms of Service help you define how users can interact with your product or service in a legally binding way.

Terms and Conditions aren’t always mandatory.

They are if you’re running an e-commerce, because they often contain legally required information related to conditions of sale and disclosures on methods of payment, shipping, delivery, withdrawals, and cancellation conditions, etc.

However, it’s usually recommended having Terms of Service in place, whether you have a website, a blog or an app.
Terms of Service can help you protect your original content with copyright, and can also limit your responsibility in the event that the information you’ve shared was used in the wrong way, thanks to disclaimers and limitations of liability.

You’ll likely need to set Terms and Conditions when you:

• want to set the rules for user behavior (including comments) and state grounds for termination of accounts;
• allow your users to upload comments or content;
• have different user levels (e.g. registered vs non-registered);
• participate in affiliate programs;
• provide advice that can potentially cause harm if misused;
• would like to have some legally enforceable control over, and set rules about how your product, service or content may be used.

Of course, this list doesn’t cover all the possible scenarios, but it’s a good starting point.

3 Steps to Write Your Terms of Service

For your Terms of Service to be effective, they need to be written in a precise way.

You can create the perfect Terms of Service document for you and your business following these 3 simple steps.

Step 1: Identify yourself and define your needs

First, you need to clearly identify yourself and your business.
This step is important because Terms of Service are essentially a contract between you and your users, so you should be identifiable and reachable. You can find more information about this here.

Then, you should carefully define your needs, based on the type of business you’re running.
For instance, if you have an e-commerce, you’ll most likely need clauses that can help you manage payments, shipping and refunds. Instead, if you have a blog where you publish your original work, you’ll better add a copyright disclosure, to protect your content from misuse.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to select the right clauses.

Step 2: Set your rules

Terms and Conditions are meant to protect you. And you can do it by choosing the right clauses.

While the specific content of a Terms of Service document will vary based on your individual needs, this is what a basic Terms of Service document includes:

• disclaimers and limitation of liability clauses: disclaimers are useful because they limit your responsibility in the event that the information you’ve shared was used in the wrong way, while the limitations of liability define the conditions under which you may be held liable;
• copyright rules: copyright is essential if you share your original content. You can set the conditions under which your work can be shared or used;
• account creation, termination conditions, accepted behavior: these clauses are useful if you’re running a website that requires users to subscribe and create an account;
• law of governance: this allows you to set your primary law of governance and it informs the users about the law that applies to you. This can be useful in cases where you may be operating in a particular state or country that grants you favorable conditions and you’d like to ensure that the rules of your region apply, should you be challenged legally. Keep in mind, however, that these clauses cannot be used to circumvent applicable law (e.g. the GDPR, if it applies to you).

Step 3: Make the document easily accessible to users

Remember what we said in Step 1? Terms of Service are a contract between you and your users.

That’s why they need to be easily accessible to the users, they’re the other part of the agreement! We suggest making them readily available both at the site of any explicit agreement (such as on sign-up and account creation forms) and in the footer of your website or app.

iubenda’s Terms and Conditions Generator

Our Terms and Conditions Generator lets you easily generate and manage Terms and Conditions that are customizable from over 100 clauses, available in 10 languages, drafted by an international legal team and up to date with the main international legislations. The solution is optimized for blogs, eCommerce and even complex scenarios like marketplace, SaaS and affiliate marketing programs.

See also

• How To Add Copyright To Your Blog
• What is an EULA and how to generate one?
• How to Generate Terms and Conditions