The short answer: Despite how simple they appear, terms and conditions are meant to meet incredibly complex and highly specific scenarios. Because each terms and conditions document is a legally binding contract that is meant to protect you, the business owner, it’s imperative that the document matches your specific business processes, model, and remains up-to-date with the various laws referenced in its contents. Templates simply cannot do this, therefore, we strongly suggest that you avoid using templates.
The contents of a terms and conditions document typically spans multiple laws (everything from consumer law to copyright law). They should allow you to set your rules for user behavior, including appropriate disclaimers for any misuse of your product or service. This is trickier than it seems as even businesses with the same model may have different processes, needs, and user behavior. Let’s look at some examples to better illustrate this.
First, let’s look at how business model influences the content of your terms and conditions by exploring a few questions.
These are some of the questions you should ask yourself when evaluating your business model:
Not only do each one of these business models have different needs, but specific or various laws may apply depending on which model you use. For example, under many countries’ laws, consumers have certain mandatory rights that you’re legally required to disclose. As you can imagine, where multiple laws and regulations are concerned, it’s best to leave the drafting to legal experts.
Business processes can vary widely even within the same general business model.
For example, two eCommerce stores, selling the exact same products can have different:
Needless to say, your actual business processes heavily determine how users interact with your service, and by effect, the rights you grant, rules you implement and the disclaimers that you make.
Lastly, considering that terms and conditions are meant to protect you, the business owner, it’s critically important that you set rules specific to your actual needs. Let’s take a look at some popular situations in which terms and conditions are used to set legally binding rules.
Businesses often choose to set explicit rules where:
As you can imagine, business needs are entirely individual and evolve with time.
Considering the above, a more accurate way to rephrase the original question would be: Should I just use a template for the only legally binding agreement between myself and my users that allows me to set rules specific to my business processes and to protect my business from liabilities? We strongly suggest that you do not.
A terms and conditions document is more than just a formality, it is a valuable tool that protects you as a business owner.
Our Terms & Conditions generator lets you to easily generate and manage Terms and Conditions that are professional, customizable from over 100 clauses, drafted by an international legal team, available in 8 languages, and up to date with the main international legislations. It is powerful, precise, and capable of handling even the most complex, individual scenarios and customization needs.
It comes with:
The solution is optimized for everything from e-commerce, blogs, and apps, to complex scenarios like marketplace and, SaaS.
Getting started is easy. Simply create a free account, activate the Terms and Conditions (requires 1 Ultra license) within the dashboard and start generating.
For a list of the full features of the Terms and Conditions Generator, click here or read the guide here.
