Terms of Service

01The agreement

StartupAid runs the website startupaid.org, the dashboard, the apps and the API.

These terms are the agreement between you and StartupAid (“we”, “us”) for using startupaid.org, the dashboard, the apps, the API, the SDKs, the SMTP relay, the WordPress plugin and the connector for AI assistants (together, “the service”). By creating an account or using the service you accept them.

If you use the service for a company or other organisation, you accept these terms for it and confirm you are allowed to. “You” then means that organisation.

Our Privacy Policy at /privacy explains how we handle personal data. When you put other people’s personal data through the service, the Data Processing Agreement at /dpa also applies and is part of these terms. If we have signed a separate agreement or order with you, it wins on any point where it differs from these terms.

02Who can use the service

You must be at least 18.

Most of our customers are businesses, and individuals can sign up too. In these terms a “consumer” is an individual using the service wholly or mainly for purposes outside their trade, business, craft or profession. If you use the service for your work, including as a sole trader, you are a “business customer”.

Some sections treat consumers differently. Where the law of the country you live in gives consumers rights that an agreement cannot take away, those rights apply whatever these terms say.

03Your account

• Give accurate details, including the business name and address for your invoices, and keep them up to date.
• Keep your password, two-step codes and API keys secret. You are responsible for what is done through your account, including by teammates you invite, by software that uses your API keys and by AI assistants you connect.
• Give teammates only the roles they need, and remove anyone who should no longer have access.
• Tell us straight away if you think someone else has got into your account.

04Using the service through an AI assistant

You can connect the service to an AI assistant, such as Claude, through our connector. You sign in and approve the access. The assistant can then act on your account in the same way as an API key: for example it can send email and push notifications, schedule posts, make videos and images, spend AI credits and run loyalty programmes.

Anything the assistant does on your account counts as done by you. The assistant is run by another company under its own terms, and it can misunderstand what you ask. Check what you ask it to do, especially anything that sends messages, posts in public or spends credits.

You can withdraw an assistant’s access at any time by revoking its key on the API Keys page.

05Free plans and the free trial

Some products have a free plan, and every account starts on the Creative free plan. Free plans have the limits shown on the pricing page. We may change or end a free plan, and we will tell you in the dashboard or by email before we do.

Each account can start one 14-day free trial of the products shown when you start it. No card is needed and we do not charge for the trial. Phone numbers for the AI Receptionist are not included. When the trial ends, the products it unlocked stop unless you choose a plan.

06Paid plans and payment

How you pay

• In the United Kingdom you see prices in pounds and pay by card through Stripe. VAT at 20% is added at checkout.
• In Nigeria you see prices in naira and pay through Paystack, by card, bank transfer or USSD. Naira prices are worked out from our own exchange rate, which we update during the day, so the naira price of the same plan can change from day to day.
• Everywhere else you see prices in US dollars and pay by card through Stripe.

We work out your country from where you are browsing. Once your account has paid through Stripe in one currency, its later Stripe payments stay in that currency. Where we must charge VAT or another tax, we add it and show it at checkout.

Automatic renewal

Paid plans are billed in advance, monthly or yearly, and renew automatically at the end of each period until you cancel. By choosing a paid plan you authorise us to take each renewal payment, through Stripe or Paystack, from the card you paid with.

• Plans paid through Stripe renew on your card at your plan’s price. A plan bought in pounds stays at the pound price it started at, unless we change the plan’s price as described below.
• Naira plans paid by card renew on that card at the naira price on the day of renewal.
• If you paid in naira by bank transfer or USSD there is no card to charge. You renew by paying from the Billing page or from the link in our reminder email.

We email you a reminder about three days before each renewal, with the amount and a link to manage or pay for your plan. For naira plans the amount in the reminder is the price on the day it is sent, and the amount charged is the price on the renewal day. A plan paid by card still renews if the reminder does not reach you, so keep your email address up to date.

If a payment fails

We tell you by email. For a naira plan paid by card, we try the card up to three times over a five-day grace period and the plan keeps working during that time. If no payment has gone through by the end of it, the plan stops. For a plan paid through Stripe, we may pause the paid features until the payment is made.

Upgrading, downgrading and cancelling

• You can move to a bigger plan at any time. It starts straight away, and you pay the new price less the unused part of what you paid for the old plan. If you pay through Stripe, we show you the amount before you confirm and then charge the card you already use. If you pay in naira, you pay the difference at checkout.
• Moving to a smaller plan is not available at the moment.
• You can cancel at any time from the Billing page. Your plan then runs to the end of the period you have paid for and stops. We do not refund the rest of that period, except as set out under “Refunds and your right to cancel”.

Price changes

We may change the price of a plan. If the price of a plan you are on goes up, we will tell you at least 30 days before the renewal at which the new price first applies, and you can cancel before then. This notice does not apply to the daily movement of naira prices with our exchange rate, which is explained above.

Invoices

Invoices and receipts are on the Billing page, made out to the business name and address you give us.

07AI credits

• AI features are paid for with AI credits. Creative plans, including the free plan, give you a monthly allowance. The allowance is for that month and does not carry over, and it is used before any credits you bought.
• You can buy more credits at any time. Credits you buy do not expire while your account is open.
• The credit price of each generation is shown before you start it, and the credits are taken when you start. Credit prices for models and features can change. The price that applies is the one shown when you start.
• If a generation fails, its credits are returned automatically. A generation that finishes is not a failure because the result is not what you hoped for.
• AI Receptionist replies and call minutes beyond your plan are also paid for in credits.
• Credits are a way to pay for the service. They have no cash value and cannot be exchanged for money. They cannot be sold or transferred, except through the gift feature.

Gifts, promo codes and referrals

• You can send credits you bought, or received as a gift, to someone else as a code or by email. Monthly allowances and referral rewards cannot be gifted. If a gift is not claimed within 90 days, the credits go back to the sender. You can also cancel a gift that has not been claimed.
• We may issue promo codes that add credits. Each code can have its own expiry date and conditions.
• When someone signs up with your referral link and verifies their email, you and they may receive credits. We set the amounts and the limits on how many referrals are rewarded, and we can change them at any time. A change does not affect a reward already paid.
• Referrals that look like self-referral or abuse, or that go over our limits, are held for review, and we may refuse them.
• We may remove credits that were gained by breaking these terms, for example through fake accounts or self-referral, and credits added to an account by mistake.

08Refunds and your right to cancel

Consumers in the UK and the EU

• You can cancel a purchase within 14 days without giving a reason. The 14 days start on the day you buy a plan or buy credits.
• If you ask us to start a plan straight away and then cancel within the 14 days, we refund what you paid less a fair amount for the service you had before you told us.
• When you buy credits, you ask us to add them to your account at once. Once you start a generation with them, you lose the right to cancel that purchase, provided you agreed to this when you bought them. Until then, you can cancel and get back the full price.
• To cancel, email support@startupaid.org from your account email and say what you want to cancel. We refund you within 14 days of hearing from you, in the way you paid.

Your other legal rights

If you are a consumer, wherever you live, you also have the rights your local consumer law gives you. In the UK, for example, the service must be provided with reasonable care and skill, and digital content must be as described, fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality. If it is not, you may be entitled to have it put right, or to a price reduction or a refund. Nothing in these terms affects those rights.

Everyone else, and other cases

• Otherwise, payments are not refundable once a paid period has started or credits have been added. If we failed to provide what you paid for, or charged you by mistake, write to us and we will put it right.
• If we close your account, or stop a product you pay for, and it is not because you broke these terms, we refund the unused part of any period you paid for in advance and the credits you bought and had not used.

09Your content and what the AI makes

What you upload stays yours. As between you and us, what the AI makes for you is yours as well, and you can use it for any lawful purpose, including commercially.

You give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, copy, process, adapt and send your content and outputs, only as needed to provide the service to you, keep it secure and meet our legal duties. Where you make something public through the service, such as a post or a Top Fans board, the licence also covers showing it there. The licence ends when you delete the content or your account closes, apart from copies the law requires us to keep.

We do not use your content, outputs, faces or voices to train AI models. To make a result we send your prompt and any files you attach to the supplier that runs the model you chose. Our suppliers are listed in the Privacy Policy.

What AI output is like

• AI can be wrong. Scripts, replies, translations, transcripts and summaries can contain mistakes, and pictures and video can show things that are not real. Check what it produces before you rely on it or publish it.
• AI output is not unique. Other people may get similar results, and output can by chance look or sound like existing works, people, logos or brands. Before you use it commercially, check that it does not copy someone else’s work or trade mark.
• In some countries the law does not protect AI output in the way it protects work made by a person, so you may not be able to stop others copying it.
• A model may refuse to make some things, for example from photos of real people.

Saying that content is AI-made

You are responsible for telling people that content was made or changed by AI wherever a network, a platform or the law requires it. For example, YouTube asks creators to disclose realistic altered or synthetic content, other networks have their own labelling rules, and in the EU the AI Act requires anyone who publishes a deepfake to make clear that it was made or changed by AI. Do not remove or hide any watermark or content credentials a supplier adds to the output.

10Real people’s faces and voices

• You may make an avatar of a real person only from photos of yourself, or of someone who has given you permission. When you make one, you confirm that permission in the dashboard and we record the date. Keep a record of the person’s permission, because we may ask to see it.
• Voice cloning needs a recording of the speaker that includes a spoken statement agreeing to it. Only clone the voice of the person who makes that statement.
• If a person withdraws their permission, delete their avatar or voice and stop using what you made with it, as far as you can.
• Do not use an avatar or a voice to mislead anyone about who is speaking, or about what a real person said or did.

The same rules apply to the cast of a Movie Maker film, presenters in Talking video, Slides to Video and Voice Swap (whichever model makes them, StartVid included), the person you put into a clip with Recast, and anyone who appears or is heard in what you upload. You must also have the rights to every screenplay, deck, recording, picture and piece of music you upload.

11Posting to social networks for you

When you connect an account on X, LinkedIn, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok, you authorise us to publish posts and replies through it for you, and to read what we need to show results and rank your fans. The access lasts until you disconnect the account.

Posts go out when you publish them or at the time you schedule, including posts drafted by the AI Planner and videos you set to post when they finish.

If you turn on auto-reply on X, replies go out to people who mention you without anyone reviewing them first. Each reply is either your fixed message or one the AI writes from your brand’s details. The AI may decide not to answer a mention, for example one that needs a person, and we email those to you instead.

Fan of the week makes a thank-you video and captions for you to review. Nothing is posted until you approve it. Where a network does not let us tag fans, we tell you what to do by hand.

You are responsible for everything posted through your connected accounts, including automatic replies. You must also follow each network’s terms and rules, including its rules on automation, spam, promotions and paid partnerships.

A network can change or withdraw its features, limit what we can post, or suspend your account with it. We are not responsible for what a network does.

12Top Fans and prizes

A Top Fans board ranks the people who comment on, reply to and mention your posts, and shows them on a public page under your brand. If you choose, the board is also listed in our public Top Fans market. You decide what the board shows and which prizes it offers.

You are the promoter of any prize, reward or competition you run on a board. We only provide the tools. You are responsible for:

• Writing and publishing clear rules, including who can take part, how scores are counted, how long a season runs, what each prize is and how winners are decided.
• Running it fairly and giving the prizes you promise.
• Meeting the law on promotions where you and your fans are, including any need to register a promotion or have it approved, and any tax on prizes.
• Following each network’s rules for promotions. Many networks do not allow you to require people to share a post or tag friends to take part.
• Having a lawful basis to show fans’ names, handles and pictures on a public page, and dealing with any request a fan makes about it.

Boards rank people by what they do. Do not add any element of chance, such as a draw or a randomly chosen winner, and do not charge people to take part.

AI credit prizes are paid from credits you bought or were given, as a gift code sent to the fan. To use them, the fan needs a StartupAid account. If you turn on automatic awards, a prize is paid without your review once a fan proves a handle is theirs by posting a one-time code from it and their score reaches the prize, up to the daily limit you set. You are responsible for prizes paid this way.

13AI Receptionist

The AI Receptionist answers your website chat and, on a paid plan, your phone calls. It uses AI to talk to people from the facts and instructions you give it. It takes messages, books appointments and hands over to a person when it should or when it cannot carry on.

It can make mistakes. It may misunderstand someone, give a wrong answer, or fail to hand over or book correctly. Give it accurate facts, keep an eye on the inbox and your bookings, and do not use it to give advice where a mistake could cause harm, such as medical, legal or financial advice.

It is not an emergency service

The AI Receptionist and our phone numbers cannot call or connect anyone to emergency services, such as 999, 112 or 911. They may fail to answer, understand or pass on an urgent call. Do not use them for any line that people may rely on in an emergency, and make sure your callers know how to get emergency help.

Telling callers and visitors

You are responsible for telling people that they are talking to an AI, wherever the law requires it or they might otherwise think they are talking to a person. The simplest way is to say so in the greeting.

Calls the AI answers are written out as they happen, and voicemails are recorded and written out. We keep call and chat transcripts and voicemail recordings in your account. Many places require you to tell callers that a call is recorded or transcribed, and some US states require the consent of everyone on the call. You are responsible for giving that notice and getting any consent the law requires, for example in your greeting.

Phone numbers

• Phone numbers come with a paid AI Receptionist plan. We rent each number from a carrier for you. It stays subject to the carrier’s rules and the rules of the country it belongs to, and you do not own it.
• UK numbers need your business to be verified. You must give true details and documents, and we pass them to the carrier for that purpose.
• We may ask for other documents to register a number. A number can be withdrawn if those rules are not met, if your plan ends or goes unpaid, or if the number is used to break these terms. A withdrawn number may be given to someone else.
• If you want to move a number to another provider, ask us before your plan ends. Whether that is possible depends on the carrier and the country.
• Each number has limits you set, such as the longest call and the most AI minutes in a day. When a limit is reached, or your credits run out, calls go to a person or to voicemail.

14Email and outreach

You may only email people you have a lawful right to contact. For marketing email that usually means their consent, or an existing customer relationship where the law allows it. You are the sender, and you must follow the law where you and your recipients are. That includes the UK’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations and UK GDPR, the EU’s equivalent rules, the US CAN-SPAM Act and the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023.

Every marketing email must say who it is from and include a working way to unsubscribe, plus a postal address where the law requires one. Honour every unsubscribe promptly, and do not send to bought or rented lists.

AI Prospecting

AI Prospecting finds businesses from public sources and drafts cold email to them. It is for business-to-business email only. It must be sent from a separate domain set aside for outreach, and we limit how much it can send each day.

Cold email is restricted in many places. In the UK, for example, you may email staff at a company without their consent, but sole traders and some partnerships must have agreed first, and some EU countries require consent for all business email. You must check the rules for each recipient’s country, give people the privacy information the law requires, and stop as soon as someone objects.

Sending health

To protect delivery for every customer, we watch bounces and complaints. If they rise too high we may pause your marketing sends, hold messages back or limit your sending until the cause is fixed, and we tell you why.

15Other tools

• WhatsApp codes: send one-time codes only to people who have asked for one, for example to sign in or confirm a phone number, and never use them for marketing. Meta’s WhatsApp rules apply.
• Push notifications: you use your own Apple and Google keys. You are responsible for having people’s permission to notify them and for following Apple’s and Google’s rules.
• Deep links: you are responsible for where your links lead and for what your app does with the data they carry.
• Currency rates are for information only and are not financial advice. They come from outside sources and can be delayed or wrong, so check a rate before you rely on it for a payment or a price. If you set your own rates or margins, you are responsible for what you charge your customers.
• Loyalty programmes you run on the service are yours. You set and publish the rules, decide what points are worth, give the rewards and deal with your members. Points have no cash value with us. The loyalty tools have no games of chance, and you must not add one.
• Brands: a verified badge means only that the details matched the Companies House record when we checked. It is not an endorsement. You are responsible for the facts in a brand profile and for having the right to use its name and logo.

16What you must not do

Messages and calls

• Send spam. You may only email, message or call people who have agreed to hear from you or whom the law otherwise lets you contact, and you must honour every unsubscribe.
• Send cold outreach from your main domain.
• Hide who a message is from, or send phishing, scams or malware.
• Use a phone number in a way that the law or the carrier’s rules forbid, or for any line people may rely on in an emergency.

AI content

• Make an avatar or voice of a real person without their permission, or use one to mislead people about who is speaking.
• Make sexual content of real people, any sexual content involving anyone under 18, or content meant to harass, threaten, defame or defraud.
• Make false content about elections, public health or emergencies that is presented as real.
• Make content that infringes someone else’s copyright, trade marks or other rights, or upload material you have no right to use.
• Try to get round a model’s safety filters or ours.

The service itself

• Break the law, or the rules of a network you post to through us.
• Get round limits, share an account to avoid paying, or resell the service without our written agreement.
• Open extra accounts to get more trials, referral rewards or prizes.
• Probe or attack the service. If you have found a weakness, report it as described at /security.

17What we may do

We do not check content before it is sent or posted, and we have no duty to watch it. To protect people, other customers and the service, we may:

• Remove or block content that breaks these terms or the law.
• Hold messages back or pause sending from your account, for example when bounces or complaints rise.
• Hide a Top Fans board from the market, or take it down.
• Suspend part or all of your account.

We tell you what we did and why, unless the law prevents it. Where we can, we tell you first and give you a chance to put things right. When the risk is serious or urgent, we act first.

18Personal data

Our Privacy Policy explains how we use your own personal data. When you put other people’s data through the service, such as contacts, callers, fans or loyalty members, you are the controller of it and we process it for you under the Data Processing Agreement.

You are responsible for having a lawful basis for that data, for telling people how you use it and for answering their requests, with our help as that agreement describes. Do not use the service to collect special categories of data, such as health information, unless we have agreed it in writing.

19Other companies’ services

Parts of the service run on other companies’ systems, and some features connect to accounts you hold elsewhere. Their terms apply to your use of those accounts. By posting to YouTube through us you agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service at youtube.com/t/terms.

We rely on outside suppliers for AI models, payments, phone lines and hosting. They are named in our Privacy Policy. If a supplier changes or withdraws a model or feature, we may have to change or withdraw it too.

20Availability and changes

We work to keep the service running but do not promise it will never be interrupted, unless we have agreed a service level with you in writing. AI models, prices per generation and features change over time. We may add, change or retire them, and we will give notice before removing something you rely on where we can.

21Ending the agreement

You can cancel your plans and ask us to close your account at any time.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, puts others at risk or stays unpaid, and we will tell you why unless the law prevents it. We may also stop the service, or a product, for everyone by giving at least 30 days’ notice.

When an account is closed, your data is deleted as the Privacy Policy describes, so download anything you want to keep first. Unused credits and the rest of a paid period are not refunded, except as set out under “Refunds and your right to cancel”.

Anything you owe us, and the sections on responsibility, liability and disputes, continue after the agreement ends.

22Our responsibility to you

For everyone

• Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability that the law does not allow us to limit or exclude, such as liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.
• We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as a failure of the internet, a carrier, a payment provider or an AI supplier.
• We are not responsible for what a social network, carrier, payment provider or AI assistant does, or for content that you or the people you deal with create or send.

If you are a business customer

• The service is provided as it is. As far as the law allows, we give no promises beyond those in these terms. In particular, we do not promise that AI output will be accurate, original or fit for a particular purpose, that every message will be delivered, or that every call will be answered.
• We are not liable for loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or data, or for any indirect or consequential loss.
• Our total liability to you for all claims arising in any 12 months is limited to the greater of what you paid us in those 12 months and US$100, or the same amount in the currency you pay in.

If you are a consumer

We are responsible for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for loss that was not foreseeable when you accepted these terms, or for business losses, because a consumer uses the service for private purposes. Your legal rights described under “Refunds and your right to cancel” are not affected.

23Your responsibility to us

If you are a business customer and someone brings a claim against us because of content you uploaded, sent, posted or generated, a promotion you ran, the way you handled calls or messages, or your breach of these terms or the law, you will cover our reasonable losses and costs from that claim, including reasonable legal fees. We will tell you about the claim promptly, let you take part in dealing with it, and not settle it without first talking to you.

If you are a consumer, you are responsible for loss you cause us by breaking these terms, as the law provides.

24Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. For a change that matters we will tell you by email or in the dashboard at least 30 days before it takes effect. If the law makes us change something sooner, we will give as much notice as we can.

If you keep using the service after a change takes effect, you accept the new terms. If you do not accept them, you can close your account before then. If you are a consumer and a change is to your disadvantage, you can end a plan paid for in advance and we will refund the unused part of it.

25General

• These terms, with the documents they mention, are the whole agreement between us about the service.
• We may transfer this agreement to a business that takes over the service, and we will tell you if we do. You may transfer it only with our written agreement.
• If a court decides that part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we do not enforce a right straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• Nobody else has rights under these terms, apart from a business we transfer them to.
• We send notices to the email address on your account or show them in the dashboard.

26Contact

Questions about these terms, notices to us and complaints: support@startupaid.org. If you have a complaint, tell us what happened and we will try to put it right.