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Terms of service

Last updated 9 September 2026

This is a template, not legal advice.

SmartChat is self-hosted, so this page describes how the software behaves rather than the terms of any particular deployment. Whoever operates this installation should have it reviewed and replaced before taking real customers.

1. What this covers

These terms cover your use of this SmartChat installation: the dashboard, the chat widget you place on your own websites, the help centre it publishes, and the API and webhooks it exposes.

2. Your account

You are responsible for who you invite and what permissions you give them. Permissions are enforced on our side on every request, but we cannot know that somebody should no longer have access — removing them is yours to do.

Keep your credentials to yourself. API keys are shown once and stored hashed; if one leaks, revoke it in the dashboard rather than asking us to.

3. What it costs

Nothing. There are no plans, no per-seat charge, no metered allowance and no payment screen. Every capability described on this site is available to every account.

The service is subject to the abuse limits in section 4 and to the rate limits the software applies, which exist to keep it working for everybody rather than to sell you a larger number.

If charging is ever introduced, existing accounts will be told by email before it takes effect, and this clause will be rewritten rather than quietly reinterpreted.

4. Acceptable use

Do not use this service to send unsolicited messages, to harass anybody, to host or distribute malware, or to collect data you have no lawful basis to collect. Do not attempt to reach another account's data — and if you find a way to, tell us; see the security address on the contact page.

5. Your content

Conversations, articles, tickets, contacts and files you or your visitors create remain yours. We store and process them to provide the service and for no other purpose: they are not used to train anything, and they are not sold or shared.

6. The AI assistant

Where your plan includes it, you may switch on an AI assistant that replies to visitors from the content you have published and the facts you have entered. Its replies are generated automatically, are labelled as such to the visitor, and may be wrong or incomplete; you are responsible for the content you give it and for reviewing what it says on your behalf. When our own model cannot answer, the reply may be generated by a third-party provider as described in the privacy policy. Do not enter anything confidential in the assistant's instructions or key facts: they are, by design, things the assistant may say to anyone.

7. Availability

We aim to keep the service running and to be honest when it is not. This template carries no uptime commitment; a deployment offering one should state it here.

8. Ending it

You can stop using it at any time. There is no self-serve close button in the product today, so write to the support address on the contact page and we will close or delete the account. Closing suspends rather than erases, so you can export first or come back.

We may suspend an account that breaches section 4, and will say why. Suspension is not deletion.

9. Changes

If these terms change in a way that affects you materially, we will tell you by email before the change takes effect rather than quietly updating this page.