How to Write Terms and Conditions (Step-by-Step Guide + Free Template)

This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Always consult a qualified lawyer before publishing binding Terms & Conditions.

Our Terms & Conditions Generator is a demo tool, not a substitute for a lawyer. It can help you understand the structure of typical clauses, but any final document should be reviewed by legal counsel.

With that said, you will get far more out of a lawyer's time (and spend less of it) if you arrive with a clear first draft. This guide shows you how to write terms and conditions step by step, which clauses to include, what changes for an app, and gives you a free outline to start from.

Terms and conditions (T&Cs) are the agreement between you and the people who use your website, app or service. They say what you provide, what users may and may not do, what happens when something goes wrong, and which rules apply to a dispute.

Most T&C pages follow a familiar pattern: introduction, eligibility, user obligations, limitations of liability, governing law, and contact details. The details depend heavily on your business model, jurisdiction, and risk profile. At a minimum they answer four questions:

• What users are allowed to do on your site/app.
• What they are explicitly forbidden to do.
• How disputes and refunds are handled.
• Which country's laws and courts apply.

In most places a general website is not legally required to have terms and conditions. They are still worth having: without them you have no agreed rules to point to when you need to remove abusive content, close an account, refuse a refund or answer a claim.

1. Describe what you actually offer. Write two or three plain sentences: who you are, what the product does, who it is for and whether you charge for it. Every clause that follows depends on this.
2. List what could go wrong. Chargebacks, abusive users, scraped content, downtime, someone relying on your content and losing money. Your terms should address the risks you really have, not a generic list.
3. Decide who you serve and where. Consumers or businesses? Which countries? Is there a minimum age? Consumer protection rules differ by country and often cannot be overridden by your terms.
4. Choose your clauses. Use the list in the next section and drop the ones that do not apply. A blog with no accounts does not need a subscription clause.
5. Draft in plain language. Short sentences, defined terms ("we", "you", "the Service"), numbered sections with clear headings. Terms that people can understand are easier to rely on than terms nobody could be expected to read.
6. Make sure the terms match the product. If the terms say refunds are available within 14 days, your checkout and support team must do the same.
7. Add the practical details: your legal name and contact details, a "last updated" date, and a link to your privacy policy.
8. Have a lawyer review the draft, especially if you take payments, host user content, or handle health, financial or children's data.
9. Publish them and collect agreement properly (see the clickwrap section below), then review them whenever the product changes.

If a blank page is the hard part, the free terms and conditions generator gives you a starting draft: enter your website name, URL, company name, country and a contact email, tick the features your site has (user accounts, user content, e-commerce, newsletter), and copy the result or download it as a text file. Treat the output as a demo template to edit, not a finished legal document.

These are the clauses most terms and conditions contain. For each one, the question in italics is what the clause needs to answer.

1. Acceptance of the terms

How does someone become bound by this document? State that using the service, creating an account or ticking the checkbox means the user agrees, and that they should not use the service if they do not.

2. Accounts and eligibility

Who may sign up, and who is responsible for the account? Cover the minimum age, the requirement to give accurate information, and that users are responsible for keeping their login details secure and for activity under their account.

3. Acceptable use

What is not allowed? Be specific: no illegal activity, no harassment, no spam, no scraping or reverse engineering, no attempts to break security, no reselling access without permission. This clause is what you point to when you remove content or suspend an account.

4. Payments, subscriptions and refunds

What does it cost, and when is money returned? Explain prices and taxes, billing dates, automatic renewal, how to cancel, what happens to access after cancellation and when refunds are given. Consumer law in many countries gives buyers rights you cannot remove, such as a withdrawal period for online purchases in the EU, so check this part with a lawyer.

5. Intellectual property

Who owns the site, software, text and brand? State that you (or your licensors) own them and that users receive a limited, revocable, non-transferable right to use the service for its intended purpose.

6. User content

What happens to what users upload? The usual approach is that users keep ownership and grant you a licence to host, display and process their content so the service can work. Add content rules, your right to remove content, and a way for people to report infringement.

7. Termination

How does the relationship end? Explain how users can close their account, when you may suspend or terminate access (for example for breaking the acceptable use rules), and what happens to their data and any prepaid fees afterwards.

8. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

What do you not promise, and how far does your responsibility go? A disclaimer typically says the service is provided "as is" without guarantees of uninterrupted availability. A limitation of liability clause caps or excludes certain types of damages. Courts in many jurisdictions limit how far these clauses can go, particularly against consumers, so this is the clause where professional review matters most.

9. Governing law and disputes

Which law applies, and where are disputes resolved? Name the country or state whose law governs the terms and the courts (or arbitration process) that handle disputes. Consumers may keep the protection of their home country's law regardless of what you write.

10. Changes to the terms

How will users find out about updates? Say that you may update the terms, how you will give notice (email, in-app notice, banner) and when changes take effect. Quietly editing the page is a weak way to bind existing users to new terms.

11. Contact information

How can users reach you? Give your legal name, an email address and, where the law requires it, a postal address.

Depending on your product you may also need clauses on third-party links and services, indemnification, service levels or export restrictions. A lawyer can tell you which apply.

Terms and conditions for a mobile app, often called an end-user licence agreement (EULA) or terms of use, include everything above plus several app-specific points.

• Licence to use the app. Users do not buy the software; you grant a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to install and use it on devices they own or control.
• App store rules. Apple and Google have their own developer agreements and review guidelines. Apple provides a standard EULA that applies to apps by default, and lets developers supply a custom one that meets its minimum terms. The stores are not a party to your agreement with users, and their requirements change, so read the current versions before you submit.
• In-app purchases and subscriptions. Purchases made through an app store are billed by the store, and refunds are generally handled under the store's own policy. Your terms should say what the user gets, how renewal works and where to manage or cancel a subscription (usually in the store account settings).
• Permissions and data. List what the app accesses (camera, location, contacts, notifications) and why, and link to the privacy policy for the details. Both major app stores expect a privacy policy for apps that handle personal data.
• User-generated content. If users can post content, the stores expect moderation features such as reporting and blocking. Your terms should state that objectionable content and abusive behaviour are not tolerated and can lead to removal.
• Updates and support. Say that the app may update automatically, that features can change, which OS versions you support, and that you may stop supporting old versions.
• Third-party services. Mention the SDKs and services the app depends on (maps, payments, sign-in, analytics) and that their own terms may apply.

Place a link to the terms in three places: the sign-up or onboarding screen, the in-app settings menu and the app store listing.

The core clauses stay the same; the emphasis shifts with the business model.

Terms and conditions, terms of service and terms of use are, in practice, three names for the same kind of document. "Terms of service" is common for online services and SaaS, "terms of use" for websites and apps, and "terms and conditions" is used for all of them and for sales. Pick one name and use it consistently.

A privacy policy is a different document with a different job. It explains what personal data you collect, why, how long you keep it, who you share it with and what rights people have. Privacy laws in many places require one whenever you collect personal data, which includes analytics, contact forms and newsletter sign-ups. Keep it separate and link to it from your terms.

An EULA is a licence for software that is installed on a device. Many apps combine it with their terms of use in one document.

Terms only help if you can show that the user had a fair chance to read them and agreed. There are two common approaches:

• Clickwrap: the user takes a clear action, such as ticking an unticked box or pressing a button labelled "I agree to the Terms and Conditions", with the terms linked right next to it.
• Browsewrap: the terms sit behind a footer link and say that using the site means you accept them. No action is required.

Courts have generally been more willing to enforce clickwrap agreements than browsewrap ones, because there is evidence the user saw and accepted the terms. For anything involving an account or a payment, use clickwrap.

Practical checklist:

• Link the terms in the site footer and in the app's settings menu.
• Show the link at sign-up and at checkout, next to the button or checkbox.
• Do not pre-tick the checkbox.
• Record who accepted, when, and which version of the terms.
• Keep old versions so you can show what applied on a given date.
• Make the page readable on a phone, with headings and normal-sized text.

• Copying another company's terms. They describe someone else's product and law, and the text itself is usually protected by copyright.
• Leaving template placeholders in. "[Company Name]" in a live document tells everyone it was never checked.
• Terms that contradict the product. A no-refund clause next to a "30-day money-back guarantee" banner helps nobody.
• Overreaching clauses. Excluding all liability or reserving the right to do anything at any time may be unenforceable and can undermine trust.
• Legalese nobody can read. Paste your draft into the Readability Analyzer and simplify the sentences that score worst.
• Mixing the privacy policy into the terms. Keep them as two documents.
• No "last updated" date and no process for telling users about changes.
• Hiding the terms. A link that is hard to find is hard to rely on.
• Writing them once and forgetting them. New pricing, features or markets usually mean the terms need an update.

Use this outline as a skeleton. Keep the sections that apply to you, delete the rest, and write each clause in your own words. It is a structural guide for a first draft, not a ready-to-publish legal document.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Last updated: [date]

1.  Introduction and acceptance
    - Who we are: [legal name, address, contact]
    - What these terms cover: [website / app / service]
    - How you accept them (e.g. creating an account, ticking the box)

2.  Eligibility and accounts
    - Minimum age and who may use the service
    - Account registration, accurate information, password security

3.  The service
    - What we provide, and what we do not
    - Availability, maintenance and changes to features

4.  Acceptable use
    - What you may do
    - What you must not do (list)

5.  Payments, subscriptions and refunds   [if you charge money]
    - Prices, taxes, billing cycle, renewals
    - Cancellation and refund rules

6.  Intellectual property
    - What we own
    - The licence we give you to use it

7.  Your content   [if users can post or upload]
    - You keep ownership; the licence you give us
    - Content rules, moderation and removal

8.  Privacy
    - Link to the Privacy Policy

9.  Third-party services and links

10. Termination and suspension
    - How you can close your account
    - When we can suspend or end access, and what happens next

11. Disclaimers

12. Limitation of liability

13. Governing law and disputes

14. Changes to these terms
    - How and when we notify you

15. Contact
    - [email / address]

Prefer to start from filled-in text? The free terms and conditions generator produces a demo draft based on your site's details that you can copy, edit and take to a lawyer for review. If you are putting the rest of a new site together at the same time, the SEO checklist for new websites covers the technical side of launch.