Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are a contract between you (the “Customer”, “you”) and the operator of TradeWaaS (“TradeWaaS”, “we”, “us”). By signing up for or using the TradeWaaS service, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you don’t agree, don’t use the service.

1. Parties & agreement

The TradeWaaS service is operated by [TBD — set LEGAL_NAME in .env] (ABN [TBD — set LEGAL_ABN in .env]), an Australian sole trader. Our registered business address is [TBD — set LEGAL_ADDRESS in .env]. You can reach us at admin@tradewaas.com.au.

These Terms apply to every customer of TradeWaaS, on every plan, from the day you sign up until your subscription ends and your data is removed under our retention policy.

2. What TradeWaaS provides

TradeWaaS is a Website-as-a-Service platform for Australian tradies. We provide:

• A hosted website rendered from one of our templates, populated with details you provide and content generated by our AI assistant from your inputs.
• A customer dashboard where you can edit your business details, services, gallery, contact details, and other content.
• A subdomain at yourname.tradewaas.com.au, or the option to connect a custom domain you own.
• Hosting on infrastructure we manage, on commercially reasonable terms.
• Optional features described on the pricing page in effect when you sign up.

We don’t guarantee any particular search-engine ranking, lead volume, conversion rate, or business outcome. TradeWaaS is a website-hosting service, not a marketing or lead-generation service.

3. Your account

To use TradeWaaS you must:

• Be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding contract under Australian law.
• Provide accurate, current, and complete information during signup and keep it up to date.
• Be the holder of any trade licence or qualification you claim on your site (e.g. electrical licence, plumbing licence). You are solely responsible for the accuracy of every licence number, certification, or membership badge displayed on your site.
• Keep your account password secure and not share it with anyone else.
• Notify us promptly at admin@tradewaas.com.au if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.

You are responsible for all activity on your account, whether or not you authorised it, unless caused by our negligence.

4. Fees, billing & auto-renewal

TradeWaaS is sold as a single plan: a one-time setup fee plus a recurring monthly subscription. The fees in effect at the time you sign up are shown on the pricing page and confirmed at checkout.

All fees are in Australian dollars and exclude GST, unless stated otherwise at checkout.

Setup fee. The setup fee is charged at signup and covers the one-time generation and provisioning of your site. Because we begin work on your site immediately at signup (the site is generated within minutes), the setup fee is non-refundable, subject to your rights under the Australian Consumer Law (see section 13).

Subscription fee. Your monthly subscription renews automatically on the same day each month until you cancel. We use Stripe to process payments. By signing up you authorise us, through Stripe, to charge your nominated payment method for each recurring billing cycle.

Failed payments. If a payment fails, we’ll retry it for a reasonable period. If we can’t collect the fee, we may suspend your site until payment succeeds. If we still can’t collect after that, we may terminate your subscription under section 12.

Price changes. We may change our prices. If we change yours, we’ll give you at least 30 days’ notice by email before the new price applies. If you don’t want to accept the new price, you can cancel before it takes effect.

5. Refunds & cancellation

Our refund policy is published separately at /legal/refund and forms part of these Terms. In summary:

• The setup fee is non-refundable once we have begun work on your site.
• You can cancel your monthly subscription at any time from your dashboard. We don’t refund the current month, and your site stays live until the end of the period you have paid for.
• Nothing in this clause limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law — see section 13.

6. Your content & intellectual property

You own your content. Anything you upload or supply (business name, photos, services, descriptions, customer logos, etc.) remains yours. By using TradeWaaS, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, copy, transmit, display, and process that content as needed to provide the service to you and your site visitors.

You warrant that your content is yours to use. You confirm that you own or have a licence to all content you provide, and that none of it infringes any third party’s copyright, trade mark, privacy, or other rights.

We own the platform. All TradeWaaS templates, theme code, site-generation logic, design system, brand assets, and software are owned by us (or our licensors) and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Your subscription gives you a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use them to render your site while your subscription is active. When your subscription ends, that licence ends with it.

You may not copy, modify, reverse-engineer, resell, or sub-licence the TradeWaaS templates or platform code outside of using the service itself.

7. Your obligations

You agree that you will:

• Provide accurate information about your business, including any trade licences, qualifications, certifications, and memberships you claim.
• Not publish fake reviews or testimonials. Publishing fabricated, bought, or otherwise misleading reviews about your business is unlawful under the Australian Consumer Law (and the ACCC has been pursuing it actively). Every testimonial on your TradeWaaS site must be from a real customer who gave it freely. We may remove any testimonial we have reason to believe is fake and may suspend your account if you continue to publish them.
• Comply with all laws that apply to your trade in your state or territory, including licensing, consumer protection, work health and safety, and tax obligations.
• Keep your contact details current so we can reach you about your account.
• Pay your fees on time.

8. Acceptable use

You agree not to use TradeWaaS to:

• Publish unlawful, deceptive, defamatory, harassing, or discriminatory content.
• Publish content that infringes any third party’s copyright, trade mark, or other intellectual property rights.
• Impersonate another tradesperson, business, brand, or person.
• Distribute malware, run phishing campaigns, or otherwise compromise the security of others.
• Send spam through any contact form, email forwarder, or other communication channel we provide.
• Scrape, crawl, or otherwise extract bulk data from the platform beyond your own site.
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to other customers’ data or sites, our systems, or the underlying infrastructure.
• Resell the TradeWaaS service or build a competing service using our templates or platform.

We may remove content or suspend your account if we reasonably believe you are breaching this section. Where we can do so safely, we’ll tell you what is wrong and give you a chance to fix it before we act.

9. AI-generated content

Parts of your initial site — including descriptions, taglines, service write-ups, and starter copy — are generated by an AI model using inputs you provide in the signup wizard. You should review every piece of generated content before publishing it. We don’t warrant that generated content is accurate, complete, or fit for your specific circumstances.

You are responsible for the accuracy of everything on your published site. Section 7 applies to AI-generated content the same as to anything else — in particular, AI-generated testimonials, reviews, or claimed credentials are not allowed under any circumstance.

10. Service availability

We use commercially reasonable efforts to keep TradeWaaS available, but we don’t guarantee uninterrupted access. Planned maintenance, third-party outages, network issues, security incidents, force majeure events, and other circumstances outside our reasonable control may cause downtime. We don’t offer a service-level agreement (SLA) with credits or uptime guarantees at this time.

If a sustained outage materially affects your ability to use the service, your remedies are set out in section 13.

11. Third-party services

TradeWaaS depends on third-party services that we don’t control. These currently include:

• Stripe — payment processing. Your payment details are handled by Stripe under their terms and privacy policy. We never see or store your full card number.
• Google Gemini — AI generation. Inputs you provide in the signup wizard are sent to Google for processing.
• Hetzner — hosting infrastructure (Singapore region).
• Let’s Encrypt — TLS certificates for HTTPS.
• ImprovMX — operator email forwarding.

Outages, errors, or policy changes from any of these providers can affect TradeWaaS. We aren’t liable for failures of third-party services beyond the limits set in section 14.

12. Suspension & termination

You can cancel at any time from the billing section of your dashboard. The cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period; your site stays live until then.

We can suspend your site or terminate your subscription if:

• You materially breach these Terms, including the acceptable-use section, and don’t fix the breach within a reasonable period after we ask you to.
• We can’t collect your fees after reasonable retry attempts.
• We’re required to by law or by a court order.
• Your continued use of the service exposes us or other customers to material legal, security, or reputational risk.

Where we suspend or terminate, we’ll tell you why unless we’re prevented from doing so by law or by a real risk that telling you would make things worse (e.g. active security threats).

After termination, your data is retained and deleted under our Privacy Policy.

13. Australian Consumer Law

14. Limitation of liability

Subject to section 13, and to the maximum extent permitted by law:

• The TradeWaaS service is provided “as is” and “as available”. We don’t warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure against every threat, or that it will meet any business outcome.
• We aren’t liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, punitive, or exemplary damages, or for any loss of profit, revenue, goodwill, data, or business opportunity, even if we’ve been advised of the possibility.
• Our total aggregate liability to you under or in connection with these Terms in any 12-month period is limited to the total amount you have paid us for the service in that 12-month period.
• Where the ACL applies and the relevant good or service is not of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic, or household use, our liability for breach of a consumer guarantee is limited (at our option) to supplying the service again or paying the cost of having it supplied again.

15. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against any third-party claims, losses, damages, costs, and reasonable legal fees arising out of or related to:

• Content you publish through TradeWaaS, including any infringement of a third party’s intellectual property, privacy, or other rights.
• Your breach of these Terms, including sections 7 (your obligations) and 8 (acceptable use).
• Your breach of any law that applies to your business or your published content.

This indemnity is reduced to the extent that the claim or loss is caused by our negligence or our breach of these Terms or applicable law.

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we’ll update the “Effective” date at the top of the page. If the change materially affects your rights or obligations, we’ll let you know by email at least 14 days before it takes effect. Your continued use of the service after the new Terms take effect means you accept them. If you don’t accept them, you can cancel under section 12.

17. Governing law & disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia. You and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Victoria and the Federal Court of Australia.

Before either of us starts court proceedings, we agree to try in good faith to resolve any dispute by direct discussion. Either party may also refer the dispute to the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman or to a similar dispute-resolution service.

18. How to contact us

Email: admin@tradewaas.com.au
Operator: [TBD — set LEGAL_NAME in .env]
ABN: [TBD — set LEGAL_ABN in .env]
Address: [TBD — set LEGAL_ADDRESS in .env]

We aim to respond to all enquiries within 5 business days.