Terms of Service

1. Agreement to Terms

By accessing or using growlocal.site, creating an account, or purchasing a subscription, you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you do not agree, do not use the service.

These Terms form a binding agreement between you and GrowLocal, LLC ("GrowLocal," "we," "us," or "our"). Please read them carefully.

2. What GrowLocal Does

GrowLocal builds and hosts custom static websites for small businesses. We use a combination of AI tools and developer oversight to design, develop, and maintain your website. We manage DNS, SSL certificates, hosting infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance on your behalf.

This is not a self-service website builder. You do not write code or drag-and-drop elements. We build the site for you based on information you provide, and you manage content through a simple dashboard.

3. Accounts

To use GrowLocal, you must create an account. You agree that:

• You are at least 18 years old
• You will provide accurate, current information during registration and keep it updated
• You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials
• You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account
• You will notify us immediately if you suspect unauthorized access to your account

4. Subscriptions & Billing

GrowLocal operates on a monthly subscription model, with an optional annual billing plan (12 months for the price of 10). Launch pricing starts at $5/month (public range $5-$14/month), and your exact rate depends mostly on the working features included in your finished site — quoted with your free mockup before you launch. Key billing terms:

• All payments are processed through Stripe
• Subscriptions auto-renew monthly unless cancelled
• Fees are non-refundable once charged for that billing period
• Price lock: once you subscribe, your rate never increases. If we raise pricing in the future, it applies only to new subscriptions -- not yours
• Promotional or introductory pricing, if offered, will be clearly disclosed along with the standard rate that applies after the promotional period ends

5. Cancellation

You may cancel your subscription at any time through your account dashboard or by contacting us. When you cancel:

• Your site remains live through the end of your current billing period, plus a reasonable grace period
• No further charges will be made after cancellation

No cancellation fees. There is no fee of any kind for cancelling -- including for a domain we registered on your behalf. If you cancel, the domain simply expires at the end of its registration period unless you request a transfer (see Section 6), which is also free.

6. Domain Ownership & Transfer

For domains registered through GrowLocal, GrowLocal is the registrant of record with the domain registrar, which allows us to manage DNS, SSL, and configuration seamlessly on your behalf. If you brought your own domain, it remains yours -- we only configure the DNS records needed to point it at your site.

Domain transfer: You may request a transfer of your domain to another registrar at any time. We will initiate the transfer within 14 business days, provided:

• Your account is in good standing with no outstanding balance
• The domain is not subject to ICANN's 60-day transfer lock (which applies after initial registration or previous transfer)

If you cancel your subscription without requesting a transfer, the domain will expire at the end of its registration period. We are not obligated to renew domains for cancelled accounts.

7. What We Own

GrowLocal owns all rights to the platform, tools, templates, SDK, build pipeline, and any code generated as part of the service. The website code we produce for you is GrowLocal's property -- it is a derivative work of our proprietary templates and systems.

This means you cannot copy, redistribute, resell, or repurpose the site code independently. You receive the right to use the site as hosted by GrowLocal for the duration of your subscription.

8. What You Own

You retain full ownership of the content you provide to us, including your logos, photographs, written text, business information, and any other materials you submit during onboarding or through your dashboard.

By providing this content, you grant GrowLocal a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, display, reproduce, and modify your content solely for the purposes of building, hosting, maintaining, and promoting your website. This license ends when your subscription terminates and your content is deleted (see Section 24).

9. AI-Generated Content

Your website may contain content generated using artificial intelligence, including text, layouts, design elements, and code. You should be aware that:

• AI-generated content may not be copyrightable under current United States law
• We do not guarantee the accuracy, originality, or uniqueness of AI-generated content
• We review AI output, but you are responsible for verifying the accuracy of content on your site before it goes live
• We may reuse design patterns, layouts, and structural elements across multiple customer sites

10. Portfolio Rights

By default, GrowLocal may feature your website in our marketing materials, portfolio, case studies, and promotional content. This helps us demonstrate the quality of our work to prospective customers.

You may opt out of portfolio use at any time by contacting us at [email protected]. We will remove your site from our marketing materials within a reasonable timeframe after receiving your request.

11. Your Responsibilities

As a GrowLocal customer, you agree to:

• Provide accurate and truthful business information
• Ensure that all content you provide does not infringe on any third party's intellectual property, privacy, or other rights
• Operate a legal business in compliance with all applicable local, state, and federal laws
• Keep your payment method current and resolve any failed payments promptly
• Review your site's content for accuracy before going live and on an ongoing basis

12. Acceptable Use

You may not use GrowLocal's services to host, promote, or distribute:

• Illegal content or activities of any kind
• Hate speech, harassment, or content that promotes violence or discrimination
• Malware, phishing pages, or any form of malicious software
• Spam, unsolicited bulk communications, or misleading content
• Fraud, scams, or deceptive business practices
• Content that infringes on copyrights, trademarks, or other intellectual property rights

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your account if we determine, at our sole discretion, that your site violates these policies.

13. Online Store Payments

If your site includes an online store, your buyers' payments are processed through Stripe Connect on a Stripe account that you create and control during onboarding. You are the seller. GrowLocal is not the merchant of record for anything you sell.

• The charge is on your account. Your buyer's card is charged on your own Stripe account and the proceeds land in your Stripe balance. GrowLocal never holds your sales revenue
• Stripe's terms apply to you directly. Accepting payments requires you to accept Stripe's own connected-account agreement, and Stripe -- not GrowLocal -- decides whether your account may accept payments. Your store cannot take a payment until Stripe reports your onboarding complete
• Payouts are Stripe's. Stripe pays out to the bank account you gave Stripe, on Stripe's schedule. We do not hold, route, or release your funds, and we cannot change when you are paid
• Platform fee. GrowLocal collects a small percentage of each store sale as a platform fee, taken by Stripe at the moment of the charge. It is separate from Stripe's own processing fees, and it is not customer-adjustable
• Refunds and chargebacks are yours. You issue refunds from your dashboard and the money comes out of your Stripe balance. If a buyer disputes a charge, the dispute is against your Stripe account -- Stripe debits the disputed amount and its dispute fee from your balance, and responding to the dispute is your responsibility. We record the dispute on the order; we do not contest disputes on your behalf
• Sales tax is yours. If you turn tax on, we add the single flat rate you enter to your orders. We do not work out what tax you owe or where you owe it, and we do not file or remit anything
• Shipping. Where you use our built-in shipping, live carrier rates are quoted and labels are bought through GrowLocal's carrier account on your behalf. Packing, shipping, and everything else you promise your buyer remain yours

14. Text Messaging

Some GrowLocal features can send text messages from a business phone number. Where you choose to use text messaging:

• You are the sender. Messages go out from your business number, and you are responsible for having each recipient's consent to text them and for complying with the TCPA, CTIA guidelines, and carrier rules
• Consent is required before we send. A marketing text to a contact with no recorded consent for text messaging is refused rather than sent -- and refused again for any number on your opt-out list
• STOP and HELP always work. Marketing texts carry "Reply STOP to opt out" unless your own wording already does. A reply of STOP (also STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, OPTOUT or REVOKE) unsubscribes that number immediately and adds it to your opt-out list; we send one confirmation and nothing after it. A reply of HELP gets an automatic reply naming your business with opt-out instructions. Both are handled for you and cannot be switched off
• Opt-outs are per business. Opting out of your messages does not opt that number out of another business's messages. There is no keyword to re-subscribe -- someone who opted out has to opt in again through one of your own forms
• Quiet hours. Marketing texts are held, not sent, outside 8:00am to 9:00pm in your business's time zone
• Message and data rates may apply to the people you text. Carriers may also delay, filter, or refuse messages, and we do not guarantee delivery
• Carrier registration. US carriers require every business sending application-to-person texts to be registered (A2P 10DLC). Until your number is registered and texting is enabled on your account, sends are refused rather than delivered, and an automation step that would have texted is skipped and recorded

15. Your Customers' Contact Data

GrowLocal stores the customers, leads, and subscribers your business collects -- through your site's forms, your store's orders, and your own entries -- as one contact record per person, with their history attached.

• It is your data. For your contact data you are the data controller and GrowLocal is the data processor -- we hold it and act on it on your instructions. Having a lawful basis to collect and message these people, publishing your own privacy notice, and honouring their requests are your responsibility
• Consent is recorded per person and per channel, and only a genuine opt-in creates it. A completed purchase is never treated as marketing consent -- an order creates a contact record, not a subscriber
• Unsubscribes stick. Every marketing email carries one-click unsubscribe headers and a link that works without logging in. An unsubscribe, a spam complaint, or a hard bounce puts that address on your suppression list, and no marketing send can reach a suppressed address afterwards
• We do not track opens or clicks on your marketing email. Delivered, bounced, and complained-about outcomes are recorded; opens and clicks are deliberately not
• Sending limits protect your list. Marketing sends pass a per-person frequency cap and a daily volume ceiling, and sending pauses automatically if your bounce or complaint rate climbs too high. A pause is released by us, not from the dashboard
• Export and deletion. You can export your contacts as a CSV from your dashboard at any time, and you can ask us for a copy of your site content and files. Ask us and we will delete a single contact or your entire contact list. When your subscription ends, contact data follows the schedule in Section 24

We do not sell your contact data, and we do not market to your customers on our own behalf.

16. Connected Accounts

Some features work by connecting an account you already own -- Google, a social platform, Etsy, Stripe. When you connect one:

• You authorize the connection on the provider's own screen, and we receive only what you approve there. We ask for the narrowest access the feature needs -- for example, read-only access to your Google Search Console data
• Social publishing runs through our publishing partner, which holds the platform authorization. GrowLocal stores a reference to the connected account and the account name and picture we show you -- not your platform password
• You can disconnect a Google, social, or Etsy account from your dashboard at any time. Disconnecting stops the feature and deletes the access we had stored. You can also withdraw our access in the provider's own security settings, and we recommend doing both. Your store's Stripe connection is managed in Stripe itself and is covered by Section 13
• The provider's terms continue to govern your account with them. A provider can change its rules, prices, or access at any time, and a feature that depends on it can stop working through no fault of ours (see Section 17)

How we handle data received from Google is described in our Privacy Policy.

17. Third-Party Services

GrowLocal relies on third-party services to deliver your website. These include, but are not limited to:

• Stripe for subscription payments, and Stripe Connect for your own store's payments (Section 13)
• Cloudflare for CDN, DNS, domain registration, email routing, and file storage
• Mailgun for sending and receiving email
• Twilio for business phone numbers and text messaging (Section 14)
• PostForMe for connecting your social accounts and publishing posts
• Google for the Search Console, Ads, Business Profile, and Calendar features you connect
• Recall.ai for meeting recording and transcription
• EasyPost for shipping rates and labels
• Etsy for product catalog import (if applicable)
• AI providers (such as Anthropic and Recraft) for content and image generation

We are not responsible for outages, policy changes, data handling, or service interruptions caused by these third-party providers. Each provider has its own terms of service and privacy policies that may apply to you.

18. No Uptime Guarantee

We work hard to keep your site online and fast, but we do not offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA) or guarantee any specific level of uptime. Downtime can occur due to maintenance, infrastructure issues, third-party outages, or unforeseen circumstances.

We are not liable for any losses, missed revenue, or damages resulting from service downtime.

19. Disclaimers

GrowLocal provides the service on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure. We do not guarantee any specific business results, including increased traffic, sales, leads, or revenue, from using our service. For additional disclaimers, see our Disclaimers page.

20. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, GrowLocal's total liability to you for any claims arising from or related to the service shall not exceed the total fees you paid to GrowLocal in the 12 months preceding the claim.

In no event shall GrowLocal be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including but not limited to loss of profits, revenue, data, business opportunities, or goodwill, regardless of the theory of liability.

21. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless GrowLocal, its officers, directors, employees, and agents from any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorney's fees) arising from:

• Your content, including any claims of intellectual property infringement
• Your violation of these Terms or any applicable law
• Claims made by your website visitors or end users
• Your use of the service in a manner not authorized by these Terms

22. Affiliate Program

GrowLocal may operate an affiliate referral program in which we pay commissions to affiliates who refer new customers. If you were referred by an affiliate:

• The referral does not affect your price -- you pay the same rate as any other customer
• Affiliates are required to disclose their relationship with GrowLocal in accordance with FTC guidelines
• We may share limited information with affiliates (that you signed up and your subscription status) for commission tracking purposes

23. Termination

We may suspend or terminate your account at our discretion if:

• You violate these Terms or our Acceptable Use policy
• Your payment fails and is not resolved within a reasonable grace period
• You engage in illegal activity through the service
• Continued hosting poses a legal or reputational risk to GrowLocal

If we terminate your account for cause, no refund will be issued for the current billing period. We will make reasonable efforts to notify you before termination, except where immediate action is required (e.g., illegal content, security threats).

24. After Termination

When your account is terminated or your subscription ends:

• Your site will be taken offline
• You have 120 days to request a copy of your content (logos, photos, text -- the things you own per Section 8)
• After 120 days, your content will be permanently deleted from our systems
• Domain handling follows the policies described in Section 6
• Payment records are retained as required by tax law

25. Disputes

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the state in which GrowLocal, LLC is registered, without regard to conflict of law principles.

Any disputes arising from these Terms or your use of the service shall be resolved through binding arbitration, conducted on an individual basis. You have a 30-day window after creating your account to opt out of arbitration by sending written notice to [email protected].

Class action waiver: You agree to resolve disputes on an individual basis only. You waive any right to participate in a class action, class arbitration, or other representative proceeding.

Small claims exception: Either party may bring qualifying claims in small claims court.

26. Changes to Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make material changes, we will provide at least 30 days' notice via email to the address associated with your account.

Your continued use of the service after the notice period constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree with the changes, you may cancel your subscription before the new Terms take effect.

27. Contact

If you have questions about these Terms, contact us at:

[email protected]