Acceptable use policy

This policy sets out what you may and may not do with startbuddi. It applies to everyone who uses a startbuddi workspace, including owners, admins, team members, and anyone you invite, such as clients in a client portal. It forms part of our Terms of service.

startbuddi gives you tools that reach other people: email, SMS, WhatsApp, social posts, live chat, an AI voice agent, forms, booking pages, websites and payment links. Those tools only stay useful, and only stay available to every customer, if nobody uses them to spam, deceive or harm people. That is what this policy protects.

1The basic rule

Use startbuddi to run a lawful business, and treat the people you contact the way the law and common decency expect. If something would be illegal, deceptive or harmful without startbuddi, it is not allowed with startbuddi either.

2Messaging, email and SMS

You are responsible for having the right to contact every person you message through startbuddi. In particular, you must not:

• Send marketing email, SMS or WhatsApp messages to people who have not agreed to receive them, where the law requires consent. Buying, renting or scraping contact lists and then messaging them is not allowed.
• Remove, hide or break the unsubscribe link we add to marketing email, or keep messaging someone after they have unsubscribed or replied STOP.
• Hide who you are. Every message must make clear it comes from your business, and email must carry a real postal or business address where the law requires one.
• Use misleading subject lines, sender names or “from” addresses, or pretend a message is a reply to a conversation that never happened.
• Send messages that break WhatsApp’s Business and Commerce policies, including sending template messages without the recipient’s opt-in, or messaging outside the rules Meta sets for its customer service window.
• Try to get around sending limits, suppression lists, bounce handling or complaint handling, for example by opening extra workspaces or rotating sending domains.

If your bounce or complaint rates are high enough to put our sending reputation at risk, we may pause sending from your workspace while we work it out with you.

3Chip AI, the voice agent and live chat

• Do not present Chip as a human. Where startbuddi offers an AI disclosure setting for live chat or the voice agent, keep it switched on, and do not tell people they are talking to a person when they are talking to Chip.
• Where the law requires it, tell callers that a call may be recorded or transcribed before it is, and get their consent.
• Do not use Chip to produce content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, sexually explicit involving anyone under 18, or designed to deceive, such as fake reviews, fake testimonials or impersonation of a real person or business.
• Do not use Chip to make decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on a person, such as refusing someone credit, housing, employment or insurance, without a person reviewing the outcome.
• Do not try to trick Chip into ignoring its safety rules, revealing other customers’ data, or running actions you are not allowed to run.
• Check what Chip writes before you send or publish it. Chip can be wrong, and you are responsible for what goes out under your name.

4Content you publish

Websites, forms, booking pages, documents, social posts, courses and anything else you publish through startbuddi must not:

• Break the law where you or your audience are, or infringe anyone’s copyright, trademark or other rights.
• Collect passwords, bank or card details, government ID numbers or similar data under false pretences (phishing), or imitate another business’s login or payment page.
• Sell or promote illegal goods or services, weapons, controlled drugs, counterfeit goods, or gambling or financial products that are not properly licensed where you offer them.
• Promote get-rich-quick schemes, pyramid or Ponzi schemes, or investment “opportunities” with guaranteed returns.
• Contain child sexual abuse material, content that sexualises minors, or content that promotes terrorism, violence or hatred against people because of who they are.
• Spread malware, or link to pages that do.
• Harass, threaten, or publish private information about someone without a lawful reason.

5Payments and invoices

• Only take payments, send invoices and create payment links for real goods and services that you actually provide.
• Follow the rules of the payment provider you connect, such as Paystack or Stripe, including their lists of businesses they do not support.
• Do not use startbuddi to launder money, finance crime, avoid sanctions, or process payments on behalf of a business you do not run.

6Personal data of your customers

When you store other people’s details in startbuddi, you decide what happens to them, so the law makes you responsible for them. You must:

• Have a lawful reason to collect and use each person’s details, and tell them what you do with their data, for example in your own privacy notice.
• Only store sensitive data (such as health information, biometric data, religious beliefs or criminal records) where the law allows it and you genuinely need it. startbuddi is not built to hold card numbers, full bank logins or government ID numbers in contact fields, notes or chats, so do not put them there.
• Answer your own customers’ requests to see, correct or delete their data. startbuddi gives you the tools to find, export and delete a person’s records.

Our Data processing agreement explains how we handle that data for you.

7Security and fair use of the service

You must not:

• Access, or try to access, another customer’s workspace or data, or any part of startbuddi you have not been given access to.
• Probe, scan or test the security of startbuddi without our written permission. If you find a security problem, please report it to us instead (see our Security page).
• Interfere with the service, for example by overloading it, sending automated traffic that is not through a documented route, or getting around usage limits, credit metering or plan limits.
• Copy, scrape or reverse engineer startbuddi, or use it to build a competing product.
• Share your login with other people. Invite them as team members instead, so each person has their own account.
• Resell startbuddi, or give access to people outside your business, unless we have agreed to it in writing.

8What happens if this policy is broken

We do not monitor your workspace content as a matter of routine. We act when we receive a complaint, when our systems flag a problem (such as a spike in bounces, spam reports or payment disputes), or when a provider such as Meta, a mobile network or a payment company tells us about one.

Depending on how serious it is, we may:

• Contact you and ask you to fix it.
• Remove or disable the content or feature involved, such as a published page, a sending domain or a connected channel.
• Pause sending, calling or publishing from your workspace.
• Suspend or close your account, as set out in our Terms of service.
• Report illegal activity to the police or another authority where the law requires or allows it.

Where we can, and where it is safe and lawful to do so, we will tell you what we found and give you a chance to respond before we act. We will act first when there is a risk of serious harm to people, to other customers or to startbuddi.

9Reporting abuse

If you receive spam, see a scam, or find content hosted on startbuddi that breaks this policy, email hello@startbuddi.com with the link, message or number involved. Published forms carry a “Report” link that does the same. If you are reporting a security issue, please follow our Security page.

10Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the product and the law change. We will post the new version here with its effective date, and tell workspace owners about material changes by email or in the app before they take effect.

Version history

Questions about this document? Email privacy@startbuddi.com.