Acceptable use policy

This policy sets out what you may not do with startbuddi, how we spot it, and what happens when an account breaks these rules. 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, together with our Sending policy.

1Why we are strict

Every invoice, email, page and form sent from startbuddi carries our name as well as yours. When one account uses it to trick people, the people tricked lose money, and every honest business on startbuddi finds its mail landing in spam. So we remove accounts that break these rules quickly, and sometimes automatically.

2Impersonation and deception

You may not present your account, or anything you send from it, as coming from someone you are not. That includes:

• Using another company’s name or brand as your business name, sender name, invoice brand or page title. For example, QuickBooks, Intuit, PayPal, a bank, a courier or a tax authority.
• Lookalike spellings of those names (“Paypa1”, “Quickb00ks Billing”), or a brand name with “support”, “billing” or “refunds” added.
• Invoices or messages telling people to call a phone number about a charge, renewal, refund or subscription they did not agree to.
• Pages or forms that copy another company’s login, checkout or support pages.

If you really are the company named, verify your own email domain in Settings, or email support@startbuddi.com and we will verify you.

3Fraud and requests for payment

You may only bill people for goods or services they agreed to buy from you. You may not:

• Send invoices, payment links or payment requests to people who do not owe you money.
• Send invoices in bulk to lists of people you have no business relationship with.
• Change bank or payout details to collect money meant for another business.
• Use startbuddi to collect card details, passwords, one-time codes or identity documents under false pretences.
• Use startbuddi to launder money, finance crime, avoid sanctions, or take payments on behalf of a business you do not run.

You must also follow the rules of the payment provider you connect, such as Paystack or Stripe, including their lists of businesses they do not support.

Everyone who receives an invoice from startbuddi can report it. Reports are read by a person, and several reports against a new account will suspend it.

4Multiple accounts

You may run more than one business on startbuddi from one sign-in. You may not create several accounts for the same business, or with copies of the same email address, to send more than one account is allowed to, to get round a limit, or to start again after a block.

5Suspensions and new accounts

If we suspend an account, the person behind it may not open another one. New accounts linked to a suspended one, by the same business name, email address or network, are suspended too.

6Spam

Email, SMS and WhatsApp messages must follow the Sending policy: only to people who have a relationship with your business, never to bought, rented or scraped lists, and always with a way to stop hearing from you. WhatsApp messages must also follow Meta’s WhatsApp Business and Commerce policies, including its rules on opt-in for template messages.

7Illegal and harmful content

You may not use startbuddi to publish, sell or promote anything that is illegal where you or the people you reach are, including:

• Malware, phishing kits, stolen data or account credentials.
• Counterfeit goods, unlicensed financial or investment schemes, or get-rich-quick and pyramid schemes.
• Content that sexually exploits children, promotes violence or terrorism, or harasses or threatens people.
• Other people’s personal data that you have no lawful basis to use.

8Chip 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 anything this policy forbids, such as fake reviews, fake testimonials or messages that impersonate 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.

9Personal 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.

10Security 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.

11How we enforce this

We check every account for signs of abuse when it signs up, as it sends, and in a daily scan. Depending on what we find, we may:

• Refuse a business name or a single send, and tell you why.
• Pause sending while a person reviews the account, usually within one working day.
• Suspend the account straight away where the evidence is clear, for example impersonation combined with sending, or a new account linked to one already suspended. Suspension can happen automatically, without a person reviewing it first.

When an account is suspended:

• Nobody on it can sign in, and nothing more can be sent.
• Its published invoices, pages and forms stop opening.
• We email the account owner to say which part of this policy was broken and how to appeal.
• We keep the account’s data for 30 days in case of an appeal, then delete it. We may keep records of the abuse for longer where the law requires it or to protect the people affected, and we may share them with the company impersonated, payment providers or the authorities.

Paid subscriptions on a suspended account are cancelled. Fees already paid are not refunded when the account broke this policy.

12Appeals

If you think we got it wrong, email support@startbuddi.com within 30 days of the suspension, from the account’s email address. Tell us who you are and what the account is for. A person will review it within two working days. If we got it wrong, we restore everything as it was.

13Reporting abuse

If you received something from a startbuddi account that breaks these rules, use “Report this invoice” on the invoice, or the abuse report form. Published forms carry a “Report” link that does the same. If you are reporting a security issue, please follow our Security page.

14Changes 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.