Website terms and conditions template

About this terms and conditions document

This terms and conditions template is for a website that connects buyers and sellers of any services. It sets out the relationship between your business and buyers who use your website to buy.

These are T&C for a website that acts as an interface between buyers and providers of a service. They regulate the relationship between your business and service providers who use your website to sell.

You could operate openly as a market or you could ostensibly be a review site where you promote particular services. You could charge the provider (as provided for in this document) or you could provide your market place service free and take advertising revenue.

It is not important what services you offer. You could be an intermediary for a wide variety of services provided by individuals or companies, or you could specialise in a single sector, like accounting or care homes, or gardening. If you supply businesses, your site could create a marketplace for machine tool services or tractor re-conditioning or website design.

Because each marketplace website has its own business model, we provide separate agreements for terms with buyers and sellers. You should therefore pair this document with the most suitable seller side marketplace T&C document we offer. We list the most appropriate documents below.

Is this template suitable for your website?

The template is ideal for a site that:

• connects buyers with sellers. Your business should not also be a seller, nor should it hold stock or fulfil orders on behalf of sellers.
• could have additional functionality that allows buyers to interact with sellers or with other site visitors, for example, product reviews, feedback, forums, or questions.
• provides payment facilities, collects taxes and your own fees, then pays the net amount to your sellers.
• has sellers that pay you either by a percentage commission or by a transaction fee.
• either allows sellers to upload their own product pages or product advertisements or instructs you to do that for them.
• provides a marketing service to sellers.
• has either regular sellers (for example, ones that operate their business from your site), or allows one-off sales.
• are hosted in the Republic of Ireland- although sellers and buyers could be located anywhere in the world.

The benefit of clear terms and conditions

Website terms and conditions are probably the best example of a legal document where use of plain English strengthens the legal effect of the document. If a dispute should arise, it would be hard for a user of your site to claim that he did not understand, even if English is not his first language.

Using this document on your website will help you to:

• set out clearly how your business works and how buyers should act and behave;
• ensure that sellers and buyers receive the quality of service that you aim to provide;
• present a professional image of your business. Our use of plain English helps to ensure that users do not feel intimidated by overly formal or legalistic language;
• prevent misunderstandings and make solving disputes easier;
• protect your website from misuse (we include paragraphs that set out exactly how buyers can interact with your website, and what they cannot do);
• protect your business from complaints about content that your buyers posted - particularly important if buyers can interact with sellers without you actively monitoring every post or message.

Similar templates

This document provides terms between your business and buyers of services within your marketplace:

• If your site creates a marketplace for products , not for services , see Website terms and conditions template: marketplace for goods: buyer side
• If buyers are required to subscribe (or become members) of your site before they can access the marketplace, then Website terms and conditions template: marketplace for services: buyer subscribes for access should be the other document you need to complement this one.
• The complementary template that provides terms for sellers can be found at Website terms and conditions template: marketplace for services: seller side.

If you are in any doubt as to which T&C template you should choose, please contact us.

The law in this document

This template helps you to comply (and be seen to comply) with the European Union Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, so far as you sell to consumers. The notes also provide advice on how best to pass obligations to your sellers.

The law in these T&C is largely common law that deals with the basics of contracts: offer, acceptance, price and payment, provision of service, liabilities and risk. By and large, you can set the commercial terms you want. The document should be edited so that it reflects exactly how your business works. Our guidance notes will tell you what you can change safely, and what we don't advise changing.

Contents of this terms and conditions

This terms and conditions template includes provisions that cover both the relationship between the seller and the buyer and the relationship between your business and the buyer.

It includes terms relating to:

• Definitions
• Basis of contract between your business and the buyer
• Responsibility of the buyer to provide accurate personal information to you
• The buying procedure
• Optional guarantee by you
• Cancellation and refunds
• Handling buyer's personal data, credit card and content uploaded or posted
• Very extensive options as to what a buyer may or may not do on your website.
• Removal of offensive content
• Protection of copyright and other intellectual property rights
• Interruption to service
• Disclaimers and limitation of liability
• Miscellaneous legal matters to protect your business
• Over 3,000 words of drafting notes to help you