Free terms and conditions generator
Answer three short questions about how your store works. Get terms and conditions you can copy straight onto your site.
- Free forever
- No signup
- Written for online stores
- Nothing uploaded
How to write terms and conditions.
Twelve answers, about a minute. The document is written as you go.
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Name your store, and say where it is based
Your business name, your website, and an email a customer can write to. The country you are based in sets the governing law, which is the clause that decides whose rules a dispute is argued under. Where your customers live is a separate question, because their consumer law follows them rather than you.
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Say what you sell, and when an order is accepted
Physical products, downloads, services, subscriptions, or several at once. Then the one decision on this page that has money attached: whether the contract is made when you send the confirmation email or when you dispatch the goods. It is the difference between absorbing a pricing error and cancelling it.
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Set the three rules that are actually yours to set
Whether customers get accounts, whether they can post reviews, and the cap on your liability. Everything else in the document is written to be true of any store, because a question whose answer changes nothing is a question worth deleting. Carve-outs that cannot lawfully be excluded stay in whatever cap you choose, since a clause that is void protects nobody.
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Read it, then publish it
Copy the document onto a page at yourstore.com/terms, or download it as a PDF. Link it from your footer and your checkout, and make sure a customer passes it before they pay. Read it first: it describes your store, and only you know if it is right.
When does an order become a contract?
Every store answers this, usually by accident. It decides whether a mispriced item is a mistake you can fix or a sale you have to honour.
- On confirmation Made-to-order work, services, anything you never oversell
The contract is formed the second the confirmation email leaves. After that the order binds you: if the price was wrong, or the last one sold an hour ago, that is yours to settle. Simple to explain, and the most expensive of the three when something goes wrong.
- On dispatch Most stores selling stock
The confirmation is a receipt, not an acceptance. You keep the right to decline the order until the parcel leaves, which is exactly the window a pricing error or a stock miscount shows up in. This is what large retailers use, and why their confirmation emails are worded so carefully.
- When you accept High value, bespoke, or anything you vet first
A separate email accepts the order and forms the contract. It gives you the longest look before you are committed and costs you one more message per order, plus a customer wondering for a day whether their order went through.
What the law expects where you sell.
Your governing law clause sets the rules of the argument. It does not move a customer out of their own consumer law, which follows them home.
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UK & EU
Any customer in the UK or the European Union.
Terms have to be in plain language, and an unclear one is read in the consumer’s favour. Prices shown to consumers include VAT. You cannot exclude liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, and a consumer can normally sue in their own country whatever your jurisdiction clause says. Pre-dispute arbitration clauses generally do not bind them.
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United States
Customers in California, New York and most other states.
Terms bind a customer who had a genuine chance to see them, which is why a checkbox at checkout beats a link in the footer. Arbitration clauses are common and enforceable, but they need a clear opt-out and a small-claims carve-out to survive. Auto-renewing subscriptions have their own disclosure and cancellation rules in California and a growing list of states.
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Australia
Customers in Australia.
Consumer guarantees cannot be contracted out of, and a term that tries is void. The unfair contract terms regime now carries penalties, and it catches one-sided clauses in standard terms: unilateral variation, broad indemnities, and limits with nothing on the other side of them.
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Canada
Customers in Canada.
Consumer protection is provincial, and Quebec is the strictest: terms have to be presented before the contract, and a French version is required for consumers there. Elsewhere, a clearly disclosed set of terms is enforceable, and statutory rights over defective or misdescribed goods still stand behind it.
What terms and conditions are for.
Not a formality. Each of these six is a specific thing that goes wrong in a store, and the clause that decides who carries it.
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The moment you are committed
When the contract is formed, and what you can still decline before it is. Without this clause, an order confirmation is an acceptance and every pricing error is yours.
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What the price includes
Tax, delivery, and what happens to an item listed at the wrong figure. A price is the one thing on your site a customer will hold you to word for word.
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Where responsibility passes
Who carries the risk while a parcel is in transit, and who pays the import duty when it crosses a border. Both are settled here or argued about later.
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The limit on what you owe
A cap on your liability, with the carve-outs that cannot be excluded anywhere. Uncapped is not brave, it is just unlimited.
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What people may not do
Scraping your catalogue, posting fake reviews, using your photographs. A rule you have not written down is a rule you cannot enforce.
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Whose law, and whose court
The governing law and where a dispute is heard. It is the shortest clause on the page and the first one a lawyer reads.
Before you publish it.
The generator writes the document. These six are yours, and none of them take long.
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Read every line
It was written from two minutes of answers. You know things about your stock, your couriers and your customers that two minutes cannot carry, and the document is yours the moment you publish it.
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Make a customer pass it before they pay
Terms nobody had a chance to see are terms a court can ignore. A tick box at checkout, or a line above the pay button linking to this page, is what turns a document into an agreement.
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Check it agrees with your other pages
If your terms, your refund policy and your delivery page disagree about a window or a charge, the version most generous to the customer is the one you will be held to.
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Put a real address behind the contact clause
Every complaint, chargeback and legal notice arrives at the address in this document. Send yourself one and make sure it lands somewhere a person reads.
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Never claim you are not liable for anything
Liability for death, personal injury caused by negligence and fraud cannot be excluded anywhere you are likely to sell. A blanket exclusion does not shrink your risk, it just tells a court what kind of document this is.
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Date it, and keep the old ones
The version live when an order was placed is the version that governs it. Keep a copy each time you change something, because the day you need it is the day you are arguing about an order from last year.
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Is this terms and conditions generator free?
Yes. It is free with no signup, no limit, and no watermark on what it produces. You own the document it writes.
Are the generated terms and conditions legal advice?
No. They are a template written from your answers and they are not legal advice. The document covers what an ordinary online store needs, in the language consumer law expects. Read it before you publish it, and take advice from a lawyer in your country if you sell in a regulated trade or on terms of your own.
What is the difference between terms and conditions and a privacy policy?
They answer different questions. Terms and conditions are the contract for buying from you: prices, orders, delivery, liability, and whose law applies. A privacy policy is a disclosure about personal data: what you collect, why, who sees it, and what rights the customer has over it. Most stores need both, plus a refund policy, and they should be three separate pages.
Do I legally need terms and conditions for my online store?
No law says you must publish them, which is why so many small stores do not. What the law does is decide the outcome when you have not written anything down, and the default is rarely the one you would have chosen. Without terms, an order confirmation is an acceptance, your liability is unlimited by any figure you named, and nothing stops a customer reselling your product photographs.
When does an online order become a binding contract?
Whenever your terms say it does, which is why the generator asks. If you say nothing, an order confirmation will usually be treated as acceptance, and the order binds you from that moment. Most stores selling stock accept on dispatch instead, so that a pricing error or a stock miscount spotted before the parcel leaves can still be put right.
Can I limit my liability in my terms and conditions?
To a point. A cap tied to what the customer paid is the one most likely to hold. What cannot be excluded anywhere you are likely to sell is liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, and for rights a consumer has under their own law. The generator writes those carve-outs in whichever cap you choose.
Which country’s law should govern my terms?
Normally the country your business is based in, which is what the generator uses. It is worth knowing what that clause does and does not buy you: it sets the rules a dispute is argued under, but a consumer can usually still bring a claim in the courts where they live, and the mandatory parts of their own consumer law apply regardless. The document says so rather than implying otherwise.
Where should I put my terms and conditions?
On their own page at a stable address such as yourstore.com/terms, linked from the footer of every page and from the checkout. The link in the footer is the minimum. A tick box or a line of text above the pay button is what actually makes them part of the contract, because terms nobody had a chance to read are terms a court can set aside.
Do I need separate terms if I sell downloads or subscriptions?
Not separate documents, but you do need extra clauses, and they are the ones generic templates miss. Downloads need a licence, a system-requirements warning, and the point at which a statutory cancellation right ends. Subscriptions need the renewal terms, the cancellation route, and notice before a price change. Tick them in step two and the generator writes those sections.
Is anything I type sent to a server?
No. The document is assembled in your browser from your answers. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and closing the tab clears it.
Terms done. Now the store.
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