Documents / Website Policies
Website Terms of Service
Set the rules for using your website or app — accounts, acceptable use, payments, disclaimers, and liability limits.
Self-help drafting template
Prepare and export a letter or publication. Follow the applicable delivery or publication process; Quill does not serve legal notices.
General text. One nationwide text with your state’s governing law. It does not adapt to your state’s mandatory rules, so check them before relying on it.
Version 2026-09-09.8. No qualified legal review is recorded. Read the complete document and obtain advice for your circumstances.
Before you use this document
- Match the terms to actual services, pricing, cancellations, acceptable use and support.
- Review consumer-law, dispute and local mandatory-rights requirements; implement clear assent and keep version records.
Guidance updated September 8, 2026. Source coverage is limited to the topics described; historical sources are identified. State, local and transaction-specific requirements still apply.
Time
~8 min
Questions
≤ 14
Steps
4
Export
PDF · Word
Answer guided questions, review your draft, and export or request signatures on supported documents.
What we will cover
- 01
Location
Choose the actual location so the preparation guidance and applicable safeguards follow your document.
- 02
Your Service
- 03
Features
- 04
Legal
- 05
Review and generate
Edit and export, then follow this document's review, delivery or execution steps.
About this document
Terms of service are the contract between you and everyone who uses your site or app. They do the unglamorous work: limiting your liability, disclaiming warranties, defining acceptable use, reserving your right to suspend or terminate accounts that abuse the service, setting out billing and refund rules, and specifying which state's law governs and how disputes get resolved. Without them, every one of those questions defaults to whatever a court decides after the fact.
Unlike a privacy policy, terms of service are not effectively mandatory — no general law requires you to publish them. What determines whether they help you is presentation. Terms a user actively agrees to at signup, with a checkbox or an explicit 'I agree' step, are far more likely to be enforced than terms sitting behind a footer link nobody clicked. If you host user content, include a DMCA notice-and-takedown process and a contact for it.
Common questions
Are terms of service legally binding?+
They can be, but only if users had genuine notice and manifested agreement. Clickwrap — where signup requires ticking a box or pressing a button next to a visible link to the terms — is regularly enforced. Terms available only through a footer link, with no affirmative agreement step, are often held unenforceable, so build acceptance into your signup flow and keep a record of when each user agreed.
Do I need terms of service for my website?+
No law requires them the way privacy law effectively requires a privacy policy, but they are what actually protects you. Without terms, you have no agreed liability cap, no warranty disclaimer, no stated right to remove abusive users or content, and no chosen forum for disputes. Any site with accounts, payments, or user-generated content should have them.
What is the difference between terms of service and a privacy policy?+
Terms of service govern behaviour and risk — the rules for using your service and the limits on your liability. A privacy policy is a disclosure document explaining what personal data you collect, why, who receives it, and what rights users have over it. They serve different purposes and should be separate documents, both linked from your footer and your signup screen.
General information, not legal advice — laws vary by state and change over time.