Terms of Service Generator

You're launching a small SaaS or content site and need a Terms of Service page. You don't have a lawyer on retainer for a $40/month product. The generator produces a generic but reasonable starting point — the basic acceptable-use clauses, IP assignment, liability limitations, governing law placeholder.

Fill in business name, location, contact email, and a few yes/no questions about what you do (sell goods, accept payments, host user content), and the output is a Markdown ToS you can paste into your site.

This is a starting template, not a substitute for actual legal review. If you handle payments, health data, or user content at any scale, get a lawyer to review it before relying on it.

A standard Terms of Service contains a few load-bearing sections. The acceptance clause says that using the service means agreeing to the terms (clickwrap acceptance is more reliable than implied acceptance). The user obligations section covers what you can't do — illegal activity, harassment, scraping, attempts to circumvent security. The intellectual property section says who owns what — typically the company owns the platform, users own their content but grant a license back to the company so the platform can display, store, and process it. The liability limitation caps the company's exposure for things outside its control. The governing law clause picks which jurisdiction's courts would handle disputes.

The generator pulls together these standard clauses, fills in the customizable bits (your business name, location, contact, what you sell or host), and produces a Markdown document ready to paste into your site. For a $40/month SaaS or a content blog, the resulting ToS is roughly the level of legal protection you'd expect from a small business — covers the basics, signals professionalism, holds up against most informal disputes. It does not match a custom ToS drafted by a lawyer reviewing your specific risk profile.

A worked example: you're launching a small newsletter platform where users can subscribe and authors can publish. The generator asks: do you accept payments? (Yes, via Stripe.) Do you host user-generated content? (Yes, the articles.) Do you have an API? (Not yet.) Where's your business based? (Delaware.) The output includes a payment-and-billing section, a content-and-conduct section with takedown procedures, an IP section granting you the right to display authors' content, and Delaware governing law. The whole document runs maybe 1,800 words, which is the right length for a small platform — short enough that users might actually read it, long enough to cover the cases that matter.

What the generator deliberately avoids: industry-specific clauses (healthcare, finance, education each have additional regulatory requirements), arbitration clauses (legally complex and contested), and class-action waivers (jurisdiction-dependent enforceability). If you handle health data (HIPAA), payment data beyond simple Stripe processing (PCI), kids' data (COPPA), or operate in regulated finance, the generator's output is incomplete and you genuinely need a lawyer. For a generic SaaS or content site without those exposures, the generator gets you 80% of the way — and crucially, gets you started rather than launching with no terms at all.