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Terms of Service

Last updated: 18 July 2026

Note: This is a plain-English policy prepared for Hostly. It is not legal advice, and Vero Dawn should have it reviewed by a licensed attorney before relying on it.
In plain English

These are the rules for using Hostly. They cover what you pay, what we do, and who is responsible for what. The short version: Hostly costs $99 a month per location, month to month, cancel any time. We draft replies with AI, you read them, and you approve them. Once you approve a reply, it is yours and you are responsible for it. Our dollar figures are estimates, not promises. If something goes badly wrong, our financial responsibility is capped at what you paid us in the past year.

1. The agreement

These Terms of Service are the agreement between you and Vero Dawn, operator of Hostly, run by Missy Ross in North Carolina, United States. By signing up for Hostly or using it, you agree to these terms. If you are signing up for a restaurant you work for, you confirm you have the authority to agree on its behalf.

Hostly is sold to businesses in the United States. It is not a consumer product.

2. What Hostly does

Hostly reads your restaurant's public Google reviews, uses AI to draft replies in your voice, and analyzes your reviews for recurring themes. It holds every draft until you approve it, then posts approved replies to Google.

Nothing is ever posted automatically. Hostly does not publish a single word without your tap.

We may improve, change, or add features over time. If we ever remove a feature you rely on, we will tell you by email first.

3. Your approval, your reply

The approval decision is yours alone. Hostly presents a draft. You read it, edit it if you want, and choose whether to publish it.

Once you approve a reply, you are solely responsible for its content. It is published in your restaurant's name and it speaks for your business, not ours.

That means you are responsible if an approved reply is inaccurate, offensive, discloses something private, makes a promise you cannot keep, or breaks any law or platform rule. Read before you tap.

4. AI drafts can be wrong

Hostly uses AI to write drafts and to summarise themes. AI makes mistakes. A draft may state something that is not true about your restaurant, misread a review, use the wrong tone, or invent a detail.

You must review every draft before approving it. Do not approve a reply you have not read.

The same goes for theme analysis. It is a helpful summary, not a verified report. Treat it as a starting point for your own judgment.

5. Our dollar figures are estimates

Hostly shows figures like "revenue at risk" and "estimated impact." These are estimates. We build them from published research on how star ratings, review volume, and owner responses affect restaurant revenue, combined with your own inputs such as your self-reported monthly revenue.

These numbers are not guarantees, promises, or predictions of any result. We do not guarantee that using Hostly will raise your rating, bring in customers, or increase your revenue by any amount, or at all.

Your results depend on your food, your service, your market, and many things outside our control. Do not make a financial decision based on our estimate alone.

6. Price, trial, and billing

Price
$99 per month, per location. One plan. No tiers, no setup fee.
Free trial
7 days. Cancel before it ends and you are not charged.
Term
Month to month. No contract, no minimum commitment.
Renewal
Renews automatically each month until you cancel.
Cancellation
Cancel any time. Service continues until the end of the month you have paid for.
Refunds
We do not give partial refunds for an unused part of a month. If something went genuinely wrong, email us and we will make it right.
Payment
Card payments are processed by Stripe through GoHighLevel. Card details never touch Hostly's servers.
Taxes
Prices are in US dollars and exclude any applicable taxes, which you are responsible for.

If a payment fails, we will try again and email you. If it stays unpaid, we may pause your account until it is settled.

We may change the price. If we do, we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email, and the new price will only apply to billing periods after that notice. If you do not want the new price, cancel before it takes effect.

7. Your account

Keep your sign-in email secure, since sign-in codes are sent there. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has access to your account. You are responsible for what happens under your account.

You confirm that the restaurant you connect is one you own or are authorised to manage, and that you have the right to connect its Google Business Profile.

8. Acceptable use

Use Hostly for your own restaurant, honestly. Do not:

  • Use it for a business you do not own or manage.
  • Publish replies that are false, misleading, harassing, threatening, hateful, or unlawful.
  • Reveal private information about a reviewer or anyone else in a reply.
  • Try to break into, overload, scrape, reverse engineer, or copy the service.
  • Resell Hostly or give access to people outside your business without our written agreement.
  • Use Hostly to break any law, or any rule of Google or another platform.

If you break these rules, we may suspend or close your account.

9. Google's rules, and review integrity

Your Google listing is governed by Google's own policies, including its prohibited and restricted content policy for reviews. You must follow them. Using Hostly does not excuse you from anything Google requires.

Hostly does not, and will not, solicit or filter reviews in violation of Google's policies.

Specifically, Hostly does not:

  • Gate or filter reviews. We do not screen customers to send happy ones to Google and unhappy ones somewhere else.
  • Buy, sell, or incentivise reviews. We do not offer discounts, free items, or anything of value in exchange for a review.
  • Write fake reviews or help anyone else write them.
  • Suppress negative reviews. We do not remove or hide honest criticism. We help you answer it well.

If you use Hostly in a way that breaks Google's policies, we may close your account. Google may also suspend your listing, and that is between you and Google.

10. Who owns what

You own your business information, your brand voice settings, and the replies you approve. You give us permission to use that content only to run the service for you.

We own Hostly itself, including the software, the design, the name, and the way it works. Using Hostly does not transfer any of that to you. You may use the service, and that is the extent of the license.

Reviews belong to the people who wrote them and to Google. Neither of us owns them.

11. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect, who processes it, and how to get it exported or deleted. It is part of this agreement. Please read it. It includes the fact that review text is sent to Anthropic's Claude API for processing, and our commitments under the Google API Services User Data Policy.

12. Disclaimer of warranties

We work hard to keep Hostly running well, but we cannot promise it will be perfect or always available. Google, Anthropic, and our other providers can change or go down, and that affects us.

HOSTLY IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR FREE, OR SECURE, THAT AI-GENERATED CONTENT WILL BE ACCURATE, OR THAT ANY PARTICULAR BUSINESS RESULT WILL BE ACHIEVED.

Some states do not allow certain disclaimers, so parts of this may not apply to you.

13. Limitation of liability

In plain terms: if we cause you a loss, the most we will ever owe you is what you paid us in the previous 12 months.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, VERO DAWN WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, OR BUSINESS REPUTATION, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO YOUR USE OF HOSTLY. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT YOU ACTUALLY PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM.

This limit applies to everything, including claims about AI-generated drafts, replies you approved, estimates we showed you, downtime, and lost data. Some states do not allow these limits, so parts of this may not apply to you.

14. Indemnity

If someone brings a claim against us because of a reply you approved, content you provided, or your misuse of the service, you agree to cover our reasonable costs of defending it, including legal fees. We will tell you promptly about any such claim and let you take part in the defence.

15. Ending the agreement

You can cancel any time. Email hello@hostly-reviews.com and it is done the same day, no phone call, no hoops. Your service runs to the end of the period you have paid for.

We can end it too. We may close your account with 30 days' notice for any reason, or immediately if you break these terms, do not pay, or use Hostly in a way that puts us or another party at legal risk.

When the agreement ends, we stop reading your reviews and stop posting. Your Google connection is disconnected. We hold your data for 30 days in case you want an export, then delete it, as described in the Privacy Policy. Sections on responsibility for approved replies, ownership, disclaimers, liability, indemnity, and governing law survive the end of the agreement.

16. Governing law

This agreement is governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in North Carolina, and both of us agree to those courts.

Before filing anything, please email us. Most problems get solved with one conversation.

17. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. When we do, we will change the "Last updated" date at the top. For any material change, we will email you at the address on your account at least 30 days before it takes effect, and we will say plainly what changed.

If you keep using Hostly after the change takes effect, you accept the new terms. If you do not accept them, cancel before that date and you will not be bound by them.

18. How to reach us

Hostly, a product of Vero Dawn
Attn: Missy Ross
North Carolina, United States
hello@hostly-reviews.com

If anything here is unclear, email and ask. We would rather explain it than have you guess.