Terms and conditions

Ironbell provides software and services that help roofing businesses capture, answer, follow up and track customer enquiries.

Ironbell currently operates as a trading name rather than an incorporated company. In these terms, “we”, “us” and “Ironbell” mean the Ironbell business. The written confirmation we send you when you sign up names the person or business you are contracting with. These terms will be updated with company registration details if and when the business is incorporated.

The service is the one agreed with you in writing during onboarding. Depending on what is set up for your business, it can include:

• A text message sent from your Ironbell number when a call to it is not answered, and an automated assistant that continues the conversation by text to collect the customer's details
• Reading new emails sent to a mailbox you connect, identifying roofing enquiries, and replying from your own address
• A text alert to you when an enquiry has been qualified
• A dashboard for leads, conversations, your pipeline, follow-ups, review requests and business figures
• Automated follow-up messages to customers who have gone quiet, on a schedule you can turn off
• Requests for an honest Google review after a job you have marked as completed, sent only when you confirm them
• IronGrow, a daily feed of general tips and observations drawn from your records, and IronBot, an assistant that answers questions about your records

WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are not currently provided as part of the service. We may improve, adjust or extend how the service works over time, and we may describe some features as being in pilot or beta while we test them.

We do not guarantee any particular commercial outcome. We do not promise a specific number of enquiries, leads, quotes, won jobs or any level of revenue, and nothing on our website, in the dashboard or in our communications should be read as such a promise. Figures shown in the dashboard come from records you and the service create; they are not a forecast. Results depend on factors outside our control, including how many enquiries your business receives, their quality and how you follow them up.

We may offer a free or reduced-price pilot. If we do, the length of the pilot, what it includes and what happens when it ends are set out in the written pilot confirmation we send you, and that confirmation takes priority over these terms where the two differ.

• A free pilot does not turn into a paid subscription unless you agree to that in writing.
• Winter Pilot places are offered on the terms in the written client agreement you sign before launch, including the price, how long it is fixed for and what we ask in return. You pay your advertising budget directly to Google.
• Either of us may end a pilot early by telling the other in writing.
• Features in a pilot may change, and some may be switched off while they are tested.
• When a pilot ends without a paid subscription, we stop handling enquiries for your business and deal with your data as described in section 9.

We create your account and send a sign-in link to the people you nominate. You are responsible for:

• Giving us accurate information during onboarding and keeping it up to date, including the numbers and mailboxes used to receive and route enquiries
• Keeping sign-in details secure, controlling who in your business can sign in, and telling us promptly if you think an account has been compromised
• Your relationships with your customers, including how you respond to and act on the enquiries the service surfaces
• Making sure any information you give us, or that reaches us through your use of the service, may lawfully be provided to us and processed by us
• Checking the information the service produces before relying on it, as described in section 11

You must not use the service, or allow it to be used, to:

• Send unsolicited marketing, or contact people who have not enquired with your business, unless the law allows it
• Contact anyone who has asked not to be contacted
• Send anything unlawful, misleading, threatening, harassing or discriminatory
• Offer customers an incentive for a review, or ask only customers you expect to be happy
• Impersonate another person or business
• Try to access another business's data, test or bypass the service's security, or overload it
• Copy, resell or reverse-engineer the service

We may suspend messages or features where we reasonably believe the service is being used in breach of this section, and we will tell you why.

Messages the service sends are sent in your business's name and on your behalf, and you remain responsible for them. In particular:

• You must have a lawful basis to contact each customer. Replies to a customer who has contacted you, and messages about a job they asked you about, are generally treated differently from marketing; if you are unsure, take advice.
• If a customer asks you not to contact them again, by any means, you must stop and tell us straight away so automated messages to them are stopped. Do not rely only on the service to detect this.
• Review requests must ask for an honest review, must not offer anything in return, and must be offered to customers whose jobs you complete without selecting only those you expect to be positive. Google's own review policies apply.
• You must not ask us to send messages that make promises about prices, dates or availability that your business has not agreed.

Your advertising budget is not part of our fees: you pay it directly to Google. The fees that apply to you are the ones set out in the client agreement or written confirmation agreed between us when you sign up, including any pilot arrangement under section 3, and those agreed fees continue to apply unless we agree a change with you.

We may set different prices for new customers at any time without changing the price you have already agreed. If we propose to change your fees, we will give you reasonable notice in advance, and you may cancel before the change takes effect if you do not accept it.

• Any fees are payable on the dates set out in your client agreement.
• A paid subscription is billed monthly in advance and recurs until cancelled.
• Unless stated otherwise, fees are exclusive of VAT and any other applicable taxes, which are payable in addition where they apply.
• If a payment fails, we will let you know and may suspend the service until payment is brought up to date.

We have not set a blanket refund policy. If there is a problem, raise it with us at support@ironbell.co.uk and we will deal with it reasonably. Nothing here affects any refund right you have by law.

You may cancel your subscription at any time by telling us in writing. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the billing month in which you cancel, so the service continues until the end of the period you have already paid for. There is no minimum term unless we have specifically agreed one with you in writing.

We may suspend or end the service if you materially breach these terms, if fees remain unpaid after we have asked you to settle them, or if we are required to by law. Other than in those situations, we will give you reasonable notice if we decide to stop providing the service to you.

When the service or a pilot ends, we stop handling enquiries for your business and disconnect the numbers and mailboxes we were using for you. If you ask within a reasonable period, we will give you an export of your lead data. We then delete or retain data as set out in our privacy policy and any data processing agreement between us.

The service relies on providers we choose with care but do not control, including for hosting and data storage, telephone numbers and text messages, email, automation and AI. They are listed in our privacy policy.

The availability and performance of the service therefore depends partly on services we do not operate. Where a provider causes an interruption we will work to restore the service promptly, but we are not responsible for failures outside our reasonable control. Text messages and emails can be delayed, filtered or not delivered by networks and mail providers, and we cannot guarantee delivery of any individual message.

The service uses automated processing, including AI, to reply to enquiries, to extract details from what a customer writes, to summarise and categorise enquiries, and to produce IronGrow observations and IronBot answers. The automated assistant tells a customer it is automated if they ask, and it is instructed not to quote prices, book appointments or promise timings.

Automated responses will not always be right. The system may misread what a customer means, record a detail incorrectly, judge urgency differently from you, or word a reply imperfectly. IronGrow and IronBot can be wrong and are labelled where advice is general rather than drawn from your records.

You remain responsible for reviewing what the service produces before acting on it and for your own communications with your customers. You can take over any conversation and pause the automated assistant for that customer. Do not rely on the service as the only way of handling urgent or safety-critical matters.

We aim to provide a reliable service, but we do not guarantee that it will be available without interruption or free of faults. It may be unavailable during planned maintenance, because of technical failures, or because of problems affecting the providers we depend on. Where we reasonably can, we will give notice of planned maintenance and keep disruption short.

For help with your account, sign-in, leads or integrations, email support@ironbell.co.uk. We respond as quickly as we reasonably can; we do not offer guaranteed response or resolution times unless we have agreed them with you in writing.

We own, or are licensed to use, all intellectual property rights in the Ironbell software, systems, dashboard, website, branding and documentation. Your subscription gives you the right to use the service while it is active. It does not transfer any ownership in it to you, and it does not give you the right to copy, modify, resell, reverse-engineer or create derivative works from it.

You keep ownership of your own materials and data, including your business information, your branding and the enquiry data generated through your use of the service. You grant us the licence needed to host, process and use that material to provide the service to you and keep it working.

Each of us may learn confidential information about the other through this relationship. Both of us agree to keep that information confidential, to use it only for the purpose of the service, and not to disclose it to anyone else except to staff and providers who need it and are under similar obligations, or where disclosure is required by law.

This does not apply to information that is already public, that was already properly known to the recipient, or that is independently developed without using the other's confidential information.

Both of us will comply with applicable UK data-protection law. For information about your own customers that we process through the service, you are the controller and we act as your processor, on your documented instructions. The terms of that processing are set out in a data processing agreement, which we provide to every client before the service goes live.

Our own handling of personal data is described in our privacy policy.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.

Subject to that, we are not liable for loss of profit, loss of business, loss of anticipated savings, loss of goodwill, or for any indirect or consequential loss, in each case however it arises. In particular, we are not liable for business you consider you have lost because an enquiry was not answered, was answered incorrectly, or was not acted on.

Subject to the first paragraph of this section, our total liability to you arising out of or in connection with the service in any twelve-month period is limited to the total fees you paid us in the twelve months immediately before the event giving rise to the claim.

The service is provided to you for business purposes. We exclude, to the extent the law allows, any implied terms that would otherwise apply.

We may update the service and these terms from time to time, for example to reflect new features, changes in the providers we rely on, or changes in the law. Where a change materially affects your rights, we will give you reasonable notice. If you do not accept a material change, you may cancel as set out above.

If you are unhappy with the service, tell us at support@ironbell.co.uk (or info@ironbell.co.uk if you are not yet a client). We will acknowledge your complaint, look into it and tell you what we will do. This does not affect any other rights you have.

These terms and any dispute arising out of them are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

For questions about these terms or your subscription, email info@ironbell.co.uk. For help with the service itself, email support@ironbell.co.uk.