Terms of service

What Usher Up is

Usher Up is a hosted endpoint that AI assistants can call when a person they are helping wants to contact your business. We validate each request, package it as a handoff, store it for 90 days, and deliver it to the destinations you configure. We also generate discovery snippets you can publish so assistants know your business accepts contact this way, and a hosted contact page people can use directly.

Three parties are involved and these terms bind only one of them. The person who asked the assistant to contact you is not our customer; the privacy policy tells them what we do with their request. The maker of the assistant is not our customer either; the assistant policy tells it what it must do before sending. We do not control AI assistants. Whether an assistant recommends you, offers to contact you, or sends a handoff is up to the assistant and the person using it.

Your account

• Usher Up is for businesses. You must be at least 18 and using the service for a business, not for personal use.
• Give us accurate information and keep it current, especially your delivery addresses. Handoffs sent to an address you abandoned are still delivered as instructed.
• Keep your account link and any webhook secrets confidential. You are responsible for activity under your account.
• Only register businesses you own or are authorised to represent. We may ask for proof and may suspend an account we cannot verify.

Plans, the free tier and limits

The Starter plan is free and delivers up to three handoffs per calendar month. Handoffs beyond that are accepted and stored but held: we email you what each one is about, your account page lists them as held, and the assistant that sent it is told that delivery to you is delayed, so the person it is helping is not told you received it. Held handoffs are delivered automatically the moment you move to a paid plan, and are deleted after 90 days like any other handoff. Starter is available only to businesses that have not previously held a paid plan. If you cancel a paid plan, your account is placed on hold at the end of the paid period and no handoffs are delivered free. We allow one account per business website and may require that your confirmation email come from that domain or that the discovery snippet be live on it.

Paid plans are billed monthly in advance through Stripe. You can cancel from your account page at any time; the plan runs to the end of the month you paid for and is not refunded, except as the section on changes to these terms provides.

To keep the service healthy we apply limits: a daily cap on handoffs per business, rate limits on the endpoint, and size limits on messages. We publish the current limits in our documentation and may change them with notice.

Acceptable use

You agree to:

• contact people only in the way they agreed to and only about the request they made;
• honour requests to stop contacting someone, and any do not call or do not email rules that apply to you;
• comply with the laws that govern your contact with customers, including telemarketing, anti spam and consumer protection laws in your region and theirs;
• not use the service to send or solicit unlawful, deceptive or harmful content;
• not resell or sublicense the service, and not use it to build a competing service;
• not probe, overload or interfere with the service or other customers' accounts.

If an account breaks these rules we act in proportion: we write to you first and give you a chance to fix it, unless the harm is ongoing or the law requires us to act at once, in which case we may suspend first and explain afterwards. We will tell you why unless the law prevents it, and you can answer through the contact form; we reconsider on what you tell us.

Your data and our role

Four things are easy to confuse here, so we separate them. The service, its software and brand are ours. The information you submit about your business is yours; we display it on your contact page and in your snippets and use it for nothing else. The personal information inside a handoff belongs, in the sense the law gives that word, to the person it describes; you hold it as the controller and we process it on your instructions under our data processing agreement, which is part of these terms. Aggregated, de-identified statistics about service usage (for example, the number of handoffs delivered per month) are ours and contain no personal data.

You are responsible for having a lawful basis to receive and act on each handoff, for telling your customers how you handle their data, and for responding to their requests about it. If a person asks us instead, we forward the request to you within five business days and delete our own copy as the privacy policy describes; the data processing agreement sets out how we help beyond that.

You grant us the limited licence we need to store, process and deliver your data for the purpose of running the service. We claim no other rights to it.

Consent and assistants

Every handoff we accept carries a consent record: the assistant's confirmation that the person agreed, the moment we received it, the business it was sent to, and the exact content that was sent. We refuse any request without that confirmation and store nothing from it. The assistant policy requires the assistant, before it calls us, to tell the person what will be shared, name you as the recipient, and get a clear yes; it may not treat inferred or ambiguous permission as consent, and it may include sensitive details only when they matter to the request. We may reject or suspend any assistant integration that does not follow these rules, and we do.

We do not take part in the conversation and cannot verify the confirmation independently, so the consent record is the assistant's statement, not our finding. The obligation to obtain consent sits with the assistant; the obligation to check that an integration followed the protocol sits with us; the obligation to act lawfully on what you receive sits with you. For requests that carry health, legal or financial details, or where your profession imposes confidentiality duties, you should take your own confirmation step before acting, and your duties apply from the moment the handoff reaches you.

We are not responsible for the content an assistant produces, including inaccuracies in a conversation summary.

Delivery and what the statuses mean

Each handoff has one of four states, recorded with the handoff and shown on your account page:

• Accepted. We validated and stored it and issued a reference. Acceptance means we have it; it does not mean you have seen it.
• Delivered. We handed it to every destination you configured and each one took it: your mail provider accepted the email, your webhook answered with a success code, your CRM accepted the record. From that moment the copy is in your systems.
• Failed. A destination refused it or could not be reached. The reason is recorded. We do not retry automatically; the handoff stays stored for its 90 days, and you can ask us to send it again once the destination is fixed.
• Held. Accepted but not delivered because your account is over its free allowance or on hold, as the plans section describes.

We will make reasonable efforts to deliver each accepted handoff promptly and we report the result of every delivery attempt to the assistant that sent it and on your account page. Email delivery depends on your mail provider; webhook delivery depends on your receiver being available; CRM delivery depends on your CRM provider. You are responsible for keeping your destinations correct and for watching requests that need a quick reply. We are not liable for handoffs that were delivered to a destination you configured but that you did not see or act on.

We aim for high availability but do not promise uninterrupted service. We may change, suspend or retire features with notice where practical.

Intellectual property

The service, its software, documentation and brand belong to Aliso LLC and are protected by copyright and trademark law. You may use them only as these terms allow. The discovery snippet and contact page we generate for you are yours to publish and link from your own properties, including after your account closes, though the page and the endpoint stop working when the account does. Your name, logo and business details appear on your contact page and in your snippets because you put them there; we use them for nothing else.

If you send us feedback or suggestions we may use them without obligation to you.

Usher Up does not host public user generated content, so the notice and takedown process of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not apply to it in the usual way. If you believe content delivered through the service infringes your rights, use our contact form and we will investigate.

Third party services

If you connect Usher Up to a third party service such as HubSpot, or point a webhook at your own systems, your use of that service is governed by its own terms and privacy policy. Our part is to send the handoff there securely, over HTTPS and, for webhooks, signed so you can verify it came from us, and to record whether the destination accepted it. We are not responsible for what the destination does with the handoff after that.

Ending the agreement

You can close your account at any time through the contact form from your account's contact email. Closing cancels any paid plan at the end of the month already paid for. Before closure you may ask us for an export of your handoffs from the last 90 days, which we provide as a file within five business days; after closure we delete your handoffs, including any held ones, and your account data within 30 days as the privacy policy describes, except for invoices and other records we must keep.

We can end or suspend your account for breach of these terms as the acceptable use section describes, for non payment of a paid plan, or if we discontinue the service, in which case we give at least 30 days' notice where possible and refund any prepaid period beyond the closing date. Sections that by their nature should survive, including those on data, liability, indemnities and disputes, continue to apply.

No warranty

The service is provided as is and as available. To the fullest extent the law allows we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non infringement. We do not warrant that assistants will send you handoffs, that handoffs will be accurate, or that the service will be error free. The specific commitments in these terms, the data processing agreement and the security page are the commitments we make; this disclaimer does not take them back. Nothing in this section excludes a right the law does not allow us to exclude.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, neither party will be liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue or business, arising from the service, even if told they were possible.

Each party's total liability for all claims arising from the service, taken together, will not exceed the greater of the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim and 100 US dollars.

These limits do not apply to a party's indemnity obligations under these terms, to a breach of the confidentiality or security obligations in the data processing agreement, to fees you owe us, or to any liability that the law does not allow to be limited. Where the law allows a limit only in part, the limit applies to that extent.

Indemnities

By you. You will defend, indemnify and hold harmless Aliso LLC from third party claims, and the damages and reasonable legal costs that come with them, to the extent they arise from your material breach of these terms, your unlawful collection, use or disclosure of handoff data, your contact with customers in violation of law, content you submitted to the service, or your gross negligence or wilful misconduct.

By us. We will defend, indemnify and hold harmless you and your officers from third party claims that the service, as we provide it, infringes a United States patent, copyright or trademark. This does not cover claims arising from your modifications, from combining the service with something we did not supply, or from your own content. If such a claim arises we may fix the service, replace it, or end your account with a refund of any prepaid period. Our total liability under this indemnity will not exceed two times the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim.

How a claim is handled. The party seeking indemnity gives the other prompt written notice of the claim, cooperates reasonably in the defence, and lets the indemnifying party control the defence and settlement, except that no settlement may admit fault on behalf of, impose an ongoing obligation on, or restrict the indemnified party without its written consent.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any dispute will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Orange County, California, and both parties consent to that venue. Before filing, each side agrees to try to resolve the matter informally for 30 days starting from a written notice to the other that describes the dispute and what would resolve it; the contact form, or your account's contact email, is the route for that notice. Either party may seek urgent injunctive relief at any time to protect its data, its systems or its intellectual property. Nothing here waives a right that the law does not allow to be waived.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. For material changes we will email account holders at least 14 days before the new terms take effect, and the date at the top of this page and the version named on the sign-up form change with them. Continuing to use the service after that date means you accept them. If you do not, close your account before they take effect and we will refund the unused part of any month you have already paid for. A change never applies to a handoff we already hold in a way that widens what we may do with it.

Aliso LLC, Sacramento, California. Questions: use the contact form.