Legal
Terms of service
1. Parties and scope
Hazelchat is provided by Jan-Philipp Peters, sole trader, Prenzlauer Allee 173, 10409 Berlin, Germany (“we”, “us”). It is offered exclusively to businesses, professionals and organisations acting in the course of their trade or profession (“you”, “customer”). Consumers may not use the service. Your own general terms do not apply, even if we do not object to them expressly.
2. What Hazelchat does
Hazelchat lets you import text from your website and documents, review and approve it, add questions and answers, and publish a chat that answers your website visitors' questions from the content you approved, in plain language, with the passages each answer rests on attached. Visitors can be guided to a next step you configure, such as a booking or contact link, and can optionally leave an enquiry.
You can also switch on a shared page for your chat, at an address on chat.hazelchat.co that you choose. It answers from the same published content as your website chat, shows the same privacy notice and counts towards the same allowance and limits. The page names your verified website and carries your business name; Hazelchat hosts it on your behalf.
You can connect AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT or Claude Code to your workspace. Within the permissions you choose, an assistant can read your agent's activity, conversations and enquiries, ask test questions against your saved draft and add answers to your draft. It cannot publish, change settings, websites or billing, or delete anything; you review and publish in the console.
Hazelchat does not make new claims about your business. When no approved passage answers a question, the chat says so and points to the next step you configured. Without an AI model, answers consist of passages shown as they appear in your approved sources. If you enable an AI model, it selects relevant passages and writes a short answer from those passages only; before the answer is shown, our server checks that every number, price, date, name and link in it appears in the selected passages, and otherwise shows the passages themselves or the handoff instead. Workshop, the assistant in your account, uses an AI model chosen by us to answer your questions about your agent from figures our server has counted and to propose changes to your draft. It cannot publish, switch your agent on or off, change your websites, limits, billing or privacy settings, or delete anything. A proposed change takes effect only when you approve it, and only in your draft; you decide when to publish. Proposed answers must be based on your sources or on facts you typed; you remain responsible for what you approve and publish.
If your workspace is connected to an online store whose product catalog Hazelchat can read (currently Shopify), you can switch on Products. Answers can then include up to three product cards, each with a product's name, price, availability and a link to its page in your store. Our server chooses and builds the cards from your catalog as Hazelchat last read it; an AI model never writes them. Within the Products setting you publish, product details follow your store without a new publication. A card shows a price only if you chose to show prices and the price was read from your store within the last 24 hours, and availability only if it was read within the last hour, with the time of that check. Keeping product details correct in your store is your responsibility.
Product cards can carry an Add to cart button, which you can switch off. It adds one of a product to the shopper's cart in your store, and the chat stays open with a View cart button; checkout, prices charged, taxes, shipping and discounts stay with your store. Hazelchat sees only that the button was clicked, not what was bought, and reports clicks as clicks.
We may add, alter or remove functionality as the service develops. We will give reasonable advance notice where a material change adversely affects a paid plan or a published chat, except where an urgent security, legal or reliability issue requires faster action.
3. Account
- Signup requires a verified email address and a password. You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for all activity under your account.
- One account owns one workspace. There is currently no team access, invitation or role management; do not share credentials.
- Tell us promptly at hello@hazelchat.co if you suspect unauthorised use. You can sign out of all devices and change your password in Account settings.
4. Your content and your obligations
- You retain all rights in the content you import, upload or write. You grant us the non-exclusive right to store, process and display it as necessary to provide the service to you and your visitors.
- You confirm that you hold the rights required to use that content and that it contains no unlawful material. We may suspend a workspace whose published content or use of the service appears unlawful, abusive or harmful to the service, and will tell you why.
- Before your chat can go live on a website, you must prove ownership of that website's domain through the verification offered on the Website page, and publish your business identity, a link to your privacy notice and a privacy contact. The chat cannot start hosted conversations without these.
- A shared page may only be switched on for the business you represent, and only while that business's website is verified for your workspace and its business identity and privacy details are published. The page address you choose must not suggest that the page belongs to anyone else. An address you replace or give up stays reserved for 30 days and is then free for others to choose.
- You are the controller for the personal data of your visitors. You are responsible for choosing a lawful basis, for the wording of the privacy notice and enquiry permission shown in your chat, for the retention period you configure, and for answering your visitors' requests. We act as your processor under the data processing agreement.
- You must review what your chat says before publishing it and after changing sources. Answers are drawn from your approved content; whether that content is correct, complete and current is your responsibility.
- An AI assistant you connect acts for you: whatever it does through its connection counts as your action, including answers it adds to your draft. Review those answers before you publish. You choose the assistant and its provider and are responsible for your agreement with them, for whether your use of visitor data with them is lawful, and for keeping assistant keys secret. Disconnect an assistant or revoke a key in Settings as soon as you no longer trust it.
5. Acceptable use
You must not: import websites or documents you have no right to use; attempt to access another customer's workspace or data; probe, overload or circumvent the service's limits, isolation or verification, including through an AI assistant connection; use the chat to collect data covertly or to mislead visitors; or use the service for content that is unlawful in the country where it is shown. Automated or bulk traffic to the public chat interfaces beyond normal visitor use is not permitted.
We may switch off or remove a shared page, or reserve its address, if it impersonates another person or business, misleads visitors about who they are talking to, or is reported to us and appears to do so; we will tell you why.
6. Availability, limits and support
The standard plans have no guaranteed availability level. We aim for continuous availability, take daily encrypted backups and rehearse restoration, but interruptions for maintenance, capacity limits or incidents can occur. Usage limits such as answer allowances, daily abuse budgets, import sizes, upload sizes and export sizes apply as shown on the pricing page, at Checkout and in the product. Support is provided by email at hello@hazelchat.co on a reasonable-effort basis; any separately signed Scale agreement may state additional support terms.
7. Plans, trials, fees and payment
- Hazelchat offers a Free plan and paid Starter, Business and individually agreed Scale plans. The price, billing interval, included monthly answer allowance, website limit and plan features shown on the pricing page and at Checkout form part of the order.
- Only successful visitor replies containing approved source evidence or product cards consume the monthly answer allowance, each reply once. Test questions, handoffs and replies with nothing to quote or show do not. Allowances reset monthly, including on annual subscriptions, and do not roll over. At the allowance the chat uses the configured contact handoff instead of producing an evidence answer; no automatic overage charge is made.
- A new paid subscription billed by us includes one seven-day trial of the selected plan and requires a payment method. The trial allowance shown at signup applies. We send a reminder 24 hours before the first charge. Unless cancelled before the trial ends, the selected monthly subscription begins and is charged; an annual subscription begins instead only when annual billing was explicitly selected. Cancelling during the trial prevents the charge and leaves the workspace on Free.
- Paid subscriptions billed by us are billed in advance and renew automatically for the selected monthly or annual term until cancelled. Annual plans include twelve months for the price of ten. Upgrades take effect immediately with the price difference prorated; downgrades and annual-to-monthly changes take effect at renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period, after which the workspace moves to Free without deleting its content.
- Listed prices exclude taxes that we are legally required to charge. While we apply the small-business treatment under § 19 UStG, no VAT is charged or shown. If that treatment changes, applicable VAT or other tax is added on top of the listed price. Customers must provide complete and correct billing and tax information.
- Plans bought through the Hazelchat app in the Wix App Market are sold and billed by Wix through its checkout, under Wix's terms for the price, any free trial, renewal, payment, cancellation and refunds. Such a plan applies to the whole Hazelchat workspace connected to that Wix site, for as long as Wix reports it as active and the site stays connected; when it ends, or when the site is disconnected or the app removed, the workspace moves to Free. These terms otherwise apply unchanged. A workspace connected to a Wix site buys and changes paid plans only through Wix.
- Plans bought for the Hazelchat app in your Shopify admin are billed and collected by Shopify, under Shopify's terms for the charge, including any free trial, renewal, payment, currency conversion, taxes Shopify collects, cancellation and refunds; the price and billing interval shown on Shopify's plan page form part of the order. Shopify charges these plans in US dollars. If Shopify bills your store in another currency, Shopify converts the amount at its current rate and, according to Shopify, adds a currency conversion fee (1.5 % for stores billed in euros when this version was published); that fee is Shopify's, not ours. Such a plan applies to the whole Hazelchat workspace connected to that store, for as long as Shopify reports it as active and the store stays connected; when it ends, or when the store is disconnected or the app uninstalled, the workspace moves to Free. Disconnecting the store in Hazelchat does not cancel the plan in Shopify; to end Shopify's charge, cancel the plan or uninstall the app in Shopify. These terms otherwise apply unchanged. A workspace connected to a Shopify store buys and changes paid plans only through Shopify.
- If a plan bought through Wix or Shopify replaces a subscription billed by us, we end our subscription immediately and refund the unused part of the fee already paid for its current term, so the workspace is never billed twice.
- Stripe processes payments for subscriptions billed by us. A failed payment may be retried for up to two weeks. Paid features remain available while recovery is pending; after final failure the workspace moves to Free. A full payment dispute may pause paid entitlements while it is reviewed.
- Fees already paid are non-refundable and are not prorated merely because a customer stops using or cancels the service, except where applicable law requires a refund, a duplicate, erroneous or technically failed charge must be corrected, or a plan bought through Wix or Shopify replaces the subscription as described above. This does not limit mandatory rights that cannot be excluded.
8. Data protection and security
Our privacy notice describes how we process personal data, including where we act as your processor. The data processing agreement forms part of these terms and applies to visitor data processed on your behalf. We use encryption in transit, hashed credentials, encrypted backups, isolated document parsing and access controls. No measure is absolute.
9. Term, termination and your data
- The agreement runs for an indefinite period. You may cancel a paid subscription through the billing portal, a plan bought through Wix in your Wix account, or a plan bought through Shopify in your Shopify admin; a subscription billed by us or a plan bought through Wix ends at the end of its current term, a plan bought through Shopify when Shopify reports it ended, and the workspace then moves to Free. You may separately close the account at any time in Settings. We may terminate with 30 days' notice, or immediately for a material breach of sections 4 or 5 that is not cured after warning where a warning is reasonable.
- You can export your workspace at any time. Closing the account deletes your account and workspace data immediately and disables your chat; encrypted backup copies expire within 30 days. Data already delivered by email cannot be recalled. If you uninstall the Hazelchat app from a connected Shopify store, we delete the store's products at once and, when Shopify asks us to (about 48 hours later) or at the latest ten days after the uninstall, the sources read from the store's websites, the versions of your agent that contain them, and the conversations and enquiries started on those websites, as the privacy notice describes. If your published version contains such sources, it is withdrawn and your chat stops answering until you publish again. Your account and its other content stay.
- Sections 10, 11 and 12 survive termination.
10. Warranty and liability
We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the German Product Liability Act, and for guarantees we have expressly given. In cases of slight negligence we are liable only for breach of an obligation whose fulfilment is essential to the proper performance of the contract and on whose fulfilment you may regularly rely (cardinal obligation), and then only for foreseeable damage typical of this type of contract. Any further liability is excluded. Hazelchat does not guarantee that answers are correct, complete or suitable for a particular purpose; they are derived from content you approve. We are not responsible for what an AI assistant you connect says or does with the information it receives from Hazelchat.
11. Changes to these terms
We may change these terms with at least 30 days' notice by email to the address of your account. If you do not object before the change takes effect, the new terms apply; we will point this out in the notice. If you object, either party may end the agreement at the date the change would have taken effect.
12. Governing law and jurisdiction
These terms are governed by the law of the Federal Republic of Germany, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. If you are a merchant, a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law, the exclusive place of jurisdiction is the court having jurisdiction at our seat in Germany.
These terms are available in German and English. If the two versions differ, the German version prevails.
13. Contact
hello@hazelchat.co — see the legal notice for full provider details.