Legal
Terms & Conditions
Before this page goes live: fill in every highlighted placeholder and have the whole document reviewed by a lawyer qualified in your operating jurisdiction. Section 11 in particular — dispute resolution — has very different consequences depending on where you incorporate, and is not something to copy from another company. This is a structured starting point, not legal advice.
These terms are the agreement between you and OurBestie. By joining the waitlist, using this website, or using the OurBestie app, you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use the service.
1. Who these terms are with
The OurBestie website and app are operated by [LEGAL ENTITY NAME], registered in [COUNTRY / STATE] at [REGISTERED ADDRESS]. "We", "us" and "our" mean that company. "You" means you.
These terms sit alongside our Privacy Policy and Community Guidelines, both of which form part of this agreement. If a separate written agreement between you and us says something different, that agreement wins.
2. Who can use OurBestie
You must be 18 or older. OurBestie helps people arrange to meet in person and we do not make it available to minors. By using the service you confirm that you are 18 or over, that the information you give us is accurate, and that nothing in the law where you live prevents you from agreeing to these terms.
We may refuse or withdraw access to anyone, including where we believe someone is under 18, has previously been removed, or presents a risk to other members.
3. Your account
Your account is yours alone. Keep your login details private, do not let anyone else use your account, and tell us at support@ourbestie.app straight away if you think someone else has got into it.
You are responsible for what happens under your account. Keep your profile accurate — a profile that misrepresents who you are undermines the entire premise of the service and is grounds for removal.
You can delete your account at any time from within the app. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms or our Community Guidelines, and where we do we will tell you why unless doing so would compromise a safety investigation or break the law.
4. How you may and may not use it
We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use OurBestie for its intended purpose: planning and joining trips, and meeting other travellers. That is the whole of the licence.
You agree not to:
- break the law, or use OurBestie to help anyone else break it;
- harass, threaten, stalk, impersonate, defraud, or endanger anyone;
- post content that is hateful, sexually explicit, or that targets someone for who they are;
- use the service to advertise, recruit, run a business, or send unsolicited messages;
- scrape, crawl, or bulk-collect other members' profiles or content by any means;
- reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract our source code, except where the law expressly permits it;
- interfere with the service's operation or security, or try to access parts of it you have not been given access to;
- create an account after we have removed you, or hold multiple accounts to evade a restriction.
Breaking any of these ends your licence immediately. We may also report conduct to law enforcement where we believe someone is at risk.
5. Content you post
Your content stays yours. You keep ownership of the photos, trips, messages and everything else you put into OurBestie.
To be able to show it to the people you intend it for, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt for display, and distribute your content for the purpose of operating and promoting the service. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except where it has already been shared with others who still hold a copy, and except for backups that expire on their normal cycle.
If we want to use your content in our own marketing — an advert, this website, an app store screenshot — we will ask you first and you are free to say no.
You promise that content you post is yours to post, and that it does not infringe anyone else's rights.
We are not obliged to monitor everything posted, but we may review, remove, or restrict content that breaks these terms or our Community Guidelines. If you believe content on OurBestie infringes your copyright, email legal@ourbestie.app with enough detail to identify the work and the material, and we will act on valid notices. [If you will operate in the US, add a full DMCA §512 notice-and- counter-notice procedure and register a designated agent with the Copyright Office.]
6. Meeting people in person
This is the most important section on this page. Please read it properly.
OurBestie introduces people to each other. We do not vet, background-check, or vouch for any member, and we cannot verify that anyone is who they say they are. Meeting someone through OurBestie carries the same risks as meeting anyone else through the internet.
You are responsible for your own safety. Decisions about who you meet, where you go, and what you do are entirely yours. We strongly recommend the practical steps in our Safety Tips: meet in public first, tell someone where you are going, keep your own transport and accommodation, and leave the moment something feels wrong.
To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for the conduct of any member, whether online or offline, or for anything that happens at a meet-up, trip, or event arranged through the service. Nothing in this section limits liability that cannot be limited by law — including liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.
If someone makes you feel unsafe, report them in the app or email safety@ourbestie.app. We take reports seriously and we act on them.
7. Money
OurBestie is free to download and free to join a trip. If we introduce paid features, we will make the price and what you get clear before you pay anything, and we will set out refund terms then. Nothing on this website is an offer to sell you anything today.
Costs you agree with other travellers — flights, rooms, dinners, splitting a bill — are between you and them. We are not a party to them, we do not hold your money, and we cannot recover it for you.
8. Our intellectual property
The OurBestie name, logo, app, website, designs, and everything we have written or drawn remain ours. These terms do not give you any right to use our brand, and you may not copy the service or build a competing product from it.
If you send us feedback or a suggestion, we may use it freely and without owing you anything. We appreciate it all the same.
9. Availability and changes
We will do our best to keep OurBestie running, but we do not promise it will always be available, uninterrupted, or error-free. We may change, suspend, or discontinue features, and we may stop offering the service entirely — if we do that, we will give you reasonable notice and a way to export your data where we can.
We may update these terms. If a change materially affects your rights we will tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect, and continuing to use OurBestie after that means you accept the new version. If you do not accept it, you can close your account.
10. Disclaimers and liability
The service is provided "as is". To the extent the law allows, we exclude implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Information in the app — including anything about a destination, a price, or another member — may be wrong or out of date, and you should check anything that matters before you act on it.
To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of data, or loss of opportunity. Our total liability to you for any claim is limited to [the greater of the amount you paid us in the preceding 12 months, or GBP 100].
Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded. If you are a consumer, you have statutory rights that these terms do not affect, and nothing in this agreement requires you to give them up.
You agree to indemnify us against claims brought by a third party that arise from your breach of these terms or your misuse of the service.
11. Governing law and disputes
These terms are governed by the laws of [JURISDICTION], and the courts of [JURISDICTION] have jurisdiction over any dispute.
If you are a consumer resident in the UK or the EU, you keep the protection of the mandatory consumer law of the country you live in, and you can bring proceedings in your local courts.
Before starting anything formal, please email legal@ourbestie.app — almost everything is faster to resolve directly.
Decision needed here. Some comparable apps require binding individual arbitration and waive class actions. That is common for US entities and is generally unenforceable against consumers in the UK and EU. Because OurBestie's own copy sells "every city on earth" and its testimonials are in French and Spanish, an arbitration clause copied from a US company is likely to be void for a large share of your users while making the page look hostile to all of them. Decide this with a lawyer, based on where you actually incorporate.
12. General
If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest carries on. If we do not enforce a right straight away, we have not given it up. We may transfer our rights under these terms to another company, for example if the business is sold; you may not transfer yours without our written agreement. These terms are the entire agreement between us about the service.
Notices to you go to the email address on your account, so keep it current. Notices to us go to legal@ourbestie.app.