Terms of service.

These Terms are a contract between XStep, Ltd., an Illinois limited liability company ("XStep," "we," "us") and the business or person that creates an account or uses the Service ("you"). By accepting these Terms, creating an account, or using the Service, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. If you accept for a company, you confirm that you have authority to bind it. The Service is for business use only. By accepting these Terms, you confirm that you are using the Service for a business, trade or profession, including as a sole proprietor, and not for personal, family or household purposes.

In short: XStep AI is an AI-powered service provided on a best-efforts basis. It can make mistakes and may miss or mishandle calls, messages, or leads. You remain responsible for following up with your customers.

XStep provides software that uses artificial intelligence to communicate with your customers, leads, and contacts on your behalf, such as answering calls and messages, collecting information, and passing it to you (the "Service," including the AI agent known as Maggie and any other XStep AI agent). We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Service for your internal business purposes during your subscription or trial.

You may not copy, resell, reverse engineer, or use the Service to build a competing product. We own the Service and all related intellectual property. You own your content and data ("Customer Data") and permit us to use it to operate, secure, and improve the Service.

We provide the Service on a commercially reasonable, best-efforts basis. We do not promise that the AI agent will answer every call or message, understand every caller, capture every lead, or respond correctly every time. The Service may be slow, unavailable, or interrupted because of maintenance, our providers, telephone and internet carriers, AI model providers, power or network failures, or events beyond our control. Statements such as "picks up every time" describe our goal, not a guarantee.

AI output can be wrong, incomplete, out of date, or inappropriate. The AI agent may mishear or misunderstand a caller, mis-transcribe a name, number, or address, give inaccurate information, fail to escalate, or fail to record or deliver a message. You acknowledge that:

• The AI agent is a convenience tool, not a replacement for your staff, judgment, or backup process.
• You are responsible for reviewing the information the Service collects and for following up with your contacts. Do not rely on the Service as your only way to receive urgent or important contacts.
• You are responsible for the instructions, business information, pricing, hours, and policies you give the AI agent, and for keeping them accurate.
• The AI agent does not give legal, medical, financial, safety, or other professional advice and must not be used for emergencies. Callers with an emergency should contact 911.
• The AI agent does not dispatch, triage or respond to emergencies, including gas leaks, electrical hazards, flooding, fire, loss of heat or cooling, or medical or mental-health crises, and it may fail to recognize one. If your business receives emergency or after-hours urgent calls, you must keep your own emergency line or on-call process and configure the AI agent to direct those callers to it or to 911.
• Communications through the AI agent do not create an attorney-client, doctor-patient, therapist-client, fiduciary or other professional relationship between the caller and you or us. If you are a licensed professional, you remain responsible for your professional, confidentiality and privilege obligations, including what the AI agent is configured to collect and say.
• The AI agent is not authorized to make binding quotes, contracts, or commitments for you unless you have configured it to do so and accept responsibility for what it says.

Some calls, messages, or leads may be missed, delayed, misrouted, misrecorded, or never delivered, and lost business may result. XStep is not responsible for lost sales, lost customers, missed appointments, missed opportunities, or harm to reputation or business arising from the Service not answering, not understanding, mishandling, or delaying a contact, however caused.

You are responsible for complying with all laws that apply to your use of the Service, including laws on call and message recording and consent, notice that a caller is speaking with an automated system, telemarketing and text messaging (including the TCPA and CAN-SPAM), do-not-call rules, privacy, and industry rules. You will give all required notices and obtain all required consents from the people the AI agent communicates with, including recording consent in states that require all-party consent. Every call handled by the AI agent begins with a short notice, set by us, that the caller is speaking with an AI assistant and that the call will be recorded and transcribed (for example: "I'm an AI assistant, and this call will be recorded and transcribed."). You may customize the rest of your greeting, but you may not remove, alter, obscure or contradict this notice, and you remain responsible for any additional notices or consents your jurisdiction or industry requires.

You will not use the Service for unlawful, deceptive, harassing, or spam communications, or to collect payment card or government ID data. The Service is not currently designed to meet the requirements of HIPAA. Unless we have signed a separate business associate agreement with you, you will not use the Service to create, receive, maintain, or transmit protected health information (as defined under HIPAA), and if you are a HIPAA covered entity or business associate, you will not use the Service for calls or messages with patients or about their care. You are responsible for any protected health information submitted to the Service in violation of this section.

You will provide accurate account information and keep your login secure; you are responsible for activity under your account. Fees, usage allowances, and overage rates are shown at checkout and in your plan. Payment is processed by Stripe, and card details are entered only on Stripe's secure page. Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled; you may cancel at any time, effective at the end of the current billing period. Fees are non-refundable except where the law requires or we state otherwise in writing. We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice, and we may suspend the Service for non-payment or violation of these Terms. Taxes are your responsibility. Free trials last 30 days, include up to 300 minutes, and do not require a payment method. Trial calls stop when the trial minutes are used, and no fees or overage charges apply during a trial. When a trial ends, the Service stops unless you subscribe to a paid plan; we will not charge you automatically. Before a trial ends, we will remind you by email and, if you have agreed to receive them, by text message. By giving us your email address or mobile number, you agree that we may contact you about your account, trial, setup, billing and usage, including reminders to finish setup or add a payment method. Text messages are sent only to numbers that have opted in, under the Maggie SMS terms; message frequency varies, message and data rates may apply, and you can reply STOP to opt out of texts or use the unsubscribe link in any marketing email. Opting out of reminders does not stop notices we must send about your account, billing or these Terms. Paid plans include a monthly allowance of minutes. Minutes beyond the allowance (and any prepaid minute packs) are billed at the overage rate shown in your plan, currently $0.50 per minute, rounded up to the next whole minute per call. We notify you at 80% and 100% of your allowance, and calls stop at 600 minutes in a billing month until you authorize additional minutes.

We handle personal information as described in our Privacy Policy, which is part of these Terms. Text messaging is governed by the Maggie SMS terms. Calls handled by the AI agent are recorded and transcribed, and calls, recordings, transcripts, and messages are processed by us and our service providers, including telephony and AI model providers, to deliver the Service. You are responsible for the personal information of your contacts; we process it on your behalf. No system is perfectly secure, and we do not guarantee that Customer Data will never be accessed without authorization, though we use reasonable safeguards.

THE SERVICE AND ALL AI OUTPUT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR SECURE, OR WILL CAPTURE EVERY CALL, MESSAGE, OR LEAD.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW: (A) XSTEP WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, CUSTOMERS, LEADS, BOOKINGS, GOODWILL, OR DATA, INCLUDING FROM MISSED, DELAYED, OR MISHANDLED CONTACTS OR INACCURATE AI OUTPUT, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY; AND (B) OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM.

These limits apply to any legal theory, including negligence. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless XStep, its owners, employees, and providers from claims, losses, fines, penalties, and legal fees arising from (a) your use of the Service, (b) your instructions, scripts, and content given to the AI agent, (c) your failure to give required notices or obtain required consents, (d) your violation of law or these Terms, or (e) claims by your customers or contacts about your products, services, quotes, bookings, or what the AI agent said on your behalf. This section survives termination.

You may stop using the Service and cancel at any time. We may suspend or end your access immediately if you breach these Terms, create legal or security risk, or fail to pay. On termination your license ends, and we will delete Customer Data, including recordings and transcripts, 30 days after your account ends (including when a free trial ends without a paid subscription) unless the law requires otherwise. Sections 2 through 4 and 7 through 14 survive termination.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Before filing a claim, you agree to contact hello@xstep.ai and try to resolve the dispute informally for 30 days. Any remaining dispute will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Commercial Arbitration Rules in Cook County, Illinois, and not in court or as a class action, except that either of us may seek an injunction in court to protect intellectual property and either of us may bring a claim in small-claims court. TODO(legal): confirm arbitration and class-waiver enforceability.

We may update these Terms. For material changes we will give at least 30 days' notice by email or in your account and may require you to accept again. Continuing to use the Service after the effective date of a change means you accept it.

These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and your plan make up the entire agreement between us. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them in a merger or sale. Neither party is liable for failure to perform due to events beyond its reasonable control. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. Legal notices to us go to legal@xstep.ai.

Questions: XStep, Ltd., Highland Park, Illinois, hello@xstep.ai.