Terms of Service

Agreement to these terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Houtos Labs ("Houtos Labs," "we," "us," or "our") covering your access to and use of the Houtos Labs website at houtos.io, The Grader website-audit tool, and the paid products described below (together, the "Service"). If you use the Service on behalf of an organization, you represent that you are authorized to bind that organization, and "you" includes that organization.

If you do not agree with these Terms, do not use the Service. Your continued use after a change to these Terms means you accept the updated version.

What the service is

The Grader evaluates a website you submit and returns a measured grade across performance, accessibility, SEO and AEO, security and privacy, trust and compliance, and reputation, together with a prioritized, plain-language fix list. The Service is offered in three forms:

• The free grade ($0). A real, measured grade across the six lenses plus the top fixes. It is genuinely useful on its own — nothing is held hostage to force an upgrade.
• The $50 Deep Report (one-time, per scan). A pay-after-the-free-grade upgrade that unlocks the full per-issue detail, copy-paste fixes, a 90-day remediation roadmap, a competitor deep-dive, a full WCAG 2.2 audit with business-risk framing, a personalized site snapshot, an "Ask this report" consultation assistant, and a downloadable PDF plus a private shareable link. The $50 is a one-time charge — not a subscription.
• The $295 development scope (one-time). A separate, one-time service fee that opens an evaluation/scope call and a fresh consultation allowance. It is the bridge from a report to a full development engagement with Houtos Labs.

Honesty about accuracy. Every finding is labeled Measured (verified by running real tools against your live site) or Estimated (a confidence-aware value used only where a direct measurement is not yet available). Paying for a report does not convert an estimated signal into a measured one. We never present an estimate as a verified scan.

The nature of an AI-generated report

The Deep Report narrative and the in-report "Ask this report" assistant are generated by an artificial-intelligence model working from signals gathered about your site. AI-generated content can be incomplete, can misjudge context, and can occasionally be wrong. You are responsible for reviewing every recommendation and verifying any suggested change against your own live code, configuration and business needs before you act on it.

The "Ask this report" assistant is bound to your report's own data. It does not browse the web and does not invent findings; when a question falls outside the report's scope, it says so rather than guessing. Copy-paste fix snippets are suggested patterns — they are starting points to verify and adapt, not guaranteed drop-in solutions.

Acceptable use

You agree to use the Service lawfully and only as intended. You will not:

• Submit a URL you do not own or otherwise have permission to have evaluated, or use the Service to scan a site in a way that violates that site's terms or the law;
• Attempt to overload, disrupt, probe, or circumvent the Service, its rate limits, its bot-protection, or its security controls;
• Use the Service to attack, surveil, or gain unauthorized access to any system, or to evaluate internal, private, or non-public addresses;
• Scrape, resell, sublicense, or commercially redistribute the Service or its output except as expressly permitted here;
• Reverse-engineer, copy, or build a competing product from the Service or its underlying engine;
• Misrepresent a report's findings — for example, presenting an estimated figure as a verified result, or stripping the measured/estimated labels and disclaimers; or
• Upload or transmit anything unlawful, infringing, malicious, or that violates another person's rights.

We may rate-limit, suspend, or terminate access that we reasonably believe breaches these Terms or threatens the Service or its users.

Payment, credits and refunds

Paid products are charged through Stripe via hosted checkout; we never see or store your full card details. All prices are in US dollars and each charge is one-time — there is no recurring billing, no card-on-file, and no auto-renewal.

All sales are final, and the $50 is not refundable for cash. Instead, the $50 you pay for a Deep Report becomes a $50 credit toward a future development engagement with Houtos Labs. The credit is real and we honor it. Full details — including how $50 refills stack credit, the single shared 90-day window, and the non-creditable nature of the $295 scope fee — are in our Credits policy, which forms part of these Terms. Consumers in some regions (for example, the EU and UK) may have statutory cancellation rights for digital services; contact us and we will honor applicable law.

Intellectual property

Ours. The Service — including The Grader, its grading engine and methodology, the site design, code, text, graphics, logos, and the "We don't guess. We grade." brand — is owned by Houtos Labs and protected by intellectual-property law. These Terms grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Service and to use the report we generate for you for your own internal business purposes. No other rights are granted by implication.

Yours. You retain ownership of the website you submit and of any content you provide. By submitting a URL or content, you grant us the limited license needed to fetch, evaluate, snapshot, and process it in order to deliver the Service to you, and to operate and improve the Service consistent with our Privacy Policy.

Your report. Subject to payment, the Deep Report we generate is yours to download, keep, and share via the tools we provide. You may not remove our branding, the measured/estimated labels, or the disclaimers, and you may not resell the report as a standalone product.

Disclaimers — not professional or legal advice

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement, to the fullest extent permitted by law. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any grade, finding, or projected score lift will be achieved.

This assessment does not constitute legal advice. Litigation-risk figures are illustrative estimates of general business risk, not a prediction about your specific situation. Consult qualified legal counsel.

Reports — including accessibility, privacy, security, and compliance findings — are provided for informational purposes and are not professional, legal, accessibility-compliance, security, or financial advice. A grade is not a certification, an audit opinion, or a guarantee of compliance with the ADA, WCAG, GDPR, or any law, standard, or regulation. For decisions that carry legal or regulatory weight, consult a qualified professional.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Houtos Labs and its founder, personnel, and suppliers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or business, arising out of or relating to your use of (or inability to use) the Service, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of the amount you actually paid us for the Service in the three (3) months before the claim or US $50. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you; in that case our liability is limited to the smallest amount permitted by law.

Changes, termination and governing law

We may update the Service and these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by the "Last updated" date above, and your continued use after a change means you accept it. We may suspend or terminate access for breach of these Terms; the sections that by their nature should survive termination (intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, and these miscellaneous terms) will survive.

These Terms are governed by the laws of [governing-law jurisdiction to be confirmed by Houtos Labs], without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and the courts of that jurisdiction will have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes, except where mandatory consumer-protection law gives you the right to bring a claim in your home jurisdiction. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest remain in effect.

Contact

Questions about these Terms? Contact Houtos Labs through the channels listed on our contact page or at our primary domain, houtos.io. See also our Privacy Policy and Credits policy.