Service Terms

1. Who we are

Saont® is operated by ASTON H-S Ltd (Company No. 15866638) of ASTON H-S Ltd 124 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX (“Saont”, “we”, “us”, “our”). These Service Terms (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of the Saont platform, including SaontDocs™ (the “Service”).

If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the Service.

2. Business use only

The Service is intended for use by businesses and organisations. You confirm you are acting in a business capacity and have authority to bind the business you represent. Consumer protection laws (including consumer cancellation rights) do not apply to business-to-business services.

3. Service classification

Saont is a technology platform providing automated compliance infrastructure and document delivery tooling. Saont does not act as your agent, representative, fiduciary, managed service provider, or compliance manager. You remain solely responsible for your business operations, choices, legal compliance, and regulatory obligations.

4. No legal, financial, or professional advice

Saont and ASTON H-S Ltd are not a law firm, are not solicitors, are not regulated legal professionals, and do not provide legal services, legal advice, legal representation, legal opinions, regulatory advice, financial advice, tax advice, or professional advice of any kind.

Nothing provided through Saont, SaontDocs™, MySaont™, or any related service, content, template, output, update, or communication constitutes legal advice, professional advice, or a substitute for independent professional judgement.

SaontDocs™ are generated automatically based on structured templates and system logic and do not take into account your specific legal obligations, jurisdictional nuances, business operations, or regulatory exposure unless explicitly stated.

You acknowledge and agree that:

• you are solely responsible for determining whether Saont and SaontDocs™ are appropriate for your business;
• you must independently review all SaontDocs™ before using or publishing them;
• you must obtain independent legal or professional advice where appropriate; and
• your use of Saont, SaontDocs™, and all related output is entirely at your own risk.

Saont does not assume and expressly disclaims any duty to provide legal, regulatory, financial, or professional guidance.

5. No reliance and assumption of risk

You acknowledge and agree that you do not rely on Saont, ASTON H-S Ltd, SaontDocs™, or any of their directors, officers, employees, contractors, or agents as legal advisers, financial advisers, regulatory advisers, or professional advisers.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Saont and ASTON H-S Ltd accept no responsibility or liability for any decision, action, omission, compliance outcome, regulatory consequence, loss, damage, penalty, claim, or liability arising from or related to:

• your use of or reliance on SaontDocs™;
• your interpretation or implementation of SaontDocs™;
• your failure to obtain independent professional advice; or
• your compliance or non-compliance with applicable laws or regulations.

You assume full and exclusive responsibility for all outcomes arising from your use of the Service.

6. Regulatory change

Laws, regulations, guidance, and enforcement practice change over time. SaontDocs™ may not immediately reflect newly introduced, amended, or reinterpreted legal requirements. You remain responsible for ensuring your business complies with applicable law regardless of whether SaontDocs™ has been updated.

7. Compliance outcomes and regulatory interpretation

The Service is designed to support compliance processes but does not guarantee compliance with any law, regulation, regulatory framework, industry standard, or enforcement expectation.

Compliance outcomes depend on factors outside Saont's control, including your business practices, implementation choices, operational behaviour, applicable legal obligations, and the interpretation of regulators, courts, and enforcement authorities.

Laws, regulations, regulatory guidance, and enforcement practices are subject to interpretation and may change over time. Saont does not guarantee that any interpretation reflected in templates, updates, or automated logic will align with the views of regulators, courts, or enforcement authorities.

You remain solely responsible for determining whether the Service, SaontDocs™, and any related outputs are suitable for your regulatory environment.

8. Definitions

9. Accounts, access, and security

• You must provide accurate, current information and keep it updated.
• You are responsible for all activity under your account, including safeguarding credentials and device access.
• You must promptly notify us of any suspected unauthorised access or security incident relating to your account.
• We may implement and enforce reasonable security controls, including authentication and session protections.

10. Plans and permitted users

SaontDocs™ Professional is single-user only. Multi-user access is reserved for Business plan functionality where offered. You must not share accounts, bypass user limits, or permit unauthorised access.

11. Product availability, roadmap, and platform evolution

Saont may refer to products, plans, add-ons, features, modules, integrations, or functionality that are not yet released, not yet enabled for all customers, limited to specific plans, subject to staged rollout, or available only by invitation, region, infrastructure environment, or operational readiness.

Any reference to future functionality, roadmap items, previews, examples, demonstrations, launch statements, pricing concepts, plan names, or anticipated availability is for general informational purposes only and does not create any binding obligation on Saont to make any feature or product available at any particular time, on any particular terms, or at all.

Saont may introduce, delay, restrict, suspend, modify, replace, reprice, repackage, or discontinue any product, plan, feature, add-on, integration, or capability at any time for security, legal, regulatory, technical, operational, commercial, or product-development reasons.

12. The Service and SaontDocs™ model

SaontDocs™ is template-based and maintained centrally. Saont may update templates, structure, delivery logic, and related functionality over time to improve accuracy, security, compatibility, operational resilience, and platform development.

Where the Service offers an “accept updates” mechanism, you are responsible for reviewing and deciding whether to accept updates. If you choose not to accept an update, your instance may remain on the prior version until it is retired for security or compatibility reasons.

The Service is designed to minimise the collection of personal data. SaontDocs™ does not provide arbitrary free-text fields for personal data entry. Your SaontDocs™ may display a business contact email address as part of a compliance document where relevant.

13. Publication and implementation responsibility

You are solely responsible for deciding whether to publish SaontDocs™ and for how and where SaontDocs™ are implemented. This includes ensuring correct installation, integration, accessibility, visibility, and operational availability of your SaontDocs™ on your websites, applications, and services. Saont may perform limited automated operational checks, including periodic verification of domain control indicators (such as DNS TXT records), for the purpose of determining whether SaontDocs™ should be made available or restricted. These checks are technical in nature and do not constitute monitoring, verification, or assurance of correct implementation, publication, accessibility, or legal adequacy. Saont does not verify that SaontDocs™ are correctly deployed, visible, or accessible to end users, and is not responsible for your implementation choices, configurations, deployment failures, publication errors, or any resulting unavailability or non-compliance.

14. Customer information, implementation inputs, and document accuracy dependency

SaontDocs™ outputs, automation, update suggestions, and related service behaviour depend on the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and truthfulness of information, selections, configuration choices, implementation steps, and operational details provided or controlled by you.

You are solely responsible for ensuring that your business practices, data processing activities, cookie usage, consent mechanisms, contact details, domains, and implementation choices are accurate and remain aligned with the content you publish.

Saont is not responsible for inaccuracies, omissions, mismatches, or compliance risk caused by incomplete, outdated, misleading, or incorrect customer-supplied information, incorrect implementation, or changes to your business operations that are not reflected in the Service.

15. Domain verification and DNS responsibility

Certain features of the Service rely on verification of domain ownership or control through DNS records, including TXT records or other verification mechanisms (“Domain Verification”).

You are solely responsible for configuring and maintaining the DNS records required for Domain Verification. Saont periodically checks for the presence and validity of verification records. If required verification records are missing, altered, invalid, or otherwise unavailable, the associated domain may be classified by the Service as unverified.

Where a domain is unverified, certain Service functionality may be restricted, disabled, altered, or withheld until verification is restored. Saont may rely on DNS verification status when determining whether documents, services, or functionality should be delivered or displayed for a domain.

Saont is not responsible for any interruption, restriction, limitation of functionality, or other issue arising from missing, incorrect, modified, or removed DNS records, including TXT records required for Domain Verification.

DNS infrastructure, domain registrars, resolver networks, content delivery systems, and related services are operated by third parties outside Saont's control. Saont accepts no liability for failures, delays, propagation issues, caching effects, resolver inconsistency, or configuration changes within such systems.

16. DNS propagation and verification timing

DNS updates and verification records may take time to propagate across global DNS infrastructure.

Verification checks performed by Saont rely on publicly available DNS responses and may be affected by caching, resolver behaviour, propagation delays, registrar systems, content delivery networks, or other third-party infrastructure outside Saont's control.

As a result, verification status may not update immediately after DNS changes are made. Saont does not guarantee real-time verification, immediate detection of DNS changes, or uninterrupted verification status for any domain.

Saont accepts no liability for delays, verification failures, temporary misclassification of verification status, or service behaviour resulting from DNS propagation, caching, resolver inconsistency, or other external DNS conditions.

17. Fees, billing, and no refunds

Subscriptions are billed via Stripe. Prices, billing periods, renewal terms, and payment methods are presented at checkout and/or in your account.

No refunds: All fees are non-refundable except where a refund is required by applicable law. If you cancel, you retain access until the end of the current paid period unless we specify otherwise in writing.

If payment fails or is reversed, we may suspend or restrict access until payment is resolved.

18. Acceptable use

You must not:

• attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Service, systems, or data;
• probe, scan, or test vulnerabilities, except with our prior written permission;
• interfere with service integrity, security, or availability (including by automated abuse, scraping, or excessive requests);
• reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or attempt to derive source code except to the extent permitted by law;
• copy, resell, sublicense, or provide access to the Service outside your permitted plan and authorised users;
• use the Service to create a competing product or to benchmark for competitive purposes (except where prohibited by law);
• access or use the Service, SaontDocs™, templates, outputs, documentation, system behaviour, or related materials for the purpose of developing, training, benchmarking, or operating a competing product or service;
• use the Service, SaontDocs™, templates, outputs, documentation, system behaviour, or related materials to develop, train, improve, benchmark, or operate any machine learning model, artificial intelligence system, competing product, service, model, or system, whether directly or indirectly;
• upload or transmit malware or harmful code; or
• use the Service in a way that violates applicable law or infringes third-party rights.

You may not copy, reproduce, extract, redistribute, publish, or create derivative works based on SaontDocs™ templates, structures, update logic, document architecture, delivery mechanisms, or system logic except as strictly necessary to use the Service for your own internal business purposes.

You must not register, use, or attempt to register any domain name, brand, product name, company name, social handle, or identifier that is identical to or confusingly similar to Saont®, SaontDocs™, MySaont™, or any related marks.

19. Intellectual property

Saont®, SaontDocs™, MySaont™, and all associated names, logos, trade marks, trade names, branding, user interfaces, software, code, templates, structures, system logic, and related technology are owned by or licensed to ASTON H-S Ltd and are protected by intellectual property laws and international treaties.

All rights not expressly granted to you under these Terms are reserved exclusively by ASTON H-S Ltd and its licensors. Except for the limited licence expressly granted in these Terms, you acquire no ownership rights, intellectual property rights, or proprietary interests in Saont®, SaontDocs™, MySaont™, or any related technology.

Subject to your compliance with these Terms and payment of applicable fees, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the Service for your internal business purposes during your Subscription.

You may not remove, obscure, or alter proprietary notices. You may not use Saont branding or marks except as expressly permitted by us in writing.

Saont® is a registered trade mark used under licence by ASTON H-S Ltd. SaontDocs™ and MySaont™ are trade marks of ASTON H-S Ltd.

20. Data protection

Each party will comply with applicable data protection law. Where we process personal data on your behalf as a processor, the Data Processing Agreement at legal.saont.com/dpa applies and is incorporated into these Terms by reference.

Our Subprocessor list is maintained at legal.saont.com/subprocessors. Our Privacy Policy is available at legal.saont.com/privacy.

21. Suspension and termination

We may suspend, restrict, or terminate access to the Service immediately if:

• you breach these Terms or misuse the Service;
• payment is overdue, reversed, or disputed without resolution;
• we reasonably believe access presents a security, fraud, or abuse risk;
• we are required to do so by law or to protect the Service and other customers.

You may cancel your Subscription in accordance with the cancellation controls provided in your account or via Stripe. Termination does not affect fees already due or your obligations that by their nature should survive termination.

22. Availability and changes

We may modify, update, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service at any time for operational, security, legal, regulatory, or commercial reasons.

No uptime guarantee: Saont does not guarantee continuous availability, uptime, accessibility, performance, or uninterrupted operation of the Service. The Service may be unavailable, interrupted, degraded, delayed, or inaccessible at any time, with or without notice.

No service levels: No service level agreement (SLA), uptime commitment, minimum availability threshold, or service credit regime applies unless explicitly set out in a separately executed written agreement signed by an authorised officer of ASTON H-S Ltd.

The Service operates on third-party infrastructure including, without limitation, cloud hosting providers, databases, content delivery networks, DNS providers, authentication providers, payment processors, email delivery systems, and network security layers.

Saont does not own or control such infrastructure and accepts no liability whatsoever for outages, failures, latency, degradation, or unavailability caused by third-party systems.

Any reference to availability, performance, or compatibility in marketing materials, documentation, or communications does not constitute a contractual commitment or guarantee.

Temporary or prolonged inaccessibility of SaontDocs™, MySaont™, web-hosted content, dashboards, APIs, embedded documents, or related functionality does not constitute breach of contract.

23. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available" without any representations, warranties, conditions, or guarantees, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise.

Saont expressly disclaims all warranties including, without limitation, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, completeness, reliability, availability, performance, security, and suitability for legal or regulatory compliance.

Output limitation: SaontDocs™ and all outputs generated, maintained, updated, or supported by the Service may be incomplete, inaccurate, outdated, delayed, or unsuitable for the Customer’s specific circumstances. No representation or warranty is given that any output will meet legal requirements, reflect every relevant factual nuance, or be accepted by any regulator, authority, court, auditor, enforcement body, or third party.

No duty to monitor or verify: Saont has no obligation to monitor, audit, verify, validate, or ensure the Customer’s compliance, the accuracy or completeness of Customer Data, the correctness of outputs, the suitability of document content, or the adequacy of implementation, publication, deployment, or operational use.

No guarantee of compliance: The Service does not guarantee compliance with any law, regulation, regulatory framework, industry standard, enforcement expectation, or supervisory guidance. Regulatory interpretation varies, enforcement practice changes, and legal requirements may be unclear, evolving, or disputed. The Customer remains solely responsible for compliance.

Security limitation: While Saont implements security measures appropriate to the nature of the Service, Saont does not guarantee that the Service will be secure, free from vulnerabilities, uninterrupted, error-free, immune from unauthorised access, or protected against cyber attacks, malicious activity, data breaches, service failures, or other security incidents.

Compatibility limitation: Any reference to compatibility, integration capability, supported platforms, supported environments, or expected behaviour (whether express or implied) is provided on a best-efforts, non-binding basis only.

Third-party integration limitation: The Service may integrate with or depend on third-party systems, platforms, providers, APIs, or services, including but not limited to hosting providers, authentication services, payment processors, DNS systems, and external infrastructure.

Such third-party systems are outside Saont’s control and may change, fail, restrict access, introduce incompatibilities, alter behaviour, or cease operation at any time without notice.

Saont does not guarantee the continued availability, functionality, compatibility, or correct operation of any integration, dependency, or external system, and accepts no liability for any loss, disruption, error, or failure arising from such third-party systems.

Display and rendering limitation: SaontDocs™, embedded documents, banners, scripts, and outputs may render differently depending on browser, device, theme, CSS, JavaScript, third-party scripts, or implementation context.

Saont does not guarantee consistent visual presentation, formatting, layout, behaviour, or display across all environments. The Customer is solely responsible for verifying correct rendering and behaviour within their own implementation.

The Service may not operate correctly, consistently, or at all across all environments, including but not limited to: websites, frameworks, content management systems, e-commerce platforms, browsers, devices, operating systems, third-party scripts, extensions, or configurations.

Differences in implementation, infrastructure, third-party dependencies, user configuration, updates, or external system behaviour may result in degraded performance, partial functionality, incompatibility, or complete failure of certain features or outputs.

Saont does not guarantee compatibility with any specific platform, system, browser, device, integration, or third-party service, even where such compatibility is referenced, suggested, demonstrated, or previously functional.

The Customer is solely responsible for testing and verifying compatibility within their own environment before relying on the Service in production.

No obligation to store or recover data: Saont does not guarantee the storage, retention, backup, restoration, or recovery of any data, content, document, configuration, output, or system state. The Customer is solely responsible for maintaining independent backups of any data, records, outputs, or materials it considers important.

Testing obligation: The Customer is solely responsible for testing, validating, and verifying all outputs, documents, configurations, updates, and implementations before relying on them in a live, production, legal, operational, or customer-facing environment.

Beta and evolving features: Certain features, modules, integrations, automations, workflows, or functionality may be released as beta, preview, experimental, early-access, limited-release, or evolving features. Such features may be incomplete, unstable, changed, restricted, or withdrawn at any time, with or without notice, and without any warranty of continuity, suitability, or performance.

The Service is not designed for mission-critical, safety-critical, emergency, or legally time-sensitive use. You agree not to rely on the Service as the sole mechanism for meeting statutory deadlines, regulatory filing obligations, emergency legal responses, or time-critical compliance actions.

Implementation environment limitation: Saont has no control over the Customer’s website, application, infrastructure, configuration, or deployment environment.

Saont accepts no liability for any failure, error, non-compliance, or issue arising from the Customer’s implementation, including conflicts with existing code, scripts, consent mechanisms, design systems, or third-party tools.

No guarantee of regulatory acceptance: Saont does not guarantee that any document, output, configuration, implementation, update, or workflow generated or supported by the Service will be accepted by any regulator, supervisory authority, court, enforcement body, auditor, business partner, insurer, platform operator, or third party, or that it will prevent investigation, enforcement action, liability, dispute, or loss.

24. Limitation of liability

Infrastructure classification and allocation of responsibility: The Service is an automated compliance infrastructure and document delivery system. Saont does not assume responsibility for legal compliance, regulatory interpretation, legal sufficiency of documents, or legal outcomes. You remain solely responsible for reviewing, approving, implementing, and maintaining compliance documentation appropriate to your activities.

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that cannot be excluded by law.

• No liability for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive losses.
• No liability for business interruption, lost revenue, lost conversion, or reputational harm.
• No liability for regulatory enforcement, investigations, penalties, sanctions, corrective orders, notices, or compliance failure.
• No liability for third-party infrastructure failure, DDoS events, cyber incidents beyond reasonable control, or customer configuration choices.
• No liability for loss or corruption of data arising from infrastructure events.
• No liability for failure of consent mechanisms, tracking technologies, or data collection practices to meet regulatory requirements.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Saont and ASTON H-S Ltd shall have no liability for any regulatory investigation, enforcement action, administrative penalty, statutory fine, sanction, corrective order, regulatory notice, or similar action imposed by any supervisory authority, regulator, government body, or enforcement authority.

This exclusion applies regardless of whether such action arises directly or indirectly from your use of the Service, SaontDocs™, automated updates, template content, system logic, or any related output. Regulatory compliance remains the sole responsibility of the Customer.

No duty to assess legality: Saont does not assess or verify the legality of Customer instructions, data, use of the Service, or implementation of SaontDocs™. The Customer bears sole responsibility for ensuring compliance with applicable law.

Our total aggregate liability (whether in contract, tort, negligence, misrepresentation, statutory duty, restitution, or otherwise, and regardless of theory of liability) is capped at the lower of:

This cap applies in aggregate to all claims arising out of or relating to the Service, regardless of the number of incidents, claims, or legal theories asserted. Multiple related or connected events shall be treated as a single claim.

The limitation of liability applies notwithstanding any failure of essential purpose of any limited remedy.

No personal liability: To the maximum extent permitted by law, you agree that any claim you bring relating to the Service must be brought against ASTON H-S Ltd only. You will not bring any claim (including in negligence) against our directors, officers, employees, contractors, shareholders, or agents personally for acts or omissions connected with the Service.

Third-party dependency: Saont shall have no liability whatsoever for failures, outages, delays, data loss, corruption, or security incidents arising from third-party infrastructure, including but not limited to hosting providers, DNS systems, content delivery networks, payment processors, authentication providers, and email delivery systems.

Data loss: To the maximum extent permitted by law, Saont accepts no liability for any loss, corruption, destruction, or unavailability of data, regardless of cause.

25. Risk allocation

Express waiver of reliance: You expressly acknowledge that you have not relied on any representation, warranty, statement, promise, assurance, or expectation not expressly set out in these Terms, and that no oral or implied statements modify or supplement these Terms.

The Customer acknowledges and agrees that:

• the Service is an automated infrastructure platform and not a managed compliance, advisory, or legal service;
• the Service does not assume responsibility for legal interpretation, compliance outcomes, or regulatory positioning;
• the fees charged reflect the allocation of risk set out in these Terms, including all disclaimers and limitations of liability;
• the Customer retains full responsibility for legal compliance, regulatory interpretation, implementation, and business operations.

You agree that this allocation of risk is reasonable, proportionate, and forms a fundamental basis of the agreement between the parties, and that Saont would not provide the Service on the same economic or commercial terms without these limitations.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, any ambiguity in these Terms shall be interpreted in a manner that reflects and enforces this allocation of risk in favour of Saont.

26. Indemnity

You will indemnify and hold harmless ASTON H-S Ltd, its directors, officers, employees, contractors, shareholders, and agents against claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from: (a) your breach of these Terms; (b) your misuse of the Service; (c) your violation of applicable law; or (d) your infringement of third-party rights.

This indemnity expressly includes claims, regulatory enforcement actions, investigations, fines, penalties, or legal proceedings arising from your use, publication, implementation, or reliance on SaontDocs™ or your failure to comply with applicable laws or regulations.

27. Force majeure

We are not liable for failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including outages or failures of hosting, networks, utilities, suppliers, or third-party service providers, or events such as acts of God, fire, flood, war, terrorism, civil disorder, strikes, or government actions.

28. Miscellaneous

• Assignment: You may not assign these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms as part of a corporate restructure, sale, or transfer.
• Severability: If any provision is unenforceable, the remainder will remain in effect.
• Waiver: A waiver must be in writing and applies only to the specific instance.
• Entire agreement: These Terms (and documents incorporated by reference) form the entire agreement relating to the Service.
• Survival: The provisions relating to intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, risk allocation, governing law, and all provisions intended by their nature to survive termination shall survive termination or expiry of the Service.

29. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, except where mandatory law provides otherwise.

30. Automated monitoring and update limitation

Where Saont operates automated monitoring, template maintenance, or update-support systems, those systems rely on external publications, third-party sources, technical detection processes, internal rules, and operational review.

Saont does not guarantee that every legal or regulatory development, enforcement position, guidance update, interpretation change, or platform-specific implementation issue will be detected immediately, interpreted in the same way as a regulator or court, or reflected in the Service without delay.

Automated monitoring and update functionality is a supporting infrastructure feature only and does not transfer responsibility for legal compliance, document suitability, or implementation accuracy away from the Customer.

Contact

Legal: legal@saont.com
Privacy: privacy@saont.com
Provider: ASTON H-S Ltd (Company No. 15866638)