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Terms of service

Last updated 14 October 2026

About these terms

These terms are an agreement between you and Ernie AI (ABN 25 348 351 054), “we” or “us”. They apply when you create an Ernie account or use Ernie on your website. Ernie is for businesses: by signing up, you confirm you’re using it for a business and that you’re allowed to agree to these terms on its behalf.

Our privacy policy explains how we handle personal information.

What Ernie does

Ernie reads your website, answers your visitors’ questions from it, and sends you their enquiries by email and text. We may improve, change or remove features over time. If a change takes away something you rely on, we’ll tell you before it happens.

Ernie’s answers

Ernie writes its answers automatically, using AI, from your website and the settings you give it, including anything it suggests during setup that you keep. It can make mistakes: an answer can be wrong, out of date or incomplete.

Ernie answers on your behalf. You choose what your website says, you can preview Ernie and change its settings before and after it goes live, and you decide to put it on your website. So, as with anything else on your website, you’re responsible for what Ernie tells your visitors and for any quote, price or promise you then make to a customer. Keep your website accurate, and remove Ernie if you’re not comfortable with how it answers. Ernie’s answers aren’t professional advice.

Your account

Keep your account details accurate and your login secure. You’re responsible for what happens in your account, including what the team members you invite do there. Tell us straight away at [email protected] if you think someone has got into your account.

Free trial

Each website can have one 14-day free trial, and a business that has had a plan before can’t start another. The trial starts when Ernie goes live on your website or you start your chat page, and needs no card. When the trial ends, Ernie is hidden on your website until you choose a plan.

Plans and payment

  • Prices are shown on our website in Australian dollars and include GST.
  • You pay in advance, monthly or yearly, through Stripe. Your plan renews automatically at the end of each period until you cancel.
  • Each plan includes a number of chats a month. Only chats a visitor starts count, including on your site builder’s preview of your website. A chat ends after 25 messages from the visitor or 24 hours without one, and their next message starts a new one. If you use them all, Ernie is hidden on your website until your allowance resets or you move to a bigger plan. We’ll email you as you get close.
  • So one busy day can’t use up your month, Ernie starts at most a fifth of your monthly chats in a day. When it reaches that, new chats pause until midnight in your time zone and we email you; people already chatting can finish. Each visitor can also start up to 10 chats a day.
  • If a payment fails, Ernie keeps working while Stripe tries again. If it still isn’t paid, Ernie is hidden on your website until you pay or choose a plan again.
  • We may change our prices. We’ll email you at least 30 days before a new price applies to you, and it takes effect from your next renewal.

Cancelling and refunds

You can cancel at any time from the Billing page in your account. Ernie keeps working until the end of the period you’ve paid for, and then stops. We don’t refund the unused part of a month or year, except where the law requires it.

Your website and content

You keep ownership of your website, your content and your enquiries. You confirm you control the website you add Ernie to and are allowed to let Ernie read it. You let us copy, store and use its content, and your chats, only to provide and improve Ernie for you.

Your customers’ information

Enquiries contain your customers’ personal information. You’re responsible for how you use it once it reaches you, and for following the privacy and spam laws that apply to your business, including telling your customers in your own privacy policy that you use Ernie where the law requires it.

Fair use

Don’t use Ernie:

  • for anything unlawful, misleading or harmful, or on a website that is;
  • on a website you don’t control;
  • to try to break, overload or get around Ernie’s limits or security, or to copy how it works; or
  • to resell Ernie without our written agreement.

Keeping Ernie running

We work to keep Ernie available and your information safe, but we can’t promise it will never be interrupted. Ernie relies on other services, such as hosting and AI providers, that are outside our control. Where we can, we plan maintenance for quiet times.

Responsibility and limits

Nothing in these terms takes away rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law that can’t be excluded. Where the law lets us, our responsibility for a failure to meet a consumer guarantee is limited to supplying the service again or paying the cost of having it supplied again.

To the extent the law allows, neither of us is responsible to the other for indirect or consequential loss, such as lost profits, lost jobs or missed enquiries. Beyond that, the most either of us can be responsible for to the other is the greater of the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim and A$100. This limit doesn’t apply to fees you owe us.

You’ll cover us for claims made against us by others that come from your website’s content, from how you use your customers’ information, or from your breaking these terms.

Ending the agreement

You can stop using Ernie at any time by cancelling your plan and deleting your business or account. We may suspend or close your account if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms or don’t pay, and we’ll tell you first where it’s reasonable to. If we ever stop offering Ernie, we’ll give you at least 30 days’ notice and refund any time you’ve paid for but not used. What happens to your information afterwards is explained in our privacy policy.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If a change is significant, we’ll email you at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you keep using Ernie after that, the new terms apply; if you don’t agree, you can cancel.

The law that applies

These terms are governed by the laws of Queensland, Australia, and the courts of Queensland can hear any dispute about them.

Contact

Questions about these terms go to [email protected].