Skip to content
HowdySEO
Menu
Log in Start free

Terms of Service

The agreement you accept when you sign up, and again when you pay for Full SEO.

These terms are an agreement between you, the business that signs up, and HowdySEO, operated by NAGAPPAN ARUN KARTHIK, trading as DesignQube, Justice Ramaswamy Street, No.51/1, Kamaraj Avenue Second Street, Adyar, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600020, India ("HowdySEO", "we", "us"). You accept them when you sign up, and again when you pay for Full SEO. Our Privacy notice says how we handle data. If your business is a dental or medical practice, our Business associate agreement also applies.

1. Who acts for your business

  • You sign in with a Google account. The person who signs up is the business's owner. A business has one owner at a time.
  • Only the owner pays, cancels, names staff, approvers and a billing contact, and grants us access. Staff see the work and may ask for edits; they never pay or cancel. An approver OKs only the kinds of work, and the locations, the owner names.
  • A message from staff or the billing contact asking to cancel is not a cancellation. We ask the owner the same business day.

2. What we do

We do search engine optimisation for each location you enrol, up to 9 locations per business. The work for each plan, each month, is:

  • Free: a week-one audit and call baseline, the first 3 fixes, then 2 fixes a month, a monthly calls report from your own accounts, and helpdesk support. For an online store, fixes fall on product or collection pages and the report counts orders.
  • Full SEO: everything on Free, plus 4 new pages or posts, 6 fixes in total, 4 Business Profile posts, a reply to every Google review, listings built or corrected until clean and then kept, outreach to 10 relevant outlets with the links won reported, review requests, tracking numbers, a site build where your site needs one, and a 30-minute monthly call with your account manager. For an online store, the store work stands in place of listings, review requests and tracking numbers, and each month 4 product or collection pages improved and 2 new pages or posts stand in place of profile posts and listings. Review requests are not offered to dental or medical practices.
  • Google Ads management, on a Full SEO location: we run your Google Ads and Local Services Ads campaigns.
  • On every plan, we make the edits you ask for. Hours go live the same business day if you ask by 3pm, otherwise the next business day; other small edits within 2 business days. On Free, your edits do not count against your monthly fixes.
  • Taking back an account a former provider or anyone else holds is free on every plan. Repairing their work is separate work, agreed with you.

A business day is Monday to Friday in your business's time zone, US federal holidays excluded.

3. What we promise, and what we don't

We promise dates, and show each one as on time or late: your first look at your calls within the hour after we get access to your Business Profile; your first 3 fixes within 2 business days of that; the month's work; your edits; a reply from a person the same business day to a message in by 3pm, otherwise by noon the next business day (weekdays 8am to 6pm your time); and the removal of our access when you leave.

A date counts as met when we put the change into your account. Time spent waiting for your OK, your input or your own step does not count against a date, and we tell you when that clock pauses.

We report calls, bookings, orders, rankings and map placement against your baseline. We do not promise them.

If we are late, we tell you on or before the due date, put the work first, and finish it within 2 business days of the original date. If a change we made is wrong, we undo it the same business day if we see it by 3pm, otherwise the next business day, and correct it within 2 business days, outside your monthly count. Work we fall short on in a month carries into the next. Late or wrong work earns no refund or credit.

4. Your accounts and our access

  • Your Business Profile, website, domain, Search Console, Analytics, store, ad and carrier accounts stay in your name. We ask for a manager or user role, never for ownership. You stay owner of your Business Profile at all times.
  • Business Profile is a service Google provides at no extra cost. Our fee is for the work we do on it. Google's notice, Working with a third party, explains what to expect from a company working on your profile.
  • You can remove our access to your Business Profile at any time yourself. If you ask us, we stop managing it within 2 business days and confirm in writing.
  • Some steps only you can take at a platform, such as verifying a profile, buying a tracking number or transferring a domain. We prepare each step; you take it.
  • We contact a former provider only when you tell us to in your helpdesk conversation, and we copy you.
  • You pay Google, your carrier and any other vendor directly. We take no share of your ad spend.

5. Your OK

  • New public content, review replies, links that name your business, ad budgets and ad copy, and any change you would notice wait for your OK in writing in HowdySEO. An OK by phone or on a call does not count.
  • Content a licensed professional must OK waits for that person's OK.
  • Other work, such as fixes, shows on your status before it goes live, and you can stop it until then.
  • You can turn on "Go ahead if I don't answer": an item that has waited 3 business days for your OK without a decline is then taken as OK'd. It never covers items a licensed professional OKs, ad spend, or anything that needs you to act. You can turn it off at any time.
  • You can ask us to undo any change. We do it as an edit, by that edit's date.

6. Price and payment

  • Free costs $0.
  • Full SEO costs $799 a month for your first location and $599 a month for each further location. An online store pays the same.
  • Google Ads management costs $499 a month for the first location and $249 for each further location; for an online store, $499 a month. It is only available on a Full SEO location.
  • There is no setup fee, whatever your spend.
  • You pay by card, month to month, in advance. Your first upgrade is charged that day, and that day of the month becomes your billing date. A location you upgrade, or Google Ads management you turn on, after your billing date is first charged on the next billing date; we start the work for it as follows and do not charge the part month:
    • an upgraded location is worked on Free until the next billing date, when its Full SEO work starts;
    • Google Ads management starts at once.
  • Your first location is the one on Full SEO longest. Receipts go to you and to the billing contact you name. Stripe processes card payments; we hold no card number.
  • If a charge fails, we tell you that day and try again on days 2, 4 and 7 after it while the work carries on. A new card is charged at once. If the charge still fails on day 7, nothing is owed for those days, your locations move to Free with history and access kept, and work in progress waits. You can move back to Full SEO at any time; you are charged that day, that day becomes your billing date, and the waiting work picks up where it stopped.
  • If your bank asks you to confirm a charge, the work carries on while you confirm it.
  • We give at least 60 days' written notice of any price change, to you and your billing contact. The new price applies from the first charge after the notice ends. If you cancel before then, you never pay it.

7. Moving to Free, cancelling and leaving

  • You can move a location to Free at any time. It stays on Full SEO until your next billing date, then moves to Free with history and access kept. Google Ads management ends with it. You can change your mind before that date.
  • You can turn off Google Ads management at any time. It ends on your next billing date, and we ask you then whether to pause your campaigns or leave them running.
  • You can cancel a location at any time, with one click, an email from your address, or a message on the helpdesk. A location on Full SEO is worked to the end of the month you've paid for. A location on Free, or one still being connected, ends at once. Nothing is refunded and nothing further is charged. We confirm in writing the same business day. You can withdraw a cancellation before it takes effect, provided you have room under the 9-location limit.
  • When a location ends:
    • review requests stop that day, and Google Ads management ends that day with your campaigns left as they are;
    • your tracking numbers keep forwarding in your carrier account, and your site stays where it is, in your account;
    • within 2 business days we remove every role we can remove ourselves and email you the list of every role we held, with each removal only you can make and its steps.
  • A site on Wix or GoDaddy Websites + Marketing cannot be moved off that platform; leaving it means a rebuild elsewhere.
  • Your export holds every change we made with before, after and link, every weekly update and monthly report, your call history (for a store, orders and revenue) and your list of accounts and roles. You can ask for it at any time, and it is ready when a location ends. The link lasts until your data is deleted.
  • 30 days after your business leaves, or after one location leaves an active business, we delete that data from our systems and our providers', except billing and payment records, which we keep 7 years after each charge. We email you when it is done.

8. Selling your business

  • When the buyer tells us on the helpdesk that he has bought your business and signs in with Google, we make him the owner. We tell you that day, naming the buyer and the date your obligation ends: the end of the month you've paid for.
  • Your card is removed at the transfer. The buyer adds his own, charged from the next billing date.
  • Locations, accounts, plan and history pass to the buyer whole. We prepare each step for moving your accounts to him and follow each one until he holds it.
  • If you dispute the sale before the next billing date, we hold the transfer, take no side, and act on what both of you give us in writing.

9. If HowdySEO stops

If we stop trading, we tell you and your billing contact in writing that day and charge nothing more. Each location is worked to your next billing date, then ends as in section 7, with the same export, removal of our access and deletion.

10. Your customers and review requests

  • Before review requests start, you confirm that you have your customers' OK to text and email them about their job or visit, and, for customers in Florida, their written OK to texts. We collect no consent from your customers.
  • Review texts go from your own registered number, and none goes before your texting registration is approved. Texts go only between 8am and 8pm in the customer's time zone, and no more than 3 in 24 hours where state law limits it.
  • Every customer is asked alike. We never buy, write, filter or ask only some customers for reviews.
  • A customer who opts out on any channel gets no further requests from any of your locations.
  • Calls to a tracking number hear that the call is recorded before any recording.

11. Texts to you

Texts of your weekly update and alerts are off until you turn them on in Notifications with your mobile number. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to stop, HELP for help.

12. Confidentiality

Your data is used only to do your work. We never use one client's material to produce another's work. A provider of ours receives only what its task needs, under a contract that bars its own use. For a dental, medical or law practice, material goes only to AI providers that keep none of it and train on none.

We represent no one. For a law firm we run no conflict check and give no exclusivity.

13. Warranties and liability

  • We give no warranty beyond the promises in these terms. Everything else is provided as it is.
  • Our total liability to you is capped at the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim.
  • Each of us indemnifies the other against claims arising from its own breach of law.

14. Changes to these terms

We give 30 days' notice of a change to these terms by email to the owner and the billing contact. If you keep using HowdySEO after that date, you accept the change. A price change follows section 6.

15. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware. Disputes go to the courts of that state.