Fair Use Policy

This document exists for one reason: to stop a small number of people using Sondu in ways that would make it more expensive for everybody else. It is not a hidden price list. Every unit price that can appear on your invoice is published here and on the pricing page, in figures, before you sign anything.

We publish real numbers because a fair use policy without them is worse than a metered plan. If you cannot tell whether you are safe, you are not being told anything.

The rule the whole thing runs on.

Unlimited on anything we compute ourselves. Metered on anything we buy per unit from somebody else. That single sentence explains every number below, and it is the reason we will not pretend a text message is free.

What we will never do.

Never charge commission. No percentage of any booking, sale or membership, on any plan, for new clients or regulars.

Never charge per person. No per seat, per agent, per staff member or per team member fee, on any product or tier, ever. Schedule tiers are gated on how many people you have, which is a different thing: at ten people the price is the same whether one of them logs in or all ten do.

Never meter what we compute. Bookings, clients, Reserve members, conversations, transactional email and translation are unlimited on every plan, because metering them would be a way of charging you for growing.

Never bill retroactively. Nothing is charged for a period already used at a price that was not published when you used it.

Never lower a published number without notice. If we reduce an allowance or raise a unit price, existing customers get 60 days written notice and the option to leave with no penalty.

What is metered, and exactly what it costs.

AI replies to customers: 1,000 a month included, then 3 cents each. For comparison, the large support platforms charge from around 90 cents to 99 cents per resolved conversation. We are not being generous. AI simply costs less than the industry prices it at, and we would rather say so than take the margin quietly.

AI drafts for your own team: unlimited, always, because they only ever land in the composer and a human decides whether to send.

Broadcast emails: 2,000 a month included, then €2 per thousand. That cap is about deliverability rather than cost. One business sending badly hurts inbox placement for everybody on the platform.

Text messages: not included in any plan, on any tier, and sold as credits at 100 for €12 in Spain or 100 for €9 in the United Kingdom. A text to a Spanish mobile costs us around 8 cents. It is bought per message from a carrier and it is not ours to give away.

Extra brand workspaces in Connect at €15 a month, extra Schedule locations at €29 and extra Reserve locations at €39. Bought deliberately, never added automatically.

Metered usage is counted per calendar month and resets on the first. Nothing metered is ever added to your invoice without the unit price having been published in advance, and you can set a hard cap on metered spend from inside billing.

What happens if you reach a limit.

At 80 percent of an included allowance you get a notice in the app and by email. Nothing changes and nothing is charged.

At 100 percent, if you have not chosen to allow metered usage, the affected feature falls back rather than stopping. Assistant drafting pauses and your team keeps replying normally, with no limit on human replies. Broadcasts wait until the month resets or you allow the overage.

Bookings, statements, invoices and client records are never restricted, whatever any counter says. Your business continues to run in full.

If you exceed an allowance for three consecutive months we will contact you and recommend the arrangement that costs you least, including telling you when staying where you are is cheaper. You are never moved up a tier automatically.

What the words mean.

A conversation is one thread with one customer on one channel. It stays a single conversation for seven days no matter how many messages pass in either direction. We do not split threads to inflate a count. Conversations are unlimited.

An AI reply is one message generated and sent to a customer. An AI draft is one reply generated for your approval. Editing a draft, regenerating it once, or discarding it does not count again, and replies typed by a human are never counted.

A broadcast recipient is one person receiving one marketing email. Sending to 150 people is 150 recipients.

A space is anything bookable and billable: a room, a chair, a desk, a studio, a court. Reserve tiers are counted in spaces, not in people.

A team member is one person with their own login. Clients, Reserve members and Consult clients are not team members.

A practitioner, on Consult, is one person whose own hours and own bookable time are published. Consult Practice covers two to five of them.

What is not fair use.

This is the part the policy actually exists for. These are not allowances to be exceeded, they are things we will ask you to stop, and will suspend an account over if you do not.

Unsolicited bulk messaging. Broadcasts and notifications may only go to people who gave your business permission to contact them.

Using Sondu as a messaging gateway for a business other than the tenant on the account, or reselling, sub licensing or white labelling any part of it without a written agreement.

Automated or generated traffic: bots, scripts, scraping, load testing against production, or artificially inflating conversation counts.

Sharing one tenant across separate businesses that are not brands you own, in order to avoid separate subscriptions.

Anything unlawful, or content that would breach Meta’s own commerce and messaging policies, since a breach there can cost us the Instagram and Messenger connection that carries every customer’s enquiries.

Where we suspect abuse we contact you first, except where an immediate suspension is needed to protect other customers or our messaging channels. Suspension for abuse is the only circumstance in which service stops without notice.

Two honest notes.

AI has a real cost to us per message, which is why it is the one thing in this policy metered rather than given away. Three cents is roughly what it costs us plus a margin we are comfortable defending out loud.

Text messages are the one channel where our price is set by somebody else. If carrier pricing moves materially we will say so, with 60 days notice, rather than quietly shrinking a credit pack.

If any number here does not work for your business, tell us before you sign up rather than after. We would rather set you up on the right plan, or tell you honestly that Sondu is the wrong choice, than take a subscription somebody resents.