How to Create Terms of Service WordPress Popups
A proper terms of service is now a must have on any serious WordPress website. As time has gone by people’s concerns over privacy, liability and copyright protection has grown. Now seeing a terms of service, or ToS for short, on a website is becoming common place.
Website visitors view a terms of service as a sign of legitimacy. They will often seek one out to make sure their personal data is safe. A good terms of service will tell users how data is being accessed, used and stored.
For website owners, terms of service are a great way to protect your users but to protect yourself as well. This is the best way to explain the ownership rules of any and all works. A website built on the idea of users submitting content are especially in need of terms.
Writing a terms of service from scratch is unfortunately a daunting task for most website owners. A highly discouraged approach is to sit down and randomly type one out. You could certainly find a lawyer to help you draft a terms of service. Please known in advance that can prove to be costly.
Thankfully, there are now a handful of places online that can help you generate the right terms of service. These solutions typically come at little cost or time commitment.
The Best Terms of Service WordPress Options
We’ve put together a list of the best sites for generating terms of service text for your WordPress site. These range from free solutions to products that cost a small fee. All of them are viable options so after reviewing our list give the one you like best a try.
We’ll also show how to take your brand new terms of service and add it to your website. We’ll give you a way to present your terms in a way that guarantees users have to read and respond.
iubenda
iubenda offers legal documents in different categories and formats for websites and mobile apps. They are popular in the “indie hacker” community as a source of terms of service and privacy policies.
iubenda requires you to sign up for an account before you can get started. It’s unfortunate this is a required step to begin working on your terms and conditions. You can make a privacy policy for free but the terms and conditions generator requires a $129 per year fee. That cost makes this one of the most expensive options we’re going to cover.
One feature setting iubenda apart from the rest is its offering of legal documents in multiple languages. Each language you use comes with a yearly fee. The service from iubenda has a great reputation but that comes at a high price.
TermsFeed
The folks at TermsFeed have built tools to generate a lot of common legal documents for websites and software applications. The process for creating a terms and service document with TermsFeed is very simple. You will answer a series of questions broken down into categories: general information, business information, and disclosures.
You can make your terms of service using TermsFeed for free. The catch is that additional charges might be added once you get to the final download step. Every question you answer makes the price go up. This makes it hard to estimate what your final cost will be. Every person’s needs are going to be different. Just know that you can spend anywhere from nothing up to over $100 pretty easily.
TermsFeed comes recommended by a lot of software companies with very large web applications. It might not be the best solution for those of you running basic WordPress websites. If you have the budget it’s worth at least investigating first before writing it off completely because of the cost.
Termly
Termly brands themselves as the “#1 Compliance Solution for Small Business” and they try and back that up. They have a handful of options to generate documents for cookie consent, privacy policies, terms of service and more.
You’ll create your terms of service document at Termly by selecting one of six pre-defined templates. Each template centers around a particular business ranging from a simple website to a complex online marketplace. After making your choice you will answer a series of questions related to the template you picked.
Termly’s pricing is atypical of the other options we present in this article. They have a Basic tier that is free but comes with a lot of limitations. The only other option is a Pro tier that comes with a $10 monthly fee. The reason Termly has this fee structure is because they host your document for you. The terms are provided in an embed code you will have to add to your site.
Shopify
Yup, that’s right. Shopify is an option for those of you looking to make a terms and conditions document for your site. This is obviously the most surprising of the places on this list. Shopify has actually put together a handful of free tools like this. Their goal is to help individuals get their online businesses off of the ground.
The terms of service that Shopify’s tool makes are probably the leanest and simplest you can find. They are 100% free for all who want to give them a try. They ask you to sign up for a 14-day free trial of Shopify during the process. You can decline that and get your terms obligation free without any commitment.
Shopify also has tools for generating a privacy policy and a refund policy. These are free, just like the terms of service generator, and worth a look if you are on a budget.
GetTerms.io
We’re going to close this list with the service we used to generate our terms of service here. GetTerms.io provides a simple and clean interface. It uses a basic form to collect your information and turn it into a full-blown terms of service document. GetTerms also provides privacy policies as well if that is also something you wish to add to your site.
GetTerms.io has three pricing options: Basic for free, Custom for $9.00, and Comprehensive for $19.00. You are asked to provide more information based on the level you select. As a result, this leads to a more thorough terms of service document for you at the end.
We recommend going with the Comprehensive option for a pretty inclusive terms of service. They also offer specific options as well based on what kind of business you operate. These options include: mobile apps, ecommerce sites, news blogs and generic web application.
Adding Your New Terms of Service to a WordPress Site
Now that you have your terms of service text in hand it’s time to actually publish it on your website.
The most common thing people do is make a page inside of WordPress with their terms of service. Then they put a link to that page somewhere in the corner of their website. A typical location is in the footer of the site. That is normally a place people don’t actively go looking for links. So the terms of service is technically available but it is out of the way and not in anyone’s face.
What if you want to be sure that your visitors see and agreed to your terms?
Throwing a link in your site footer isn’t going to get the job done.
Users will ignore terms that are buried in some far corner of your site design. As a result, a better solution is needed if you want to get people reading and acknowledging your terms.
You can use our plugin, WP Terms Popup, and present your terms of service directly to every visitor. You can require that they verify they agree to your terms before giving access to your site at all.
Install and Activate WP Terms Popup
You can have WP Terms Popup installed and running on your website in only a minute. The best way to get going is to add the plugin from right inside of WordPress.
First, go to the “Add New” link in the “Plugins” menu of the WordPress admin. You can find this on the left side of the screen after you sign in with your administrator account.
On the “Add Plugins” screen you’ll see a small search box in the upper right. Type “WP Terms Popup” in that search box and WordPress will find the plugin for you automatically.
Press the “Install Now” button. This will automatically download the latest version of WP Terms Popup directly into your copy of WordPress. The button changes to “Activate” when installation is complete. Pressing it again will complete the process. WP Terms Popup has now been installed and is running on your site.
Creating Your First Popup
Next, you need to add your new terms of service text into a popup you’ll create with the plugin. Go to “WP Terms Popup” in the WordPress menu. Select the “Add New” option to get started.
This interface should already be familiar to you. Adding a new popup is similar to adding a new post or page to your site.
Your title will appear at the top of your popup. Your terms of service text should go into the main content editor. You have the option of changing the text on the popup buttons. There is also an option to change where declining users are sent.
WP Terms Popup Settings
Now that you have your popup built, with your terms of service inside and your agreement and decline buttons setup just the way you want it’s time to actually add the popup to your site.
Under the “WP Terms Popup” menu you’ll see a “Settings” option that will let you control how your popup is triggered.
From this screen you can decide if you want your popup to appear on every page of your site. You can decide how much time will pass before people agreeing to your popup will be presented them again. Finally, you can set some default values if you ever with to have more than one popup on your site.
Note: The majority of WP Terms Popup use one popup for their entire site but if you would prefer to use multiple popups, or limit your popup to just a single or small number of pages, you can make that decision inside of the WordPress post editor itself. The option is located on the side of the screen with the other miscellaneous meta boxes.
Your terms will display in a popup once your WP Terms Popup settings are completed and saved. You can see an example of WP Terms Popup in action right here on our own site.
The Easiest Way to Change the Look of Your Terms of Service Popup
By default, WP Terms Popup will come with very basic styling that will try its best to match the look of your site. You can customize the appearance with custom CSS if that’s something you, or your website developer, are comfortable with.
We offer a simple add-on for WP Terms Popup called Designer that will let you make changes to the visual design of your popups without having to write any code.
With a few clicks of your mouse you can change:
- Popup Width, Height and Position
- Font Sizes for the Popup Header, Content and Buttons
- Color Settings for the Popup Header, Text & Buttons
- Background Color and Transparency
- … and much more.
The Designer add-on requires the latest version of the free WP Terms Popup plugin. Designer installs quickly and is very simple to use while still giving you a lot of power and control of the look of your popups. You can purchase Designer and be up and running in minutes.
How to Track Users Agreeing to Your Terms of Service
We have another add-on called Collector that will help you keep track of who has agreed to your popup.
The following data will be logged inside of your WordPress admin when a visitor presses your Agree button:
- Agreement Date
- IP Address
- Browser Details
- Referral Page or Post
- WordPress Username
- Expiration Date
You can review all of this data, in real-time, through the Collector tab inside of WP Terms Popup. This data can easily be searched and individual records deleted. All of that can be done with one click of your mouse at any time.
Collector monitors how often your popups are viewed and clicked through. You can see what kind of conversion rates your site is getting in response to your terms of service.
You can install and activate Collector in minutes after purchase. It requires the latest version of WP Terms Popup.
It’s becoming harder and harder to ignore things like terms of service and privacy policies. Even if you just have a simple blog it’s best to educate yourself and come up with a solution. Privacy concerns are on the rise. People are becoming increasingly interested in understanding what is legally involved with their online interactions.
Hopefully you find the proper generator you need for your terms of service WordPress popup from one of the choices we listed above. Once you’ve got your terms of service ready don’t forget that WP Terms Popup can help you get those terms to your visitors. Users read terms faster with our plugin than just a simple link in a hard to find menu or footer.