Terms of service

1. Who these terms are between

These terms are a contract between you — the company or professional using Marktender — and Alessandro Forte (sole proprietor, Italy), Italy, the operator (“we”). By creating a workspace, a buyer account, or using an offer link you accept them. Marktender is a business-to-business tool: you confirm you use it for a trade or profession and are at least 18. The privacy policy explains how data is handled and is part of these terms.

2. What the service is — and is not

Marktender is software. It lets a seller describe lots, send offers to their own buyers by email and WhatsApp, have replies read and ranked, confirm orders and keep the paperwork together; it lets a buyer follow producers, hear about new lots and ask for offers.

We are not a party to any sale. Every offer is the seller's own commercial offer; every bid, counter-offer and acceptance is exchanged between the seller and the buyer, who alone decide whether a contract exists and on what terms. We are not a broker, agent, escrow or marketplace operator, we take no commission, we do not verify the identity, solvency or goods of any party, and we do not guarantee that any offer receives a reply or that any order is performed. Compliance with the rules that apply to your trade — product claims, analyses, labelling, export and phytosanitary requirements, sanctions, taxes — is yours.

3. Accounts

• Keep your sign-in details to yourself; you are responsible for what happens in your workspace, including by colleagues you let in.
• Give accurate company details; buyers rely on them.
• A buyer account is free and is used only to follow producers, read their lots and ask for offers.
• We may suspend an account that breaks these terms, sends unsolicited messages, or endangers the service; we tell you why and, where possible, first.

4. Offers, bids, counter-offers and orders

• An offer you send through Marktender reaches the buyers you selected, in the language and currency shown in the preview. The binding price is the one in your base currency; converted amounts are indicative, computed with the European Central Bank rate printed on the offer.
• A buyer's reply — through the private link, by email, WhatsApp or voice note — is shown to you as read by the AI, with the original alongside. Check the original before you rely on it; you accept or counter, never the software.
• An order confirmation issued by Marktender records what the two of you agreed. It is your document, not ours, and the two of you are its parties. Standard clauses included in it can be edited by you.
• Deadlines, reminders and “valid until” times are aids; missing one is not a claim against us.

5. Messaging rules

You may only send offers and invitations to people and companies you have a business relationship with, or who asked to hear from you. You are responsible for that relationship and for honouring any request to stop. Messages go out under your name; every offer email carries a footer that identifies Marktender, shows your postal address as entered on your company page, and lets the recipient stop your offers. When a recipient uses it we skip them from your sends and tell you; you may resume only if they ask you to. WhatsApp and SMS are subject to the carriers' and Meta's rules; we may throttle or block sending that looks like spam.

6. AI, translations and rates

The AI reading of messages, transcripts, translations and summaries is provided as is: it is usually right and sometimes wrong. It never binds you and it does not replace reading the original. Exchange rates come from the European Central Bank once a day and can differ from your bank's. Net-at-gate figures depend on the costs and freight rates you entered; they are estimates for comparison, not a quotation.

7. Trial, subscription and payment

• A seller workspace starts with a 30-day free trial, no card required. Nothing is charged unless you subscribe.
• After the trial the workspace needs a subscription: $39/month, or the founder price of $29/month for the first workspaces that subscribe, kept as long as that subscription stays active. Prices are in US dollars, exclusive of any VAT or sales tax that applies to you, and shown on the site and in Settings. A buyer account is free for following producers, receiving offers and confirming orders; its request desk (requests to the buyer's own suppliers and the comparison of their quotes) has the same 30-day trial and the same subscription. The mirror holds for a producer: answering a buyer's request from the private link, countering and accepting an award are free with or without a subscription; the selling desk (lots, offers, buyer book, orders) is what the subscription pays for.
• Billing is monthly in advance through Stripe and renews automatically. You can cancel at any time from Settings; the subscription then ends at the end of the paid month, with no further charge. We do not refund partial months unless the law says otherwise.
• If a payment fails we retry and tell you; after 14 days without payment the workspace becomes read-only until it is settled. Your data stays.
• We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice by email; the change applies from your next renewal after the notice.
• Fair use. Every subscription includes, per month, up to 500 documents or messages read by the AI and up to 300 text messages to US and Canada numbers (texts to other countries are not sent; the email and the WhatsApp link go out instead). These limits are far above a working desk's needs. Past them the desk keeps working — messages are filed without the AI summary, texts fall back to email — and we contact you about a plan that fits. Your use so far is shown in Settings.

8. Your data

Everything you put in — lots, analyses, photos, documents, buyers, messages, orders — is yours. You give us the licence needed to store, process, transmit and display it in order to run the service for you, and to your buyers to the extent you send it to them. You can export every table as CSV at any time from Settings and you can delete the workspace by writing to hello@marktender.com; we remove it within 30 days. We never use your data to train models or for advertising. Aggregate statistics that identify nobody (such as how many offers are sent per week) may be used to improve the service.

9. Acceptable use

• No unlawful, misleading or infringing content; no offers for goods you do not have the right to sell.
• No attempts to access other workspaces, scrape, overload or reverse-engineer the service, or resell it.
• No use that violates the messaging rules above or a person's privacy.

10. Availability and changes

We work to keep Marktender available around the clock but do not promise uninterrupted service; maintenance and incidents happen and we announce the ones that matter. We improve the service continuously and may add, change or retire features; if a change removes something you rely on we tell you in advance. Beta features are marked as such and may be withdrawn.

11. Warranties and liability

Marktender is provided as is, without warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement beyond what the law imposes. To the extent permitted by law, our total liability for any claim arising from the service in any 12-month period is limited to the fees you paid us in that period (or €100 if you paid none), and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profit, lost sales, or the acts of buyers, sellers, carriers, payment providers or AI providers. Nothing here limits liability for fraud, gross negligence, wilful misconduct, or where the law does not allow it. You will hold us harmless from third-party claims caused by content you sent or by your breach of these terms.

12. Ending the agreement

You can stop at any time by cancelling the subscription and, if you wish, asking us to delete the workspace. We may end the agreement with 30 days' notice, or immediately for a serious breach. Sections on data, liability and governing law survive.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by Italian law. Disputes go to the courts of the operator's seat in Italy, without prejudice to mandatory rules of your country that apply to businesses. If a clause is invalid the rest stands. These terms and the privacy policy are the whole agreement; we may update them and will announce changes that matter by email or in the app before they take effect.

14. Annex A — data-processing terms (for sellers)

Where you enter personal data of your buyers and contacts into Marktender, you are the controller and we are your processor under Article 28 GDPR. On that basis:

• Instructions. We process that data only to provide the service as described in these terms and the privacy policy, and on your documented instructions given through the product (sending an offer, forwarding a message, deleting a buyer).
• Confidentiality. People with access are bound by confidentiality; access is limited to what running the service requires.
• Security. The measures described in the privacy policy (encryption in transit and at rest, EU hosting, per-workspace isolation, backups, two-factor access to production).
• Sub-processors. The providers listed in the privacy policy, engaged under written terms that impose the same obligations. We announce additions in the app or by email at least 15 days before they process your data; you may object for a legitimate reason, in which case either of us may end the agreement.
• Assistance. We help you answer data-subject requests and, where needed, security and impact assessments, within what the product allows (export, deletion, correction) and at reasonable cost beyond that.
• Breaches. We inform you without undue delay of a personal-data breach affecting your data.
• Deletion. At the end of the service we delete your data within 30 days (backups within a further 7), unless the law requires us to keep part of it.
• Audit. Once a year, on 30 days' notice, you may ask for the information reasonably needed to show compliance, including summaries of third-party audits of our providers.
• Transfers. Outside the EEA only to the sub-processors listed and under the safeguards named in the privacy policy.