Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are a binding agreement between you and MailerDot ("we", "us"). By subscribing to, browsing, or otherwise using MailerDot (the "Service"), you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Part A applies to everyone. Part B applies additionally to Operators who lease a Territory. Part C applies to everyone and governs liability, disputes, and interpretation.

Two further documents form part of these Terms and are incorporated by reference: the Acceptable Use Policy, which sets out what may and may not appear in an edition, and the Refund & Cancellation Policy, which governs billing, cancellation, and refunds. Where the Refund Policy and Section 11 differ on a billing question, the Refund Policy governs.

2. Description of Service

MailerDot publishes an automated daily email digest of local news, weather, events, and community stories for a chosen city, together with a public web archive of past editions. Editions are generated programmatically using AI language models grounded in web search, along with public data sources. The Service is provided as-is and may be modified, suspended, or discontinued at any time.

Reading MailerDot is free and will remain free. There is no paywall and no subscription fee for readers. An edition may carry the local Operator's own business at the top, clearly set apart under its Spotlight label, and a calendar of community events that anyone may submit free of charge. Neither is editorial, and neither is ever generated by, or allowed to influence, the automated newsroom.

3. Reader Subscriptions

• You must provide a valid email address that you own or are authorised to use.
• You may unsubscribe at any time using the one-click link in any email.
• We may remove addresses that hard-bounce, register spam complaints, or appear invalid or disposable, in order to protect deliverability for everyone.
• We do not sell, rent, or licence subscriber email addresses to anyone, including Operators. See the Privacy Policy.

4. Content and Accuracy

Editions are produced automatically and are not reviewed by a human editor before sending. AI-generated summaries can be incomplete, out of date, or wrong. Content is provided for general information only, is not professional, legal, financial, medical, or safety advice, and should not be relied upon for any decision where accuracy matters. Verify anything important with the original source.

Editions may summarise, quote briefly from, and link to third-party sources. Those sources remain the property of their owners, and linking is not endorsement. If you believe an edition infringes your rights, contact legal@mailerdot.com and we will review it promptly and may remove it as appropriate. Editions are not corrected or re-sent: an edition reflects what its sources said on the morning it went out, and archived editions are a record of what was sent.

5. Acceptable Use

The full rules are in the Acceptable Use Policy, which forms part of these Terms. In summary, you agree not to:

• Use the Service for any unlawful purpose, or in breach of any anti-spam, privacy, or advertising law.
• Subscribe an address you do not own or lack permission to use.
• Scrape, harvest, or systematically extract subscriber data, or attempt to identify individual subscribers from aggregate figures.
• Redistribute edition content commercially without permission, or present it as your own.
• Probe, overload, or interfere with the Service, its infrastructure, or its sending reputation.
• Use automated access beyond what our robots.txt and published API terms permit.

6. Intellectual Property

The MailerDot name, logo, software, design, and the compilation and presentation of each edition are owned by MailerDot. You may share individual editions for personal, non-commercial purposes with attribution and a link. All other rights are reserved.

If you submit anything to us — a report, a waitlist note, spotlight copy, an event listing — you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use it for the purpose of operating the Service, and you confirm you have the rights to grant that licence.

This Part applies if you lease a city ("Territory") as an "Operator". It is additional to Part A.

7. What a Territory Lease Is

A lease grants a limited, revocable, non-exclusive-to-content, non-transferable licence to the commercial rights associated with one city for as long as the lease is current and paid. Specifically, it grants the right to occupy that city's owner spotlight, to schedule and control the placement slots in that city's editions through the operator console, and to access aggregate performance reporting for that city.

When a lease begins

A lease begins only when your first payment has been processed. Starting a checkout does not reserve or hold a Territory: until a first payment is processed, the Territory remains available to every prospective claimant, and it is granted to the claimant whose payment is completed first. An abandoned or incomplete checkout holds nothing and lapses automatically. If your payment is processed for a Territory that has in the meantime been granted to someone else, no lease is created and the payment is refunded in full under the Refund & Cancellation Policy.

A lease does not convey ownership of anything. It is not a franchise, not a partnership, not a joint venture, not an agency, not a security or investment contract, and not a sale of any asset. In particular, it does not convey ownership of, or any right to receive, the subscriber list, the content, the domain, the city page, or any goodwill in the MailerDot brand. We remain the publisher and the sender of record for all email. The listing revenue share described in Section 10 is a contractual payment for the commercial rights the lease grants and changes none of this: it creates no partnership, agency, joint venture, franchise, or security, and it comes with no representation, promise, or projection about what a Territory will sell or earn.

8. Exclusivity

While your lease is active, no other Operator will hold the same Territory. Exclusivity is limited to that specific city as we define it, and does not extend to neighbouring, overlapping, or later-created territories, to other channels, or to any promise about audience size, growth, revenue, or the continued existence of that city's edition.

9. Subscriber Data — No Export, No Import

This is the central term of the Operator relationship and is not waivable:

• You are leasing an audience, not buying a list. Subscribers are MailerDot's, not yours, at all times and after any termination.
• Operators receive aggregate reporting only. Individual email addresses are never exposed through the Operator dashboard or any API, and no export is provided.
• You may not import, upload, or otherwise introduce any externally sourced contact list into the Service.
• You may not attempt to derive, reconstruct, or re-identify individual subscribers from aggregate figures, nor use the Service to solicit addresses for your own list.

Any breach of this section is a material breach and may result in immediate termination without refund. These restrictions exist to protect subscriber privacy and the sending reputation shared by every city on the platform.

10. The Spotlight and Paid Listings

Two kinds of placement run in a Territory's editions and on its public page, and they work differently.

The Operator's spotlight

The placement at the top of every edition is the Operator's for as long as the lease is current, for their own business. It is not sold to anyone else, is not counted as inventory, and may not be resold. Copy is subject to the review and labelling rules below.

Listings — standard and premium

Anyone may submit a listing for a Territory. A standard listing is free: it enters a review queue that is read by a person with no committed timeline, approval is not guaranteed, an approved standard listing runs in plain placement below premium listings and never appears in the daily editions, and it may be declined or removed at our sole discretion. A premium listing is purchased at the prices published on /advertise and buys priority automated review, publication upon payment, and placement above standard listings. Two premium products exist. An event listing: a flat fee lists the event on the Territory's public Events page until the day of the event, and a higher flat fee also places it inside the daily editions ahead of the event. A business directory listing: a flat fee lists the business on the Territory's public Directory page for thirty days from publication, and a higher flat fee adds one mention a week inside the daily editions across that run. Listings are sold by MailerDot only, at published prices only. Every rule in this Section — the standards, our right of removal, and the labelling rules — applies to standard and premium listings alike.

• Every listing is screened before payment. An automated compliance review — with human review where it cannot decide — checks each submission against the listing standards before any checkout exists. A rejected submission is never charged.
• Nothing publishes until payment clears. A screened listing goes live when our payment processor confirms the charge, runs through the day of the event — or, for a directory listing, thirty days from publication — and then comes down on its own.
• MailerDot decides what runs. The Operator does not review, approve, edit, or remove listings, and cannot be paid to do any of those things. Screening and removal are ours alone.
• We can remove anything, at any time. Editions are sent from our domain and under our name, so we retain final say over every listing, before or after payment. A listing we remove stays removed. Whether a removal is refunded is set out in the Refund Policy: a listing removed for breaching the standards is not refunded; a paid listing that never ran for reasons on our side is refunded in full.
• Buyers are responsible for what they submit. By purchasing a listing you warrant that it is truthful and not misleading; that it complies with the FTC Act and all applicable advertising, consumer-protection, and disclosure rules; that it does not infringe any third party's intellectual property, privacy, or publicity rights; and that you hold all rights and consents needed to publish it.
• Buyers' names and contact details are used for the purchase — the receipt, the payment link, and questions about the listing. They are never published, are never shown to Operators, and Section 9's spirit applies to them exactly as it does to subscribers.

The Operator's revenue share

MailerDot pays the Territory's Operator 50% of net listing revenue for listings sold in their Territory while their lease is active — net meaning after payment-processing and split-distribution fees — distributed through our payment processor's revenue-split facility to the Operator's own verified account with that processor. The share is a payment for the commercial rights the lease already grants; Section 7 applies to it in full, and we make no representation about how many listings a Territory will sell, which may be none.

Nothing else is for sale

Those two placements are the whole of what runs in an edition alongside the news. MailerDot does not operate an advertising marketplace and does not sell any other placement; an Operator may not sell one either — the spotlight is theirs to use, not to resell, and only MailerDot may sell a listing.

What may not run

Applies to spotlight copy and paid listings alike. The full list is in the Acceptable Use Policy §4. Nothing published in an edition may promote or contain:

• Anything unlawful, deceptive, or fraudulent, including phishing, malware, or misrepresented offers.
• Adult content, gambling, weapons, tobacco or vaping, illicit drugs, or regulated financial products such as loans, crypto assets, or investment offers.
• Political, electoral, or issue advocacy.
• Claims about health, safety, earnings, or legal outcomes that are not substantiated.
• Content that disparages, targets, or discriminates against any person or protected group.

Review, labelling, and takedown

Everything published in an edition is subject to our review and may be rejected, suspended, or removed at any time, with or without notice, at our sole discretion — including a listing that has already been paid for and published.

Paid placement is visibly set apart from editorial content. The Operator's placement runs under the Spotlight label; featured event listings and business mentions run under a label naming them paid listings; and the outbound links of both carry search-engine sponsorship attributes. Nobody — Operator or buyer — may attempt to disguise a paid placement as editorial content.

11. Fees, Billing, and Taxes

Who you are paying

Lease fees are sold and processed by Creem (Armitage Labs OÜ, registry code 16977866, Rotermanni 14, Tallinn 10111, Estonia), acting as our merchant of record. Creem — not MailerDot — is the seller of record on the transaction: it takes the payment, issues the invoice, and is responsible for collecting and remitting any sales tax or VAT that applies where you are. Your purchase is therefore also subject to the Creem Buyer Terms, which you accept at checkout, and to Creem's privacy notice for the payment itself.

The charge appears on your statement as CREEM.IO* MAILERDOT, not as "MailerDot". MailerDot never receives or stores your card number. If we change merchant of record we will tell you before the change takes effect.

How billing works

• Lease fees are billed in advance on a recurring monthly basis at the price shown at checkout. Usage-based components, where applicable, are billed in arrears for the period just ended.
• Listings — event and business directory alike — are one-time purchases at the flat prices published on /advertise, processed by Creem as merchant of record exactly as lease fees are, stated exclusive of taxes, with the same statement descriptor. A listing purchase is not a subscription and renews nothing. Refund rules for listings are in the Refund & Cancellation Policy: rejected before payment means never charged, paid but never published means refunded in full, removed for breaching the standards means not refunded.
• Fees are stated exclusive of taxes unless shown otherwise. A period already served is not refunded and partial periods are not pro-rated on cancellation, subject to the exceptions — duplicate or erroneous charges, a Territory that never went live, and your rights under consumer-protection law — set out in the Refund & Cancellation Policy. Refunds are issued through Creem; we do not process refunds outside it, and Creem may issue one on our behalf within 60 days of a purchase at its discretion.
• We may change pricing, including automatic tier changes as a Territory's audience grows. A price change takes effect at the start of your next billing period, never mid-cycle, and we notify you by email when one is scheduled. Continuing after the change takes effect is acceptance; your remedy if you disagree is to cancel before your renewal.
• You are responsible for keeping a valid payment method on file. If a payment fails we will hold your Territory for a short grace period so you can resolve it; if it is not resolved within that period the lease ends and the Territory returns to us under Section 12.
• Please raise a billing problem with us through our support contact form before disputing a charge with your bank. We reply within 3 business days. This does not limit your right to dispute a charge.

12. Term, Cancellation, and Release of a Territory

A lease runs month to month unless stated otherwise. You may cancel at any time, yourself, from your operator dashboard (Settings → Cancel this town) — no email or request to us is required — effective at the end of the current paid period. We may suspend or terminate a lease immediately for material breach, non-payment, or conduct that endangers the Service, its readers, or its sending reputation; and otherwise on 30 days' notice.

If payment stops, the Territory returns to us. That applies whether you cancel, a payment fails and is not resolved within the grace period, or a checkout is abandoned before its first payment.

On termination or release of a Territory, for any reason:

• Your spotlight and any scheduled placements stop being published.
• Paid listings already sold keep running. Their buyers paid MailerDot for a run that ends on the event's date or at the end of the directory listing's thirty days, and that run does not depend on the lease. Your revenue share applies only to listings sold while your lease was active; listings sold after release accrue no share to you.
• The city's edition continues to publish, free, as it did before the lease.
• Subscribers remain with the city. They are not deleted, transferred to you, or made available to you in any form.
• The Territory may be re-listed and leased to another Operator, who will occupy the spotlight going forward. It is re-listed at the price its audience supports at that time, under the pricing in Section 11 — which may be higher than you were paying if the city grew while you held it. You have no right of first refusal and no claim on that price.
• No refund of fees already paid is due, and no compensation is payable for the audience, goodwill, or sponsorship pipeline associated with the Territory.

13. Operator Indemnity

You will indemnify, defend, and hold harmless MailerDot, its officers, employees, and contractors from and against any claim, demand, loss, liability, damage, fine, penalty, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to: any sponsorship or spotlight content you submit; your dealings with any advertiser; your breach of these Terms, including Section 9; or your violation of any law or third-party right. This obligation survives termination.

14. Third-Party Data and Services

Certain city information, including demographic and housing statistics, is sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey via the Census Bureau Data API. This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau. Census data is presented as-is from the source; any derived metrics (such as homeownership rates) are calculated by MailerDot and identified as such. Weather data is sourced from Open-Meteo and is not a substitute for official forecasts or emergency warnings.

The live local data shown on city pages comes from public agencies and open datasets: weather alerts from the National Weather Service; river and streamgage readings from the U.S. Geological Survey; tide predictions from NOAA Tides & Currents; wildfire locations from the National Interagency Fire Center; air quality and historical weather records from Open-Meteo; and county boundaries from the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder. None of it is official, none of it is a substitute for an emergency warning from the issuing agency, and all of it may be delayed or unavailable.

Town descriptions on city pages are extracts from Wikipedia, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. Each extract links to the article it came from, which is where that article's own authors are credited. MailerDot claims no ownership of that text.

Photography is provided by Pexels and its contributing photographers under the Pexels License. Photos remain the property of their respective photographers.

15. Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, that any edition will be delivered to any inbox, that content will be accurate or complete, or that any Territory will achieve any level of audience, engagement, or revenue. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

16. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, MAILERDOT WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY, OR ANTICIPATED SAVINGS, however caused and on any theory of liability, even if advised of the possibility.

OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED US DOLLARS ($100). For readers, who pay nothing, this means our liability is limited to $100. These limits apply even if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

17. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You and MailerDot agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in California for any dispute not resolved informally, and each party waives any objection to venue there.

Before filing anything, you agree to contact us at legal@mailerdot.com and give us 30 days to resolve the matter in good faith. Any claim must be brought within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred. Claims must be brought individually and not as a class or representative action.

18. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms. For material changes affecting Operators, we will give at least 30 days' notice by email before they take effect. For all other changes, the updated Terms apply once posted. Continued use after that constitutes acceptance.

19. General

• Entire agreement. These Terms, with the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between us on this subject and supersede any prior discussion or marketing statement.
• Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, it is limited or severed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest remains in force.
• No waiver. Not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it.
• Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms or any Territory lease without our prior written consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including outages of upstream providers.
• Independent parties. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, franchise, agency, or employment relationship.

20. Contact

Billing, cancellation, refunds, and anything to do with your account: use our support contact form. We reply within 3 business days.

Questions about these Terms, privacy, data requests, or a rights complaint: legal@mailerdot.com.