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Terms and Conditions

Last Updated: 2026-09

1. Who we are

1.1 "Ellulo" is a trading name and is not a registered company, close corporation, or other separate legal entity. Ellulo is not currently a registered VAT vendor, so no VAT is currently added to the fees described in clause 4.

1.2 You can reach us at [email protected] for general queries, complaints, and anything not billing-specific, or [email protected] for billing and payment queries, or +27 60 019 5060. If you have a complaint about the Service, contact us at the details above, and we'll acknowledge it within 2 business days and aim to resolve it within 10 business days. If your complaint relates to how we handle personal information, you can also complain to the Information Regulator (details in our [Privacy Policy](https://ellulo.com/privacy-policy)); other consumer complaints, to the extent the Consumer Protection Act applies to you (see clause 12), can be referred to the National Consumer Commission.

Ellulo is not currently a member of any self-regulatory or industry accreditation body, and does not subscribe to any code of conduct.

1.3 This is a continuous, recurring agreement that runs, and is billed, until you cancel it under clause 6.

2. What the Service is

2.1 Ellulo provides a subscription marketing and business-automation platform ("the Platform") and associated services (collectively, "the Service") that help small businesses generate more leads and manage inbound enquiries and calls, including, without limitation, and depending on the plan you sign up for: a lead-capture website, automated review-collection ("reputation") funnels, missed-call text-back, pre-built marketing and referral campaigns, local search (SEO) optimisation, a unified inbox and dedicated business phone number, automated lead follow-up, and related tools, together with optional AI Employee and Conversational AI upgrades described in clause 5. This list is illustrative, not exhaustive: Ellulo may add, change, or retire specific Services from time to time; the Services actually available to you at any time are as shown on Ellulo's pricing page or agreed with you at sign-up (clause 2.3).

2.2 Ellulo is not a party to, and accepts no responsibility for, any agreement between you and your own clients, leads, or customers. You remain solely responsible for the goods, services, and representations you provide to them.

2.3 The specific Services included in your plan, and any applicable limits (for example, number of locations, users, or contacts), are as shown on Ellulo's pricing page or agreed with you at sign-up.

3. Onboarding and delivery

3.1 There's no physical product here and nothing is shipped. The Service is delivered entirely electronically, in two stages:

(a) Account creation: near-instant. Once you sign up and your first payment is successfully processed, Ellulo creates your account, typically within 1–2 business days.

(b) Onboarding and build: after account creation, Ellulo (or, where applicable, a member of the Ellulo team) works with you to configure and build out the specific Services in your plan (for example, your website, campaigns, and automations), typically completed within 7–10 business days of your onboarding call, at which point your Services go live ("Go-Live"). This timeframe is an estimate and depends on how promptly you provide the information, content, and access we need from you.

3.2 You're responsible for providing accurate information and any content, assets, or access (for example, business details, branding, or third-party account access) reasonably needed for onboarding and Go-Live. Ellulo isn't responsible for delays caused by incomplete or late information on your side.

3.3 Once live, ongoing access to the Service continues for as long as your subscription remains active and your Subscription Fees are paid, subject to clause 7 (suspension/termination).

4. Fees and billing

4.1 The Service is billed at the Subscription Fee shown on Ellulo's pricing page or agreed with you at sign-up, charged monthly, automatically, in advance, using the recurring/tokenised billing facilities of Paystack and/or PayFast. Ellulo currently offers month-to-month billing only: there is no annual or other billing cycle, and no fixed-term/minimum-term plan (see clause 6).

4.2 AI Employee and Conversational AI upgrades. These are optional add-ons to your base subscription, offered on three tiers shown on Ellulo's pricing page:

(a) Pay-As-You-Go: no separate monthly add-on fee; usage is billed based on the underlying processing cost of the AI models and actions used (for example, per unit of text generated, or per minute of voice processing), at the rate shown on Ellulo's pricing page.

(b) AI Employee Growth: a flat monthly add-on fee, including a monthly allowance of Conversational AI responses and Voice AI minutes as shown on Ellulo's pricing page.

(c) AI Employee Unlimited: a flat monthly add-on fee for materially unlimited access to core AI Employee/Conversational AI features, subject to the fair-use policy in clause 5.4.

Where a tier includes a monthly allowance (Growth), usage is metered separately for text-based Conversational AI (measured in agent responses) and Voice AI (measured in AI agent-minutes); there is no hard cap: usage beyond your included allowance is simply billed as overage at the rate shown on Ellulo's pricing page. Usage charges are calculated in arrears and billed with your next Subscription Fee. You can see your current usage against your allowance from your account.

4.3 Ellulo does not itself receive, process, or store your full card or bank account details. These are collected and processed directly by Paystack and/or PayFast, under their own terms and privacy policies.

4.4 If a Subscription Fee payment fails or is declined, Ellulo may retry it and may suspend your access to the Service until payment succeeds; continued non-payment is grounds for suspension or termination under clause 7.

4.5 Ellulo may change fees or introduce new pricing tiers from time to time. Any fee change affecting your existing subscription will be notified to you at least 20 business days before it takes effect, and will only apply from your next billing cycle after that notice period. If you don't agree to a fee increase, you can cancel under clause 6 before it takes effect. Fees are quoted in South African Rand (ZAR); see clause 1 regarding VAT.

5. AI Employee and Conversational AI upgrades: additional terms

5.1 AI Employee and Conversational AI features use automated systems, including third-party artificial intelligence and voice-processing providers, to interact with your leads and customers on your behalf (for example, answering enquiries, qualifying leads, or handling calls). You're responsible for how you configure and deploy these features, including the instructions, scripts, or knowledge you provide them, and for your own compliance with applicable law in how you use them (including in your communications with your own customers).

5.2 These features aren't infallible: outputs may occasionally be inaccurate, and Ellulo doesn't guarantee any particular outcome (such as a sale, booking, or resolution) from their use. You should review and monitor how these features represent your business.

5.3 Where any personal information passes through these features (for example, a caller's or lead's details, or the content of a conversation), it's handled as described in our [Privacy Policy](https://ellulo.com/privacy-policy), including the identity of any third-party AI/voice-processing sub-processors and applicable cross-border transfer safeguards.

5.4 Fair use (AI Employee Unlimited). The AI Employee Unlimited tier (clause 4.2(c)) is for materially unlimited use consistent with normal operation of a business of your size. If your usage is disproportionate to that (for example, automated or bulk use inconsistent with genuine lead/customer interactions), Ellulo may contact you, apply reasonable rate limits, or move your account to a metered tier, before treating continued excessive use as a breach of these Terms.

5.5 Automated decision-making. Whether, and how, an AI Employee/Conversational AI feature makes any automated decision about one of your leads or customers (for example, automatically qualifying, scheduling, or declining an enquiry without human review) depends entirely on how you configure it for your business, and Ellulo doesn't itself decide this. Where you configure a feature to make this kind of significant automated decision, you are responsible, as the responsible party for that lead's or customer's information (clause 9.2), for complying with POPIA's requirements around automated decision-making, including giving the data subject an opportunity to make representations where the law requires it.

5.6 Disclosure and call-recording consent. Where a lead or customer could reasonably mistake an AI Employee or Conversational AI interaction for a human one, you must ensure it is disclosed to them where the law or fair dealing requires it. Before any call is recorded or otherwise processed by Voice AI, you must obtain and manage any consent needed under the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act, 2002 (RICA) or other applicable law. This is your responsibility as the party who decides how the feature is configured and used with your leads and customers.

6. No fixed term; cancellation

6.1 Ellulo offers subscriptions on a month-to-month basis only: there is no fixed-term or annual plan, and no minimum-term lock-in. Because of this, the notice and early-cancellation-penalty provisions of section 14 of the Consumer Protection Act, which apply specifically to fixed-term consumer agreements, are not relevant to the Service as currently offered.

6.2 You can cancel at any time from your dashboard's Settings page. There's no need to contact anyone, though you're welcome to email or speak to our accounts team ([email protected], +27 60 019 5060) if you'd rather. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current paid billing cycle: you keep full access to the Service until then, and won't be billed for any further cycle. You're welcome to resubscribe at any time afterwards.

6.3 Cancellation does not, by itself, entitle you to a refund of Subscription Fees already paid for the current billing cycle; see clause 8 (Refunds).

7. Suspension and termination by Ellulo

7.1 Ellulo may suspend or terminate your access to the Service if: you breach these Terms, including by failing to pay Subscription Fees when due and not resolving this within 7 days of Ellulo notifying you; Ellulo reasonably suspects fraudulent, unlawful, or abusive use of the Service; a third-party platform the Service depends on requires us to; or we're required to by law or regulation. Where reasonably possible, we'll tell you we've done this and why, and restore access once the issue is resolved.

7.2 Where Ellulo terminates for a reason other than your breach or non-payment, we'll refund the unused, already-paid portion of your current billing cycle.

8. Delivery, cancellation and refunds

This clause sets out, in one place, how delivery of the Service works, how cancellation works, and when a refund applies.

8.1 Delivery. As described in clause 3, the Service is delivered electronically in two stages: near-instant account creation, followed by onboarding/build, typically completed within 7–10 business days, after which your Services go live. There's no shipped product and no separate "delivery date" beyond Go-Live.

8.2 Cancellation. You can cancel at any time (clause 6). Cancelling stops future billing; access continues through the period you've already paid for, then ends. Fully disconnecting or requesting deletion of your account/data is a separate step from cancelling billing; see our [Privacy Policy](https://ellulo.com/privacy-policy) for how to do that.

8.3 Refunds: general rule. Subscription Fees are non-refundable once onboarding/build work (clause 3.1(b)) has started for the relevant billing cycle, except as set out below. This is consistent with section 44 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 2002, under which the standard 7-day cooling-off right for electronic transactions doesn't apply once a service has begun with the consumer's consent.

8.4 Refunds: before build starts. If you cancel before onboarding/build work has started on your account, Ellulo will refund your first payment in full. Once build work has started, this guarantee no longer applies, and clause 8.3 governs.

8.5 Refunds: billing errors. If you're charged in error (for example, charged twice for the same billing period, charged after a cancellation that should already have taken effect, or charged the wrong amount due to a fault on our side), we'll refund the incorrect amount in full within 10 business days of the error being confirmed. Report suspected billing errors to [email protected].

8.6 Refunds under this clause are processed back to the original payment method via Paystack or PayFast, and may take a further period to reflect, depending on your bank or card issuer and which gateway you're billed through: Paystack states refunds are typically received within 3–10 working days of being processed; PayFast states Instant EFT refunds take 2–3 business days, and card refunds take longer: up to 7 business days for credit cards and up to 10 business days for cheque cards. In short: expect up to 10 business days in the worst case.

8.7 Scope. This clause governs refunds of the Subscription Fee that you, as Customer, pay to Ellulo. It doesn't apply to, and Ellulo has no responsibility for, payments your own clients or leads make to you. Those are between you and your client, using whatever payment tools you've set up for your own business.

9. Your responsibilities

9.1 You're responsible for the accuracy of the information and content you provide, for your own compliance with applicable law (including consumer protection, marketing/communications, and anti-money-laundering requirements) in how you run your business and use the Service, and for how you configure and use the Service, including any AI Employee/Conversational AI features (clause 5).

9.2 Where personal information belonging to your own leads or customers passes through the Service, you're responsible, as the party who decides why and how that information is processed, for your own compliance with POPIA and any other applicable law; see our [Privacy Policy](https://ellulo.com/privacy-policy) for how this responsibility is allocated between you and Ellulo.

10. Intellectual property

10.1 Ellulo (or its licensors) owns all right, title, and interest in the Service, including its software, source code, design, look and feel, trademarks, logos, and documentation. Nothing in these Terms transfers any ownership of that to you. Subject to your compliance with these Terms and payment of applicable fees, Ellulo grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to access and use the Service for your own business purposes, for as long as your subscription remains active. This licence ends automatically when your subscription is cancelled or terminated. You must not copy, reverse-engineer, resell, sublicense, or white-label the Service, except to the extent the law prevents that restriction from being enforced.

10.2 As between you and Ellulo, you retain all right, title, and interest in your own business data, your content, and any personal information belonging to your own leads or customers that's submitted to or processed through the Service. You grant Ellulo a limited licence to host, process, and transmit that data solely to provide the Service to you, as described in our [Privacy Policy](https://ellulo.com/privacy-policy).

10.3 If you send Ellulo feedback or suggestions about the Service, Ellulo may use that feedback to improve the Service without restriction or obligation to you.

11. Confidentiality

11.1 Each party may receive confidential information from the other in connection with the Service. Each party agrees to keep the other's confidential information confidential, and to use it only to perform its obligations or exercise its rights under these Terms, except where disclosure is required by law or by a regulator.

11.2 This doesn't apply to information that's already public, was already known to the receiving party without an obligation of confidence, or is independently developed without reference to the disclosing party's confidential information.

12. Limitation of liability

12.1 The Consumer Protection Act ("CPA") doesn't apply to a transaction where the customer is a juristic person whose asset value or annual turnover, at the time of the transaction, is at or above the threshold set by the Minister under CPA section 5(2)(b), currently R2 million (Government Gazette No. 34181, 1 April 2011). Ellulo's Customers include businesses on both sides of that threshold. Above the threshold, this clause is enforceable as written, subject only to the common-law limits in clause 12.3. Below the threshold, and for natural persons, those same limits already satisfy what CPA sections 48 and 51 require, because this clause never excludes liability for gross negligence. No separate version of this clause is needed either way.

12.2 Subject to clause 12.3, Ellulo's total liability to you for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the fees you've paid Ellulo in the three months immediately before the claim. Ellulo isn't liable for indirect, special, or consequential loss, or loss of profit, revenue, business, or goodwill, even if advised such loss was possible, and isn't liable for loss caused by the acts, omissions, downtime, or unavailability of any third-party platform, payment gateway, or AI/voice-processing provider the Service depends on, since these are independent providers outside Ellulo's control.

12.3 None of this excludes or limits liability that can't lawfully be excluded under South African law, including for fraud, wilful misconduct, gross negligence, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or anything else the CPA, POPIA, or other law prohibits Ellulo from excluding, to the extent that law applies to you. Nothing here affects your right, to the extent the CPA applies to you, to take a dispute to the National Consumer Commission, an accredited ombud, or the Consumer Tribunal instead of or before litigation.

13. Indemnity

13.1 You indemnify Ellulo, and Ellulo's employees, contractors, and agents, against any claim, loss, damage, cost, or expense (including reasonable legal costs) arising from: your use of the Service in breach of these Terms; your breach of any law, including in your dealings with your own leads or customers; any dispute between you and your own client; inaccurate, unlawful, or unauthorised information or instructions you give Ellulo, including where you cause your customers' personal information to be processed through the Service (including via AI Employee/Conversational AI features) in a way that breaches POPIA or any other law; or your negligence, fraud, or wilful misconduct. This survives cancellation or termination of your subscription.

14. Service availability and disclaimer

14.1 The Service is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. Ellulo doesn't warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free. This includes outages or changes originating from a third-party platform, payment gateway, or AI/voice-processing provider the Service depends on, which are outside Ellulo's control.

14.2 Ellulo may carry out planned maintenance, and may update, improve, or change the Service from time to time, using reasonable efforts to minimise disruption and to give advance notice where practicable.

15. Force majeure

15.1 Neither party is liable for a failure or delay in performing its obligations under these Terms (other than your obligation to pay Subscription Fees already due) to the extent it's caused by something beyond that party's reasonable control, for example load-shedding or other electricity interruptions, internet or telecoms failures, natural disasters, or an outage or policy change at a third-party platform the Service depends on. The affected party must tell the other as soon as reasonably possible and make a reasonable effort to resume normal service.

15.2 If this kind of event stops Ellulo providing the Service for more than 30 days running, either party can cancel the affected subscription without penalty, and clause 8 (Delivery, cancellation and refunds) applies to any unused, already-paid period.

16. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found by a court, tribunal, or other body of competent jurisdiction to be illegal, invalid, or unenforceable, that provision is severed and the rest of these Terms continue in full force and effect. Where that happens, we'll negotiate in good faith to agree a replacement provision that's valid and enforceable and reflects the original commercial intention as closely as possible.

17. Entire agreement

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and any pricing page or order information expressly referred to in them, are the entire agreement between you and Ellulo about your use of the Service, and supersede any prior discussions or understandings, written or oral. You confirm you haven't relied on any representation or promise that isn't set out here. No variation of these Terms is effective unless made in accordance with clause 18, or otherwise agreed in writing signed by an authorised representative of Ellulo. If either of us doesn't act on a right under these Terms straight away, that doesn't mean we've given it up.

18. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time; the "Last updated" date above reflects the current version. Continuing to use the Service after an update means you accept the revised terms. Where a change is material, we'll take reasonable steps to let you know before it takes effect (for example, by email).

19. SMS and email communications

19.1 Ellulo may send SMS and email messages to users who opt in, including promotional offers, service updates, appointment confirmations, and appointment reminders. Providing your phone number or email and opting in authorises Ellulo to send these messages; consent is not a condition of purchase.

19.2 To opt out of SMS messages, reply "STOP" to any SMS message you receive from us. You'll receive confirmation, then stop receiving messages from us. To opt out of marketing email, click "unsubscribe" in any marketing email. You can opt back in at any time using the same method you used to opt in.

19.3 Reply "HELP" or contact [email protected] / +27 60 019 5060 for assistance. Message and data rates may apply; contact your wireless provider regarding plan questions. Carriers aren't liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

19.4 Use of this messaging programme is governed by our [Privacy Policy](https://ellulo.com/privacy-policy).

20. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of South Africa. You and Ellulo consent to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the High Court of South Africa, Western Cape Division, Cape Town, for any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms. This doesn't stop Ellulo bringing proceedings in any other competent court, and doesn't affect your right, to the extent the CPA applies to you, to refer a dispute to the National Consumer Commission, an accredited ombud, or the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud instead of or before litigation.