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Terms of Service & Acceptable Use Policy

Effective date: July 28, 2026
Last updated: September 9, 2026

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of SyteCheck (the "Service"), operated by Ascent Web Solutions ("SyteCheck", "we", "us"). By creating an account, submitting a scan, or using the public API, you agree to these Terms and to the Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. The Service

SyteCheck performs automated audits of websites and returns scored reports across up to ten categories of site quality — HTML validity, SEO, broken links, accessibility, performance, security headers, responsive design, visual and aesthetic analysis (which includes the prominence and clarity of calls to action), content freshness, and AI visibility. A scan fetches and renders the target URL, captures screenshots, and inspects the returned content.

The Service is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. Scan results are informational; they are automated estimates and do not constitute professional advice, a security certification, or a guarantee of any site's quality, compliance, or safety.

2. Eligibility and accounts

  • You must be at least 16 years old (or the age of digital consent in your jurisdiction) and able to form a binding contract.
  • You are responsible for the accuracy of your registration information, for safeguarding your credentials and API keys, and for all activity under your account.
  • Accounts are for a single user. Administrative privileges are granted only by us and are not self-service.
  • We may suspend or disable an account that violates these Terms. A disabled account cannot authenticate by any method until re-enabled.
  • Restricted jurisdictions. You may not use the Service, and we may not sell to you, if you are located in — or are a person or entity subject to sanctions or trade restrictions administered by — any jurisdiction that applicable sanctions or export laws prohibit us from dealing with. You represent that you are not such a person, and our payment provider (§9) applies its own sanctions screening independently.

3. Authorized use only — the core rule of acceptable use

You may only scan websites that you own or that you have explicit permission to analyze. By submitting a URL you represent and warrant that you are authorized to run an automated audit against that target and its subresources.

A SyteCheck scan is an automated process that issues many requests to the target origin (page fetches, a link crawl, a headless-browser render at multiple viewport sizes, screenshot capture, a Lighthouse performance audit, and header/accessibility probes). Running this against a site you do not control, without permission, may violate the target's terms of service, computer-misuse and anti-hacking laws (including the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and equivalents), or other applicable law. You are solely responsible for having authorization, and you agree to indemnify us for claims arising from scans you were not authorized to run.

4. Prohibited uses

You must not, and must not permit anyone to:

  • Scan any site you do not own or lack documented permission to analyze.
  • Use the Service to attempt to gain unauthorized access to, disrupt, overload, or degrade any system, network, or website (including using scans as a denial-of-service or stress-testing tool against a third party).
  • Circumvent, disable, or interfere with our rate limits, scan-pacing controls, quotas, authentication, or any other technical measure — including by rotating accounts or keys to evade limits.
  • Reverse engineer, resell, or provide the Service to third parties except as expressly permitted (see §7, Public API).
  • Scan targets for the purpose of scraping personal data at scale, building profiles of individuals, or any unlawful, infringing, deceptive, or harmful purpose.
  • Upload or transmit malware, or use the Service to store or distribute unlawful content.
  • Misrepresent your identity or authorization, or violate any applicable law or third-party right in connection with your use.

We may investigate suspected violations and cooperate with law enforcement. We may remove content, cancel scans, and suspend or terminate accounts that violate this policy, with or without notice.

5. Respect for target websites

Even for sites you are authorized to scan, use the Service responsibly:

  • Honor the intent of a target's robots.txt and terms; do not use SyteCheck to bypass access controls.
  • Avoid scanning a single site so frequently that it burdens the origin. The Service paces requests to reduce load, but you remain responsible for the aggregate impact of your usage.

We reserve the right to refuse or throttle scans that appear abusive to a target or to our shared infrastructure.

6. Plans, rate limits, and quotas

To protect the Service and the sites you scan, what your account may do depends on its plan. Current plans and limits (which we may change with notice):

  • Free plan: 3 scans per month, covering the visual and aesthetic analysis, SEO fundamentals, and accessibility categories only. Accessibility results identify each issue found but do not include remediation guidance. Scan history is kept for 30 days, and 1 scan may run at a time. No scan webhooks.
  • Pro plan: 30 scans per month across all analysis categories, with PDF export. Scan history is kept for 12 months, and 3 scans may run at a time. No scan webhooks.
  • Agency plan: 250 scans per month across all analysis categories, with PDF export and scan webhooks. Scan history is kept for 12 months, and 5 scans may run at a time.
  • Public API. Every plan, including Free, may create and use API keys (§7). An API key confers no additional allowance: scans submitted through the API draw on the same monthly quota and the same analysis categories as the plan itself.
  • One-off scans. A single scan covering all analysis categories may be purchased without a subscription. It is subject to these Terms in full, does not expire into a subscription, and confers no other plan benefits.
  • Quota periods. Scan quotas run on the calendar month (UTC) and do not roll over into the next month. Deleting a scan does not restore quota. Exceeding a quota returns an error (HTTP 429); it does not incur an additional charge.
  • Burst limits. A daily cap also applies as an abuse and infrastructure protection, separately from the monthly quota.
  • Per-target pacing: to keep from overwhelming any one origin (and to protect our shared egress reputation), scans of the same host are spaced out globally and the per-scan analysis fan-out is paced. A scan of a very recently scanned host may be briefly deferred or, in extreme cases, rejected.
  • Analysis budgets: some analyzers are internally bounded (for example, the broken-link crawler checks a capped number of links per scan). These caps are disclosed in the report.

These limits are technical measures under §4; attempting to evade them — including by creating multiple accounts to obtain additional free-plan quota — is a violation of these Terms.

7. Public API

SyteCheck offers a public HTTP API so the analysis engine can be used programmatically.

  • Authentication. API requests authenticate with a personal API key presented as Authorization: Bearer <token>. Keys carry a sck_ prefix. Your raw key secret is shown once at creation and is never retrievable again; store it securely. Only a hash of the key is retained by us.
  • Your responsibility. You are responsible for all activity performed with your API keys and for keeping them confidential. You can revoke a key at any time, which takes effect immediately. Treat a key like a password; notify us if you believe one is compromised.
  • Plan requirement. API access is available on every plan, including Free (§6). A key confers no allowance of its own — it reaches the same monthly quota and the same analysis categories as your plan. Scan webhooks (delivery of a completed scan to a URL you supply) are a feature of the Agency plan; requesting one on another plan is refused, and the scan may still be submitted without it.
  • Same rules apply. API usage is subject to these Terms in full, including the authorized-use requirement (§3), the prohibited uses (§4), and the same per-host pacing as the web application (§6). Scans submitted through the API draw on the same monthly quota as scans submitted through the web application — the API is a different way in, not additional allowance. Per-key usage is recorded.
  • Versioning and stability. The API is versioned in its path (e.g. /api/v1). We aim to keep a published version stable and to provide a reasonable deprecation period before removing or breaking a versioned endpoint. See the developer guide for the current contract.
  • No misuse. You must not use the API to build a competing bulk-scanning service, to circumvent limits, or in any manner these Terms prohibit.

8. Your content and data

You retain ownership of the URLs you submit and any labels or data you provide. You grant us the limited license needed to operate the Service — to fetch, render, analyze, and store scan inputs and outputs, and to process them through our sub-processors — as described in the Privacy Policy. That policy also explains data retention, how to delete individual scans, and how to permanently erase your account and its data.

9. Fees, taxes, and cancellation

Who you are buying from. Paid plans and one-off scans are sold and processed by our authorized reseller acting as merchant of record. That reseller is the seller of record for the transaction, appears on your card statement and invoice, and its buyer terms govern the payment itself. These Terms continue to govern your use of the Service. The reseller is identified at checkout.

Billing. Subscriptions are billed in advance on the interval you select (monthly or annual) and renew automatically at the then-current price until cancelled. One-off scans are billed once and confer no subscription. Prices are listed in US dollars and exclusive of tax; any applicable VAT, GST, or sales tax is calculated and added at checkout based on your location, and is shown before you pay. Where local law requires prices to be displayed inclusive of tax, the checkout will show them that way.

Cancellation and plan changes. You may cancel at any time from your account. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period — your plan remains active until then, and it is not prorated. After it lapses your account reverts to the free plan, including that plan's scan quota, category access, and retention window. We keep your full scan history for a further 14 days after any downgrade, so you have time to download anything you want to keep; after that, scans older than your plan's retention period may be permanently deleted. That date is shown on your billing page and in the email we send when a plan ends.

Switching between paid plans is different from cancelling, and takes effect straight away in both directions. If you move to a more expensive plan, you get its features immediately and we charge the difference for the remainder of your current billing period. If you move to a cheaper one, it applies immediately too, and we credit the unused portion of what you have already paid against your next invoice — so you are not charged twice for the same days. Changing between monthly and annual billing works the same way.

Right of withdrawal (EU/UK consumers). If you are a consumer in the EU or the UK, you have 14 days from the conclusion of the contract to withdraw from it without giving a reason. You can exercise this right from the withdrawal control in your account billing page, or by contacting us at the address in §18. Where you have asked us to begin providing the Service during the withdrawal period, you may be charged an amount proportionate to what you used before withdrawing.

Refunds otherwise. Outside the withdrawal right above, fees are non-refundable, except as required by law, as expressly stated at checkout, or as set out in our Refund and Cancellation Policy — which is part of these Terms and is the detailed statement of when we refund, how to ask, and how long it takes. We may change pricing prospectively with notice; a change never applies to a period you have already paid for.

10. Intellectual property

The Service, including its software, design, and brand (the SyteCheck name and mark), is owned by Ascent Web Solutions and protected by intellectual-property laws. These Terms grant you no right to our marks or software except the right to use the Service as intended. Scan reports generated for you are yours to use for your own or your authorized clients' purposes.

11. Third-party sites and content

Scanned websites are controlled by third parties. We do not endorse them and are not responsible for their content, and screenshots or excerpts captured during a scan reflect those third parties' material. You are responsible for ensuring your scanning and your use of the resulting reports comply with the target's rights and applicable law.

12. Disclaimers

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT SCAN RESULTS ARE COMPLETE OR ERROR-FREE, THAT DETECTED ISSUES REPRESENT ALL ISSUES, OR THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED.

13. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, Ascent Web Solutions WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS OR DATA, ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM OR USD 100.

14. Indemnification

You will indemnify and hold harmless Ascent Web Solutions and its personnel from any claim, loss, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your use of the Service, your violation of these Terms, or your scanning of any site you were not authorized to analyze.

15. Termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time (see the Privacy Policy for the erasure process). We may suspend or terminate your access for any violation of these Terms or to protect the Service or third parties. Provisions that by their nature should survive termination (including §§ 8, 10–14, and 16) survive.

16. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of Massachusetts, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The courts located in Massachusetts, USA will have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes, unless applicable consumer-protection law provides otherwise.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be posted here with an updated effective date and, where appropriate, communicated to you. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance.

18. Contact