Zealo Online terms

Last updated: 31 October 2026

These terms cover Zealo Web (your business website) and Zealo Mail (email addresses on your own domain), whether they come with the Online or Online Pro package or with another Zealo plan. They are offered by HashData (Pty) Ltd ("Zealo", "we", "us") to the business that uses them ("you").

They add to our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy. Billing, our limit of liability, governing law and how we change our terms are in the Terms of Service and are not repeated here. If these terms and the Terms of Service say different things about your website or email, these terms apply.

The person who first publishes your website, or first sets up your email, ticks "I agree to the Zealo Online terms" for your business. They must be allowed to agree for the business. We keep a record of who agreed, when, and to which version.

These terms are also shown in other languages. If a translation says something different from the English version, the English version applies.

Section 10 also covers listing your business on the Zealo Marketplace, our public business directory.

1. Your responsibilities

You are responsible for everything on your website and in the emails your mailboxes send: the words, pictures, prices, files, links and any code you upload. Make sure it is true, legal and yours to use. We don't check your content before it goes live, apart from scanning uploads and email for viruses.

You must follow every law that applies to your business, your website, what you sell and the emails you send. These include the Consumer Protection Act, the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (ECTA) and the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).

Section 3 (Acceptable use) of the Terms of Service also applies to your website and your email.

You are responsible for what your users do with your website and mailboxes.

2. If someone makes a claim against us

You indemnify HashData (Pty) Ltd and its directors and staff. This means: if someone else makes a claim against us, or a regulator fines us, because of your website content, the emails sent from your mailboxes, or your breaking these terms or the law, you pay what it costs us. That includes amounts we have to pay and our reasonable legal costs.

This does not apply to the extent the claim was caused by our own breach of these terms, our negligence or our misconduct.

We will tell you about the claim promptly and let you take part in dealing with it. We won't settle a claim you have to pay for without your agreement, and you won't refuse it without a good reason.

3. Personal information (POPIA)

Your website and mailboxes hold personal information about other people: the visitors who fill in your contact form, and the people who email you or whom you email.

For that information, you are the responsible party under POPIA. You decide why and how it is used, and you answer to those people for it.

HashData (Pty) Ltd is your operator. This section is the written agreement between you and us that sections 20 and 21 of POPIA require. For that information, we will:

• process it only to run your website and email, and as you instruct through Zealo, unless a law requires otherwise;
• treat it as confidential and not share it, except as this section says or a law requires;
• never use it for our own marketing, and never sell it;
• keep it secure with appropriate, reasonable technical and organisational measures, as section 19 of POPIA requires. These include encryption in transit and at rest, access only for staff who need it, virus scanning, monitoring and backups;
• store it with Amazon Web Services in Cape Town, South Africa. Email you send is delivered to wherever each recipient's email provider keeps it, because that is how email works;
• use Amazon Web Services for hosting, storage and sending email, under terms that protect the information at least as well as this section;
• tell you immediately if we have reasonable grounds to believe that someone has accessed or acquired it without authority, and help you with what you must do next;
• help you, where we reasonably can, to answer someone who asks to see, correct or delete their information;
• delete it when your website or email is deleted under section 9. Copies in backups clear on the timeline in that section.

You must tell people how you use their information (for example in a privacy notice on your website), have a lawful reason to process it, use contact form messages only for what you told the visitor, and only send direct marketing where POPIA allows it (section 69).

For the information we hold about you and your users as our own customers, see our Privacy Policy.

4. Zealo Web: your website

What it is

• Online: a one-page website made from a Zealo template, with a small "Powered by Zealo" line at the bottom. You may not hide or remove that line.
• Online Pro: a template website, or your own website that you upload as a zip file (pages, styles, scripts, images, fonts, short videos and documents such as PDFs). No "Powered by Zealo" line.
• Your website runs on your own domain (for example yourbusiness.co.za), never on a Zealo address.
• If it has a contact form, each message reaches you by email and as a lead in your Zealo customer records (CRM).

What your website may not have or do

Your website may not:

• break the law, or help someone else break it;
• contain or spread malware, harm a visitor's device or data, or attack other websites;
• phish, scam, or pretend to be someone else, such as a bank, SARS, a courier, Zealo or another business;
• show adult or sexual content, or anything that sexualises children;
• spread hate or threats, or incite violence;
• use other people's photos, text, music, video, logos or trade marks without their permission;
• collect card numbers, bank PINs, passwords or ID numbers;
• mine cryptocurrency in a visitor's browser, or run scripts that secretly track or take over visitors' devices;
• be used to store or share files. Files must be part of the website (a brochure, menu or price list is fine).

Selling on your website

You must follow every law that applies to what you sell and how you sell it, and hold any licence it needs.

To take payment, link to your payment provider's own hosted checkout page, for example a Paystack, PayFast or Yoco payment link. That is allowed. Never ask for card numbers on your website.

Your website may not sell, or advertise for sale:

• anything illegal, such as drugs, counterfeit goods, stolen goods or protected wildlife products;
• cannabis that contains THC. Adults may grow and use it in private, but selling it is still illegal in South Africa;
• vapes, e-cigarettes or tobacco;
• alcohol;
• weapons, ammunition or parts for them;
• adult content or services;
• gambling, betting or lotteries;
• get-rich-quick, pyramid or crypto investment schemes, or financial products you are not licensed to offer.

CBD products are allowed only when they meet South African law: no medical or health claims, and no products that need a prescription.

The contact form

Template websites show a short note under the form: "[Your business] uses your details to reply to you and keeps them in its customer records." If you upload your own website with a form, you write your own notice.

To stop spam, we check the visitor's internet address (IP) and limit how many messages can be sent: 5 an hour from one visitor, and 50 a day to one website.

Cookies and tracking

Zealo's template websites, the "This website is paused" page and the contact form set no cookies and contain no tracking or advertising code. A visitor's internet address is used only to stop spam, and is kept in our server logs as set out in our Privacy Policy.

If your own uploaded website adds analytics, advertising pixels, chat widgets or other tracking, you are responsible for them: telling visitors, getting consent where the law needs it, and following those services' terms.

Limits

• Storage: 100 MB on Online and 500 MB on Online Pro, unless your package shows a different amount. Uploads bigger than your limit are refused.
• Up to 2,000 files in one upload, website file types only. Every upload is scanned for viruses before it goes live.
• No server-side code: no PHP, databases, WordPress, plugins or FTP. JavaScript that runs in the visitor's browser is fine.
• We may change these limits. If a change affects you, we tell you first, as set out in the Terms of Service.

Your domain

You must own the domain your website or email runs on, or have the right to use it.

Keep it registered and paid up, and keep the settings (DNS records) Zealo shows you in place. If the domain expires or the settings change, your website or email stops working. That is not a Zealo outage.

5. Zealo Mail: your email

Mailboxes and aliases on your own domain, which you read in Zealo or in any email app. Email arrives at our mail server and is sent through Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES), both in Cape Town.

Sending rules

Zealo Mail is for your business's everyday email with people who expect to hear from you. You may not:

• send bulk or marketing email (newsletters, promotions or mail-outs). Use a dedicated email marketing service for that;
• send unsolicited email (spam), or email any address list you bought, rented, borrowed or copied from websites;
• pretend to be someone else, or fake the sender, the "From" address or other details of an email (spoofing). Send only from your own addresses and aliases;
• send malware, phishing or scams, or anything that section 4 doesn't allow on a website;
• try to get around the sending limits, for example by spreading email over many mailboxes.

Each mailbox has a daily sending limit, and your company has one for all its mailboxes together, to protect delivery for everyone. Everyone in To, Cc and Bcc counts, and the count starts again at midnight. Your limits and how much you have sent today are shown on the Email settings page in Zealo. We may change limits to protect the service.

We watch bounces (email that can't be delivered) and complaints (people marking your email as spam). If your bounce rate goes over 5% or your complaint rate over 0.1%, or we see sending that breaks these rules, we may suspend sending for a mailbox or for your company straight away. We email your administrators when either rate reaches half of that, so you can act first. Receiving and reading email keeps working. We tell you why, and turn sending back on once the cause is fixed.

We can't control whether another provider accepts your email, so we don't promise that every email is delivered.

Your passwords

You are responsible for keeping your users' passwords safe, and for email sent from your mailboxes, including by someone who got hold of a password. Use two-step sign-in. Tell us straight away if you think a mailbox has been broken into. We may suspend a mailbox that looks compromised, to stop it sending.

Spam and viruses

We filter incoming email for spam and scan it for viruses. Email with a virus is refused. No filter is perfect: some spam may get through, and some real email may land in Spam, so check your Spam folder.

Storage

Each mailbox gets the storage your package includes, shown on the Email page. Today that is 500 MB on Basic, 1 GB on other paid plans, 2 GB on Online and 5 GB on Online Pro. When a mailbox is full, new email to it may bounce until you make space or get more.

Keeping your email

We keep your email until you delete it, or until it is deleted under section 9. Email in Trash and Spam may be removed automatically after a while.

Removing a mailbox in Zealo switches it off but keeps its email, so it can be turned back on, until it is deleted under section 9. You can download a copy of a mailbox from Zealo at any time.

6. Domains bought through Zealo

• When you buy a domain through Zealo, we register it through an accredited registrar in your company's name, with the details in your Company setup. Your company owns the domain.
• You see the price before you pay. A domain is registered for a year at a time. Prices exclude VAT, which is added when you pay.
• We email your administrators 30, 14 and 3 days before the domain expires. With automatic renewal on, we charge the renewal to your card on file about 14 days before it expires. You can switch automatic renewal off, or renew it yourself on the Email page. If a renewal isn't paid, the domain can expire and be lost.
• If the registrar refuses a registration, we refund you in full. Once a domain is registered or renewed, that year's fee can't be refunded, because the registry charges for the whole year.
• You may move the domain to another provider at any time, also if you leave Zealo. Ask us for the transfer code (EPP code) and we give it to you. To stop it lapsing by mistake, a domain bought through Zealo can't be removed on the Email page: ask us and we help you move it.
• The rules of the domain's registry (for example ZACR for .co.za) and of the registrar also apply. Your company's details are listed with the registry as the owner, as the registry requires.

7. Reporting abuse and taking content down

How to report

Anyone can report a website or an email sent through Zealo by emailing abuse@zealo.app. Include the website address or a copy of the email (with its full headers if you can), what the problem is, and how we can contact you.

How quickly we respond

Business hours are 08:00 to 17:00, Monday to Friday, except South African public holidays.

What we take offline straight away

We take a website, page or file offline, or suspend sending, without warning if it has malware, is phishing or a scam, contains child sexual abuse material, or is otherwise clearly illegal. We tell you why as soon as we have done it. Where the law requires it, we report it to the police or the right authority and keep the evidence.

When we give you notice first

For anything else, we tell you what the problem is and give you 5 business days to fix it or explain why it is fine. If it isn't fixed and we reasonably decide it breaks these terms or the law, we take the content offline, pause the website or suspend sending.

What we pause

A website problem pauses only the website, and an email problem only stops sending. The rest of your Zealo account keeps working. For serious or repeated abuse, we may suspend more of your account or end Zealo Online for your company, as the Terms of Service allow.

Getting it back

Fix the problem and reply to our email. We check it and switch things back on, usually within 1 business day. Nothing is deleted while it is paused. Your package fee keeps running while your website or sending is paused for breaking these terms, and there is no refund for that time.

Takedown notices under ECTA

If you believe content on a website or in an email hosted by Zealo is unlawful or infringes your rights, you can send a takedown notice under section 77 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 2002 (ECTA) to:

The notice must be in writing and include: your full name and address; your signature (an electronic signature is fine); the right you say is being infringed; the exact content or page; what you want us to do about it; your phone number and email address; and statements that you are acting in good faith and that the information is true and correct to the best of your knowledge.

When we receive a complete notice, we act on it within 2 business days, usually by removing the content or pausing the website, and we tell the customer. We may also remove content ourselves when we believe it breaks these terms or the law.

Anyone who knowingly sends a false notice can be held liable for the damage it causes.

8. Backups and uptime

Websites: when a file on your published website is changed or deleted, we keep the previous copy for 30 days, so we can often restore a recent version.

Email: we back up the mail server every day and keep each backup for 35 days, so we can usually recover email lost through a fault on our side. We can't promise to bring back an email you deleted yourself.

We don't promise we can always restore something. Always keep your own copy of anything you upload, such as your website zip, photos and documents.

Websites run on one server for now, so they are provided on a best-effort basis, with no uptime target.

Zealo Mail aims for the same 99.5% availability target as the rest of Zealo, as set out in the Terms of Service (excluding planned maintenance and events outside our control). It is a target, not a guarantee.

9. When a package lapses or you cancel

If your package lapses

Your package lapses if a payment fails and isn't fixed, or if you cancel or drop the package your website or email needs. An uploaded website also needs Online Pro.

1. Your website stays online for 7 days (the grace period). We email your administrators when it lapses and again 3 days before it goes offline.
2. After 7 days, visitors see a plain "This website is paused" page. Nothing is deleted yet: as soon as you pay or buy the package again, your website comes back by itself, exactly as it was.
3. If the package is still not paid 90 days after it lapsed, your website counts as cancelled. This is the same whether you cancelled or a payment failed, so you have time to change your mind. We email you when it is cancelled, and again a week before it is deleted.
4. 30 days after it is cancelled, we delete your website for good: its pages, settings, pictures and uploaded files. Copies in backups clear within a further 30 days. You can still renew during those 30 days to keep it.

This only happens when your company has no package with a website at all. If you moved from Online Pro to Online, your uploaded website stays paused, and is not deleted, while you are on Online.

The same rules apply to email. If your email package lapses and you have more mailboxes than your package now allows, the extra mailboxes stop sending after 7 days; they keep receiving email and you can still read them. If the package is still not paid 90 days after it lapsed, they count as cancelled, and we delete them and their email 30 days after that. Copies in backups clear within a further 35 days. We email you before anything is deleted.

Your Zealo account and your data

• If you cancel your whole Zealo account, the 30 days in section 7 of the Terms of Service apply to everything, including your website and email.
• Contact form messages already in your customer records are part of your Zealo data. They stay for as long as your Zealo account does.
• Save a copy of anything you want to keep before you cancel. You can download a copy of each mailbox from Zealo.
• We may keep information for longer where a law requires us to.

10. Zealo Marketplace

The Zealo Marketplace is a public directory of businesses that use Zealo. Listing is free on every plan, and it stays off until a company admin switches it on in Company settings and agrees to these terms.

Your page shows your business name, logo, what you do, your categories, services and areas, your phone number and website, and the opening hours and address of your Zealo Web website when it is published. We never show your email address.

What you put on your page must be true and yours to use, and the rules for website content in section 4 apply to it. Only list a business you are allowed to act for.

Messages sent to you through the marketplace come to you by email and are saved as leads in your Zealo customer records. As with your website contact form, you are responsible for how you use the sender's details under POPIA.

Your page is hidden while your Zealo subscription is not active (for example a lapsed plan or an unpaid monthly bill) and comes back by itself when it is. We may also hide a page that breaks these terms, misleads people or draws complaints, and we tell you why.

You can switch your listing off at any time. The page then goes offline, and search engines are told it is gone.

A listing is not a recommendation by Zealo. We don't check the businesses that list themselves, and any deal between businesses is between them.

11. Changes and contact

We may change these terms as set out in section 13 of the Terms of Service.

To report a website or an email: abuse@zealo.app.

For questions about these terms: info@hashdata.co.za, +27 21 330 5784.