Terms and conditions template for a small online store

Short answer: terms and conditions are the rules for using your website and buying from your store: acceptable use, pricing and order acceptance, intellectual property, limits on your liability, and which state or country's law applies if there's a dispute. Copy the template below, fill in your own details, and link it from your footer. This isn't legal advice; have a lawyer review it if you sell anything higher risk (supplements, services, subscriptions).

Facts last checked on October 19, 2026, against the sources linked below.

What terms and conditions cover, and what they don't

Terms and conditions are the broadest of your store's policies. They cover the relationship between you and anyone using your site, not just the people who buy from it.

They typically answer:

• What counts as acceptable use of your site (and what's banned, like scraping or reselling your content).
• How you accept an order, and when a sale is final.
• Who owns your site's content, photos and branding.
• How far your liability goes if something goes wrong.
• Which country or state's law applies, and where a dispute would be handled.

Copy-paste terms and conditions template

Fill in the highlighted parts with your own store name, location and contact details.

What to customize before you publish

Governing law. Put your own state or country here, not a generic one copied from somewhere else. This is the law that would actually apply if there were ever a dispute.

Liability limits. Standard wording caps your liability near the order amount. If you sell something higher risk, like supplements, cosmetics, or services where a mistake could cause real harm, get a lawyer to look at this section specifically.

Intellectual property. If you use a lot of user-generated content (customer photos, reviews), add a line about what rights you get when a customer submits one.

Order acceptance. If you sell on preorder, custom, or made-to-order items, say plainly when a sale becomes final, since that's different from in-stock items that ship right away.

How this differs from your refund and privacy pages

It's easy to blur these three together, but they answer different questions:

• Terms and conditions are the rules for using your site and the general terms of a sale: liability, acceptable use, who owns the content, and which law applies.
• Privacy policy is about what personal data you collect and what you do with it, not about the sale itself.
• Return and refund policies are about what happens after a specific purchase: how a customer gets money back, an exchange, or a replacement.

Most stores link to all three separately from the footer, since a shopper looking for "can I get my money back" shouldn't have to read through liability clauses to find it.

Where to put your terms and conditions

1. Your site footer, linked from every page, next to your other policies.
2. Checkout, often as a required checkbox before a customer can complete an order.
3. Account signup, if you let customers create accounts.

On Shopify, your terms of service live under Settings > Policies alongside your other store policies, and Shopify can generate an automated version from your store settings or let you write your own. Shopify Help Center

Once your terms are published, a chatbot like Chatbait can answer a shopper's "can you cancel my order?" or "who owns these photos?" straight from the page, instead of you retyping the same answer by email.

Frequently asked questions

Are terms and conditions legally required for a small online store?

There's no single US federal law requiring every store to post them, but they protect you if a dispute comes up, and most payment processors expect you to have one. It's standard practice to publish them either way.

Is "terms and conditions" the same as "terms of service"?

Yes, in practice they mean the same thing for a store website. Shopify and most platforms call it "terms of service."

Can I use a free terms and conditions template as-is?

A template like the one above is a reasonable starting point, but fill in your own state or country for the governing law section, and have a lawyer review it if you sell anything higher risk.

Do I need both terms and conditions and a privacy policy?

Yes. Terms and conditions cover the rules of using your site and buying from it; your privacy policy covers what personal data you collect and how. They answer different questions, so most stores publish both separately.

What happens if I don't have terms and conditions at all?

You can still run a store without them, but you lose a clear, written limit on your liability and a stated governing law, which matters more if a dispute with a customer ever comes up.