Terms of service

Connect24 sends messages on your behalf across email, SMS and WhatsApp, replies to comments on your connected social accounts in a voice you configure, generates video, and exposes all of it through an API. You supply the recipients and the content; we deliver them and report back what happened.

You are responsible for everything done through your account and your API keys. Keep keys secret — anyone holding one can send messages that are billed to you and attributed to you. If a key is exposed, revoke it in the portal immediately; we cannot un-send messages sent with it.

You must give accurate account information, including a real physical address. South African law requires that address to appear in the marketing messages you send, so an account without one cannot send marketing.

This is the most important clause here. Under the Protection of Personal Information Act, you are the responsible party for the personal information of the people you message. Connect24 is an operator: we process that information on your instruction and for no other purpose.

That means the lawfulness of a campaign is yours to establish, not ours. By sending through Connect24 you warrant that, for every recipient, you either hold consent in the form POPIA requires or the recipient is an existing customer being marketed a similar product, and that they were given the chance to object when you collected their details and in every message since.

You also warrant that you can say where you obtained each recipient’s contact details. Under section 45 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act you must disclose that source on request, and failing to is a criminal offence. Connect24 records the source of every contact you upload so that you can answer.

You may not use Connect24 to send:

• messages to purchased, scraped, rented or otherwise harvested lists;
• messages to anyone who has not consented and is not an existing customer of yours;
• messages to anyone who has opted out, by any means, from any of your campaigns;
• content that is unlawful, deceptive, or impersonates another person or business;
• phishing, malware, or anything designed to obtain credentials or payment details;
• content that would breach the WASPA Code of Conduct or your obligations under the Consumer Protection Act.

We may inspect message content where we have reason to believe these terms are being breached, or where a provider, regulator or recipient complaint requires it.

Every marketing message sent through Connect24 carries a way to opt out. When someone uses it — an unsubscribe link, a STOP reply to an SMS, a spam complaint, or an entry on the National Consumer Commission’s Opt-Out Registry — that person is suppressed across every campaign and every list on your account, immediately and permanently.

You cannot remove such a suppression, through the portal, the API, or by asking us. It is not a setting. If that person wants to hear from you again they must opt in again themselves. Suppressions we created for other reasons — a mailbox that permanently rejected mail, or an address you added by hand — you may remove, and we log it when you do.

The Consumer Protection Act prohibits direct marketing to consumers at home on Sundays and public holidays, on Saturdays before 09:00 and after 13:00, and on any other day between 20:00 and 08:00. Connect24 holds marketing sends that fall outside those windows and releases them when the window opens, in South African time, rather than sending them late on your behalf. We record the time every message was dispatched, because the burden of proving it was sent lawfully falls on you.

Connect24 assigns the sender address or originator your messages are sent from and verifies it against our own domains and registered numbers. You cannot change it. This is what allows us to keep delivery working for everyone on the platform, and it is what stops one customer’s conduct from putting another customer’s mail in a spam folder.

Connect24 is prepaid. Every message is charged against your credit balance before it is sent, at the rates published in the portal. When your balance cannot cover a message, the send is refused rather than silently dropped.

A message a provider refuses after we have charged for it is refunded to your balance automatically. A message that was accepted and delivered is not refundable, whatever the recipient later does with it. Credit has no cash value and is not redeemable for money.

Invoices are issued per calendar month and are visible in the portal. Billing questions go to billing@connect24.co.za.

We may suspend sending on your account without notice where we see evidence of sending without consent, a complaint rate that threatens delivery for other customers, a regulator or network operator requiring it, or any breach of these terms. Where we can give notice first, we will. Suspension does not refund credit already spent.

We work to keep the platform available and messages moving, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted service or that any individual message will be delivered — delivery depends on networks, mailbox providers and recipient devices we do not control.

To the extent the law permits, our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the credit you spent through the platform in the three months before the claim arose. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profit or lost business.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including under the Consumer Protection Act.

We may change these terms. Where a change materially affects you we will tell you before it takes effect. These terms are governed by South African law, and the courts of South Africa have jurisdiction.

Questions: support@connect24.co.za.