Terms of Use
These terms govern your use of Yowl (“the Platform”), accessible at yowl.co.za, operated by CDSoft (Pty) Ltd (Registration No. 2023/618547/07), 16 Sering Street, Red Swallow Room, Stellenbosch, Western Cape, 7600. You can reach us via our contact page.
1. What Yowl is
Yowl is a hosted smart shared inbox — email infrastructure for an organisation. You connect a domain or take addresses on ours, and we receive, store, and process the mail sent to those addresses on your behalf: reading it, classifying it, summarising it, and surfacing it in your inbox so a person in your organisation can act on it. Think of it as a Google-Workspace-style mailbox with an AI layer built in.
We are your operator: we run this software for you and process your correspondence on your instructions. We are not a party to the messages sent to your addresses, we do not use them for our own purposes, and we do not sell or share your mail. What you do with your inbox — who you reply to, what you decide — is entirely yours.
Using the Platform does not create any employment, agency, or professional relationship between you and CDSoft (Pty) Ltd.
2. Who may use the Platform
You must be 18 or older to create an account.
Accounts belong to individuals acting for an organisation. By registering an organisation you warrant that you are authorised to act for it and to accept these terms — including the processing consent in section 4 — in its name. By creating an account you confirm you have read and accepted these terms.
3. Your organisation, addresses, and mail
Your organisation name and address
Registering an organisation reserves a Platform web address (e.g. your-name.yowl.co.za) and the inbound addresses tied to it. You warrant that the name and address you choose do not infringe anyone else’s rights — including trademarks and company names. We may reclaim an address that infringes rights, impersonates another business, or violates these terms.
Ownership
Your mail and your organisation’s content are yours. We store and process them only to provide the Platform to you, for as long as your account is active, and we delete them when you delete your account (section 7). We do not sell your content, and we do not use the content of your mail to train models, target advertising, or for any purpose of our own — only aggregate, content-free operational metrics (message counts, delivery statistics) are ever used to run and improve the service.
Your responsibility for how you use it
You are responsible for how your organisation uses the mail it receives and the replies it sends. You must have a lawful basis for the personal information you process through the Platform, handle it in line with the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA), and honour the rights of the people you correspond with. Don’t use the Platform to send spam, to harass, or for any unlawful purpose.
4. AI processing of your inbound mail — and your consent
The Platform’s core function is to process the mail you receive. So that we may lawfully do this on your behalf, and because you are a party to every communication sent to your addresses, by creating an account you give your prior written consent, under section 5 of the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act 70 of 2002 (RICA), for the Platform to intercept, store, and process the content of communications sent to or from your addresses.
That processing includes automated reading, classification, summarisation, and analysis of message content and attachments, performed on your behalf to run your inbox. You give this consent at registration, before any mail is received at your addresses. It is the only consent the model needs: we never ask the people who email you to agree to anything, and we never contact them on our own initiative.
The AI features are decision-support. Summaries, classifications, and suggestions are generated by AI, may be wrong, and are provided “as is” — we make no warranty as to their accuracy or fitness for any decision. Every decision you take on your mail is yours.
Where your organisation adds more than one member, each member accepts this same consent for the addresses they use.
5. Sub-processors
We use a small number of infrastructure providers to run the Platform on your behalf, each under a data processing agreement: Cloudflare (hosting, database, storage), Anthropic (the Claude API that performs the AI reading and summarisation of your mail), Resend (outbound email delivery), and Sentry (error monitoring). Some operate outside South Africa; POPIA section 72 permits this where the recipient is bound by equivalent protection, which each of these satisfies. Our Privacy Policy sets out what each receives.
6. Free and paid features
Core features may be free or paid — the relevant pricing page on the Platform is the authoritative source at the time of purchase. If a paid feature is purchased, the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 gives you a 5-business-day cooling-off right for electronic transactions; refund requests within this window will be honoured.
7. What we may do with your account
We may suspend or close an account that violates these terms, is used to send spam or to harass, or is used unlawfully. Where practical we’ll give notice and a chance to respond first. When you close your account, your organisation and its stored mail are removed within 30 days (see the Privacy Policy for retention detail).
8. Limitation of liability
To the extent permitted by law, CDSoft (Pty) Ltd’s liability for any claim arising from use of the Platform is limited to the amount you paid us in the 3 months preceding the claim. We are not liable for indirect losses, lost opportunities, or the consequences of any decision you take on your mail.
You indemnify CDSoft (Pty) Ltd against any claim, loss, or damage arising from how your organisation uses the Platform or handles the personal information it processes through it — including sending mail without a lawful basis, POPIA breaches within your responsibility, or infringement of third-party rights. This applies to every member of your organisation’s account.
9. Governing law
These terms are governed by South African law. Disputes will be resolved in the courts of South Africa. If a provision conflicts with the Consumer Protection Act or any other applicable SA legislation, the legislation prevails.
10. Changes
We may update these terms. If a change materially affects your rights, we will notify active users by email at least 14 days before the change takes effect. Continued use after that date constitutes acceptance.
Questions? Contact us