Terms of service

Last updated: August 2026

These are the commercial terms behind the pricing on instructedhq.com — what the setup fee covers, how notice works, and what the Performance tier's outcome commitment actually means. Plain English, on purpose.

If you become a client, you sign a separate service agreement and data processing agreement with us before any work starts. Those signed documents are the contract, and set out your specific fee, start date and postcode district. This page is the public statement of the terms behind them, and applies wherever the signed agreement is silent. Where the two differ, the signed agreement governs.

Who we are

Instructed Limited is registered in England and Wales (company number 17337714), with a registered office at 51 Hilderstone Road, Stoke-on-Trent, England, ST3 7NU. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under registration reference ZC206641. Acting throughout by Joshua Williams, Director.

For anything to do with these terms, contact: [email protected] or 07507 095186.

The services

Three productised retainer tiers, described in full on the pricing section of this site: Foundation (lead-capture automation, CRM hygiene, listing copy, monthly reporting), Growth (everything in Foundation, plus unlimited listing copy, a content programme and a vendor-nurture sequence), and Performance (everything in Growth, plus outbound prospecting and paid campaigns, with the outcome commitment described below). There is also a one-off Growth Diagnostic, which is not a retainer and carries no ongoing terms beyond the fee paid for it.

Onboarding follows the same fourteen working-day plan for every client, every tier, issued alongside the signed agreement.

Fees and payment

• Setup fee — £750, one-off, every tier. Invoiced on signature and payable within 14 days. Covers discovery, the baseline audit, the automation build and the reporting templates built during the onboarding fortnight.
• Retainer — billed monthly in advance, by bank transfer, within 14 days of invoice. Billing starts on the go-live date at the end of onboarding, not on signature — the setup fee is what covers the onboarding fortnight itself.
• VAT. Instructed is not currently VAT registered, so no VAT is charged. If that changes, VAT will be added from that date and you will be given notice first.
• Not included. Portal subscriptions, CRM licences, advertising spend, photography, floor plans and EPCs. Performance-tier ad spend is paid by you directly to Meta or Google — it is never invoiced by Instructed. Anything outside the tier you've signed up for is quoted separately, in writing, before work starts.

Contract term and cancellation

Foundation and Growth run on a rolling monthly basis from the go-live date. Either party may end the agreement on 30 days' written notice, given at any time, for any reason or none. There is no minimum term and no lock-in.

Performance carries an initial minimum term of three months from go-live — because outbound prospecting and paid campaigns need that long to show a fair result. After the initial three months it converts to the same rolling monthly, 30-day-notice basis as the other tiers.

Founding-partner pricing (the first two agencies, at half the standard fee for three months) runs on the same 30-day rolling notice as the tier it applies to — the discount changes the price, not the notice period.

Notice runs from the first day of the month following the month in which it is given.

What happens when it ends

• Everything built for you stays in your own systems and accounts. There is nothing to unpick and nothing held back.
• Our access is removed within five working days of the last day.
• Your data is returned or deleted within 30 days, at your choice, as set out in the data processing agreement.
• Fees already invoiced for a period worked remain payable. Fees invoiced in advance for a period not worked are refunded pro rata.
• Ending a Performance-tier agreement inside the initial three-month term does not affect fees already invoiced for months worked, and does not itself trigger the fee credit described below.

The Performance guarantee

The Performance tier carries a soft outcome commitment — soft because no marketing spend can promise a specific result, but a commitment nonetheless: a target of +6 to +10 incremental market appraisals booked per month, measured against your own baseline. This section defines the three things the pricing page has always promised but never spelled out.

• Baseline. The figure recorded during discovery (days 3–5 of onboarding) from your last full month's enquiry records — or, where those records don't exist, a two-week forward baseline taken in parallel with the build. Either way, it's written down and agreed with you before it's measured against.
• A miss. A calendar month in which market appraisals booked, measured against your baseline, come in below the bottom of the target range — that is, fewer than 6 incremental appraisals.
• Two months running. Two consecutive calendar months that both miss, as defined above. A strong month in between resets the count.
• The partial fee credit. Once two consecutive months have both missed, a credit of 20% of that month's Performance retainer fee (the £1,495, not your ad spend, which we never invoice) is applied to the next invoice. If the shortfall continues into a third or further consecutive month, the same 20% credit applies again for each month it continues, until a month meets or beats the target and the count resets.

This commitment applies to the Performance tier only. Foundation and Growth carry no outcome commitment of any kind — what's guaranteed there is the work itself, done to the standard described, and the numbers reported honestly whichever way they fall.

The 20% figure is Instructed's own policy decision, published here for the first time — it did not exist anywhere in writing before this page. It has not yet applied to a real client, since no Performance-tier client has signed as of this update.

One client per district

While a client's agreement is in force, we do not provide these services to another residential sales agency whose trading address is in the same postcode district. Your district is fixed in writing at signature. This is exclusivity by postcode district, not by town or county — we work across Staffordshire and south Cheshire, and will have other clients in other districts.

Ownership and approval

• Nothing goes out under your name — no listing description, automated reply, follow-up message or published material — without your approval. For the first month, every listing description is approved individually; after that we may agree a lighter routine in writing.
• Everything produced for you — listing copy, reports, and the automation configuration built in your own accounts — belongs to you on payment of the invoice covering the period it was produced in.
• Our own templates, prompts, methods and reporting formats remain ours, and we may reuse them for other clients. Nothing specific to you is reused.
• Your brand, listings and data remain yours throughout.

Confidentiality

Both parties keep the other's commercial information confidential, during the engagement and for two years afterwards. This doesn't prevent a case study or testimonial you've agreed to and approved the wording of.

Data protection

Where we process personal data on your behalf — enquiry handling, CRM hygiene, reporting — that is governed by a signed data processing agreement, incorporated into your service agreement. We are registered with the ICO under reference ZC206641. See our privacy policy for how we handle data collected through this website itself.

Insurance and liability

We hold professional indemnity and public liability cover in the company name for the duration of every client engagement, and will provide evidence of it on request.

Our total liability in any twelve-month period is limited to the fees you've paid us in that period. Neither party is liable for loss of profit, loss of business, or indirect loss. Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Changes to these terms

We'll update this page if the commercial terms behind the pricing change. The date at the top shows when it was last revised. A change here doesn't retrospectively alter a service agreement you've already signed — that document is what governs your engagement, on the terms you signed up to.

Governing law

These terms, and any service agreement entered into on the basis of them, are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

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