Terms of Use

BuyAndSellABusiness.com (the "Service") is a free business-for-sale listing service. We want buying and selling a business to feel straightforward, so we've kept these terms as plain as we can.

The short version

• Listing a business is free. Searching and contacting sellers is free for buyers.
• We don't represent buyers or sellers, and we are not part of any sale. Please check every listing yourself and get professional advice.
• We review listings before they go live, but we don't confirm the figures or check who buyers and sellers are.
• A seller sees a buyer's name and contact details only once the buyer's inquiry is unlocked, which is a paid feature or part of a broker plan.
• Plans renew automatically until you cancel, and you can cancel any time from your account.
• Copying, scraping or bulk downloading the Site is prohibited, and so is trying to identify a confidential business or buyer. If you need access the Site doesn't offer, talk to us.

This summary is for convenience. The full terms below are the agreement.

Contents

1. About these terms
2. What we do, and what we don't do
3. Your account
4. Listing a business
5. Buyers, inquiries and introductions
6. Content standards and review
7. Your content
8. Paid features and billing
9. AI and automated tools
10. Email and phone
11. Our intellectual property and other services
12. Closing or suspending accounts
13. Disclaimers and limitation of liability
14. Indemnity
15. Changes to these terms
16. Disputes and governing law
17. General
18. Contact us

1. About these terms

1.1 The Service is operated by ScalePoint M&A Inc. ("we", "us" or "our").

1.2 These Terms of Use (the "Terms") apply to everyone who uses the Service, including the BuyAndSellABusiness.com website (the "Site"), its emails and the tools we connect to it, such as our AI connector. By creating an account, buying a paid feature or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you use the Service for a business or brokerage, you confirm that you can accept these Terms for it.

1.3 You must be at least 18 to use the Service. You may not use it if we have closed your account for breaching these Terms, unless we agree in writing.

2. What we do, and what we don't do

2.1 The Service is a marketplace where business owners and brokers list businesses for sale, and where buyers search listings, describe what they want and contact sellers. We also offer optional paid tools that help listings get seen and help sellers connect with buyers.

2.2 We are a listing service, not your representative or a party to any sale. Through the Service, we don't act as a broker, lender, appraiser, lawyer, accountant or financial advisor for any buyer or seller. We don't negotiate for anyone, hold deposits or take part in any transaction, and our fees for the Service never depend on whether a sale happens or on its price. Any agreement to buy or sell a business is made only between the people involved.

2.3 We don't verify listings or users. We review listings before they go live (section 6), but we don't confirm that a business exists as described, that its figures are accurate, that a seller can sell it or that a buyer can afford it. Do your own checks and get independent professional advice.

2.4 Information, not advice. Guides, market reports, valuation estimates and other content on the Service are general information, not legal, tax, financial or valuation advice. We often use artificial intelligence (AI) to generate results on the Service, such as listing reviews, search results, matches, suggested text and estimates. AI can make mistakes, so please check anything that matters to you.

2.5 Valuation estimates, benchmarks and market reports. Our valuation tool, sale-price benchmarks and market reports give general, directional estimates based on the information you enter and on combined market data, which may be incomplete or out of date. They are not an appraisal, a formal business valuation or an opinion of value, and they can't account for everything that affects what a particular business is worth. Please don't rely on them to set a price, make an offer, arrange financing or make any other decision; for that, get a professional valuation. Asking prices on listings are set by sellers, not by us.

2.6 Advertising. The Service may show advertising, including ads chosen and delivered by third-party ad networks, and we earn revenue from it. Ads are labelled as ads. An ad is not an endorsement by us, and any dealings you have with an advertiser are between you and the advertiser. Our own paid listing placements, such as Spotlight, are labelled separately (section 9.2).

3. Your account

3.1 You can create an account yourself, or our team can set one up and email you an invitation to finish it. Some features need a confirmed email address and a phone number.

3.2 Please keep your information accurate and your sign-in details secure. You are responsible for everything done under your account; tell us at support@buyandsellabusiness.com if you think someone else has used it. One person per account, and please don't create extra accounts to get around a limit or a suspension.

3.3 Broker profiles. Our broker directory includes profiles carried over from our previous site. If a profile describes you, you can claim it, correct it or ask us to remove it. A "Verified" badge means the broker has claimed the profile. It does not mean we have checked a licence, qualification or track record.

4. Listing a business

4.1 Listing is free. Some optional tools are paid (section 8).

4.2 What you promise when you list. Each time you publish or change a listing, you confirm that:

• you own the business or are authorized to list it, and you may share the information and photos you include;
• the information is true and not misleading to the best of your knowledge, including the figures and the reason for sale;
• listing it doesn't breach any agreement you are bound by, and you have any consent you need (for example from a franchisor or landlord);
• if you list for someone else, you meet the rules that apply to your work; and
• you will keep the listing up to date and mark it sold or withdraw it when it is no longer available.

4.3 Contact phone. A contact phone number is required to publish a listing. We don't show it to buyers. Our team may use it to contact you about your listing.

4.4 Confidentiality settings. You choose what buyers see: you can hide your business name, show only your region, choose which photos appear, show figures as "Available on request" and limit a listing to signed-in members. Details can still point to a business, so please check your preview and leave out anything that would identify yours.

4.5 Check-ins and when a listing ends. We will ask you from time to time to confirm that your listing is still available; if you don't respond, it may lapse. A listing marked sold stays on the Site as a sold listing, without the sale price. A withdrawn or lapsed listing leaves search, but its page may stay at its old address, marked as no longer listed. Contact us if you want it taken down completely.

4.6 Photos and images. Your own photos are best. You may show your business's sign, vehicles, products, premises and staff; you are responsible for having the consent of any person shown. Every image you add, whether you take, create or generate it, must represent your business honestly and must not include:

• imagery that evokes slavery, servitude, forced labour, segregation or colonial exploitation;
• hate symbols, or content that harasses or demeans any group;
• sexual or explicit content, or anything involving the exploitation of children; or
• personal information that isn't yours to share, such as a customer's face or someone else's address.

We review images with your listing and may hide one that breaks these rules, with a short reason. Anyone can report an image, and a reported image may be hidden while we review it.

4.7 Representative images. If you don't add photos, we show an image from our category library for your industry, labelled "Representative image". These images are made and approved under our image policy, but they may not accurately depict your business, so we recommend you take, create or generate images that represent it.

5. Buyers, inquiries and introductions

5.1 Searching and contacting sellers is free for buyers. You need an account to send an inquiry, and before your first one we ask for your phone number and a little about you as a buyer.

5.2 How contact details are shared. Messages about a listing go through our system by email, and you can read them in your account. Buyers never see a seller's email address through us.

• Until an inquiry is unlocked, the seller sees only the buyer's message and a short summary, such as timeline, budget range and financing.
• Once it is unlocked, the seller sees the buyer's name, email, phone number and buyer profile. A seller can pay to unlock one inquiry, or every inquiry on all their listings for 30 days, and our broker plans include it for every inquiry.
• If a listing has no seller account, the inquiry comes to us and we pass the message on to the seller or their representative.

5.3 Contacting a broker. When you use the contact form on a broker's profile, we send the broker your message, name and email address so they can reply directly.

5.4 No contact details in messages until an inquiry is unlocked. Sharing phone numbers, email addresses, links or social media handles in messages before an inquiry is unlocked, or asking the other side for theirs, is prohibited and breaches these Terms. Our system replaces them with a placeholder and tells the sender. If you try to get around this, we may suspend or close your account. A message that looks suspicious may be held and reviewed before it is delivered. We don't pass on attachments.

5.5 The Wanted board. Buyers can post the business they want. Anyone can see a short preview (industry, province, budget and timeline); brokers on a paid plan see the full post and can ask to be introduced. Your name and contact details stay hidden until you accept an introduction; then that broker receives them and you receive theirs.

5.6 Confidential (M&A Vault) listings. Some listings are shown only as a summary. To open one, a buyer may need a VIP Buyer membership, a complete buyer profile, acceptance of that listing's confidentiality agreement and, where the seller requires it, the seller's approval. When you accept a listing's agreement, your name and buyer profile summary go to its seller or broker.

5.7 Keeping each other's information confidential. When another user shares non-public information with you, such as a business's identity or figures, or a buyer's budget and financing, you agree to use it only to consider or complete that purchase or sale, share it only with advisors, lenders and partners who need it and keep it confidential, and not contact the business's staff, customers, suppliers or landlord about the sale without the seller's permission. This doesn't cover information that is already public, that you already had or that the law requires you to disclose. These promises last two years. If a listing has its own confidentiality agreement, that also applies.

6. Content standards and review

6.1 Review before publishing. We check every listing before it goes live, using automated tools and, where needed, a member of our team. We may ask you to change a listing, decline it or remove it later if it breaks these Terms, or if it:

• offers a business that can't lawfully be sold or operated as described, or isn't a genuine opportunity;
• is a duplicate or spam, or makes claims that seem unlikely to be true;
• contains contact details, links or payment instructions, or asks buyers to pay anyone for information;
• speaks unfairly about brokers, owners or other sellers;
• is obscene, hateful or harassing, or infringes someone else's rights; or
• reveals information your confidentiality settings say should be hidden.

6.2 Prohibited conduct. Please treat everyone on the Service, including other users and our team, with courtesy, dignity and respect. You must not:

• post false or misleading information, or impersonate anyone;
• harass, threaten, bully, intimidate, abuse or demean anyone, or treat anyone with disrespect or indignity;
• discriminate against anyone, or use hateful, offensive or degrading language or images, including about a person's race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age or disability;
• send spam or collect other users' contact details;
• get around our contact-detail protections, paid features or account limits;
• try to identify a person or business from a confidential listing, an anonymous Wanted post or our market reports;
• copy, scrape or bulk download listings, profiles or other data from the Service, by hand or with automated tools, except through tools we provide (such as our AI connector, for your own account) or with our written permission, or use any of it to build a competing service or train an AI model. If you need access the Site doesn't offer, contact us: our broker plans and AI connector may already cover it;
• interfere with the Service or test its security without our permission; or
• use the Service in breach of any law.

6.3 Reporting and staying safe. If something looks wrong, use "Report this listing" or email support@buyandsellabusiness.com. We only take payment through checkout on the Site, and our team will never ask you to pay by e-transfer, gift card or cryptocurrency, or to send money to another user. Please don't pay anyone a fee or deposit to see a listing or hold a business; any deposit for a purchase should go through a lawyer or other trusted professional.

6.4 We aren't obliged to monitor the Service, and our review doesn't mean we vouch for any listing, buyer, seller or broker.

7. Your content

7.1 You keep ownership of the listings, photos, profiles, messages and other material you submit ("Your Content").

7.2 Our permission to use it. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, copy, show and lightly adapt Your Content (for example, resize photos) to run and promote the Service, including on the Site, in our emails, in search results, on social media and in our advertising, always within your confidentiality settings. We use messages only to deliver them, keep the Service safe and handle support. The licence ends when you remove Your Content, except for backup copies kept for a reasonable time and the combined figures in sections 7.3 and 7.4.

7.3 Market data. You agree that we may combine details from your listings, such as industry, region, asking price, revenue and cash flow, with details from other listings into anonymized, aggregated statistics, reports and benchmarks, which we may publish, share or license, including after your listing ends. They may be broken down by industry, region or business size (for example, restaurants in Alberta), but they never name you or your business.

7.4 Sale outcomes. When a listing ends, we may ask whether the business sold and, if so, the price and closing date. Sharing that is optional, and providing this information helps others sell their businesses for a fair price. If you share it, you may be eligible to receive the reports we create from this data. We use it to keep our records accurate and, combined with other sales, in market reports and benchmarks that we may publish, share or license. We never show the sale price of your business; we only publish sale prices as combined figures, such as category averages.

8. Paid features and billing

8.1 Prices and payment. Paid features include unlocking buyers' contact details, listing promotion (such as Boost and Spotlight), promotion credit, broker plans, extra Wanted board introductions and the VIP Buyer membership. Current prices and what each includes are shown before you buy. Prices are in Canadian dollars, plus applicable taxes. Payments are processed by Stripe. We never store your full card number on our Site.

8.2 Plans renew automatically. Broker plans and the VIP Buyer membership renew at the end of each monthly or annual period at the then-current price unless you cancel first. You can cancel any time from your account; cancelling stops the next renewal, and you keep access until the end of your paid period.

8.3 Free trials. Where a plan includes a free trial, we ask for a card when you start it and email you 7 days before it ends. Cancel before the trial ends and you won't be charged; otherwise your card is charged when it ends.

8.4 One-time purchases and plan inclusions. Some plans include unlocks, Wanted board introductions or Spotlight placements; what each plan includes is shown on the Site. Placements included in a plan are for the quarter they are issued and don't carry over if unused. When you buy them separately, unlocks, Boosts, extra Wanted board introductions and Spotlight placements are one-time purchases. A Spotlight placement runs for the period you bought, from the date you choose.

8.5 Promotion credit. You can buy promotion credit in your account, and credit packs include extra credit. Promotion credit can be used for Spotlight placements at the published rates. It can't be used for plans, transferred or exchanged for cash. Credit you buy expires 12 months after purchase, and we email you 30 days before it does. We may also add credit to your account, for example as a bonus, a promotion or a goodwill gesture; that credit follows the same rules and may expire on the date shown in your account.

8.6 Refunds. Unlocks, Boosts, placements and promotion credit are non-refundable, and plans aren't refunded for part of a billing period. If something went wrong, for example you were charged twice or a placement didn't run, email support@buyandsellabusiness.com and we will put it right. Nothing in these Terms limits any refund right you have by law.

8.7 Founding plans are offered only to existing customers we invite. They can't be transferred and end permanently if cancelled.

8.8 Price changes. If we raise the price of your plan or reduce what it includes, the change applies from your next renewal after at least 30 days' notice by email. You can cancel before then.

9. AI and automated tools

9.1 Automated tools. We use automated tools, including AI models from third parties, to review listings, check messages, interpret searches, match listings with buyers and suggest text. Our automated review can approve a listing on its own. These tools can make mistakes; if you think one got something wrong, contact us and a person will look at it. Please check any text a tool suggests before you use it; anything you publish is Your Content.

9.2 How results are ordered. Paid promotion affects where listings and broker profiles appear. Spotlight placements are labelled "Featured" or "Spotlight". A Boost moves a listing back to the top of the newest listings for a time. In the broker directory, brokers on paid plans appear first.

9.3 AI assistants on broker plans. Some broker plans include our listing assistant and let you connect an AI assistant (such as Claude or ChatGPT) to your account. When you use one:

• you authorize it to act on your account within what the connector allows, including reading your inquiries and unlocked buyer details, changing your listings and profile, approaching buyers on the Wanted board and booking placements with your credit or plan;
• you are responsible for what it does, as if you had done it yourself;
• information a connected assistant reads, including other users' details, goes to its provider at your direction. Use other users' information only to deal with them about your listings, and don't use the connector to export data in bulk; and
• you can disconnect it any time in your account settings.

10. Email and phone

10.1 We send the emails needed to run your account and the features you use, such as inquiries, receipts and trial reminders, while your account is open. Our promotional emails give you a way to unsubscribe, and you can manage many of your email choices in your account; section 8 of our Privacy Policy explains more.

10.2 If you give us your phone number, our team may call you about your account, your listing or your inquiry. If you are a broker in our directory, we may contact you at your published business phone or email about your profile and our broker plans.

11. Our intellectual property and other services

11.1 The Service, including its design, software, text, images, market reports and data compilations, belongs to us or our licensors. You may use it for its intended purpose and share links to its pages, but you may not copy, republish or sell its content except as these Terms allow. If you send us suggestions, we may use them freely.

11.2 Some features of the Service rely on other companies, such as Stripe for payments, Google and Apple for sign-in, AI assistant providers and advertising networks. When you use those features, those companies' own terms also apply, and we aren't responsible for their services.

12. Closing or suspending accounts

12.1 Closing your account. Email support@buyandsellabusiness.com or our privacy officer and our team will close your account; our Privacy Policy explains what happens to your information. Closing your account ends any plan straight away, without a refund for the rest of the period, so please cancel your plan first if you'd like to use it until the period ends.

12.2 What we may do. We may remove content, limit features, or suspend or close an account if we reasonably believe it breaches these Terms, puts other users or us at risk, or is being used fraudulently. Where it's reasonable, we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond. If we close your account without a breach on your part, we will refund prepaid fees for the unused part of a plan.

12.3 Inactive accounts. If you haven't signed in for 3 years, we may email you and then close your account.

12.4 We may change or discontinue parts of the Service. If we discontinue a paid feature you have prepaid, we will refund the unused portion.

12.5 Sections 5.7, 7, 11, 13, 14 and 16 continue after your account is closed.

13. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

13.1 We work to keep the Service available, accurate and secure, but we provide it "as is". As far as the law allows, we don't promise that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, that listings are accurate or complete, that a listing will attract inquiries or a sale, or that any user is who they say they are or will do what they promise. Your dealings with other users, including any sale, are between you and them.

13.2 As far as the law allows, we are not liable for any loss arising from dealings between users or from what users post, or for indirect or consequential losses such as lost profits, business opportunity or data.

13.3 As far as the law allows, our total liability to you for all claims about the Service is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose or CAD $150, whichever is greater.

13.4 Nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud, wilful misconduct or anything else that can't be limited by law. If you are a consumer, this section applies only as far as your province's consumer protection law allows.

14. Indemnity

If you use the Service for a business, including as a broker, you agree to cover our reasonable losses and legal costs from a third-party claim caused by Your Content or your breach of these Terms or the law, except to the extent we caused the loss.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms and will post the new version with its date. If a change materially affects your rights or a paid plan you have, we will email you at least 30 days before it takes effect, and you can cancel or close your account before then. If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, the new Terms apply.

16. Disputes and governing law

16.1 Talk to us first. Before starting any claim, please contact us at support@buyandsellabusiness.com and give us 30 days to try to resolve it.

16.2 Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of Alberta and the federal laws of Canada that apply there.

16.3 Business users. Buying or selling a business, and working as a broker, are business purposes. If you use the Service for a business purpose, any dispute with us that we can't resolve informally will be settled by a single arbitrator in Calgary under Alberta's Arbitration Act, on an individual basis, and you agree not to bring or join a class action against us. Either of us may instead bring a claim within the limits of the Alberta Court of Justice (Civil).

16.4 Consumers. Section 16.3 doesn't apply to consumers. If you are a consumer, the courts of Alberta have jurisdiction, and you keep any right your province's consumer protection law gives you, including to bring a claim where you live.

17. General

These Terms, the Privacy Policy and any terms shown when you buy a paid feature or accept a listing's confidentiality agreement are the whole agreement between us about the Service. If part of these Terms is unenforceable, the rest still applies. You may not transfer your account without our consent; we may transfer these Terms as part of a reorganization or sale of our business. We may send notices to the email address on your account.

18. Contact us

BuyAndSellABusiness.com

Email: support@buyandsellabusiness.com

Phone: 1-888-278-4991