Broker Terms

These Broker Terms apply to every brokerage, dealer or other business ("your brokerage", "you") that advertises boats on Boatfront, the marketplace operated by Boatfront Ltd ("Boatfront", "we", "us"). They apply in addition to our Terms of Service. Where the two differ on a matter concerning your brokerage's accounts, these Broker Terms prevail.

Your brokerage accepts these terms when it registers, or when one of its members accepts them in the broker portal. The person who accepts confirms that they are authorised to bind the brokerage. We record the version accepted, when, the brokerage and the person.

These terms are an agreement between businesses. Your brokerage uses Boatfront in the course of its business, not as a consumer.

• Office: a place of business from which your brokerage sells boats, with its own address and its own team. What your brokerage may call a branch is an office.
• Group: two or more offices under common ownership or one brand, set up on Boatfront as a group with each office beneath it.
• Account: the Boatfront account for one office: its profile, its listings, its team and its subscription to the Broker Plan.
• Listing: an advertisement for one boat. A listing is published while the public can see it on Boatfront.
• Broker Plan: the subscription under which an office pays for its published listings, as described on our Pricing page and in the broker portal.
• Enquirer: a person who contacts your brokerage about a listing through Boatfront.

Each office has its own account. A brokerage with one office has one account. A brokerage with more than one office has a group, with an account for each office beneath it. Tell us about your other offices before your first listing is published, and we will set the group up with you.

You must not use one office's account to advertise boats held by another office, whether that office is part of your brokerage or not.

A broker who works from home, or a stand at a boat show, is not a separate office unless it has its own address and team. If you are unsure whether part of your business is an office, ask us and we will agree how to set it up.

If your brokerage opens, closes, moves or merges an office, tell us within 30 days so the accounts can be changed to match.

A listing is published by the office that holds the boat: the office that has the owner's instruction, answers the enquiries and arranges the viewings. Where two offices share an instruction, the office leading the sale publishes it.

The listing states where the boat is. The boat does not have to be near the office.

We may review how an account is used, including where its boats are, where its team works and how its stock changes over time.

If we believe one account has been used to publish listings held by more than one office, we will tell you what we found and give you 14 days to respond. If the matter is not resolved, we may:

• split the account into one account for each office, and move each listing to the office that holds the boat;
• re-rate past billing periods, up to 12 months back, as though each office had had its own account, and invoice the difference;
• pause publishing from the account until it has been split.

Re-rating charges what separate accounts would have paid under the rates, caps and discounts in force at the time, less what the account paid. It never charges more than that.

If a group wants one account for several offices, ask us. We may agree terms in writing, such as a monthly cap that reflects the number of offices. Terms we agree appear on your billing page in the broker portal.

Every listing must be accurate and not misleading, including its price, specification, condition, photos and the boat's location. State the asking price, its currency and, where you know it, the boat's VAT status.

Your brokerage must own the boat, hold a current instruction from its owner, or have the owner's written authority to advertise it. Show us that authority if we ask for it.

Keep listings up to date. Close a listing within five working days of the boat being sold or withdrawn from sale.

Your brokerage is responsible for following the law that applies to advertising and selling boats where it trades, including the rules on consumer protection, advertising and money laundering.

We may correct a listing's formatting, decline a listing or take it down if we believe it breaks these terms or our Terms of Service. We will tell you why.

Your brokerage keeps ownership of the text, photos, videos, floorplans and documents it puts on Boatfront ("your content"), or confirms that it has the owner's permission to use them as these terms require.

You grant Boatfront a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, copy, adapt, translate, display and distribute your content to operate and promote the marketplace, for as long as the listing or profile is on Boatfront. This includes showing it in search results, in emails and on social media about Boatfront, and to search engines and AI assistants that read the site. Copies may remain in backups and caches for up to 90 days after a listing closes.

We process photos when they arrive: we rotate, resize and convert them and remove their metadata. We keep the processed copy, not the original.

We may use facts from listings, such as price, length, builder, model, year and how long a boat was for sale, in market statistics shown on Boatfront. Those statistics do not identify your brokerage.

You confirm that your content does not infringe anyone's rights.

When someone sends an enquiry about one of your listings, we pass your brokerage their name, contact details and message. For that data your brokerage is an independent controller under the UK GDPR, and the EU GDPR where it applies. It decides how the data is used and is responsible for using it lawfully.

Use enquirer data to answer the enquiry and to deal with the enquirer about boats they may want to buy or sell. Do not sell it, share it outside your brokerage except as a sale requires, or add the enquirer to a marketing list without their consent.

We keep a copy of each enquiry, as our Privacy Policy explains, and use it to run the service, measure how listings perform and prevent fraud.

Tell us promptly if you believe an enquiry is fraudulent or abusive.

The Broker Plan includes importing listings by spreadsheet or feed, the Boatfront API, and the broker MCP server, which lets an AI assistant work on your brokerage's account. They are for managing your brokerage's own listings and accounts. Use within fair use is included in the Broker Plan.

Fair use means:

• a feed is fetched no more than once an hour, and each fetch is no larger than 40 MB;
• API and MCP keys are used only by your brokerage and the services acting for it, and are kept secret;
• requests stay within the rate limits we set, and you do not try to get around them;
• you do not use them to copy other brokerages' listings, to collect personal data, or in a way that slows the service for others.

If your use goes beyond fair use, we will contact you first. If it continues, or it harms the service, we may limit or suspend the key or the feed.

Each office's account is billed monthly under the Broker Plan for the listings it published in the billing period, at the rates shown in the broker portal. A listing counts once in any billing period in which it is published, however long it was up. There are no refunds for part of a period. The rate card, the minimum charge and the monthly cap apply to each office's account separately.

Invoices are raised at the end of each billing period and paid by the card your brokerage keeps on file with Stripe, our payment processor. Prices exclude VAT, which is added where it applies.

If a payment fails, we will tell you and try again. If an invoice is still unpaid 14 days after it was due, we may stop showing the account's listings until it is paid.

We may change the rates with at least 30 days' notice, by email and in the broker portal. A change applies from the first billing period that starts after the notice ends. A discount or offer applies on the terms stated when your brokerage took it up.

If you believe an invoice is wrong, tell us within 60 days of its date.

Your brokerage can end the Broker Plan for an account at any time in the broker portal. The account is billed for the billing period in progress, and then billing stops.

We may pause publishing from an account, or close it, if your brokerage materially breaks these terms and does not put it right within 14 days of our asking, or if an invoice is unpaid as section 10 describes. We may do so at once if an account advertises a boat it has no right to advertise, acts fraudulently or puts enquirers at risk.

When an account closes, its listings are taken down. We keep its invoices and records for as long as the law requires, and delete or anonymise the rest as our Privacy Policy explains.

Sections 5, 7, 8, 10 and 12 continue to apply after an account closes, for anything that happened while it was open.

Boatfront is a marketplace. We are not a party to any sale, and we do not act as a broker for either side.

We do not promise any number of views, enquiries or sales, or that the service will always be available.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow to be limited.

Otherwise, neither side is liable to the other for loss of profit, revenue, business or goodwill, or for indirect or consequential loss. Our total liability to your brokerage in any 12 months is limited to the fees your brokerage paid us in those 12 months.

Your brokerage will compensate Boatfront for claims by others arising from its listings, its content or its use of enquirer data, including reasonable legal costs.

We may change these terms. We will give at least 30 days' notice of a change that affects your brokerage, by email and in the broker portal, and ask your brokerage to accept the new version there. If your brokerage does not accept it, it can end the Broker Plan before the change takes effect.

These terms, our Terms of Service, our Privacy Policy and any terms we agree with your brokerage in writing are the whole agreement between your brokerage and Boatfront about advertising on Boatfront.

Your brokerage may not transfer its accounts or these terms to anyone else without our agreement. We may transfer them to a business that takes over the marketplace.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

Notices to us go to hello@boatfront.com. Notices to your brokerage go to the contact email on its account.