Are You Ship-Shape on Privacy? A Solo Founder’s Honest Look at Termly

Why I Needed Something Like Termly

Like most solopreneurs, I didn’t start my business excited about legal compliance. I just wanted to ship a landing page and start selling.

Then reality hit:

• I was collecting email addresses for a newsletter.
• I had analytics and heatmaps installed.
• I was running retargeting pixels for ads.

Every time I opened Twitter, I’d see people talking about GDPR fines, cookie consent, and “you legally need a privacy policy.” My to‑do list gained a new item: “sort out compliance before a lawyer sorts me out.”

What Termly Actually Does for Me

From my founder perspective, Termly is not a fancy legal platform. It’s a simple one‑stop dashboard for:

• Generating a privacy policy tailored to my site.
• Creating terms of service for products and memberships.
• Adding a cookie consent banner that respects EU/UK regulations.
• Keeping track of consent records so I can sleep at night if anyone ever asks.

The workflow is straightforward: I answer a questionnaire about my site—what data I collect, which tools I use (Google Analytics, Stripe, email providers, etc.)—and Termly builds the documents for me.

Cookie Banners Without Going Insane

Implementing a compliant cookie banner from scratch is… not fun. I don’t want to manually categorize scripts, write legal copy, and handle consent logic.

With Termly, I drop in their script once. It scans my site, categorizes cookies, and shows a banner with clear options for visitors. When laws or best practices change, Termly updates the banner configuration for me—I don’t touch code.

Policies That Don’t Look Like I Copy‑Pasted Them

Before Termly, I was tempted to copy a random privacy policy from some other site and “swap the name.” I knew that was a bad idea, but I also didn’t want to spend thousands with a lawyer.

Termly sits in the middle: the policies are structured, readable, and tailored to my specific setup. They list:

• What information I collect.
• Why I collect it.
• Which third‑party tools I send data to.
• How users can contact me or request deletion.

Do I still keep an eye on regulations? Yes. But for a one‑person online business, this is a huge upgrade over “nothing” or “copied template from 2013.”

Where Termly Fits in My Stack

For my BUILD phase, Termly lives alongside:

• Northwest Registered Agent for entity + registered agent.
• Namecheap for domains and DNS.
• Framer / Carrd for front‑end landing pages.

I don’t log into Termly every day. It’s more like infrastructure: I set it up, revisit it when I launch a new site, and otherwise let it quietly do its job in the background.

Limitations You Should Know About

This is not magic, and it’s not a full legal department.

• If you run a fintech startup, a healthcare product, or anything in a heavily regulated space, you still need a lawyer.
• If you’re doing complex data processing (custom tracking, data warehouses, advanced profiling), Termly can’t model every edge case.
• The UI is designed for clarity, not for legal nerds—great for me, but some power users might want deeper customization.

Pricing: Worth It for Peace of Mind?

Is it cheaper than writing policies yourself? No. Is it cheaper than a single hour with a competent lawyer? Absolutely.

For what I pay annually, I get:

• Hosted, always‑up‑to‑date policies.
• Cookie consent that won’t embarrass me in front of EU users.
• A concrete answer when someone asks, “Do you have a privacy policy?”

For a solo founder, that trade‑off is easy.

Final Verdict

Termly is not exciting. It will never be the star of my tool stack. But quietly, in the background, it does something crucial: it lets me launch sites and products without that nagging feeling that I’m one angry user away from a legal headache.

If your business is still missing proper policies and cookie consent, don’t overthink it. Spend an afternoon with Termly, wire it into your sites, and then get back to building the fun parts of the business.