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Terms of service

Last updated 10 November 2026

1. Who we are

Tocsin is an on-call alerting service run by Espresso Group Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 16232595), with its registered office at Suite 8, Bourne Gate, 25 Bourne Valley Road, Poole, Dorset, BH12 1DY (“we”, “us”). You can reach us at support@tocsin.co.uk.

These terms are an agreement between us and the organisation that signs up for Tocsin (“you”). If you sign up for an organisation, you confirm that you can accept these terms for it.

2. The service

Tocsin receives alerts from your monitoring tools, by webhook or by email, and sends texts, emails and phone calls to the people you have set up to be on call. It can escalate to further people if nobody responds, and lets people acknowledge an alert by replying to a text or pressing a key during a call.

We may improve or change the service over time. If we make a change that significantly reduces what you pay for, we will tell you first.

3. Important: how much to rely on alerts

We work hard to deliver every alert, but delivery depends on things outside our control, including mobile networks, phone carriers, email providers and your own tools. No alerting service can promise that every message arrives or arrives on time.

  • Texts and calls can be delayed, filtered or blocked by networks and by the recipient’s phone settings.
  • Tocsin only sends the alerts your tools send to it, to the people and rules you set up. It cannot tell you about a problem your tools did not detect.
  • Tocsin is not an emergency service. Do not use it as the only way to protect life, health or safety. Where a failure could put people at risk, you must have other safeguards in place as well.

We show you what we sent, and warn you when an alert reached nobody, so you can fix gaps. Keeping your rotas, contact details and rules correct is your responsibility.

4. Your account

  • Give us accurate information and keep your sign-in details secure. You are responsible for what is done with your account, including by people you invite.
  • Administrators can invite and remove people and change settings. Choose them carefully.
  • Keep your API keys and email inbox addresses private. If one is exposed, revoke it in the dashboard straight away.
  • Tell us promptly if you think your account has been misused.

5. People you add and their details

You will give us the names, email addresses and phone numbers of people who may be alerted. You confirm that you are allowed to share those details with us, that you have told those people, and that they have agreed to receive alerts at work and out of hours, where the law or their contract requires it. If a text recipient asks to stop, you must remove them or change their contact details. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information.

6. Acceptable use

You must not:

  • send alerts that are unlawful, abusive, misleading or that you have no right to send;
  • use Tocsin to send marketing, spam or messages that are not genuine operational alerts;
  • try to get around the limits of your plan, probe or attack the service, or interfere with other customers;
  • resell the service without our written permission.

We may limit, pause or suspend sending if we reasonably believe it is needed to protect the service, other customers or recipients, or to follow the law. We will tell you why where we can.

7. Plans, credits and payment

Payments are taken by Stripe. The prices shown on our website apply when you buy. Prices are shown + VAT. UK VAT, currently 20%, is added at checkout and shown on your invoice.

  • Free trial. The trial lasts 14 days and sends alerts by email only. Texts and phone calls start when you choose a plan and have credits. When the trial ends, alerts stop being sent and you cannot change settings until you choose a plan. We keep your data, so you can pick up where you left off.
  • Plans. Starter and Team are charged monthly in advance and renew automatically. You can cancel at any time before the next renewal. We do not refund the month already paid.
  • Credits. Texts and phone calls are paid for with prepaid credits, one credit for each text and each call. If credits run out, alerts are still saved and emailed, but texts and calls are not sent until you add more. If a text or call fails to send, we return the credit. Credits last 12 months from purchase. They are not refundable once bought, except where we failed to send.

We may change prices for future periods by giving you at least 30 days’ notice.

8. Your data

You own your data, including the alerts you send and the details of the people you add. You give us permission to use it only to run the service for you, as set out in our Privacy Policy. Please keep copies of anything you need: we do not promise to keep alert history indefinitely.

9. Our rights

We own Tocsin, including its software, design, name and logo. You may use the service while these terms apply, but you do not get ownership of any of it.

10. Availability and support

We aim to keep Tocsin available, but we do not promise it will always work without interruption. We carry out maintenance from time to time. For help, email support@tocsin.co.uk.

11. Our responsibility to you

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

Subject to that, and because delivery depends on third parties (see section 3):

  • we are not responsible for loss caused by alerts that were delayed, not delivered or not acted on, by problems in networks, carriers or your own systems, or by information you gave us being wrong;
  • we are not liable for lost profit, lost business, or indirect or consequential loss;

12. Ending the agreement

You can stop using Tocsin at any time and ask us to close your account. We may end or suspend your access if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms, or if you do not pay, and we will give you notice where we reasonably can. When your account closes we will delete your data in line with our Privacy Policy. Unused credits are not refunded when an account closes.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. We will tell you about material changes by email or in the dashboard before they apply. If you keep using Tocsin after that, you accept the new terms.

14. Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction, unless the law gives you the right to go to court elsewhere. If something goes wrong, please email us first so we can try to put it right.