Image: Nozbe offers a SaaS GTD solution, but read the TOS and you’ll think twice before “dumping your brain” there. Not to pick on Nozbe, but SaaS SLAs have a long way to go before users will entrust them their most critical stuff.

For day-to-day task planning and management I use a light version of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) method.

Earlier this year I saw a reference on the ZDNet Office Evolution blog to a new SaaS GTD tool called Nozbe from apivision.com. I was reminded of it when lifehack.org included Nozbe in their 11 Top New Web Apps of 2007.

Over the holidays I thought I would give Nozbe a try and see if it could replace my current Microsoft Outlook solution. My initial impression of the site was positive, until I clicked on the Terms of Service link at the bottom of the Nozbe home page.

When I evaluate a new SaaS service on of the first things I do is have a look at the terms of service to see if there are any traces of a SaaS Trust Architecture. What I saw at Nozbe showed little or no thought had been given to convincing qualified prospects (in this case me) to trust their company enough to consider taking the next step and trying their service.

Extract from Nozbe’s terms of service

Here is an extract from the “Service” section of Nozbe’s Terms of Service. I had added highlighting for the text which I immediately noticed:

“Apivision.com may suspend the Service for any reason whatsoever, including but not limited to, repairs, planned maintenance or upgrades, and will not be liable to you for any such suspension.”

“Apivision.com reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time.”

“Apivision.com may suspend the Service for any reason whatsoever, including but not limited to, repairs, planned maintenance or upgrades, and will not be liable to you for any such suspension.”

“Such termination of the Service will result in the deactivation or deletion of your Account or your access to your Account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all Content in your Account.”

“Apivision.com reserves the right to make any changes to the Service or to discontinue any aspect or feature of the Service without notice, and will not be liable to you for any such change.”

“Apivision.com, in its sole discretion, has the right to suspend or terminate your Account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service, for any reason at any time.”

Who do these terms protect?

It seems to me that Nozbe’s terms of service have been written to protect the interests of apivision.com as the SaaS supplier, and not the customer.

These terms of service are not customer-friendly. There is no commitment to providing the service. It even sounds like my data can disappear at any time without any recourse.

I am sure that this was not the intention, but it is almost as if the terms had been written with the sole intention of scaring potential customers away.

Trust is the very first sales qualifier

In my recent post Why ISVs Need a SaaS Trust Architecture to Survive the Shift to SaaS I explained when you offer your application software via SaaS, building a trust relationship with your customers is the most important thing you must do.

I looked at Nozbe’s terms of service for a first impression to see whether or not they are giving trust the emphasis it deserves. I do not know apivision.com and I have no previous experience with their products or services. They therefore started with a trust level of zero from me as a potential customer.

Moving to a SaaS GTD solution might not be a big risk in overall terms, but the risk is too large for me to trust my data to Nozbe.

This is a shame as Nozbe might have been a good solution to my GTD needs.

The lack of any indication of a SaaS Trust Architecture means that I will never know how good Nozbe might have been. On the other hand, apivision.com has lost a qualified and motivated prospect at the very first stage of their sales funnel.

Let your competitors make Nozbe’s mistake!

apivision.com missed an opportunity to start building a trust relationship with me as a qualified prospect for their Nozbe GTD SaaS solution

The lack of a SaaS Trust Architecture means that all the time and effort that they have invested in building software or improving their back-end infrastructure are wasted investments. A little more thought on developing terms of service focused on building a trust relationship from the very first contact could have made all the difference.

Many of your future competitors will try to take the easy option and write terms of service like Nozbe that are solely for their benefit and not their customers. That is bad for them, but good for you.

Design your terms of services to focus on gaining and keeping your customer’s trust as part of your SaaS Trust Architecture. This will mean exposing yourself to new and unfamiliar risks. That is a core part of the new SaaS business model — get used to it.

You are not going to survive and profit from the shift to SaaS unless you can live with this reality. apivision.com does not yet seem to have learned this lesson.