These Terms of Service ("Terms") form a binding agreement between you ("you") and Matthew Fabling, a sole trader trading as "Smooth English", who operates the ActuallySpeak app ("we", "us", "ActuallySpeak"). By creating an account, taking a diagnostic, or starting a subscription, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the service.
ActuallySpeak is operated by Matthew Fabling, a sole trader trading as "Smooth English" (the "trader" for the purposes of UK consumer law), United Kingdom, in connection with [Smooth English Company — VERIFY legal entity name and registered address].
Contact email: actuallyspeak.help@gmail.com
Address for legal notices: 4 Earlsburn Road, Lenzie, Glasgow, East Dunbartonshire, Scotland, G66 5PF, United Kingdom
ActuallySpeak is a web app for practising spoken English. It includes a free diagnostic (IELTS-style or General English level test), AI-generated feedback on your speaking, vocabulary trainers, and subscription-only premium trainers. It also includes the ActuallySpeak Academy: a learner community (posts, comments, likes and direct messages), bookable live classes with a teacher, gamified points, levels, leaderboards and prizes, and a vocabulary builder. Service availability, features and pricing may change with notice.
We currently offer three subscription plans, billed in GBP via Stripe:
| Plan | Price | Trial | Renewal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pro (General English scene trainer) | £2.99 / month | 7 days free, card required | Monthly, auto-renews |
| Premium Monthly (IELTS Band 7+ trainer) | £4.99 / month | 7 days free, card required | Monthly, auto-renews |
| Premium Annual (IELTS Band 7+ trainer) | £29.50 / year | 7 days free, card required | Yearly, auto-renews |
Trial: the 7-day free trial begins the moment you complete checkout. You will not be charged during the trial. You can cancel at any point before the trial ends and you will not be billed.
Auto-renewal: after the trial, your plan renews automatically at the price shown above (monthly or annual depending on plan) until you cancel.
Cancellation: you can cancel any time from the Manage Subscription portal (Stripe). Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current paid period — no further charges, and you keep access until that date.
Price changes: if we change the price of your plan we will email you at least 30 days before the change applies. You can cancel before the new price takes effect.
Cancel the free trial = no charge. If you cancel before your 7-day free trial ends, you are never charged. This is the simplest way to avoid payment.
14-day statutory cooling-off. Because this is a distance contract for a digital service, you have a legal right to cancel within 14 days of signing up. By starting your access immediately (so you can use the service during your trial) you ask us to begin supply straight away and acknowledge that your right to cancel for services already supplied may end once supply has begun.
After the cooling-off period, we do not refund the period already paid, but you can cancel at any time to stop future charges and keep access until the end of your current paid period — cancelling is as easy as subscribing.
Your statutory rights are not affected. Where UK law requires a refund (for example, if the service is faulty or not as described under the Consumer Rights Act 2015), we honour that regardless of the above.
Full details are in our Refund & Cancellation Policy.
The 9-prompt IELTS diagnostic and the 4-scene General English level test are free. We may rate-limit usage to prevent abuse. We may discontinue or change free features at any time.
You agree not to:
We may suspend or terminate your account for material breach. Where the breach is serious, we may do so without refund.
The site, code, prompts, vocabulary lists, and methodology (including the Logic Engine and Clusterbomb method) are owned by Matthew Fabling trading as "Smooth English". Stock images and videos are licensed from Pexels under their respective terms. You retain ownership of your own answers and transcripts; by submitting them, you grant us a non-exclusive licence to process them for the purpose of providing the service and improving scoring quality. We do not publish your individual answers without your written consent.
Feedback, band-score estimates, and CEFR levels are generated by AI models against the official IELTS Speaking Band Descriptors and standard CEFR criteria. They are best-effort estimates. We do not guarantee:
Treat all AI feedback as a guide for practice, not as an official assessment. This applies to every AI-powered feature on the platform — including speaking feedback, writing feedback, vocabulary suggestions, mock-exam scoring and any AI-generated study advice. Band scores and feedback shown anywhere in the app are AI-generated estimates, not official IELTS results, and we make no guarantee that any practice score will be matched in an official examination.
We aim for high uptime but make no guarantee of uninterrupted service. The service depends on third-party providers (Supabase, Stripe, Groq, Anthropic, Netlify, Resend, and VooV / Tencent Meeting for live classes) whose own incidents may affect availability. Planned maintenance will be announced where reasonably practicable.
To the extent permitted by law:
How we handle personal data is set out in our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference.
You can stop using the service and cancel your subscription at any time. We may suspend or terminate accounts for breach of these Terms, fraud, or chargebacks. On termination, premium access is revoked; you can request export of your data by emailing us.
We may update these Terms. If a change is material we will email subscribed users and update the "Last updated" date. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.
The Academy community lets you publish posts and comments, react to other learners' content, and send direct messages ("DMs") to other users. When you use these features:
You keep ownership of everything you post. By posting, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, display and distribute your posts, comments and profile content within the service so that other users can see them, and to make the technical copies needed to operate the platform. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies kept in routine backups or where we are required to retain them by law.
You must not post or send (including in DMs):
We reserve the right (but do not undertake a general obligation) to review, moderate, hide, edit-for-removal or delete any user content, and to suspend or ban accounts that break these rules. Users can flag content for review; we act on flags as quickly as we reasonably can. Repeated or serious breaches may lead to account termination without refund, as set out in section 7 and section 13.
Reactions (likes) on community content may award points under our gamification system. The way likes convert to points, and the points values themselves, may change at any time — see section 18.
As set out in section 3, account holders and payers must be at least 18. Where the platform allows a learner under 18 to have their own profile, the following additional rules apply:
The Academy timetable lets you book live online classes with a teacher. These are one-off purchases (or credit-based bookings), separate from the subscription plans in section 4.
The service awards points for activities such as practising, posting, receiving likes and attending classes, and shows levels and leaderboards based on those points.
These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales [England and Wales — VERIFY]. Disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, except where UK consumer law gives you a non-waivable right to your local courts.
Questions about these Terms? Email actuallyspeak.help@gmail.com.