Last updated 24 September 2026. These terms cover use of this website, the free interactive tools we host on it, anything you submit to us, and anything you buy from us (section 10).
1. What this site is
The Design Tools is an editorial directory of design software, a jobs board, a library of prompts, an inspiration gallery, a directory of designers and studios, and a set of free interactive tools we build and host ourselves. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any product listed here unless a listing explicitly says so.
By using this site you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the site.
2. Who we are
This site is operated by an individual trader established in Sweden, trading as The Design Tools (thedesigntools.site). We are not a registered company.
The fastest and primary way to reach us about anything on this page is hello@thedesigntools.site. We reply to every genuine message, normally within 24 hours on working days. A postal address is available on request to anyone with a legitimate legal reason to need one; email us and we will provide it.
3. Who may use this site
You must be at least 16 years old to use this site, and at least 18 to buy anything from us or to hold an account. If you are using the site on behalf of a company or a client, you confirm you are authorised to accept these terms for them.
4. The interactive tools
We host a set of free browser-based tools — all of them listed on /free-tools/ — including colour, image, document and generator tools.
They run entirely in your browser. There is no account and no server-side storage of what you enter. Some of them let you open an image or a file from your own device — for example to compress it, to make a favicon from it, or to place it in a design. Those files are read by your own browser and are never sent to us or to anyone else. See the privacy policy for detail.
You own your output
Whatever you produce with these tools — colours, palettes, gradients, CSS, icons, images, invoices, spec sheets, documents — is yours. We claim no rights over it and place no restriction on its use, commercial or otherwise. You do not need to credit us.
You are responsible for having the rights to anything you put into a tool, and for what you do with the result. Several of the tools include third-party material — for example icon sets in the icon and logo makers — which remains subject to that material’s own licence.
Provided as-is
The tools are provided free and without warranty. We have tested them, but we cannot guarantee they are error-free, available without interruption, or suitable for any particular purpose.
This matters most for the contrast checker: it implements the WCAG contrast formula and reports a ratio accurately, but a passing ratio is not a determination of legal accessibility compliance. Contrast is one of many WCAG success criteria. Do not treat the output as an accessibility audit or as legal advice.
It matters for the calculators too. The freelance rate calculator and the invoice generator do arithmetic on the numbers you give them. They are not tax, accounting or legal advice, they do not know the rules where you live, and an invoice they produce is not guaranteed to meet your country’s invoicing requirements. Check with your own accountant.
The AI text detector reports an estimate of how machine-written a passage reads. It is not proof of anything, it makes mistakes in both directions, and it must not be used to accuse anyone of misconduct or to make a decision about a person’s work, grade, application or employment.
Your work is not backed up
Because nothing is stored on our servers, nothing can be recovered by us. Anything saved by a tool lives in your browser’s local storage and is lost if you clear it. Keep your own copy of work you care about.
We may change or withdraw a tool
These tools are free and we maintain them ourselves. We may change, move or withdraw any of them at any time, and we do not promise that a tool, a feature or a saved format will still be here tomorrow. Where we can give notice on the page beforehand, we will.
5. Accounts
Most of the site needs no account. You only get one if you buy something from us or list yourself in the designers & agencies directory. Accounts are created by signing in with Google or GitHub, or with a one-time code we email you.
Keep control of the email address and the sign-in provider you use, because whoever can receive that email or sign in with that provider can reach your account. Tell us at once if you think someone else has got in. You are responsible for what happens under your account, except to the extent it results from our own failure.
You may close your account at any time from your account page or by emailing us. Closing it cancels any subscription; see section 10 for what happens to something you have already paid for.
6. Acceptable use
You may use this site and its tools for any lawful purpose, including commercial work. You may not:
- scrape, crawl for bulk copying, systematically download, or use automated means to copy the directory, the jobs board, the prompt library or the inspiration gallery;
- copy our content in bulk to train, fine-tune or ground a machine-learning model or a competing dataset or directory;
- republish substantial portions of our editorial content as your own;
- attempt to disrupt, overload, probe or gain unauthorised access to the site, its accounts, or any system behind it;
- use the site to send spam, malware, or anything unlawful, defamatory, deceptive or infringing;
- misrepresent who you are, or submit content on someone else’s behalf without their authority.
Linking to us, quoting us with attribution, and using the tools as much as you like are all fine. So is reading our llms.txt and the agent files it points to — those exist to be read by AI assistants, and using them as intended is not a breach of this section.
7. Accuracy, and content written with AI help
We check pricing, licence terms and product claims against each vendor’s own materials, and we date our research. Software changes without notice. If something here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
Some material on this site — news posts, parts of a listing, and drafts we write for advertisers and for Maker Verified listings — is generated with the help of AI tools and then reviewed by a person before it is published. Review reduces mistakes; it does not eliminate them.
The jobs board lists roles collected automatically from public job feeds and companies’ own careers pages. We do not verify them, we are not the employer, we are not a recruiter, and applying always happens on the third party’s own site. A role may be filled, changed or withdrawn before we notice.
Nothing on this site is professional advice — not legal, tax, accessibility, financial or employment advice. Decisions about what to buy, adopt, apply for or hire remain yours.
8. Content you submit to us
This section covers anything you send us: a tool submission, a prompt, an image or website for the inspiration gallery, a designer or studio profile, advertising copy, or a correction.
You keep ownership. Your content stays yours. You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, resize, edit for length and accuracy, publish and promote it on this site and our social and newsletter channels, for as long as it is published, with credit where the form promises credit. This licence exists only so that we can show your content in the way you asked us to.
You confirm that you have the right to send us what you send, that it is your own original work or you hold the rights to it, that it does not infringe anyone’s copyright, trademark, privacy or other rights, and that any claim in it is true and not misleading.
We decide what gets published. We may decline, edit, re-title, re-categorise, unpublish or delete any submission, at any time, for any reason — including that it does not meet our editorial policy. Paying to skip the review queue does not change this; see section 10 for what happens to your money if we take something down.
Submitting something does not create any obligation to publish it, does not create a partnership or employment relationship, and does not entitle you to payment.
Claimed pages and maker replies. If you claim a tool’s page, you confirm that you are allowed to speak for that tool. A reply you publish under our “Keep in mind” section is your content under this section: it must be true, about the tool, in plain text, without links or advertising, and it is shown as the maker’s reply. We never edit its meaning, but we may decline or remove it. A reply does not change our own review, and a fact correction is checked before it goes live.
If you think we have published something we should not have
Email hello@thedesigntools.site with the page address, what the material is, why you have the right to complain about it, and how we can reach you. This includes copyright and trademark complaints, a request from a website owner to be removed from the inspiration gallery, and an employer asking us to drop a job listing. We act on genuine requests quickly and without argument, and we tell the person who submitted it that we have.
If you submitted something and want it taken down, email us from the address you submitted with and we will remove it.
9. Affiliate links and sponsorship
Some outbound links earn us a commission at no cost to you, and some placements are paid. Paid placements are labelled. Payment never buys a better review or ranking. Every listing we review states real drawbacks; a maker can pay to skip the review queue, and those pages are marked as paid Maker Verified listings. See the privacy policy for how affiliate tracking works.
10. Buying from us (terms of sale)
These terms apply when you buy an advertising placement at /advertise/book/, a Maker Verified listing, or a monthly listing in the designers & agencies directory. They sit alongside the rest of this page.
Who sells
The Design Tools (thedesigntools.site), an individual trader established in Sweden. Contact: hello@thedesigntools.site; postal address on request. Payments are processed by Stripe; the payment page may show the charge as sold through Link, Stripe’s checkout service. We provide the service described here. We never see or store your card number.
What you buy
The placement or listing described on /advertise/ at the moment you pay, at the price shown in US dollars, including anything added at checkout (such as sales tax or VAT). Prices shown may change for future purchases; the price you have already paid does not change.
Advertising placements and Maker Verified listings are one-time payments. Nothing renews by itself, so there is nothing to cancel.
A directory listing for designers and agencies is a monthly subscription at the price shown on /submit-designer/. It renews automatically every month until you cancel, and the price you signed up at stays the same for as long as you keep it. While founding places last, a new listing starts with the free months shown on that page: no card is needed to start, we (through Stripe) remind you before the free period ends, and if you have not added a card by then the subscription simply ends and your profile comes down.
4-week placements start when you launch them from your dashboard. Cards we have written for you start by themselves on day 5 if you have not launched them. A sponsored article goes up when you approve it; a newsletter spotlight goes out in our next issue.
A Maker Verified listing is a normal directory page about your tool, written by us in our neutral voice and marked on the page as a paid listing with a “Maker verified” label. A tool that is not listed yet is published within minutes; for a page you have already claimed, the label is added straight away. It is pinned at the top of our weekly new-tools list for the week it goes live, and it includes up to 3 update requests a month, each checked before it goes live.
What you buy is a placement on this site. It is not a promise of traffic, clicks, sign-ups, ranking, revenue or any other result, and we do not guarantee visitor numbers. You may not resell or transfer a placement to someone else without asking us first.
Cancelling a subscription
Cancel whenever you like, in one click, from your account page — or through the billing portal linked there. No notice period, no cancellation fee, and you never have to ask us.
Cancelling stops the next payment. Your profile stays online until the end of the month you have already paid for, then comes down. We do not refund part of a month you have used.
If a payment fails, we email you and your profile stays online for a short grace period while your bank retries. If it still fails, the profile comes down and the subscription ends. Nothing is deleted — starting again puts the same page back.
We may remove a listing that breaks the editorial policy. If we do that before it has been published, we cancel the subscription and refund the payment in full.
If you are in the EU or UK: a subscription you cancel in the first 14 days is refunded in full unless your profile has already been published, which you ask us to do at checkout.
Our check before anything goes live
We check every new advertiser before a placement can go live. If we decide it is not a fit for our readers, we refund you in full. We do not run anything illegal, misleading, adult, gambling-related or harmful, and we may take down a placement that turns out to be one of those, refunding the days not used.
What paying never buys
Every placement is labelled Sponsored and its links use rel="sponsored nofollow". Paying never changes a review, a ranking or a drawback on another listing, and never puts you in our AI briefing files (llms.txt).
Refunds and your right to withdraw
Our refund terms are part of these terms. In short: a full refund any time before your placement goes live; after that, a refund for the days not used within the first 14 days. Consumers in the EU and UK have a legal 14-day right to withdraw from a distance purchase. Because you ask us to start straight away, you pay only for the days already live if you withdraw. A Maker Verified listing is delivered once it is published (or, for a page you already manage, once the label is added); if we cannot deliver it, you get a full refund. Refunds go back to the card you paid with within 14 days of your request.
Your content, and the claims in it
You confirm that you may use the name, logo, website and claims you give us, and that the claims are true. We may shorten or correct copy so it is accurate and clearly labelled. Section 8 applies to advertising copy as it does to anything else you send us.
Taxes, chargebacks and non-payment
Prices are in US dollars. Where we are required to charge sales tax or VAT it is added at checkout and shown before you pay. If you are buying as a business, you are responsible for your own tax position, including any reverse-charge or self-assessment obligation where you are established.
If you dispute a charge with your bank rather than asking us for a refund, we may pause or remove the placement while the dispute is open. We would much rather you emailed us first — we refund quickly and without an argument when the refund terms apply.
Questions and complaints
Email hello@thedesigntools.site with the address you paid with. We reply within 24 hours on working days.
11. Other people’s sites and products
This site links out constantly — to tool vendors, to employers, to designers’ portfolios, to inspiration sources. When you follow a link you leave our site. Those destinations are not ours, we do not control them, and we are not responsible for their content, their products, their prices, their hiring, their security or their privacy practices. Any dealing you have with them is between you and them.
Product names, logos and trademarks shown here belong to their owners and are used to identify the product being described. Use of them does not imply any endorsement in either direction.
12. Suspension and termination
We may suspend or close an account, remove content, or withdraw access to the site if you break these terms, if we are required to by law, or if we reasonably believe your use is harming the site or other people. Where it is a minor or accidental breach, we will normally ask you to fix it first.
If we close a paid account for a reason that is not your fault, we refund the part you have paid for and not used. If we close it because you broke these terms, we do not.
You may stop using the site at any time. Sections 8, 11, 13, 14, 15 and 16 continue to apply after you stop.
13. Disclaimers
The site, the tools and everything published here are provided as-is and as-available. To the fullest extent the law allows, we exclude all warranties, conditions and terms that would otherwise be implied — including fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and uninterrupted or error-free operation.
We do not promise that the site will always be available. We may take it down for maintenance, and things outside our reasonable control — hosting failures, network outages, third-party API changes, legal demands — can interrupt it.
14. Liability
To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for loss or damage arising from use of this site, its tools, its listings or anything bought from us — including lost work, lost data, lost profits, lost revenue, lost business or goodwill, wasted expenditure, or decisions made in reliance on information published here.
Where we are liable despite the above, our total liability to you for everything connected with the site, taken together, is limited to the greater of: the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, or 100 US dollars.
Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited — including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, and, if you are a consumer, any of your statutory rights. If you are a consumer in the EU, the UK or another jurisdiction with mandatory consumer-protection rules, those rules apply to you whatever this section says, and the cap above does not reduce a remedy the law gives you.
15. Indemnity (business users only)
If you use this site in the course of a business — including as an advertiser, a Maker Verified customer, or a listed studio — you agree to cover us for any claim, loss, cost or reasonable legal expense we incur because of content you submitted to us, a claim you asked us to publish, your breach of these terms, or your infringement of someone else’s rights. This section does not apply to consumers.
16. Governing law and where disputes are heard
These terms, and anything arising from them, are governed by Swedish law, and the Swedish courts have jurisdiction — with Stockholms tingsrätt as the court of first instance unless the law requires otherwise.
If you are a consumer, this does not take away the protection of the mandatory law of the country you live in, and you may also bring a claim in the courts there.
Consumers can complain without going to court. Please email us first — we would rather fix it. If we cannot agree, a consumer may refer the dispute to the Swedish National Board for Consumer Disputes, Allmänna reklamationsnämnden (arn.se), Box 174, 101 23 Stockholm, Sweden. We take part in its procedure. Consumers in other EU countries can also contact their local European Consumer Centre.
17. General
- Severability. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force and that part is read as narrowly as necessary to make it valid.
- No waiver. If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.
- Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these terms without our consent. We may transfer ours if the site changes hands, provided your rights are not reduced.
- Whole agreement. These terms, the refund terms, the privacy policy and the editorial policy are the whole agreement between us about the site. Nothing said elsewhere overrides them, except a written agreement we have signed with you.
- No third-party rights. Nobody other than you and us can enforce these terms.
- Language. These terms are written in English, and the English version is the one that applies.
18. Changes
We may update these terms. Material changes will be reflected in the date at the top, and where a change affects something you have already bought we will email you before it takes effect. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated terms.
19. Contact
Questions about these terms: hello@thedesigntools.site.