Skip to content
BuildBuddy

Terms and Conditions

Effective date:

These terms apply when you use the BuildBuddy app and this website. Please read them. They set out what you can expect from BuildBuddy and what we expect from you. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle your personal data, and account and data deletion explains how to delete your account.

1. Who we are and these terms

BuildBuddy is operated by Prince Musole, an individual based in Lusaka, Zambia. BuildBuddy is not a company. These terms are an agreement between you and BuildBuddy for your use of the BuildBuddy app and this website (together, the “Service”).

2. Who can use BuildBuddy

You must be 18 or older to use BuildBuddy. By creating an account, you confirm that you are.

3. Your account

You sign in with the methods the app offers, such as email and password, an email code, or Google or Apple where they are offered. You can use BuildBuddy as a homeowner, as a contractor, or as both.

Keep your sign-in details private. You are responsible for activity under your account. If you think someone else has used your account, contact support straight away.

4. What BuildBuddy provides

BuildBuddy is a planning and record-keeping tool for residential building projects in Zambia. Owners can track a build by stage, with photos, house plans, materials, budgets and expenses. Owners and contractors can contact each other inside the app. Contractors can apply to be listed in the contractor directory.

We may add, change or remove features. We aim to keep the Service available, but we do not promise that it will always be available, error-free, or offered without charge.

5. Your content

“Your content” means what you upload or write in BuildBuddy. This includes photos, house plans, receipts, expense details, chat messages and questions, showcases, comments, reviews, enquiries, quotes and profile details.

You keep your rights in your content. You give BuildBuddy a licence to host, store, copy, process and display it only as needed to run the features you use. For example, that includes showing a published showcase, showing an approved review, passing an enquiry to the contractor you chose, and checking public content against our rules.

You must have the right to share what you upload. Photos shown to other people, such as portfolio photos, review photos and showcase photos, must not show identifiable people, house numbers, street signs, name plates or documents. Portfolio photos and review photos are checked automatically before they are shown to others.

6. Reviews, comments and votes

Reviews must be based on your own genuine experience. Reviews and review photos are checked automatically before they are shown to others. Until they pass, they are not shown. You can remove your own review at any time.

Where BuildBuddy has switched on comments or votes for showcases, the following applies. You can comment on a published showcase and remove your own comments. You can report a comment that breaks these terms. BuildBuddy may hide or remove comments. Each person can cast one vote per showcase, and an owner cannot vote on their own showcase.

7. Showcases and credits

An owner can publish a showcase of work on a build and can keep it unlisted. An owner can credit up to five approved contractors on a showcase, with a role for each one. A credited contractor can confirm or decline the credit. You cannot credit your own contractor listing.

8. Contractors

8.1 Applying and what you provide

To be listed, a contractor completes a business profile and uploads an NCC certificate and a national ID or passport. Both must be clear photos of the full document (for the ID, the front and back). A PACRA certificate is optional. A contractor also adds at least three photos of past work.

8.2 What you confirm

When you apply, you confirm that the details you give are true and that you agree to these contractor terms. The application shows this sentence: “I confirm these details are true and I agree to the contractor terms.” You must keep your details accurate and up to date.

8.3 Review of your application

BuildBuddy reviews every application. Review usually takes 24–36 hours. That is an estimate, not a promise. Only approved listings appear in the contractor directory and can send quotes.

BuildBuddy can approve an application, reject it, ask for more information, suspend a listing or reinstate one. A decision to reject, ask for more information or suspend includes a note.

8.4 Reapplying, suspension and review requests

After a rejection, you can reapply once the waiting period has passed. The waiting period is 30 days unless BuildBuddy sets a different period of up to 365 days. A suspended listing is not shown in the contractor directory. You can ask for a review of a suspension in the app.

8.5 Changes to an approved listing

If you change the NCC number on an approved listing, the listing goes back for review before it is shown again.

8.6 Your work

You and BuildBuddy are independent of each other. BuildBuddy is not your employer, agent or partner. As a contractor, you are responsible for your own work, your qualifications, and for complying with the laws that apply to your trade and to the building work you do. BuildBuddy does not supervise, guarantee or check the quality of your work.

9. Enquiries and quotes

An owner can send an enquiry to an approved contractor in the app, and the contractor can reply in the same thread. You choose whether to share the stages, the plan or the area of your build with a contractor.

An approved contractor can send a quote stating an amount, what it covers, when work can start, and how long the quote stays valid. An owner can accept or decline a quote while it is valid. A quote that is not answered in time expires.

Any agreement for the work is between the owner and the contractor. Accepting a quote in the app does not make BuildBuddy a party to that agreement.

10. AI features

Some features use AI. These are: asking questions about a build in chat, including searching your build records to answer them; reading receipts; reading house plans; proposing edits to a plan; turning a voice question into text; and generating a build overview. You can also use photo intake, which uses the same kind of checks. BuildBuddy also uses AI to check contractor listings, reviews and portfolio photos automatically. The Privacy Policy explains what is sent to AI providers.

  • AI can be wrong. Its output can be incomplete or inaccurate. It is a helper, not a professional opinion. Check what it suggests before you rely on it, especially amounts, measurements, quantities of materials, and structural or legal points.
  • Drafts are not saved for you. A receipt or plan reading is a draft. Nothing is saved as an expense, and a plan is not ready, until you save it or confirm it.
  • Chat has a scope. Chat is for questions about building, money and your build. It may refuse other questions.
  • Voice questions. When you record a voice question, the recording is transcribed and the text appears for you to edit and send. After transcription, the app deletes the recording whether or not transcription succeeds. If that clean-up step is interrupted, the recording may remain stored; see the Privacy Policy. Only a question you send is saved as a chat message.
  • Usage limits. To keep the features working for everyone, AI features have usage limits. These limit how many requests can be made in a period, and some features have short cooldowns between requests. The app tells you when you reach a limit. A failed request can pause that feature briefly. We may change these limits, including the limits on the free tier.
  • Availability. AI features may be unavailable at times, or turned off for your account.

11. Payments and paid features

BuildBuddy does not take payments today, and it does not move money between users. Amounts you enter for expenses, budgets, materials and quotes are records or proposals only.

Paid features. Some features, including AI features and AI usage credits, may in future require a paid plan or credits. Features and limits on the free tier, including AI usage limits, may change. Where a feature becomes paid, its prices, limits and payment terms will be shown before you buy, and you must accept them separately before any purchase. Before any payment details are collected, the payment processor will be named in the Privacy Policy.

BuildBuddy is not a party to any agreement or payment between homeowners and contractors. It is not responsible for any price, deposit, payment or refund agreed between them.

12. Acceptable use

You must not use BuildBuddy to:

  • break the law, or to harass, defraud or mislead anyone;
  • post false records, fake reviews, or misleading showcases or profiles;
  • post other people’s personal details without their permission, or an owner’s contact details in public content;
  • access other people’s data, get around limits or access controls, or interfere with the Service;
  • scrape, copy at scale or overload the Service, or reverse engineer it, except where the law allows;
  • try to make an AI feature ignore these terms or reveal its instructions.

13. Restrictions, suspension and bans

If we believe a user has broken these terms or put the Service at risk, we may act reasonably to protect the Service and other users. We may:

  • remove or hide content that breaks these terms;
  • put an account into read-only mode, which lets you read but not make changes or use AI features;
  • turn off individual features for an account;
  • suspend a contractor listing; or
  • ban an account from signing in.

When an account is banned, the sign-in screen says that access has been turned off. Your data is not deleted by a ban. If you think a decision is wrong, contact support (see Contact).

14. Deleting your account

You can delete your account in the app, or use the account and data deletion page. Deleting your account starts erasing your BuildBuddy data first, except the records described below and in the Privacy Policy, then deletes your sign-in. Larger accounts are erased in batches that can finish after your sign-in is gone. Deletion cannot be undone.

Some records are kept, as described in the Privacy Policy. These include admin audit records, enquiry threads where you were the contractor, which the owner keeps as “Contractor (deleted)”, and orders you placed with stores, which stay on the store’s records without your name, delivery address or payment reference.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. When we do, we will change the effective date at the top of this page. If a change is important, we will say so on this page. If you keep using the Service after the effective date, the updated terms apply to you.

16. Disclaimers and limits on liability

BuildBuddy is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows:

  • we do not promise that the Service will be error-free, that AI output will be accurate, that any contractor will do good work, or that any listing, review or showcase is complete;
  • we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, or losses from building decisions, payments, prices or contracts between users;
  • our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the amount, if any, you paid BuildBuddy for the Service in the 12 months before the claim.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits any liability that cannot be excluded under the law of Zambia.

17. Governing law and courts

These terms are governed by the laws of Zambia. The courts of Zambia have jurisdiction over any dispute about these terms or the Service.

18. Contact

Your main contact is in-app support. Open BuildBuddy and go to You → Help and support.

For legal or privacy requests, email pmusole2@gmail.com.