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. "Smooth English" is a trading name of Matthew Fabling; it is not a registered company.
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. Speaking features use your device's microphone, with your permission; our Privacy Policy explains when the microphone is used and what happens to your recordings. Service availability, features and pricing may change with notice.
We currently offer three subscription plans, billed in GBP via Stripe:
| Plan | Price | Trial at checkout | Renewal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pro (General English scene trainer) | £2.99 / month | None — charged at checkout | Monthly, auto-renews |
| Premium Monthly (IELTS Band 7+ trainer) | £4.99 / month | None — charged at checkout | Monthly, auto-renews |
| Premium Annual (IELTS Band 7+ trainer) | £39.99 / year | None — charged at checkout | Yearly, auto-renews |
Your free practices: when you create an account you get 5 free practices inside the app. They are free, they need no card, and they are granted once per person. They are not a subscription and nothing renews — nothing is taken from you and nothing starts automatically when they run out.
No trial at checkout: subscriptions are separate. When you subscribe you are charged the price shown at that moment, on that day. There is no additional free period at checkout.
Auto-renewal: 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. (If you subscribed inside our iPhone or Android app, see "In-app purchases" below.)
In-app purchases (iPhone and Android apps): inside the ActuallySpeak app for iPhone/iPad and for Android, Premium is sold as a monthly or yearly in-app subscription through the Apple App Store or Google Play instead of Stripe. The store shows you the price, currency and any tax before you confirm, and the payment is charged to your Apple ID or Google Play account under the store's own terms. The subscription renews automatically at the same price unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. You manage or cancel it in the store, not in our Stripe portal: on iPhone/iPad in Settings → your name → Subscriptions, and on Android in Google Play → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions (the app's own "Manage subscription" option opens the same page). Deleting the app does not cancel the subscription. A subscription bought in the app unlocks Premium on the same ActuallySpeak account on the web too; if it does not unlock after you pay, use Restore purchases in the app.
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.
Try before you pay. Every account gets 5 free practices inside the app with no card and no charge. That is the point at which to decide whether ActuallySpeak is for you — subscribing afterwards is a paid step and takes payment on the day you subscribe.
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 straight away) 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.
In-app purchases. If you paid through the Apple App Store or Google Play inside our iPhone or Android app, Apple or Google took the payment, so refunds for those purchases are requested from them under their own refund policies — Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com, Google through Google Play's refund process. We cannot refund store payments ourselves, but contact us and we will help.
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, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Netlify, Resend, the Apple App Store and Google Play for in-app purchases, 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 law of Scotland, and disputes are subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of Scotland. If you are a consumer living elsewhere in the United Kingdom, you may also bring proceedings in the courts of the part of the UK where you live (England and Wales, or Northern Ireland), and you keep the benefit of any mandatory consumer protections under the law of the place where you live. Nothing in these Terms takes away rights you have as a consumer that cannot be excluded by agreement.
Questions about these Terms? Email actuallyspeak.help@gmail.com.