Terms of Service.

InStone is a London-based strategy and intelligence agency, operated by InStone Agency Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 15710657, with its registered office in London. These terms govern your use of this website, your subscription to any of our publications, and any commissioned work we undertake for you.

By using this website, subscribing to a publication, or commissioning work, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please stop using the site and contact us at info@instone.one so we can tell you what has gone wrong.

For the purposes of these terms, references to "InStone", "we", "us", or "our" mean InStone Agency Ltd. References to "you" or "your" mean the person using the website, subscribing, or commissioning work.

Website: the InStone website at www.instone.org.uk and any pages or subdomains under it.

Publications: the free daily Briefs (RedStone and BlueStone), the paid Specialist Briefs, and any bespoke editorial output delivered by subscription.

Subscriber: a person who has signed up to receive any of our Publications, paid or free.

Engagement: any commissioned work we undertake for you, from a Focused single-framework piece of work through to a Full Strategy engagement or a Commissioned intelligence study.

Client: a person or organisation that has commissioned an Engagement.

You may use this website to read, navigate, subscribe, and enquire. You may share individual pages by link. You may print pages for personal or internal use.

You may not scrape the site at volume, attempt to circumvent any security measure, attempt to access any private area, use automated tools to harvest subscriber-only content, or do anything that would put the site or our subscribers at risk.

Reasonable, good-faith use is always welcome. If you want to do something the site does not obviously permit (republish a full essay, syndicate a brief, etc.), ask us: info@instone.one.

The RedStone Brief and BlueStone Brief are provided free of charge. Subscribing is free, delivery is free, and you can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of any email.

We do not guarantee uninterrupted delivery. The service is provided as-is, free of charge, and we reserve the right to change what it covers, to pause it for short periods, or to discontinue it entirely, with reasonable notice to subscribers where discontinuation is permanent.

Content in free Publications is provided for informational purposes and for personal reading. It is compiled from primary institutional sources using our editorial workflow, which may include AI-assisted tooling. While we take reasonable care in compiling each issue, we do not warrant that every item is accurate, complete, or suitable for any specific decision, and readers are expected to verify specific points before acting on them for material matters.

You may forward individual issues to colleagues. You may not republish, syndicate, or systematically redistribute the content without written permission.

Specialist Briefs and related paid subscriptions are billed monthly, per brief, per named seat. Prices are shown on each brief's page and are fixed for the duration of your contract year unless you expand scope.

Subscriptions auto-renew monthly on the date you subscribed, until you cancel. Cancellation can be made any time before the next billing date and takes effect at the end of the current period. You keep access through to the end of any period you have paid for.

The Founding Subscriber rate of £29 per month applies to the first fifty subscribers per brief and is locked for twelve months from sign-up. After your twelve months end, or if the cohort closes before you join, your subscription continues at the standard rate of £49 per month.

Refunds are not issued for subscription periods partially used, except where required by consumer protection law. Consumer subscribers in the UK and EU may have a 14-day cooling-off period for digital services where statutory rights apply. Contact us at info@instone.one to exercise any statutory right. If we make a material change to a brief mid-period (for example a substantial scope reduction), we will credit or refund the remaining period on request.

Business Seats subscriptions are governed by the seat count and tier purchased. Named seats are not transferable between individuals within a month but can be reassigned via the admin console at any time.

Failed payments result in a suspension notice after a reasonable grace period. We will contact you in writing before any action on the account.

Every Engagement is scoped, timed, and priced in writing before work begins. Our standard terms apply unless we sign a different master agreement with you.

Scope and deliverables: the specific deliverables, timeline, and price are set out in the scoping brief you sign before work starts. Scope changes mid-engagement are negotiated in writing before work continues, not after.

Payment terms: unless we agree otherwise in writing, invoices are net 30. For engagements above a certain threshold, we typically split payment: a portion at sign-off of the scoping brief and the balance at delivery.

Delivery: we deliver on the timeline set out in the scoping brief. If a phase is delayed by input we are waiting on from you, the timeline is extended accordingly and communicated in writing.

Sign-off: each phase of an Engagement is gated on written sign-off from you. We do not proceed to the next phase until the current phase is signed.

Cancellation: you can cancel an Engagement at any gate. You are liable for work completed up to the cancellation date, plus any committed third-party costs we cannot recover.

Website and Publications: all content on this website and in our Publications (including text, design, illustrations, and typography) is owned by InStone or licensed to us. You may not copy, reproduce, adapt, or systematically redistribute it without written permission.

Commissioned deliverables: the intellectual property in deliverables created for a specific Engagement transfers to the Client on full payment, unless we agree otherwise in writing. Our underlying frameworks, methodologies, templates, and know-how remain our property and are licensed to you for your use of the deliverable.

Pre-existing materials: materials we create outside the Engagement, or licensed materials from third parties, remain the property of their respective owners. Where these are embedded in deliverables, we grant you the licence you need to use the deliverable as intended.

Our right to refer to the Engagement: unless you specifically request otherwise in writing, we reserve the right to name the Engagement and the client at a general level for reference purposes, without disclosing confidential content or specific outputs.

When you submit a brief through our contact form, propose a speaker, reply to a publication, or otherwise send us content, you warrant that you have the right to share it with us.

We treat everything you share with us as confidential by default, even without a specific NDA, unless the content is clearly intended for public use (for example a proposed speaker's published biography).

You grant us a limited, internal licence to read, review, and respond to what you send. We do not use your submissions for any other purpose without asking you first.

For Engagements, a mutual non-disclosure agreement is signed before scoping begins. The NDA governs everything exchanged during and after the Engagement in specific detail.

For enquiries and scoping conversations that do not proceed to Engagement, we still treat the content shared as confidential and delete or archive it in line with our Privacy Policy retention schedule.

We do not share client lists, specific project outputs, or confidential context with any third party without explicit permission.

Our work is produced with professional care, applied to the scope agreed in writing. We do not warrant that publications or deliverables are error-free or suitable for any purpose beyond the scope agreed.

To the extent permitted by law, our total liability for any Engagement is capped at the fees paid under that Engagement. For free Publications, our liability is limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or any other liability that cannot be limited under applicable law.

You agree to indemnify us against any claim arising from your misuse of the website, your breach of these terms, or any content you submit to us that infringes a third party's rights.

We agree to indemnify you against any claim that our commissioned deliverables (being the specific written outputs delivered under an Engagement as set out in Section 6) infringe a third party's intellectual property, subject to the liability cap set out above, and subject to you promptly notifying us of any such claim. This indemnity does not extend to free or paid Publications, which are provided as-is.

We update these terms from time to time as our services or the law change. Material changes will be announced to subscribers by email before they take effect, and updated terms will be posted here.

The date at the top of this page shows when we last updated it. Your continued use of the website, publication, or engagement after the effective date of any change constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any dispute is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, except where mandatory consumer protection law in your jurisdiction gives you additional rights.

Questions about these terms, including anything that looks ambiguous or contradictory, can be sent to info@instone.one. A human reads every message and responds within five working days.