Article Submission Terms

1. Definitions and Interpretation

In these Terms and Conditions, the following definitions apply unless the context requires otherwise:

• "Platform" means the Auto Press Hub website and all associated services.
• "Operator" means Automotive Technology PR Limited (company no. 13671308), registered in England and Wales, registered office 3 Grosvenor House, Chapel Street, Congleton, England, CW12 4AB, trading as Auto Press Hub. The Operator owns and operates the Platform and is the party with whom you contract.
• "User" means any individual or entity that registers for an account on the Platform to submit articles.
• "Listed Manufacturer" means a vehicle manufacturer whose newsroom is carried on the Platform.
• "Manufacturer Organisation" means an Organisation opened from an email address on a domain the Operator has recorded as belonging to a Listed Manufacturer. A Manufacturer Organisation may publish, without charge and without limit, for each Listed Manufacturer associated with that domain.
• "Manufacturer User" means a User on a Manufacturer Organisation — whether they opened it, joined it, or were invited onto it by its Organisation Admin (including an employee of a public relations agency so invited).
• "Agency User" means a User representing a public relations agency that has been verified and approved to submit articles on behalf of one or more authorised Brands other than Listed Manufacturers. An agency publishes a Listed Manufacturer's news only as a Manufacturer User, through that manufacturer's own Organisation.
• "Supplier User" means a User representing an automotive supplier, technology company, or other non-manufacturer entity.
• "Organisation" means a group account representing an agency or company, within which multiple Users may operate under shared brand authorisations.
• "Organisation Admin" means a User with administrative privileges within an Organisation.
• "Brand" means any manufacturer, supplier, or other entity whose news content may be published on the Platform.
• "Article" or "Content" means any text, images, media, or other materials submitted by a User for publication on the Platform.
• "Submission Credit" means a single-use entitlement to submit one article for publication on the Platform.
• "Analytics" means the performance data associated with published articles, including but not limited to view counts, image download statistics, referrer information, and geographic data.

2. Account Registration and Verification

2.1 Registration Requirements

To use the Article Submission Service, you must register for an account by providing a valid professional email address associated with the brand or organisation you represent. Registration is subject to approval by the Operator.

2.2 Email Domain Verification

As part of the registration process, the Platform will verify your email address through a magic link authentication system. The domain of your email address will be checked against known domains associated with the brand you wish to represent. The Operator reserves the right to conduct additional verification checks, including but not limited to WHOIS domain registration lookups, MX record verification, typosquatting detection, and manual verification of your identity and authority.

2.3 Approval Process

All new account registrations are subject to manual approval by the Operator. The Operator may, at its sole discretion, approve, reject, or request additional information before granting access. Approval of an account does not constitute endorsement of the User or their content.

2.4 Account Accuracy

You warrant that all information provided during registration is accurate, complete, and current. Providing false or misleading information is grounds for immediate account termination.

2.5 Account Security

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality and security of your account credentials. The Operator is not liable for any loss or damage arising from unauthorised use of your account.

3. Brand Authorisation

3.1 Brand Assignment

Brands are assigned to your account as follows. A Manufacturer Organisation is assigned each Listed Manufacturer associated with the email domain from which it was opened, and every User on that Organisation may publish for those Brands. An Agency User or Supplier User is assigned the Brands they add to their account, other than Listed Manufacturers. A Listed Manufacturer can be assigned only to its own Manufacturer Organisation (and so to the Users on it), or by the Operator directly. You may only submit articles for Brands assigned to your account.

3.2 Restriction on Submissions

You must not submit articles on behalf of any Brand that has not been assigned to your account. Any attempt to submit content for an unauthorised Brand constitutes a material breach of these Terms and may result in immediate account termination.

3.3 Responsibility for Authorisation

It is your sole responsibility to ensure that you have the necessary authority and permission from the Brand to publish content on their behalf through the Platform. By submitting an article, you represent and warrant that you have obtained all necessary approvals.

3.4 Operator Liability

The Operator accepts no liability whatsoever for any content submitted by a User who does not have proper authorisation from the Brand they purport to represent.

3.5 Attribution of Published Articles

Every article published through the Platform names the Organisation that submitted it. Where that Organisation publishes the news of a client Brand, the article is attributed “Submitted by [Organisation] on behalf of [Brand]”. In every other case, including articles published by a Manufacturer Organisation, the article is attributed “Published by [Brand]”.

This attribution is applied by the Platform to every article you publish. It is not optional, cannot be removed or suppressed at your request, and forms part of the Platform's commitment that a reader can always see who published a release and on whose behalf. Which of the two forms applies to your Organisation follows from the answer you give at registration as to whose news your account publishes. If that answer is or becomes incorrect, contact the Operator and it will be changed.

4. Organisations and Team Accounts

4.1 Organisation Creation

Every account belongs to an Organisation, which is the unit for team access, brand authorisation and billing. The Organisation Admin may invite further Users onto it; on a Manufacturer Organisation this includes inviting the manufacturer's public relations agency, whose Users then publish for the Organisation's Brands without charge.

4.2 Organisation Admin Responsibilities

The Organisation Admin is responsible for inviting and removing team members, assigning and revoking brand access, ensuring compliance with these Terms, and managing the Organisation's subscription and billing.

4.3 Shared Responsibility

The Organisation and its Admin are jointly responsible for all content submitted by team members. The Operator may take action against the entire Organisation if any team member breaches these Terms.

4.4 Journalist Requests (Manufacturer Organisations)

Journalists and content creators may choose to share a request for a press vehicle with every Manufacturer Organisation on the Platform. As part of the service, every User of a Manufacturer Organisation can see those requests on the Journalist requests page and receives an email when a new one is shared; each User can switch those emails off at any time. The requester's contact details are shared so that the Manufacturer Organisation can contact them directly, for that request only: they must not be added to any mailing list or used for any other purpose. Whether to offer a vehicle, and on what terms, is entirely the Manufacturer Organisation's decision, arranged directly with the requester. The Operator passes requests on only, does not verify a requester's credentials or any audience figure they state, and gives no assurance about any requester.

5. Payments, Credits, and Refunds

5.1 Submission Credits

Access to the Article Submission Service may require the purchase of Submission Credits or a subscription plan. Pricing, credit bundles, and subscription terms will be clearly displayed at the point of purchase. All prices are stated in pounds sterling and are exclusive of VAT unless otherwise indicated. The Operator reviews its prices once a year. A price change applies to new purchases from the date it is published; for an existing subscription it applies only from your next renewal, and only after at least 30 days' notice by email, as set out in the Cancellation and Refund Policy. A founders' discount is held for the period stated when you signed up.

5.2 Payment Processing

All payments are processed securely through our third-party payment provider. The Operator does not store your full payment card details. By making a payment, you warrant that you are authorised to use the payment method provided.

5.3 Service Delivery

The Article Submission Service is a digital service. The service is deemed to have been fully delivered at the point at which your submitted article is published on the Platform in accordance with the submission details you provided (including correct brand assignment, headline, body text, and images displayed without material error caused by the Platform). You acknowledge and agree that publication of an article in accordance with your submission constitutes complete performance of the service in respect of that Submission Credit.

5.4 Cancellation and Refunds

Cancellation, refunds, unused allowance, and what happens to releases you have already published are governed by our Cancellation and Refund Policy, which prevails over these Terms where they differ.

5.5 Business Use

The Article Submission Service is offered to businesses only. By purchasing, you confirm you are acting for the purposes of your business (Cancellation and Refund Policy, section 1).

5.6 Chargebacks and Disputes

If you initiate a chargeback or payment dispute after your article has been published, the Operator reserves the right to immediately suspend your account and remove all content associated with it, pending resolution of the dispute. Fraudulent chargebacks may result in permanent account termination and forfeiture of all remaining credits.

5.7 Content Removal Requests

Removal of a published release at your request is governed by section 10 of the Cancellation and Refund Policy.

5.8 Rights That Cannot Be Excluded

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any right that cannot be excluded or limited by law. If you believe the service was not as described, contact us at contact@autopresshub.co.uk and we will investigate promptly.

6. Content Submission and Publishing

6.1 Submission Process

Articles must be submitted through the Platform's designated submission form. Each submission must include all required fields: brand selection, headline, body text and contact information. Images are optional.

6.2 Content Standards

All submitted content must be accurate, truthful, and not misleading; relate directly to the Brand for which it is submitted; be original content or content for which you hold the necessary rights; comply with all applicable UK laws and regulations including the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, the Defamation Act 2013, and the UK GDPR; not contain any defamatory, obscene, offensive, discriminatory, or unlawful material; and not infringe any third-party intellectual property rights.

6.3 Image Requirements

Images must not exceed 15 MB per image. Accepted formats are JPEG, PNG, and WebP. You must hold all necessary rights, licences, and permissions for each image uploaded. Images may be automatically compressed and optimised for web delivery.

6.4 Submission Limits

Each plan includes a set number of releases per billing period, as shown on the pricing page at the time of purchase. On a monthly plan the allowance is granted at the start of each billing period; unused releases roll over, but the most you can hold at any one time is twice your plan's monthly allowance. On an annual plan the whole year's allowance is available from the day the plan starts. A release is counted when it is published; a submission that is never published (for example, one held for brand authorisation that does not go ahead) is returned to your allowance. Releases are not reviewed before publication; the Editorial Guidelines explain when the Operator may remove one afterwards. Manufacturer Organisations, including Users invited onto them, are not subject to a limit and are not charged. Full details, including what happens to unused releases on cancellation or a change of plan, are in the Cancellation and Refund Policy.

6.5 Deduplication

The Platform automatically monitors for duplicate content. If an article you submit matches content that has been independently sourced by the Platform's automated systems, the submitted version will take precedence and will replace the automatically sourced version.

7. Content Reporting and Removal

7.1 Report and Flag System

The Platform provides a reporting mechanism that allows any visitor to flag content they believe violates these Terms, is inaccurate, or is otherwise inappropriate.

7.2 Removal

The Operator may remove a published release, or the part of it that breaches these Terms or the Editorial Guidelines, as set out in Part K of the Editorial Guidelines, and will tell you why. Where content is unlawful, defamatory, infringing or materially misleading, the Operator may remove it immediately.

7.3 No Right to Publication

Nothing in these Terms creates any right to have content published or to have content remain published on the Platform. A removal decision can be appealed as set out in Part K of the Editorial Guidelines.

8. Intellectual Property

8.1 Your Content

You retain ownership of all intellectual property rights in the content you submit. By submitting content to the Platform, you grant the Operator a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to publish, display, distribute, and make available your content on the Platform and through associated channels (including but not limited to email newsletters and social media). This licence continues for as long as the content remains published on the Platform and for a period of 30 days following its removal, to allow for the removal of cached copies. Removal of a published release at your request is governed by section 10 of the Cancellation and Refund Policy.

8.2 Image Licence

By uploading images, you grant the same licence as described in clause 8.1. You further acknowledge that Platform visitors may view images associated with published articles, and may obtain and use them for editorial use only, in reporting on the release they accompany.

8.3 Platform Content

All intellectual property rights in the Platform itself, including its design, software, databases, logos, and branding, are owned by the Operator.

8.4 Takedown Requests

If you believe that content on the Platform infringes your intellectual property rights, please contact the Operator with full details.

9. Analytics and Performance Data

The Platform records performance data for published articles, including article view counts, image download counts, referrer source information, and geographic distribution of readers, in accordance with the Cookie Policy and the visitor's cookie choices.

Analytics are not currently made available to Users. The Operator does not undertake to report Analytics to you, and nothing you are charged for is priced by reference to them. Should the Operator make Analytics available in future, all performance data will be provided on an "as-is" basis without warranty of accuracy or completeness — in particular, figures count only those visitors whose cookie choices permit measurement, and will therefore understate readership.

10. Data Protection and Privacy

10.1 Data Controller

The Operator is the data controller for personal data collected through the Platform. Full details of how we collect, use, store, and protect your personal data are set out in our Privacy Policy, available at autopresshub.co.uk/privacy. By using the Article Submission Service, you confirm that you have read and understood the Privacy Policy.

10.2 Personal Data Collected

In connection with the Article Submission Service, the Operator collects and processes the categories of personal data described in Section 2 of the Privacy Policy. The lawful bases for processing are set out in Section 4 of the Privacy Policy and include contractual necessity (for managing your account and providing the service), legitimate interests (for platform operation, security, and improvement), and consent (for marketing communications). Details of our data processors, including Brevo (email delivery), Supabase (database and authentication), and Vercel (hosting), are set out in Section 5 of the Privacy Policy.

10.3 Your Rights

Your rights under UK GDPR (including the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection, and withdrawal of consent) are set out in full in Section 8 of the Privacy Policy. To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at contact@autopresshub.co.uk. We will respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

10.4 Data Retention

Account data will be retained for as long as your account remains active and for 24 months after account closure, in accordance with Section 6 of the Privacy Policy. Published articles may remain on the Platform after account closure unless you request their removal. Details of international data transfers and the safeguards in place are set out in Section 9 of the Privacy Policy.

11. Prohibited Conduct

You must not use the Platform to submit content for any Brand not assigned to your account; impersonate any person, organisation, or brand; submit false, misleading, defamatory, or fraudulent content; interfere with or disrupt the Platform's operation; attempt to gain unauthorised access; use automated tools or bots without prior written consent; circumvent subscription limits or access controls; use the Platform for any unlawful purpose; submit content that is primarily promotional (Editorial Guidelines 3.1); or register using a fraudulent or spoofed email domain.

12. Termination and Suspension

12.1 Termination by User

You may close your account at any time by contacting the Operator. Account closure does not entitle you to a refund of any prepaid fees or unused credits (see Section 5.4).

12.2 Termination by Operator

The Operator may suspend or terminate your account immediately and without notice if you breach any provision of these Terms; the Operator reasonably suspects fraudulent or unauthorised activity; your domain verification status changes; or the Operator is required to do so by law.

12.3 Effect of Termination

Upon termination, your access to the Platform will be revoked and your published articles may remain on the Platform unless you request their removal prior to termination. The treatment of unused Submission Credits depends on the circumstances of termination: (a) if you terminate your account voluntarily, unused credits will be forfeited; (b) if the Operator terminates your account for breach of these Terms or fraudulent activity, unused credits will be forfeited; (c) if the Operator terminates your account for any other reason (including discontinuation of the service), the Operator will refund the value of any unused Submission Credits, calculated at the price paid per credit at the time of purchase, within 30 days of termination.

13. Limitation of Liability

13.1 Platform Provided "As Is"

The Platform is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. The Operator makes no warranties or representations, express or implied, regarding the Platform's availability, reliability, accuracy, or fitness for any particular purpose.

13.2 Exclusion of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Operator shall not be liable for any indirect, consequential, special, or incidental losses; any loss of profit, revenue, business, data, or goodwill; any damage to your reputation; any inaccuracies in Analytics; any downtime or unavailability; or any actions taken by third parties in reliance on published content.

13.3 Cap on Liability

The Operator's total aggregate liability shall not exceed the greater of the total fees paid by you in the twelve months preceding the claim, or one hundred pounds sterling (£100).

13.4 Nothing Excluded

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited by law.

14. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the Operator and its directors, officers, employees, and agents from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of: your breach of these Terms; any content you submit to the Platform; your use of the Platform in violation of applicable law; any claim that you were not authorised to submit content on behalf of a Brand; or any infringement of third-party intellectual property rights caused by your submitted content. Your total liability under this indemnity shall not exceed the greater of the total fees paid by you in the 12 months preceding the claim or five hundred pounds sterling (£500). The Operator will use reasonable endeavours to mitigate any losses and will notify you promptly of any claim to which this indemnity may apply.

15. General Provisions

15.1 Governing Law

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales shall have exclusive jurisdiction.

15.2 Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with the Editorial Guidelines, the Cancellation and Refund Policy, the Privacy Policy and any applicable subscription agreement, constitute the entire agreement between you and the Operator in relation to the Article Submission Service.

15.3 Amendments

The Operator may amend these Terms at any time by publishing the revised terms on the Platform. The Operator will give at least 30 days' written notice (by email to your registered email address) of any material changes. If you do not agree to the revised Terms, you may terminate your account before the changes take effect and receive a refund of any unused Submission Credits in accordance with Section 12.3(c). Continued use of the Platform after the effective date of the revised Terms constitutes acceptance of the changes.

15.4 Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable, that provision shall be severed and the remaining provisions shall continue in full force and effect.

15.5 Third-Party Rights

These Terms do not confer any rights on any third party under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

15.6 Force Majeure

Neither party shall be liable for any failure or delay in performing its obligations to the extent caused by circumstances beyond that party's reasonable control, including but not limited to: acts of God, fire, flood, or extreme weather; epidemic or pandemic; war, terrorism, or civil unrest; government action, sanctions, or embargoes; failure of telecommunications or internet infrastructure; cyberattack or security incident affecting the Platform's infrastructure; or industrial action (whether or not involving that party's employees). The affected party must notify the other party promptly of the force majeure event and use reasonable endeavours to mitigate its effects. If a force majeure event continues for more than 60 consecutive days, either party may terminate these Terms by giving 14 days' written notice, and the Operator will refund any unused Submission Credits in accordance with Section 12.3(c).

16. Launch Calendar

Where the Operator makes a launch calendar available to vehicle manufacturer press offices, the following applies.

16.1 Nature of the service

The launch calendar is an information service. An entry records that dates are held, the kind of event, a region and a status, and — only if you choose — the vehicle segment, the audience and the approximate number of journalists; nothing else. Other participants see entries without the name of the Brand that made them. The Operator does not allocate dates, does not relay requests between participants other than as described in Section 16.3, and does not arbitrate between participants. Nothing in the launch calendar reserves a date or obliges any participant to change its plans.

16.2 Your entries

Entries must be made in good faith and kept current. Entries that are not re-confirmed when prompted lapse and are no longer shown to other participants. The Operator may limit the number of tentative entries a Brand may hold at once.

16.3 Mutual reveal

Where your dates overlap another participant's entry, either of you may ask the other to reveal identities for those two entries. Nothing is revealed unless the other participant agrees; if they do, each of you sees the other's Brand and the contact details of the person who asked or accepted, for those entries only. What you do after that is between you. The launch calendar must not be used to reach any agreement between manufacturers, and the Operator takes no part in any such discussion.

16.4 Confidentiality and your data

What you see in the launch calendar is for your own planning and may not be shared outside your organisation. Your entries are stored in the United Kingdom, are shared with other participants only as described in this Section, are not used for analytics beyond the counts shown to participants, and are not used to train any automated system. Every view and change is recorded against the user who made it. If you leave the launch calendar, your entries are deleted. The Operator may withdraw access for misuse.

17. Contact Information

For any questions, complaints, or requests relating to these Terms or the Article Submission Service, please contact:

Automotive Technology PR Limited t/a Auto Press Hub
Registered in England and Wales, company number 13671308
Registered office: 3 Grosvenor House, Chapel Street, Congleton, England, CW12 4AB
VAT registration number GB 399338828
Email: contact@autopresshub.co.uk