Terms and conditions of sale are mandatory for any French online store selling to individuals. Shopify provides generic templates, but they are drafted under Anglo-Saxon law and do not cover the fourteen-day right of withdrawal, the legal guarantee of conformity, or the information required by the Consumer Code.
This guide covers what a Shopify terms and conditions of sale document must contain to be valid in France, where to integrate them into Shopify, and when it becomes useful to pay a lawyer. Our answer on the latter point is later than most agencies.
Missing or non-compliant terms and conditions can result in an administrative fine of up to 15,000 euros for an individual and 75,000 euros for a company.
Summary
- Terms and Conditions, Legal Notices, Terms of Use: What the Law Requires
- What Your Terms and Conditions Must Contain
- Where and How to Integrate Them into Shopify
- Our Position: Start with the Free Generator
- The Most Common Mistakes
- Selling Outside France
- Resources to Read Next
Where to start? If you are launching your store and looking for the quickest and least expensive solution, go directly to section 4. If you already have terms and conditions and want to check their compliance, section 5 lists the shortcomings we most often observe during our audits.
1. Terms and Conditions, Legal Notices, Terms of Use: What the Law Requires
These three documents are often confused. However, they address distinct obligations, and a serious French online store must have all three.
- The Terms and Conditions (CGV) govern the commercial relationship: price, order, payment, delivery, withdrawal, guarantees. They are mandatory in B2C and must be accepted before payment.
- The Legal Notices identify the site publisher: company name, legal form, capital, registered office, RCS, intra-community VAT, publication director, host. Mandatory for any e-commerce site.
- The Terms of Use (CGU) govern the use of the site itself: customer account, intellectual property, editorial responsibility. Shopify terms of use are not legally mandatory but are highly recommended whenever customer accounts are involved.
In addition, there are two separate documents, often incorrectly treated as annexes to the Terms and Conditions: the privacy policy, required by GDPR, and the return policy. Shopify's generator produces all three, which we will discuss in section 4.
2. What Your Terms and Conditions Must Contain
The Consumer Code sets out a list of information that must be provided before the contract is concluded. Generic templates systematically omit some of this information.
- The seller's identity. Company name, registered office address, contact details, RCS and intra-community VAT number.
- The essential characteristics of the products and the price including all taxes, with delivery costs displayed before validation.
- Accepted payment methods, and the exact moment of debit.
- Delivery times, with a deadline. The absence of a date engages your liability in case of delay.
- The fourteen-day right of withdrawal, its legal exceptions, and the standard withdrawal form that must be provided.
- Legal guarantees of conformity (two years) and hidden defects. These are mandatory and cannot be waived, regardless of what an imported template may state.
- After-sales service and complaint procedures.
- The consumer ombudsman, whose contact details must be provided. This is the most frequent omission on French stores.
- Applicable law and competent jurisdiction in case of dispute.
The standard withdrawal form and the ombudsman's contact details are the two elements we most often find missing. Neither appears in the default Shopify templates.
As of June 19, 2026, a clause is no longer sufficient: your terms and conditions must also indicate the existence and location of the online withdrawal functionality, which is now mandatory. We detail its setup in our 2026 return policy guide.
3. Where and How to Integrate Them into Shopify
Shopify provides a dedicated location for legal documents, distinct from standard pages. This is the one to use, as it automatically populates the links in the checkout funnel.
- In the administration, open Settings, then Policies.
- Fill in each document in its field: terms and conditions of sale, privacy policy, refund policy, shipping policy.
- Shopify then generates accessible pages and automatically adds the links to the checkout footer.
- Then add these links to your theme's footer, as the checkout link is not enough: the information must be accessible before adding to the cart.
An important clarification regarding acceptance. Displaying a link to the terms and conditions does not constitute acceptance. For consent to be enforceable, an explicit and unchecked checkbox must be present at the time of order. Shopify offers this option natively in the payment settings, and it is disabled by default.
On the stores we audit, this is the most often overlooked point: the terms and conditions exist, but there is no proof that the customer accepted them.
4. Our Position: Start with Shopify's Free Generator
This is the advice we consistently give to brands starting out, and it often comes as a surprise: use Shopify's free T&C and ToU generator, and don't spend a single euro on a lawyer for your launch.
We are sometimes told that this is surprising coming from an agency. That is precisely why we say it: we have nothing to sell on this item, and we see too many creators spending 1,500 to 3,000 euros on legal drafting before they have even received their first order.
The reasoning is economic before it is legal. Perfect T&Cs will never sell you one more item. They do not change your conversion rate, your average order value, or your acquisition cost. They protect you from a risk, which is necessary, but they do not generate any revenue. Every euro spent on this item at launch is a euro that does not go into your product photos, acquisition, or inventory, where it would truly work.
However, at launch, the real risk is low. A dispute assumes customers, volume, and a complaint. A brand making its first ten sales is not in this situation.
What the Shopify Generator Does Well
- It is free, requires no paid account, and produces a document in minutes
- It has been drafted and reviewed by legal professionals, which puts it far above a template copied from a forum
- It covers both T&Cs and ToUs in one go, which many creators mistakenly treat separately
- It is also available as a privacy policy and refund policy, covering the complete legal foundation of a store
- The document remains editable: you receive it by email and can adjust it freely
Shopify itself states that these templates do not constitute legal advice. This is correct, and it does not diminish their usefulness as a starting point.
When It's Time to Move On
Our rule, after more than a hundred stores assisted: the generator is sufficient as long as you sell a standard product, to individuals, in France. Three situations justify investing in custom drafting, and only one of them is related to turnover.
- Your product falls under an exception to the right of withdrawal. Perishable goods, unsealed cosmetics, personalized products, downloaded digital goods. A generic template will apply the fourteen days to everything, and you will be obliged to refund items that the law allowed you to refuse.
- Your sales model goes beyond the simple case. Subscription, pre-order, private sale, marketplace, B2B: each substantially modifies the applicable clauses, and no generator covers them.
- You have exceeded the threshold where a dispute costs more than prevention. At this stage, you have the turnover to absorb it, which was not the case at launch.
In all three cases, two additions still need to be made manually even with a custom document: the contact details of your consumer ombudsman, which depend on the organization you are affiliated with, and the standard withdrawal form, which the law requires you to provide. No generator can guess these.
Summary of our position: free generator at launch, lawyer when the product or model requires it, never the other way around.
5. The Most Common Mistakes
Here's what we consistently find during our audits of French Shopify stores.
- T&Cs literally translated from English. They mention concepts that do not exist in French law and omit the legal guarantee of conformity.
- No acceptance checkbox at the time of order, therefore no proof of consent.
- Missing withdrawal form, even though it must be provided to the consumer.
- The ombudsman not designated, or mentioned without usable contact details.
- Shipping costs revealed at the last moment, which violates the obligation of prior information and increases cart abandonment.
- T&Cs never updated after a change in catalog, shipping, or opening to new countries.
- A delivery time formulated as "approximately" without a deadline, which does not satisfy the legal obligation.
The last point is worth emphasizing: compliance is not a one-time project. Every evolution of your offering requires a review, just like a price change.
6. Selling Outside France
As soon as you deliver to another European Union country, the principle is the protection of the consumer in their country of residence. Your French terms and conditions are no longer sufficient if they contradict a more protective local rule.
Three topics to address first: the applicable VAT regime depending on the country and the distance selling threshold, mandatory mentions specific to certain markets, and the language of drafting, as a consumer may require a document in their language.
The invoicing and VAT aspect is the most challenging in practice: our article on Shopify invoicing covers compliant invoices, the OSS desk, and electronic invoicing. For multi-country configuration itself, currencies, taxes, and languages, see Shopify Markets.
If you sell to professionals, the regime also changes: B2B terms and conditions are not subject to consumer law and meet other requirements. Our Shopify B2B guide covers this case.
For support on bringing your store into compliance, you can contact us. We do not draft legal documents, but we audit the technical compliance of your funnel and work with lawyers specializing in e-commerce.
7. Resources to Read Next
Compliance is just one brick among many when launching or growing a store. Here are the guides to open depending on the stage you are at.
If You Are Launching Your Store
Legal documents can be settled in an hour with the generator. The rest of the launch requires more: our guide how to create a Shopify store covers all the steps, and how much a Shopify site costs gives you an idea of the costs before you commit. If you are still unsure about the plan, our Shopify pricing page details the costs, including those discovered later.
If You Sell Internationally or B2B
These are the two cases where your standard terms and conditions are no longer sufficient. Our article on Shopify invoicing covers VAT, the OSS desk, and electronic invoicing, and Shopify Markets covers multi-country configuration. On the professional side, the Shopify B2B guide explains why consumer law does not apply and what that changes.
If Your Store Is Already Running
Shipping costs displayed too late are both a breach of the obligation to inform and one of the primary causes of cart abandonment. The topic is covered in our conversion guide, and the retargeting mechanism in our article on abandoned cart recovery. On the payment funnel itself, Shop Pay is worth examining.
To Go Further
Our Shopify FAQ answers the most frequent questions in a few lines, the ultimate Shopify guide provides an overview, and all our resources are gathered in our e-commerce guides.