The deal between you and us.

What boostsmall is

A review platform for independent, family-owned small businesses in the Houston metro and East Texas. Free to browse, free to write reviews, free to claim your business. No pay-to-rank, no chains, no ads.

Your account

• You must be 13 or older. By signing up you're saying you are.
• One account per person. Don't create fakes to inflate or attack a business.
• You're responsible for what gets posted from your account. Don't share your sign-in link.

Reviews — the rules

The whole site rests on reviews being honest. So:

• Only review places you actually visited. Specifics help — what you ordered, who was working, what surprised you.
• Don't review your own business. Same for family members, employees, and competitors.
• No paid reviews.Don't accept money, free food, or anything else to write a review. Don't pay anyone else to.
• No harassment, slurs, threats, or doxing. We'll remove these and ban repeat offenders.
• No spam, no copy-paste, no AI-generated reviews. We filter these out.
• Photos must be yours.Don't upload someone else's photo or a screenshot from another site.

We can remove reviews that break these rules, with or without notice. Reviews that get reported by neighbors or flagged by our moderators go through a human review before action is taken.

Who owns what you post

You keep ownership of your reviews and photos. By posting them you give boostsmall a non-exclusive license to display them on the site, in emails to verified owners, and in press coverage of boostsmall. If you delete a review, we delete our copy too (subject to legal hold requirements).

Owners — claiming and responding

• You can claim a listing if you're the actual owner or an authorized representative. We verify by phone or email at the listed contact.
• Owner responses are public. Stay professional — threatening, insulting, or doxing a reviewer means losing the listing.
• You can't pay to bury a review or boost your ranking. That isn't a feature and never will be.
• If you sell or close the business, transfer or release the claim. Listings for closed businesses get archived.

Things you can't do

• Scrape the site, run bots, or hammer our servers.
• Try to reverse-engineer or break the moderation system.
• Impersonate someone else — another reviewer, an owner, a staff member.
• Use boostsmall to promote chains, franchises, or businesses that don't meet the “family-owned and not publicly traded” bar.
• Use the site to do anything illegal.

No warranty, limit of liability

boostsmall is provided as-is. We work hard to keep the data right and the site up, but we can't guarantee a listing is current, a review is accurate, or the site is bug-free. You use it at your own risk. To the maximum extent the law allows, boostsmall isn't liable for indirect or consequential damages from using (or not being able to use) the site.

Closing your account

You can close your account any time by emailing us. We may suspend or close accounts that break these rules. We'll try to tell you why, unless doing so would interfere with an investigation.

Changes to these terms

If something material changes, we'll update this page and email accounts at least 14 days before the change takes effect. Continuing to use the site after that counts as acceptance.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas. Disputes go to the state or federal courts located in Harris County, Texas.