Terms of service
Version 4, Oct 15, 2026.
What Dowser is
Dowser is a nightly report of public hospitality license filings and records, compiled for the people who sell to bars, restaurants and stores. Dowser is operated by Dowser Intelligence LLC, and these terms are the agreement between your organization and Dowser Intelligence LLC. Compiled from public records. Verify before contact. A record on Dowser is a reading of what a municipality or the state published; the publication is the fact, and Dowser's reading of it can be wrong or late.
Your use of the data
The data is licensed to your organization for its own sales use. It is not for resale, redistribution, or publication, and not for building a list you sell or give to anyone outside your organization. Exports are for your own sales use.
Your outreach
How you contact the businesses in the records is yours to decide and yours to make lawful. You are responsible for making your calls, texts, emails and visits comply with the anti-spam and telemarketing laws that apply to you — among them the federal CAN-SPAM Act and Telephone Consumer Protection Act and Illinois's telephone solicitation and automatic dialer laws — including consent, identification, do-not-call lists and opt-outs. Dowser supplies public records; it does not send, and does not vouch for, any message you send.
Suspension
Dowser Intelligence LLC may suspend or end an account that resells or redistributes the data, that extracts it in bulk by any route other than Dowser's own exports — scraping, scripted downloads, sharing a login — or that uses it to look for people's home addresses or personal numbers. Dowser says why, in writing, and a suspended account is not refunded for the period in which the breach happened.
Your organization's records
What your organization writes on Dowser — statuses, routes, home bases, saved views, territories — belongs to your organization and is shown to no other. Statuses are visible only to your organization.
People in the records
Owner and officer names appear as a municipality or the state publishes them in its license records: a name and a title, the licensed premises as the only address, and nothing beyond the public record. Dowser does not gather home addresses or personal phone numbers, and you agree not to use Dowser to look for them.
Billing
Plans are paid monthly or yearly, in advance, with no trial. A plan renews at the end of each paid period, and is charged again, until you cancel it. You can cancel yourself at any time; cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period, and nothing renews after that. Monthly plans are not refunded. A yearly plan is refunded in full if you ask within 14 days of its purchase or renewal (an upgrade doesn't start a new 14 days), unless your organization has taken records in bulk since then. Taking records in bulk means fetching the full daily feed, or taking more than 500 different records for each paid seat in any 24 hours. Plan and seat changes are prorated, except that once your organization has taken records in bulk on a yearly plan, a change that lowers your yearly total, such as a lower plan, fewer seats or monthly billing, earns no credit for the time left on it. Chicago subscribers may owe Chicago's lease transaction tax on this subscription; it isn't included in the price.
Price changes
Dowser's prices can change, and a change never reaches a period you have already paid for. When a renewal would be at a new price, Dowser Intelligence LLC tells you by email at least 30 days before that renewal — to the address you sign in with and the one your receipts go to — so you can cancel before it if the new price is not for you.
Accounts and sign-in
Sign-in is handled by Clerk on Dowser's behalf; Dowser never stores a password. Your login email is your identity on Dowser and the address its mail goes to. An administrator of your organization can add and remove its members.
What Dowser promises, and does not
Dowser is delivered as it is, read from public sources that change without notice. Dowser does not promise that a filing will become a license, that a record is complete, or that the service is available at every moment. Dowser Intelligence LLC's liability to you is limited to what you paid for the service in the three months before the claim.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and any dispute under them is brought in the state or federal courts sitting in Cook County, Illinois, whose jurisdiction you accept.
Changes
When these terms change, you are asked to accept the new version at your next sign-in before you go on; the version and the date are at the top of this page.