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Mutual Agreement
Between Us And You.
Beyond Digital Marketing, LLC
Summary
We will always do our best to fulfill your needs and meet your goals, but sometimes it’s best to have a few things written down so that we both know what’s what, who should do what and what happens if stuff goes wrong. In this contract you won’t find complicated legal terms or long passages of unreadable text. We have no desire to trick you into signing something that you might later regret. We do want what’s best for the safety of both parties, now and in the future.
In short
You are hiring us Beyond Digital Marketing, LLC to design and develop a website for the estimated total price as outlined in our proposal. Of course it’s a little more complicated, but we’ll get to that.
What Do Both Parties Agree To Do?
As our customer, you have the power and ability to enter into this contract on behalf of your company or organization. You agree to provide us with everything that we’ll need to complete the project – including text, images, and other information – as and when we need it and in the format, we ask for. You agree to review our work, provide feedback and approval in a timely manner too. Deadlines work two ways and you’ll also be bound by any dates that we set together. You also agree to stick to the payment schedule set out at the end of this contract.
We have the experience and ability to perform the services you need from us and we will carry them out in a professional and timely manner. Along the way, we will endeavor to meet all the deadlines set but we can’t be responsible for a missed launch date or a deadline if you have been late in supplying materials or have not approved or signed off our work on time at any stage. On top of this, we’ll also maintain the confidentiality of any information that you give us.
Getting Down to the Nitty Gritty
Design
If we are designing your application we’ll create designs for the look-and-feel, layout, and functionality of your website. This contract includes one main design plus the opportunity for you to make up to two rounds of revisions. If you’re not happy with the designs at this stage, you will pay us in full for all of the work that we have produced until that point and you may either cancel this contract or continue to commission us to make further design revisions at our standard design rates.
HTML and CSS Layout Templates
If the project includes HTML markup and CSS templates, we’ll develop these using valid HTML and CSS code. The landscape of web browsers and devices changes regularly and our approach is to look forward, not back. With that in mind, we will test all our markup and CSS in current versions of all major desktop browsers to ensure that we make the most from them. Users of older or less capable browsers or devices will experience a design that is appropriate to the capabilities of their software.
We do not cater for people using Microsoft Internet Explorer (all versions) and cannot predict the behavior of that browser.
We will also test that these templates perform well on Apple’s iPad. We will not test old or abandoned browsers, for example, Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows or Mac, previous versions of Apple’s Safari, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera unless otherwise specified. If you need us to consider these older browsers, we will charge you at our standard old browser rate for any necessary additional design work, development, and testing.
Text Content
We may have written a hundred blog posts but we’re not responsible for writing or inputting any text copy unless we specified it in the original estimate. We’ll be happy to help though, and in addition to the estimate, we will charge you at our standard copywriting or content input rate.
Photographs
You will supply us with photographs in digital format. If you choose to buy stock photographs we can suggest vendors of stock photography. Any time we spend searching for appropriate photographs will be charged at our standard discovery rate.
Changes and Revisions
We know from plenty of experience that fixed-price contracts are rarely beneficial to you, as they often limit you to your first idea about how something should look, or how it might work. We don’t want to limit your options or opportunities to change your mind. The estimate/quotation prices are based on the amount of work we estimate we’ll need to accomplish everything you have told us you want to achieve. If you do want to change your mind, add extra pages or templates, or even add new functionality, that won’t be a problem. However, you will be charged accordingly and these additional costs will need to be agreed to before the extra work commences. This additional work will affect deadlines and they will be moved accordingly. We’ll be upfront about all of this if and when it happens to make sure we’re all on the same page before proceeding. We may also ask you to put requests in writing so we can keep track of changes. If the nature or functions of the project change significantly throughout the process, we reserve the right to deem the current project canceled. At this point, you will pay us in full for all the work we have done and may commission us to complete the new project based on the new requirements. This will require a new quote and contract.
Approval to launch the site acts as your acceptance with the deliverable. The second half of the project invoice will be sent to collect payment, and any items moving forward will fall under a new scope of work.
Technical Support
You may already have professional website hosting, you might even manage that hosting in-house; if that’s the case, great. If you don’t manage your own website hosting, or your current hosting environment does not support the solution we are providing, we can set up an account for you at one of our preferred, third-party hosting providers. We will charge you a one-off fee for installing your site on this server, plus any statistics software such as Google Analytics, then the updates to, and management of that server, plus any support issues will be up to you.
We offer web hosting for sites developed by Beyond Digital Marketing only if you choose to host with us. This ensures that all code is safely controlled. Please reach out for more details on our website hosting offerings.
Hosting
Migration Fee: Unless built by us, a migration fee will be charged for moving your sites content onto our dedicated hosting environments. This will be billed at our standard hourly rate and invoiced separately.
Uptime: We strive for perfection when it comes to keeping your site online, maintaining a 99.9% uptime. With a signed SLA, if we fail to deliver 99.9% or above, we’ll credit you for the amount of time that service was unavailable after each year. If hosting is transferred prior to a years subscription, reimbursement will not be offered.
Server Access: Due to the high level of security and configuration of our servers, we are unable to provide cPanel or FTP access to our clients.
WordPress Access: Both Admin and Editor level users will be provided after payment has been received in full for the website project. We strongly recommend making all site edits under the Editor level. If a change is made at the Admin level requiring our time to fix, this time will be billable at our standard rate.
Security: We implement best practices and offer routine WordPress maintenance to help keep your site safe. We can not guarantee that your site will not be hacked. We strongly advise signing up for our weekly backups in the event that your site is compromised, so we have a previous restore point to roll back to.
Changing Hosts: Should you wish to move your website to another host from ours, we will package all site files and databases; however, please be advised that sites may not port over to certain servers, and/or the site may lose certain functionalities on certain servers. We are not responsible for any loss of functionality or issues on a new host. There is no termination charge, however, the time it takes for us to package your website and database will be billed. Downtime credits will also be forfeited. Should the site require additional programming to port to another server/host, or should we be required to engage in extensive consulting to assist in the migration, we will bill for our time at our standard hourly rate. Payment must be received before the release of the packaged files.
Retainer Agreements
Retainer agreements are based on a 12 month contract. Prices exclude paid media spend (this would be an additional line item which goes strictly to paid ads). Any discounted or free services may cease if a contract is broken by either party. If this occurs, standard rates will apply for any remaining services. We request a 30 days written notice of intent to cancel a retainer agreement. All outstanding invoices must be paid in full immediately after the cancellation notice is countersigned. Any outstanding assets will remain property of Beyond Digital Marketing until invoices are paid in full.
Legal stuff
We can’t guarantee that the functions contained in any web page templates or in a completed website will always be error-free and so we can’t be liable to you or any third-party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages arising out of the operation of or inability to operate this website and any other web pages, even if you have advised us of the possibilities of such damages.
If any provision of this agreement shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this agreement and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.
Phew!
Copyrights
You guarantee to us that any elements of text, graphics, photos, designs, trademarks, or other artwork that you provide us for inclusion in the website are either owned by your good selves, or that you have permission to use them.
When we receive your final payment, copyright is automatically assigned as follows:
You own the graphics and other visual elements that we create for you for this project.
We’ll give you a copy of all files and you should store them really safely as we are not required to keep them or provide any native source files we used to make them.
You also own text content, photographs and other data you provided unless someone else owns them. We own the markup, CSS, and other code and we license it to you for use on only this project. We love to show off our work and share what we have learned with other people, so we reserve the right to display and link to your completed project as part of our portfolio and to write about the project on websites, in magazine articles, and in books about web design.
Payments
We are sure you understand how important it is as a small business that you pay the invoices that we send you promptly. As we’re also sure you’ll want to stay friends, you agree to stick tight to the following payment schedule:
Net Terms
- Net-15
Paid Media Spend
- Due upon receipt
- We reserve the right to hold/pause a campaign until payment is received upfront.
Website Projects
- 50% deposit upfront, and is non-refundable
- 50% balance after 90 days or once the website has been tested and everyone agrees it is ready to go live (whichever occurs first).
If you are unable to supply all of the right content at this stage, it does not mean we have not done our job. Once the site has been tested and is ready to go live, either with your content or placeholder images and dummy text, we will issue the final invoice. Once the final invoice is paid we will hand over the keys and show you how to put your content in once it’s ready. If the final invoice is not paid within the credit terms we have given you, we are under no obligation to keep the site on our testing server or continue with the project in any way.
If payment for the project or services falls 90 days overdue, we reserve the right to suspend the project and services until full payment has been received. This includes web hosting.
We accept the following methods of payment:
- Check made payable to Beyond Digital Marketing
- ACH Payment (please request our account number)
- Venmo (@beyonddigital)
- Stripe (recurring payments only – i.e. hosting)
But where’s all the horrible small print?
Just like a parking ticket, you can’t transfer this contract to anyone else without our permission. This contract stays in place and need not be renewed. If for some reason one part of this contract becomes invalid or unenforceable, the remaining parts of it remain in place. Although the language is simple, the intentions are serious and this contract is a legal document under the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Connecticut.