the legal bit

Terms of Service

Last updated: 23 June 2026

This is a managed website service — not a transfer of source code or a self-hosted website. You're hiring me to build, host and look after a website for your business, with an Admin Panel to run it yourself. By paying a deposit, you confirm you've read, understood and agreed to these terms.

01What you're buying — a licence, not the code

You're buying a fully built, hosted, working website and a licence to use it, plus a login to your own Admin Panel to manage your content (text, images, products, prices). No intellectual property rights or ownership rights in the underlying software, source code, systems, or infrastructure are transferred to you.

02Intellectual property and your licence

All source code, software, databases, design framework and underlying systems that build and run your website are, and remain, my exclusive intellectual property, protected by copyright. Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, I am the author and first owner of copyright in this code and system, and no assignment of copyright is made to you under this agreement. You receive a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use your hosted website and Admin Panel for your own business. This licence continues while payments are maintained and these terms are not breached, and terminates automatically on breach of these terms or on non-payment. You (and anyone acting for you) agree not to copy, reproduce, reverse-engineer, decompile, resell, sub-licence, or attempt to extract or recreate the code or system. For these reasons, and to keep every site I host secure, you are not given source code, server access or database files. This is a condition of the service. No sale, assignment, transfer or exclusive licence of the software, source code, database structure or underlying platform is intended or created by this agreement.

03What you own

• Your content — all text, images and logos you provide or create through the Admin Panel.
• Your domain name — registered in your name, always yours.
• Your data — the customer data your site collects (see section 9).

04If you move on, or I stop trading

• If you move to another developer: I'll export your content (text and images) into a standard file you can take with you. The code, system and framework stay with me.
• If I ever cease trading: I'll provide a static export of the publicly visible website (HTML, CSS, images, and assets only), with all backend functionality, databases, and admin systems excluded. It does not include my underlying system or source code. (See section 14 for what you're entitled to in that situation.)

05Deposit, payment and refunds (the build)

• Deposit (50%): A deposit of 50% of the agreed build price secures your slot and my time, and work begins once it's paid. The deposit is a payment for reserving time, scheduling, and commencing development work, and is not contingent on delivery milestones. It reflects a genuine pre-estimate of the time I reserve and the work I turn away to commit to your project, and is not a penalty.
• 48-hour change-of-mind window: If you cancel within 48 hours of paying your deposit and before I've started work, you receive a full refund. As I often begin shortly after payment, this window may close as soon as work begins.
• Consumer cancellation rights: Most clients buy as a business (for example a company, or a sole trader buying a business website) and are not "consumers", so the statutory 14-day cancellation right does not apply to them. If you are an individual buying for purposes outside a business, you have a 14-day right to cancel under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. By asking me to start work straight away, you expressly request that the service begins within that period and acknowledge that you will lose this right once the work has been fully performed; if you cancel after work has begun but before completion, you remain liable for the cost of the work carried out, which the deposit goes towards.
• Once work has started: the deposit is non-refundable. If you decide not to continue, I keep the deposit and stop development; no further payments will be due from either party, and the website is not handed over.
• Substantial completion: Once a working preview is delivered for review, testing, or client approval, the project is considered substantially complete and refunds are no longer applicable.
• Review and acceptance: Please review and give feedback on a delivered preview within 14 days. If I don't hear from you within 14 days of delivering a preview, the project may be treated as accepted.
• Work valuation: In the event of cancellation, any work completed is not priced individually unless agreed in writing prior to commencement.
• Balance and handover: The remaining 50% is due on completion. Your live website and Admin Panel login are released only once the balance is paid in full. Until then, the website, its code and its hosting remain entirely mine.
• What this covers: These deposit and balance payments cover the design and build of your website. Hosting, maintenance and ongoing support after launch are covered separately under sections 6 and 7.

06Hosting, Maintenance and Support

The first three months of hosting, maintenance and support are included at no additional charge, starting from the date your website goes live. After that included period, a subscription fee of £25 per month, payable in advance, keeps your website hosted and maintained.

The subscription includes:

• website hosting;
• security updates;
• bug fixes;
• backups;
• reasonable technical support; and
• maintenance reasonably required to keep your website operating correctly.

Routine content updates that can be made through the Admin Panel (text, images, products, prices and the like) are your responsibility.

The subscription does not include new features, custom development, redesigns, major layout changes, third-party integrations, or any functionality that was not part of your website as originally built. Any work outside the included maintenance scope may be quoted separately, and no such work will be carried out until you have agreed the price in advance. For the avoidance of doubt, the subscription does not entitle you to unlimited support, unlimited maintenance or unlimited development work.

07Subscription Payments and Non-Payment

The monthly subscription fee becomes due after the initial three-month included period and is payable monthly in advance. A grace period of 14 days applies after each payment due date; during the grace period the fee remains due and payable.

If payment remains outstanding after the grace period, I may suspend your website and Admin Panel. Outstanding subscription fees continue to accrue during any suspension, and your website will be restored only once all outstanding fees have been paid.

If payment remains outstanding for a further 30 days after suspension, I may terminate the service, revoke your licence to use the website, and permanently delete the hosted website, data, backups and associated files. Once deleted, recovery may not be possible.

08Your responsibilities, mistakes and tampering

• If you (or anyone you bring in) get around the Admin Panel, alter the code, and break the site, that is not my responsibility.
• If you break the site through the Admin Panel — e.g. deleting something you shouldn't — I can restore it from a backup at my standard hourly rate.
• If your site is compromised because of a weak password you set, or content you chose to publish, I'm not responsible for any resulting loss.
• You're responsible for ensuring all content you provide is lawful, does not infringe third-party rights, and complies with applicable laws.
• You warrant that any content, images, logos, trademarks or other materials you provide are owned by you, or that you have permission to use them.

09Your customers' data

Where your site collects customer information (names, emails, enquiries, orders), I act as your data processor and you remain the data controller. In line with Article 28 of the UK GDPR, as your processor I will: only process that data on your documented instructions; keep it confidential; apply appropriate security measures; use only carefully selected sub-processors where needed to provide the service (such as hosting, email and backup providers), which you authorise; assist you with data-subject requests and your own compliance duties; and delete or return the data at the end of our work. Sensitive details such as passwords are one-way encrypted so they can't be read by anyone, including me. You are responsible for ensuring you have a lawful basis for collecting and using that data under UK data-protection law. A separate Data Processing Agreement covering these obligations in full is available on request.

10Attacks and emergency suspension

My hosting is usage-based, so my system monitors for sudden, unnatural traffic spikes from malicious activity such as DDoS floods, brute-force login attempts, or rogue scraping bots. If your site comes under a heavy malicious attack that risks running up large server costs or harming my wider infrastructure, or where it is otherwise reasonably necessary to protect the security, stability or operation of my systems or other customers, I reserve the right to temporarily suspend service where immediate action is required to prevent harm, and I'll tell you straight away afterwards. Once it's safe, I restore your site at no cost. If blocking the attackers requires complex, custom work, that falls outside the included maintenance and may be quoted separately under section 6, with a fee agreed before I begin.

11Uptime

Your website runs on professional, enterprise-grade hosting. I take reasonable steps to keep it online, but I cannot guarantee uninterrupted availability; downtime may occur due to factors outside my control, including hosting-provider outages or malicious attacks. Where downtime occurs, I will restore service as promptly as is reasonably practicable, and at no cost where the cause is not attributable to you.

12Liability

I'm a solo developer, not a 24/7 agency or security firm. I'm not liable for indirect or consequential losses, including loss of business, revenue, profits or reputation, arising from downtime, attacks, suspensions, or your own use of the Admin Panel. My total liability to you is limited to the total amount you've paid me in the 12 months before the claim. This limitation applies to the maximum extent permitted by law. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes my liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot legally be limited or excluded. Nothing in these terms guarantees that the website will generate enquiries, sales, revenue, search-engine rankings or business results.

13Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and any disputes fall under its courts.

14Termination

Either party may terminate this agreement. On termination, your licence to use the website ends and access to the live website and Admin Panel may be revoked. Termination for non-payment of the subscription is dealt with in section 7. Terms that by their nature should continue after termination — including intellectual property, payment and liability — remain in force. If I permanently cease trading, clients who are fully paid and not in breach of these terms remain entitled to the static export described in section 4.