Introduction

Contracts are never fun to read (and this isn’t an overly short one), but it’s here to give you peace of mind & assurance of what working with acerockcola will be like & what you can expect for (almost) all possible situations that could arise. There’s a quick summary below before you get to the individual sections, but the general ethos of the contract is that of fairness. For example, if you want to change something during development, that’s fine and we can negotiate any extra cost that may be involved. Additionally, you will own the site upon completion and payment – this isn’t a license for a website that will cease if you decide to move it away from acerockcola to a competitor – you own it, you can do anything you want to it and take it anywhere you choose if you want to stop working with acerockcola. It’s recommended that you save this document (or ‘Print’ it as a PDF) for your records, but a copy will always be available upon request. Finally, please note that as a sole trader, VAT is not charged on acerockcola‘s services.

Before we get into anything, there are several words that appear often in this contract, they’re explained below for clarity just to make sure that we’re all on the same page.

Definitions:

YOU: Anytime the word ‘You’ appears throughout this contract it specifically refers to COMPANY NAME, AT X LOCATION (or anyone working from or on behalf of COMPANY NAME that you’ve give written permission to do so by email to mail@acerockcola.com).

Domains: Domains are used to identify websites – they’re not the actual websites themselves. Your real website address is a collection of numbers but attaching it to a domain (like google.com or acerockcola.com) makes it easier for customers to find your site. Domains are like registration plates on cars – they can be transferred to other vehicles or changed but the site can still operate (just not with the friendly address that the public are used to).

Hosting: Websites need to be hosted on a server. Your website sits on this server & whenever someone types in your domain name your website is “served” to them. Basically, to have a live & fully functioning website, you need both a domain name & web hosting.

Got it? Let’s start:

Sections:

1) Summary
2) Services To Be Provided By acerockcola, Associated Costs & Payment Timelines For Initial Website Launch
3) Information, Media & Credentials To Be Provided By YOU To acerockcola
4) Renewals
5) Notes, Fees & Penalties
6) Responsive Web Design
7) SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
8) Spam, Virus Protection & Protecting Your Site From Hacking
9) Changes, Revisions & Cancellation During Building Process
10) Editing The Site Once Live & On-Going Maintenance
11) Situations Outwith acerockcola‘s Control
12) Intellectual Property
13) Legal Information
14) Use Of Your Site By acerockcola
15) Branding
16) Payment Information
17) Important Reminders
18) Lastly…

1) Summary:

acerockcola will always do the best to fulfil your needs and meet your expectations, but it’s important to have things written down so we both know what’s what, who should do what and when, and what will happen if something goes wrong or can’t be done. In this contract, you won’t find any complicated legal terms or long passages of unreadable text. There’s no desire here to trick you into signing something that you might later regret. All that we both want is what’s best for both parties, now and in the future.

2) Services To Be Provided By acerockcola, Associated Costs & Payment Timelines For Initial Website Launch:

You (“You”) are hiring acerockcola to perform/implement the following services:

• Design and develop a website to an agreed specification
• Launch of website with customer’s permission on (or before) the date XX/XXXXXX/XXXX
• Host the website for 12 months, procure an SSL certificate for 12 months and perform daily off-site backups for 12 months at no extra cost to you
• Purchase of any stock images, video, plugins, themes or additional extensions as required with no extra cost to you
• Register requested domain name(s) for 12 months at market cost price
• Transfer of domain name(s) if requested
• Configure DNS settings/records when the website is ready to go live
• Pre-recorded video training for how to update the site
• THEN PUT EVERYTHING IN THE PROPOSAL HERE

COST BREAKDOWN:

Upon Receipt Of This Contract:
£XXX.XX (40%/50% of total cost of website & services)

After Launch Of Website:
£XXX.XX (Remaining X% balance of website & services in X number of instalments)

On 1st Of Each Month:
£XXX.XX (Monthly payment for Statistics/SEO/Website Maintenance/XXXXXXXX)

Every 12 Months:
£159 (Yearly Web Hosting, Domain Renewal (if your domain is with acerockcola), Daily Off-site Backups & procurement of a UCC/SAN SSL Certificate – this has a £299 value)
£XX.XX (OTHER SOFTWARE LICENSES IF NEEDED)
£XX.XX (Yearly Renewal of X Google Workspace Email Account[s])

3) Information, Media & Credentials To Be Provided By YOU To acerockcola:

• Company logo/corporate brand assets (the higher in quality & size the better)
• All narrative content that you wish to be included on the site. This ranges from an ‘About Us’ blurb to the description of the services you offer. (acerockcola will provide the terms & conditions page content unless you wish to use your own).
• Staff headshots (the higher in quality & size the better – also looks better if all headshots are taken from the same angle & in the same location)
• Photo(s) of your workplace or photos demonstrating your work (the higher in quality & size the better – please check that you have the necessary consent/approval of anyone or any legally protected products that appear in the photos – acerockcola will not take any legal responsibility for issues regarding intellectual property or privacy concerns in any still media)
• Video(s) of your workplace or photos demonstrating your work (the higher in quality & size the better – please check that you have the necessary consent/approval of anyone or any legally protected products that appear in the photos – acerockcola will not take any legal responsibility for issues regarding intellectual property or privacy concerns in any still media)
• Access to any social media, brand assets, FTP & web hosting accounts requested & agreed upon during the discussion of creating your website

4) Renewals:

Domains:

• Domain names registered for you on behalf of acerockcola will traditionally expire after a minimum of one year.
• Domains with extensions (ending in) .co.uk, .net & .com will be charged at market rate per year for renewal (for example – as of May 2021 this cost is £11.99 for a .co.uk). Prices for the renewal of other domain extensions such as .me & .scot will be renewed at the current standard OVH market rate
• You will be notified at least 30 days before your domain expires (in addition to a final reminder & on the day of expiry if the domain still has not been renewed). Please note that if your domain expires, a redemption fee of £80 will be charged to resurrect your domain providing it is possible to renew your domain name at that point in time.
• You will be given the option to renew your domain for longer than the standard 1-year term in the reminder email that you will receive when your domain is approaching expiry.

Web Hosting, Daily Off-Site Backups & SSL Certificate:

• Web hosting is complimentary for the first year with all websites.
• The procurement and installation of an SSL certificate for the first year is complimentary on all websites.
• Daily backups for the first year are complimentary on all websites.
• The year of complimentary web hosting, backups and the SSL certificate begins the day your site starts being developed (including when sites are in a ‘coming soon’ state).
• The renewal of your web hosting, daily backups & SSL certificate for an annual period is charged at £159 per year, (this has a £209 value).
• You will be notified a least 30 days before your web hosting, backups & SSL certificate expires (in addition to a final reminder & on the day of expiry if the package has still not been renewed).
• If your web hosting/backup plan/SSL certificate lapses then your website will be suspended & display a message saying so. After 30 days passes once your hosting expires, the website will be removed from acerockcola‘s server along with any backups.

The following section explains in greater detail the procedures for other various situations of conflict.

5) Notes, Fees & Penalties:

Ideally, the above definitions & breakdown should cover everything but sometimes things happen – the section below will explain what can be expected if needed.

Expired Services:

• Failure to renew a domain name after the expiry date will result in an £80 charge per domain name (providing that resurrection & the reinstating of the domain is possible). Please note that occasionally, once expired – some domain names are not salvageable & not in a state of retention where they can be renewed. It is in your interest to respond to acerockcola‘s emails concerning your domain names before their expiration.
• Failure to renew web hosting after the expiry date will result in suspension & then deletion after 30 days. There will be an £80 charge to reinstate expired web hosting once all outstanding balances are paid.
• Cessation of payment for the Monthly Recurring Costs mentioned above will result in an immediate halt for any services in use (including backups being taken).

Content:

• acerockcola will suspend (& in some cases permanently remove) your website from the webserver if any of the following are found to be hosted on your site:
  • any scripts, bots or tools used to hack, infect or maliciously damage content stored either on acerockcola‘s server or across the rest of the internet
  • child pornography
  • copyrighted material (if a complaint from the owner of the material is received)
  • any other content deemed illegal under UK law

• acerockcola will not suspend or take any action on your website or web hosting for the use of any controversial rhetoric regardless of complaints received.  Silencing free speech is dangerous.

Spam/Hacked Websites:

• Each new website comes with 12 months of complimentary security maintenance. If your site is hacked or subject to an attack then acerockcola will fix it. If repeated cases of hacking occur however (& it can be faulted to weak passwords set by the user) then an hourly fee to fix the site of £35 per hour will be charged.
• If your site is hacked or comprised after 12 months of being live, then your site will be suspended & you will be notified so a conclusion can be reached. The hourly rate for fixing hacked websites is £35 an hour. Your site will not be reinstated & made live again until the site is clean & verified as so by Sucrri’s online site scanner.

Downtime:

• Occasionally your website may experience downtime (excluding any cause by hacking as mentioned above). Sometimes there are technical issues outwith either of acerockcola’s control such as global DNS issues & power outages that can cause your site to go down & it’s not fun for anyone involved.
• acerockcola monitors every hosted website via the Uptime Robot tool. This monitoring service checks that your website is live every 60 seconds & should the worst happen you can rest easy knowing that it’s something that will have already been brought to attention with the aim of getting your site back up as soon as possible.

6) Responsive Web Design

In a time when the number of web pages viewed on mobile phones outnumbers the number of pages viewed on desktops, it’s vital to have a website that is ‘responsive’ (meaning that the design & content of a site will adapt & rearrange to fit comfortably on mobile phones, tablets, laptops & other handheld devices). All acerockcola websites are responsive for that reason.

The section below will explain what can be expected, however, please note: you are never going to get a website that looks great on a desktop, the latest iPad & a 2010 Blackberry phone.

For this reason, acerockcola will test your website & guarantee usability on the most common devices & browsers:

Desktop Browsers (designed to fit on all resolutions, but optimised for 1080×1920):

• Google Chrome (including official variants like Canary)
• Microsoft Edge
• Mozilla Firefox (including official variants like Developer)
• Safari
• Opera 

Mobile Devices (using either their native browser or Chrome. Firefox or Opera):

• iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch (running 2016’s iOS 10 & above)
• Android phones & tablets (running 2016’s 7/Nougat & above)

7) SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

SEO (in its most basic term) is the background work that’s done to get your website appearing high in Google’s search results for the keywords you choose. (Keywords are phrases like ‘office cleaners Dundee‘ or ‘wedding bands Scotland‘).

SEO takes a long time for results to start to show, you need roughly 4 months of solid work before you’ll start to rank on Google. For this reason, SEO packages initially require a six-month commitment.

SEO is (for lack of a better term), a game with Google. A quick search will show you the never-ending (but completely different) ‘sure fire’ ways that many different companies claim is the most efficient way to make SEO gains. acerockcola has a method (that is kept a secret) but as you can see, it gets results.

SEO is not an exact science and while it may not be possible to get your site in first position for all your keyword choices it’s a lot more effective than traditional advertising. Additionally, SEO reporting (which comes with any SEO plan) has other advantages over traditional advertising such as showing you how many people find your site through your chosen keywords & so on.

Just for clarification, please remember that in order for your site to have the best success for appearing in Google or Bing search results, ongoing SEO will need to be performed on your site to (first achieve) and then keep it high in search engine results. acerockcola can offer an SEO plan for your site with monthly reports on your gains & rankings or alternatively, you can use a separate SEO company or if search engine rankings aren’t important to you or if you’re reaching your customers by other means like word of mouth, Facebook or traditional advertising, then this service can be skipped. Whatever option you choose, please remember that a lack of SEO work equals a lack of search engine results. The concept of SEO to keep your site in search results is something that affects any website, regardless of who builds it. Be wary of committing to work with web design agencies who fail to mention the importance of SEO, as it’s these companies that likely stop caring about your site as soon as you pay their final design invoice.

Regardless of whether you choose to buy an SEO package from acerockcola, all websites are designed to be ‘SEO-ready’ & are accessible to search engines through natural & organic (non-SEO) means. But once again, just so it’s documented in this contract – SEO is very, very, very likely to seriously boost your standing on Google for your chosen keywords, but it will take about 4-6 months for results to appear and in some extreme situations, you may not get the results promised (though this has yet to happen to any client so far).

8) Spam, Virus Protection & Protecting Your Site From Hacking

acerockcola wants your site to remain safe for everyone. As noted in section 5:

• Each new website comes with 12 months of complimentary security maintenance. If your site is hacked or subject to an attack then acerockcola will fix it.
• If your site is hacked or comprised after 12 months of being live then your site will be suspended & you will be notified so a conclusion can be reached. The hourly rate for fixing hacked websites is £35 an hour. Your site will not be reinstated & made live again until the site is clean & verified as so by Sucrri’s online site scanner.

Almost all spam injections and site hijacking comes from your site being ‘hacked’, but virtually all ‘hacks’ to WordPress occur by people using weak passwords and then other people easily guessing those weak passwords. If you update the site yourself you will have a login for WordPress, the password shared with you will be a strong password, like this: rZ5xQ3gC1fZ3aL0n

The stronger a password, the less likely it is for someone to guess it and compromise your site. You will have the ability to change your password in the admin area of WordPress, if you so so keep this password long, strong & also secure, it’s easier for everyone in the long run.

9) Changes, Revisions & Cancellation During Building Process

Alterations:

• acerockcola doesn’t want to limit your ability to change your mind so if things have to change, please don’t hesitate to mention it (ideally at your earliest convenience).
• The price at the beginning of this contract is based on the cost of software licenses & the time estimated to accomplish everything you’ve said that you want to achieve, but it’s in acerockcola’s interest to be flexible.
• If you want to drastically change your mind on things or want to add anything new, that won’t be a problem & after discussion, a separate estimate for the additional cost, work & time will be provided.

Cancelling:

• If you come to decide (once we’ve started working together) that acerockcola isn’t for you or for any other reason on your part you wish to cancel the outstanding agreed work, then we can sever the contract immediately.
• Regardless of the stage that the website is at in design, the percentage you have paid upfront shall be deemed as final payment & all work shall be stopped.
• Any content created during the time leading up to the request to cancel shall be destroyed & not held by acerockcola or given to you.
• acerockcola cannot (at any time) make the decision to cancel this contract (or any agreed work) & retain any payments that you have already made.

10) Editing The Site Once Live & On-Going Maintenance

Editing The Site Yourself:

If an agreement has been made in your proposal that allows you to edit areas of the site yourself, then some (or all) of the following will apply.

• You will receive credentials that allow you to access the website for updating the blog/news page and/or the ability to manage the day-to-day eCommerce aspect of your site
• If your site is to be updated dynamically through syndication of posts from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or other online platforms then you will have to supply acerockcola with credentials to enable the flow of such updates. This requirement varies by platform (from being added as an ‘editor’ to your Facebook page to sharing the username/password for your Instagram account). These connections will need to be maintained for the duration of your website’s existence to ensure seamless synchronisation from the chosen platform(s) to your site.

Updates To Your Site If A Maintenance Plan Is In Place:

• If you choose to take out a maintenance plan with acerockcola then any labour that is required to make changes to existing pages or features that you ask for will not be charged. However, if the purchase of new licenses or software is required, these will be charged to you at cost price.
• If you want to make major changes to your site (such as adding an eCommerce element or adding a large feature such as a Booking System) then the labour for this may be charged for based on the amount of work involved and if you have previously requested many smaller updates in the past (as detailed in the previous point). Similarly, if the purchase of new licenses or software is required for these larger updates, then these will be charged to you at cost price.

Updates To Your Site If A Maintenance Plan Is NOT In Place:

• With the exception of very small updates (a change of phone number for example), any work (in the form of updates or changes) will be charged at £35 per hour for labour. If the purchase of new licenses or software is required, these will be charged to you at cost price.
• If you want anyone except acerockcola to make any changes to your site, this will require you to move your site away from acerockcola and our business relationship will cease. Any monies that have been pre-paid for services that can be cancelled (like SEO), will be refunded to you on a pro-rata/unused basis.

11) Situations Outwith acerockcola‘s Control

If you decide to manage any non-web design element of your domain yourself (or with another company) then acerockcola cannot be held responsible for any issues such as the domain expiring, the management of the nameservers or any of the records inside the DNS zone.

If your site relies on external platforms or APIs (the syndication of your Instagram posts being an example) then acerockcola cannot be held responsible if the company that manages the platform or API decides to stop offering their service integration. An example of this would be if Instagram suddenly globally turning off its ability to allow their photos to be syndicated on external websites. Issues like these are highly unlikely but are in the realm of possibility.

12) Intellectual Property

Unlike most web design companies, you will own your website & be the sole legal owner of its intellectual property. You’ll have total full control of the site (and any other assets created for you like logos or photographs taken) & you’ll be sent a copy of the entire site (& all media assets) on request & you can move it to any other web host if you want.

Just to be clear, intellectual property refers to your website design, the entire content of your site, all photos & media & the unique combination of these elements that constitutes a complete design.

acerockcola guarantees that all elements of the work delivered to you were either created in-house or that the necessary permissions or licences have been obtained to provide them to you.

When text, images or other artwork are provided to you, acerockcola will protect you from any claim by a third party that you’re using their intellectual property.

Provided you’ve paid for the website and that this contract hasn’t been terminated by you before all work has been completed then:

• You’ll own the website designed for you plus the visual elements created for it.
• acerockcola will give you the source files (a snapshot of your website) upon request at any time & and you should keep them somewhere safe as if you do leave this will serve as the only copy of those files.
• You’ll own all intellectual property rights of the text, images, site specification and the data you provided (unless someone else owns them & they’re being used on your website under an agreement).

Please be aware though that if you do move the site away from acerockcola then our business relationship for that site will cease to exist. The offer to fix your website should it become hacked (complimentary or paid), along with extras you may have (such as backups & statistics) will also cease.

13) Legal Information

acerockcola will carry out work in accordance with good industry practice and at the standard expected from a suitably qualified company with relevant experience. That said, it can’t be guaranteed that 100% of the final work will be error-free. For this reason, it is your responsibility to ensure that the site (including the written copy) is error-free before you give the go-ahead for the site to be launched. acerockcola is not liable to you or any third-party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages caused by any errors on your site once it’s been approved by yourself.

If, in the future, any provision of this contract is deemed unlawful, void, or for any reason becomes unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this contract and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.

14) Use Of Your Site By acerockcola

acerockcola is proud of the work that it creates & love to show it off.

Therefore, acerockcola reserve the right to display all aspects of its creative work, including sketches, work-in-progress designs and the completed work detailed in this contract in online portfolios & on social media accounts.

15) Branding

As a small web design company it’s great to get the acerockcola name out there. So, like most web design companies all sites have the following logo (either in black or white depending on the colour scheme of your design) subtly in the footer on your website (like this):

All it does is link back to acerockcola.com. Hopefully, this is okay, if not, this chyron can be removed for a one-time fee of £299.

16) Payment Information

Deposit:

Before any work commences, 33%/50% of the final amount as detailed in the proposal is due. Once this has been received, work on your site will start within 72 hours (but usually that day).

General Financial Requests & Transactions:

• All invoices will be raised to you via PayPal’s Invoice Service.
• Payment is accepted by debit or credit card via PayPal or by BACS with your company name as the remitter reference.
• For the consequences of any missed payments please see the Notes, Fees & Penalties section of this contract.

After Your Site Is Live:

• Once your website is approved (by you) & put live (by acerockcola), you will be invoiced for the remaining 50% of the balance OR the first of your 3 remaining monthly invoices (& any extras that we’ve agreed on during construction).
• If your second invoice has not been paid within 21 days of the site going live, the site will be suspended until payment is settled & the late fee shall rise to 50% of the outstanding balance.
• If any of the 3 invoices are not settled within 21 days of their date of issue, the site will be suspended until payment is received & the late fee shall rise to 50% of the outstanding invoice(s).

17) Important Reminders

• Without a maintenance plan – almost all edits & changes to the site after launch will be chargeable at £35 per hour
• Without a maintenance plan – any issues or conflicts caused by automatic upgrades to WordPress core or problems that are the result of automatic plugin/API upgrades & deprecations are not the responsibility or fault of acerockcola. It should be noted, however, that issues like these are extremely rare.
• Without an SEO plan – acerockcola cannot be held responsible for the number of people that visit your site, or for your ranking in Google’s search engine. However, to be clear – ALL acerockcola websites are designed to an SEO friendly standard and an organic rise through the rankings on Google is still quite likely.
• SEO does guarantee a rise in the Google rankings for your site but it does not guarantee you more sales (on or offline) as this is a human choice by the potential customer/site visitor.
• SEO can take up to six months for major documented changes to be reflected in Google’s search engine.
• SEO results are achieved with an SEO plan in conjunction with other digital aspects of your brand. These include your social media presence & activity and the accuracy of directory information such as what is detailed in your Google My Business listing/Google Maps location.
• SEO is an on-going process as Google indexes your site (and your competitors) once or twice a week

18) Lastly…

This contract will stay 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 will remain in place.

Everyone wants to make a change or two once their site is live. It’s absolutely understandable & for that reason any small changes/tweaks (text changes, where the email form is going, the position of photos, the order of menus & so on) will be done at no cost for the first 28 days. Any further type of changes (new pages, redesign of menus, new features & so on) will be chargeable based on the size of the request.

Please remember that the average lifespan of a website (just like your phone) is 2 years & after that length of time it can’t be guaranteed that it will function perfectly (though, it’s unlikely that anything should happen – and even if it does, it should be fixable).

Given this lifespan, please be aware that if after several years you decide that you want a new feature added to the site then it may not be possible without a full ground-up redesign & rebuild but every effort will be made to avoid this.

If you have any questions or concerns about any aspect of this contract, please drop an email to mail@acerockcola.com

IF YOU’RE HAPPY WITH EVERYTHING MENTIONED ABOVE THEN PLEASE COMPLETE & DIGITALLY SIGN THE CONTRACT BELOW