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Terms & Conditions

How the price works, what's included, when the site becomes yours, and what happens if something goes wrong. Written to be read, not skipped.

Draft for attorney review — not yet in force. This is not legal advice. The highlighted values and decisions still need to be settled, and the whole document should be reviewed by an attorney licensed in Illinois before it's used with clients. Remove this notice once that's done.

01About These Terms

These terms govern every website project I take on. They work together with a short signed Client Agreement, which records the details specific to you: your project scope, purchase price, monthly payment, dates, and what's included. Where the two differ, your signed agreement wins.

In these terms, “I”, “me” and “the studio” mean LEGAL NAME OR COMPANY, doing business as Designs by Hunter Curtis, of BUSINESS ADDRESS, Illinois. “You” means the person or organization signing the agreement.

A few terms used throughout:

  • Purchase price — the total price of your website, stated in your agreement before you sign.
  • Base payment — one of the twelve equal monthly payments that together make up the purchase price.
  • Full payment — the moment the whole purchase price has been received, whether by the twelfth base payment, an early payoff, or an outright purchase.
  • Project deliverables — the design, code and other materials I create specifically for your website.

02No Upfront Costs, No Hidden Fees

There is no design fee, no deposit and no setup fee. Nothing is payable when you sign.

Before you sign, your agreement discloses the purchase price, the monthly payment, the payment schedule, what's included and what isn't. Those figures don't change once signed. I don't charge late fees or interest.

If your project needs anything with its own cost — an optional service, or a third-party expense such as a premium font, plugin or paid integration — I'll tell you what it is and what it costs before you commit to it. You're never charged for anything you didn't approve in writing.

03Two Ways to Pay

You buy your website one of two ways. Either way the price is the same figure, quoted for your project before you commit.

The 12-Month Agreement

You pay the purchase price in twelve equal monthly base payments. Throughout those twelve months I host and maintain the site, as set out in What the 12-Month Agreement Includes. Every base payment counts toward the purchase price. After the twelfth, the website is yours.

Example: a site priced at $1,800 is paid as twelve monthly payments of $150.

Outright Purchase

You pay the same purchase price in one payment instead. No maintenance agreement is required. See Buying Outright.

04Key Dates

Your agreement records four separate dates, so it's always clear what happens when:

  • Signing date — when we both sign. Nothing is payable on this date.
  • Development period — the estimated time to design and build the site, which depends partly on how quickly I receive your content and approvals.
  • Billing start date — the date of your first base payment. Unless your agreement says otherwise, it's the day the site launches.
  • Term — the twelve months of base payments, beginning on the billing start date. Later payments fall due on the same day of each following month.

If the site is ready but launch is held up because I'm waiting on you, billing starts NUMBER days after I tell you in writing that the site is ready for your approval.

05Design, Build and Launch

Every website is written in code. Nothing is assembled in Wix, WordPress, Squarespace, Showit or any other page-builder, and there is no platform license underneath it for you to keep paying.

The site is developed on a private staging address. It launches on your domain once you've supplied the content, approved the site, and authorized the launch.

The scope of the build — pages, features and integrations — is described in your agreement. Changes to that scope after signing are treated as extra work under Extra Work and Optional Services.

06What the 12-Month Agreement Includes

For the twelve months of the term, your base payments include:

  • Hosting on infrastructure I manage, with SSL.
  • Maintenance: monitoring, security and dependency updates, and fixing defects in the work I delivered.
  • Content edits, up to the monthly allowance stated in your agreement. Unused time doesn't roll over.

Edits cover changes to existing content: replacing text or photographs; updating hours, service times, contact details or staff; adding or removing an announcement; replacing a document; updating an event.

Edits don't cover new pages, redesigning a page or section, new forms or integrations, copywriting, logo or brand work, or new functionality. Those are quoted as extra work.

Your agreement lists any other included services and any exclusions specific to your project.

07Extra Work and Optional Services

Anything outside your agreement's scope or monthly allowance is extra work. I'll quote it first, and I won't begin until you've approved the quote in writing. Unless a quote says otherwise, extra work is billed at $85 an hour in 15-MINUTE increments.

Extra work and optional services are always itemized separately. They don't change the purchase price, and payments for them don't count toward it.

Prices are in U.S. dollars and INCLUDE / EXCLUDE any applicable tax.

08Paying Off Early

You can pay off your website at any time during the term. The payoff amount is the remaining purchase balance: the purchase price minus the base payments I've received.

Example: on a $1,800 site, after five payments of $150, the remaining balance is $1,800 − $750 = $1,050.

  • There's no payoff premium, penalty or fee.
  • Once the balance is paid, no further base payments are due. You are never charged both the balance and the remaining monthly payments.
  • Early payoff counts as full payment, so the website becomes yours, as described in Ownership and Transfer.
  • Unpaid extra work you've approved is invoiced separately and doesn't change the balance.

Paying off early ends the base payments, and with them the included hosting and maintenance, subject to the handover period in After Full Payment.

09Buying Outright

An outright purchase costs the same purchase price as the 12-month agreement, paid in one payment. The outright price is due ON LAUNCH / ANOTHER STATED MILESTONE, as stated in your agreement.

It includes the design, build and launch; delivery of your codebase; and correction of any reproducible defect in my work that you report within 14 days of delivery.

It doesn't include ongoing hosting, maintenance, content edits or support. If I host the site at launch, that hosting continues for NUMBER days so you have time to move it. Hosting and maintenance afterwards are available on separate terms if you'd like them.

10Ownership and Transfer

What's Always Yours

Your domain, business name, logos, photographs, written content, and anything else you supply remain yours throughout, whether or not the site has been paid for.

Before Full Payment

While base payments are being made, I retain ownership of the project deliverables and you have the right to use the website as hosted by me, as long as your account is current.

On Full Payment

Effective automatically on full payment, I assign to you all of my right, title and interest, including copyright, in the project deliverables: the completed website and the design, code and other materials I created specifically for it. The signed agreement is the written instrument of that assignment. On request, I'll also sign a short confirmation of the transfer.

My General Tools and Third-Party Materials

Some things in your site aren't mine to transfer, or aren't specific to you:

  • My general tools and techniques — reusable code, components and methods I use across projects. I keep ownership of these, and on full payment you receive a permanent, irrevocable, royalty-free license to use, copy, modify and host them as part of your website, and to have anyone you choose do so.
  • Third-party materials — open-source software, fonts, stock images and platforms stay under their own licenses. I'll only use materials whose licenses let you use, modify and host your site, and I'll tell you about any that carry their own ongoing costs.

None of these exceptions will stop you from using, modifying or hosting your website after full payment.

11Delivering Your Codebase

Within NUMBER business days of full payment, I deliver your codebase by ZIP file, transfer of a GitHub repository, or another method we agree. Standard delivery is included in the purchase price.

The delivery includes the source code, the assets created for your site, the configuration details needed to run it, and basic instructions for building and deploying it. It won't include credentials for my own accounts or anything belonging to another client.

Your website is code, not a visual editing platform. There's no drag-and-drop editor included; changing it later means editing the code yourself or hiring someone who can.

12Migration and Setup Help

If you'd like help moving the site to a new host, setting up accounts, or briefing another developer, I can do that as an optional service. I'll quote it first, and it's only charged if you approve it in writing.

Migration help is never a condition of receiving your codebase or ownership of your site.

13Your Domain and Accounts

You register, own and pay for your domain, and you control the registrar account. You give me whatever access is needed to point the domain at the site.

If I set up any account for your site — email, forms, analytics — it's set up in your name, or transferred to you on full payment.

I'm not responsible for a domain lost because it wasn't renewed or because the registrar account details were out of date.

14Payments, Billing and Refunds

Base payments are taken automatically from the payment method you authorize, on the due dates in your agreement. You authorize me and my payment processor to charge that method for base payments and for any extra work you've approved in writing.

Base payments aren't refundable once made, because each one is part of the purchase price you're paying off. That doesn't apply to duplicate or mistaken charges, anything I agree in writing to refund, the refunds described in If I Don't Deliver or I End the Agreement, or refunds required by law.

If you think a charge is wrong, tell me in writing and I'll look into it promptly. Nothing here removes any chargeback or billing dispute right that can't legally be waived. While a payment is reversed or disputed, it's treated as unpaid.

To respond to a payment dispute, I may share the signed agreement, payment authorization, invoices, approvals and our correspondence with the payment processor, bank or card network, or a legal adviser.

15Missed Payments and Suspension

Signing the agreement is a commitment to pay the purchase price, either through the base payments or through an early payoff. If a payment fails:

  • Notice. I'll retry the payment and send you written notice of the overdue amount.
  • Time to catch up. You have NUMBER days from that notice to pay the overdue amount.
  • Suspension. If it's still unpaid after that, I may suspend the website on hosting I control, and pause edits and support. The site is replaced with a neutral holding page that says nothing about payment.
  • Restoration. Paying the overdue base payments, and any overdue approved extra work, restores the site within NUMBER business days of payment. There's no reactivation fee.

Suspension never takes your domain, never deletes your content, and doesn't cancel the agreement. Ownership doesn't transfer until full payment.

If an overdue amount is still unpaid NUMBER days after suspension, I may end the agreement by written notice. Base payments already due at that point remain owed, and REMAINING BALANCE: DUE / NOT DUE — CONFIRM WITH COUNSEL. You can still receive ownership and your codebase by paying the remaining purchase balance within NUMBER days of that notice. Either way, I'll export your content on request.

16If I Don't Deliver or I End the Agreement

You don't owe the full price regardless of how I perform. You may end the agreement by written notice if:

  • I fail to deliver a site ready for launch within NUMBER days of the end of the development period in your agreement, for reasons within my control; or
  • I materially breach the agreement and don't put it right within 15 business days of your written notice.

I may also end the agreement for my own reasons, on at least 60 days' written notice.

In any of these cases:

  • You owe nothing further.
  • If the site never launched, I refund the base payments you've made.
  • If the site has launched, it's treated as paid in full: I deliver the codebase and ownership transfers as described in Ownership and Transfer.
  • Where I end the agreement for my own reasons, the site stays live through the notice period.

This section doesn't apply where the agreement ends because of your own uncured breach.

17After Full Payment

Once the purchase price is paid, the website is yours to manage yourself or to hand to any other provider. There's no further purchase charge, and nothing restarts automatically — there's no second twelve-month term.

Hosting included with the 12-month agreement continues for NUMBER days after full payment so you have time to move the site. I'll coordinate the handover with you during that period. After it, the site comes off my hosting unless we've agreed otherwise.

If you'd like me to keep hosting or maintaining the site, that's optional, and offered on its own written terms and pricing.

Owning the website doesn't include free hosting indefinitely, domain renewals, or third-party subscriptions. Those are paid for by whoever provides them.

18Your Content and Acceptable Use

You're responsible for everything published on the site, and you confirm you own it or have permission to use it.

The site may not be used to publish anything unlawful, fraudulent, defamatory, infringing, malicious or deceptive; malware; personal information you have no right to publish; or anything that breaches the policies of my hosting and technology providers.

While I host your site, it shares infrastructure with other clients' sites. I may remove or disable content, or suspend the site, where reasonably necessary to comply with the law or a provider's policies, to protect other sites, or to address suspected infringement, fraud or malware. Where it's reasonably possible, I'll tell you first and give you a chance to fix it.

You're responsible for claims, damages and reasonable legal costs arising from content you supplied or approved, or from your breach of this section.

19Hosting and Availability

While I host your site, it runs on third-party infrastructure. I'll take reasonable care to keep it available and to hold an independent copy of the source, but I don't control that infrastructure and can't guarantee uninterrupted service.

Where a provider suspends or removes content under its own policies, I'll work to restore service as quickly as is reasonable.

20Data and What Happens to It

After the agreement ends, your confidential information, personal data, form submissions, credentials and non-public content are ordinarily deleted from my active systems within 90 days, except where keeping them is reasonably necessary for legal compliance, accounting, a dispute, security or fraud prevention, or because of the limits of backup systems.

Before deletion, I'll export anything that's yours on request.

The Privacy Policy covers personal information in more detail.

21What I Need From You

Projects stall on missing content far more often than on design or code. I need your material in usable formats by the dates we agree, one named person who can approve things, access to the accounts the project touches, and replies within a reasonable time.

If a project goes quiet for more than 30 days during development, I may pause it until you're ready, and the development period is extended by the same amount.

22Warranties and Disclaimers

I'll carry out the work with reasonable skill and care, to a professional standard.

Beyond that, and to the extent the law allows, the work is provided as is. I can't promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free, that it will look identical in every browser (I test against current mainstream browsers), or that it will produce any particular commercial result, search ranking or level of traffic.

Nothing here limits rights you have that can't legally be excluded.

23Limitation of Liability

To the extent the law allows, my total liability arising from the agreement is limited to the amounts you've paid me under it.

I'm not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profit, revenue, data, business or goodwill.

Nothing here limits liability for fraud, willful misconduct, or anything else that can't lawfully be limited.

24Portfolio and Credit

I may show the work in my portfolio and describe my role in it. If any part is confidential, tell me in writing before launch and I'll leave it out.

I may place a small credit in the site footer. Ask and I'll remove it.

25Disputes and Governing Law

If something goes wrong, tell me in writing first. We'll both try in good faith to resolve it within 30 days before either of us takes it further.

These terms and your agreement are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois. Any dispute that isn't resolved directly will be heard in the courts located in COUNTY County, Illinois, and either of us may use small claims court where the claim qualifies.

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies.

26Changes to These Terms

I may update these terms for future projects. The version that applies to you is the one in force when you signed, unless we both agree otherwise in writing. Changes are never applied retroactively.

27Contact

Questions are welcome. Email hunter.curtisdesigns@gmail.com and I'll answer plainly.

Last updated: DATE · Version 2.0