Service Agreement

Summary

We’ll always do our best to fulfill your needs and meet your expectations, but it’s important to have things written down so that we both know what’s what, who should do what and when, and what will happen if something goes wrong. In this service agreement you won’t find any complicated legal terms or long passages of unreadable text. We’ve no desire to trick you into something that you might later regret. What we do want is what’s best for both parties, now and in the future. So in short; the client (“You”), are hiring us (CS Websites) (“We or Us”) to provide the services agreed to, for the total price outlined in previous correspondence.

What both parties agree to

You: You have the authority to enter into this agreement on behalf of yourself, your company or your organisation. You’ll give us the assets and information we tell you we need to complete the project. You’ll do this when we ask and provide it in the formats we ask for. You’ll review our work, provide feedback and approval in a timely manner too. Deadlines work two ways, so you’ll also be bound by dates we set together. You also agree to stick to the payment schedule set out at the end of this agreement.

Us: We have the experience and ability to do everything we’ve agreed with you and we’ll do it all in a professional and timely manner. We’ll endeavour to meet every deadline that’s set and on top of that we’ll maintain the confidentiality of everything you give us.

Intellectual Property

You guarantee that all elements of text, images or other artwork you provide are either owned by your good selves, or that you’ve permission to use them. When you provide text, images or other artwork to us, you agree to protect us from any claim by a third party that we’re using their intellectual property. We guarantee that all elements of the work we deliver to you are either owned by us or we’ve obtained permission to provide them to you. When we provide text, images or other artwork to you, we agree to protect you from any claim by a third party that you’re using their intellectual property. Provided you’ve paid for the work and that this agreement hasn’t been terminated, we’ll assign all intellectual property rights to you as follows: You’ll own the deliverables we designed and/or developed for you plus the visual elements that we create for it. You own all intellectual property rights of text, images, site specification and data you provided, unless someone else owns them.

Graphics and Photographs

You should supply graphic files in an editable, vector digital format such as SVG or AI. You should supply photographs in a high resolution digital format. If you choose to buy stock photographs, we can suggest stock libraries.

Feedback and Revisions

You’ll have plenty of opportunities to review our work and provide feedback. We’ll either share a PDF, MarkUp link for feedback or development site with you and we’ll have regular, contact by the medium agreed upon and to your liking. We don’t want to limit your ability to change your mind. The price at the beginning of this agreement is based on the amount of time that we estimate we’ll need to accomplish everything you’ve told us you want to achieve, but we’re happy to be flexible. If you want to change your mind and add new functionality, that won’t be a problem as we’ll provide a separate estimate for those additional milestones. Unless mentioned in the service summary, the amount of revisions is unlimited as long as there is no clear indication of new functionality being needed, or deviating from the original design, in which case a new, seperate estimate will be made to extend the project scope.

Content Management

The choice of Content Management System to manage your website will be made by us, taking into account your wishes and requirements. We will happily discuss about which of the platforms work best for your specific project. We will provide access to the system upon completion of the project.

Compatibility Testing

We strive to ensure that a person’s experience of a design should be appropriate to the capabilities of a browser or device. Therefore, we test our work in current versions of major desktop browsers including those made by Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome) and Mozilla Firefox. We won’t test in other/older browsers unless we agreed separately. If you need an enhanced design for an older browser, we can provide a separate estimate for that. Since half of digital visits these days are through mobile phones, we also test responsiveness using popular smaller screen devices. This includes Safari and Chrome on iOS, and Chrome on Android.

Search Engine Optimization

We don’t guarantee improvements to your website’s search engine ranking, unless agreed otherwise. The sites we develop are fully accessible to search engines and adhere to SEO best practices.

Technical Support

We’re not a website hosting company so we don’t offer services or products for website hosting, email or other items related to hosting. You may already have professional hosting and you might even manage that hosting in-house; if you do, great. If you don’t, we will recommend one of our preferred hosting providers depending on budget and location. However, we do perform hosting work. We can set up your site on a server, plus statistics software such as Google Analytics and will provide a separate estimate for that. Then, the updates to, and management of that server will be up to you. Not into that? We provide a maintenance service for select WordPress projects built by us.

Maintenance Plan

We provide an optional maintenance service for a flat yearly fee of €300 excl. taxes, for select WordPress projects built by us. Ask us about it to learn more. The service provides the customer with the following benefits:

• Secure and automated updates of WordPress Core, plugins and themes.
• Automated daily security scanning, looking for known threats including viruses and malware. When a threat has been identified, we aim to provide malware removal services at no extra cost.
• Monthly backups of the entire WordPress file structure*
• Automated uptime monitoring every 5 minutes, checking availability of the website’s front-end. When the website is down, we will attempt to restore availability as soon as reasonably possible.
• General performance checkups. We will also provide solutions and tips for resolving large performance issues, but do not actively optimize the site on a regular basis.

*Storage of backups and other related data is done on an Amazon AWS server, located either in Europe or the United States depending on the customers’ location and applicable data protection laws.

At the end of the contractual term, a report will be provided where details about work performed can be found in a summarized format. The Maintenance Plan is automatically renewed for another year upon the renewal date, but you have 14 days post-renewal – as well as anytime prior to renewal – to cancel the service without additional charges.

Cancellation

In the unfortunate event of project cancellation, we will have to be compensated for servicesperformed through the date of cancellation in balance with the fees due, and progress of the project. Any purchased assets or products to facilitate this progress will also have to be paid.

Termination

This agreement shall commence on the project start date and shall terminate automatically onacceptance of the deliverables and payment of all outstanding sums. While we think you’ll love working with us, either party may terminate this agreement immediately at any time by written notice.

Payment Terms and Schedule

We’re sure you understand how important it is 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.

In order to commence the project, no downpayment is requested unless agreed otherwise. The remainder of the payment is due upon completion and/or invoicing of the project. The payment of the invoice is due 30 calendar days upon issuance, unless agreed otherwise. An additional fee of 3% of the outstanding amount will be charged for late payments, at a minimum of €40. After 30 days, a notice will be sent by email for invoices overdue.

All proposals are quoted in EUR and payments will be made at the equivalent conversion rate at the date the transfer is made. You agree to pay all charges associated with international transfers of funds. The appropriate bank account details will be printed on our electronic invoice and/or emails for international clients.

Displaying our work

We love to show off our work, so we reserve the right to display all aspects of our creative work, including sketches, work-in-progress designs and the completed project on our portfolio and in articles on websites, in magazine articles and in books.

Where’s the small print?

Just like a parking ticket, neither of us can transfer this service agreement to anyone else without the other’s permission. Although the language is simple, the intentions are serious and this agreement is a legal document. We both agree that we’ll adhere to all relevant laws and regulations in relation to our activities under this agreement and not cause the other to breach any relevant laws or regulations.

This agreement stays in place and need not be renewed. If for some reason one part of this agreement becomes invalid or unenforceable, the remaining parts of it remain in place.