Summary

We’ll always do our best to fulfil 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 our Agreements you won’t find any complicated legal terms or long passages of unreadable text. We’ve no desire to trick you into signing 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;

You THE CLIENT, are hiring us BRITWEB LTD located at Suite 2, First Floor, 7-8 Sterling Buildings, Carfax, Horsham, West Sussex, RH12 1DR to design and develop a website for the estimated total price as outlined in any previous written Agreement or undertake a period of digital marketing as part of an Agreement. Of course it’s a little more complicated, but we’ll get to that.

Where we refer to ‘Agreement(s)’ below we are referring to any written between us including any retainer agreement, support agreement, statement of works, privacy policy and any written agreement for the provision of additional services as well as these terms of business.

What do both parties agree to do?

You

You have the authority to enter into all Agreements on behalf of yourself, your company or your organisation. You’ll give us everything we need to complete the project including necessary access to platforms as and when and in the format we need it. 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 agree to pay for the services outlined in this Agreement. Easy-peasy, right?

Unless expressly agreed in an Agreement our services do not include things like hosting setup (unless we’ve discussed that separately). Think of it like this: we’ll bake a delicious cake, but you’ll provide the oven and the party!

We both agree to be honest and respectful with each other throughout this process. It’ll make everything run smoothly.

You must keep any passwords we give you secure (under lock and key if necessary). It’s like protecting the secret recipe!

You promise to play by the rules and not try to hack or mess with our systems – that’s just not cool.

You acknowledge the license we grant (that’s the official permission slip!) lets you use your final product, but there might be specific guidelines outlined there.

You agree and acknowledge that if there are delays on your end, it could impact the project timeline or possibly even the cost. We’ll communicate with you, but we can’t be responsible if missing info from you throws a wrench in the works.

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 all reasonable deadlines that are set and on top of that we’ll use a reasonable degree of care to maintain the confidentiality of everything you give us (unless it is within the public domain, or we are required by law or a regulatory or government body to disclose it).

Our Services

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

You understand that we allocate time and team members based on the estimates in the Agreement. If you’re a little slow in getting back to us with information or approvals, that throws our carefully laid plans out of sync! This could mean rescheduling parts of your project, which might lead to delays and could potentially change the cost, which we reserve the right to do. Any delays on your end might cause even bigger delays down the line.

Estimated Delivery Dates: A Guide, Not a Guarantee

All project dates and timelines we discuss are our best estimates, and we’ll always work hard to meet them. However, please be aware that some flexibility is important – things happen! We’re not liable for any losses or expenses caused by unexpected delays in the project.

Changes = Adjustments

We know from experience that fixed-price contracts are rarely beneficial to you, as they often limit you to your earliest ideas. We don’t want to limit your ability to change your mind. The price set out in our Agreement is based on the length of time 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 or add anything new, that won’t be a problem as we’ll provide a separate estimate for that.

If you want to make changes further down the line that aren’t possible with the tools we’ve provided to you, we’ll provide a separate estimate for that.

You understand that if you request additional services or changes after we’ve started the project, this may impact our estimated delivery dates. We’ll endeavour to accommodate your reasonable requests, but we may need to adjust the timeline and costs accordingly. We may determine in our sole discretion we cannot accommodate your proposed changes and therefore have the right to refuse your requests politely.

Design

We create look-and-feel designs, and flexible layouts that adapt to the capabilities of many devices and screen sizes in your desired format. We create designs iteratively and use predominantly HTML and CSS so we won’t waste time mocking up every template as a static visual. We may use static visuals to indicate a look-and-feel direction (colour, texture and typography.) We call that ‘overall design.’

We usually provide up to 3 versions of the overall design artwork within the estimated price, but this will be outlined in the Agreement. The amount of iterations you will receive will also be outlined in your Agreement. If you require more revisions we’ll provide a separate estimate for that.

If, at any stage, you’re not happy with the direction our work is taking, you’ll pay us in full for everything we’ve produced until that point and cancel the Agreement.

Content

We will input text copy if it is provided to us in an editable digital format according to the limits described in the Agreement we have provided to you. It is your responsibility to check spelling, grammar and accuracy on any copy supplied. If you want us to write text copy for you this will also be detailed in your Agreement.

If we are writing copy for you, we will provide up to 3 revisions of that text within the estimated price. For edits beyond that we will provide a separate estimate.

We reserve the right to not include anything in your project that could be seen as offensive, illegal, or that might infringe on someone else’s rights. This keeps things safe for everyone.

If your final project is a website, remember that we can’t control what visitors write in the comments. That’s on you to manage.

If problems arise from the content you provide, you agree to cover any legal issues and costs which might come up for us. This isn’t meant to scare you, it’s just about protecting both of us!

Media, Fonts and Images

You must supply photographs in a high-resolution digital format. If you choose to buy stock photographs, we can suggest stock libraries. If you’d like us to search for photographs for you, we can provide a separate estimate for that.

If you want us to purchase stock photography on your behalf, that’s fine, but all costs will be passed on to you.

Logo, icons and other similar artwork must be supplied in a vector format suitable for printing at any resolution.

If you have specific requirements for third party fonts, they must be supplied and licensed appropriately based on an independent agreement with the copyright holder.

Browser testing

Browser testing no longer means attempting to make a website look the same in browsers of different capabilities or on devices with different size screens. It does mean ensuring that a person’s experience of a design should be appropriate to the capabilities of a browser or device.

We aim to support more than 97% of all global web users on all platforms.

As such we routinely test on:

Google Chrome (desktop & mobile)
Apple Safari (on desktop and mobile)
Firefox
Microsoft Edge

We will not routinely test sites on browsers which are :

outdated or no longer maintained (e.g. Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge (Legacy))
specific to certain devices or manufacturers (e.g. Samsung Internet, Blackberry QNX, Symbian)
only have a very small observable user base (e.g. Opera, UC Browser)

If you require us to support a specific browser or platform that is not covered by our routine testing, we can provide a separate estimate for that.

Technical support & training

We want to make sure you are not flying blind with your new website so we will offer basic training on the platform that we use to build your site, and will make sure you know how to use the parts of it you want to control. If you require extensive training, or want us to train a lot of people, we’ll provide a separate estimate for that.

Third-Party Plugins

With most sites, we will make use of third-party plugins, often these are commercial works. If payment is required, we will either assist you with purchasing them yourself, or we’ll purchase on your behalf and bill them directly to you. If you choose the latter and you leave us, we’ll keep passing on this cost until you tell us otherwise. Most of the time, commercial plugins work great, but often we will not be able to test them completely until after purchase. On the rare occasion that something doesn’t work as expected we may be unable to offer a refund for costs incurred or time spent.

For this reason, we strongly encourage the use of open source plugins where possible since they are more transparent and highlight potential issues before making costly commitments.

Performance & Page Speed

Since performance of your site can have an impact on your visitors experience and in turn on SEO we take this into account as part of your site build. Conditions vary wildly so we can’t make any promises, but we do check against various metrics (including Google PageSpeed Insights) and try to keep it reasonably quick within your normal support agreement.

If anything less than ‘blisteringly fast’ is not acceptable then we’ll need to provide a separate estimate for the optimisation work and may need to make adjustments which will affect your hosting costs.

Copyrights & Intellectual Property

You guarantee that all elements of text, images, fonts, videos, audio files or other artwork you provide are either owned by you, or that you have permission to use them. You may be required to provide evidence of license agreements on request at any time. If additional costs or damages are incurred due to incorrectly licensed assets you have supplied, they will be passed on to you.

When your final payment has cleared, copyright will be automatically assigned as follows:

You’ll own the visual elements that we create for this project. We’ll give you source files and finished files and you should keep them somewhere safe as we’re not required to keep a copy. You own all elements of text, images and data you provided, unless someone else owns them.

We’ll own the unique combination of these elements that constitutes a complete design and we’ll license that to you, exclusively and in perpetuity for this project only, unless we agree otherwise. We can provide a separate estimate for that.

… wait… what was that?

Yes, it sounds a little odd that you don’t actually own the website, but if we were to sign over copyright for all the code and data that comprises the site, you could sue us for building a website for anyone else as we’d likely be using a lot of the same stuff. Many other contributions are also used when developing a website, and we’re bound by their licensing agreements in the same way and can’t sign their work over to you. Don’t worry though, you can do whatever you want to with the website and have every right to take it elsewhere once you’ve paid for it, whatever the reason.

We love to show off our work and share what we’ve learned with other people, so we reserve the right, with your permission, to display and link to your project as part of our portfolio and to write about it on websites, in magazine articles and in books.

Payments

We’re sure you understand how important it is as a 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.

Invoices may be created individually with their payment terms, or payment terms may be set out in our Agreement with you. The amounts and terms on an invoice are generally not up for discussion (except to correct obvious errors), when we send an invoice, we expect it to be paid in full on or before the due date, and have likely already spent that money on printer ink, salaries, and tea.

You must pay invoices in full without any set-off, abatement, cross claim, deduction or withholding of any kind (other than as required by law).

If there’s no set price outlined in Agreement, we figure out and charge costs based on the actual time, expenses and materials involved. We’ll keep careful track of everything for you.

In the event we incur expenses or third-party costs in performing our work, we shall notify you at our earliest opportunity. Expenses or third-party costs shall be invoiced by us at the end of the month in which the expense is incurred and shall be charged for at the rate imposed by the relevant third party.

Any price estimates we give are our best guess based on what we know early on. Projects evolve naturally, so we reserve the right to adjust those estimates along the way. We promise to keep you in the loop on any changes! Here are some situations where the fee might need to change:

Scope Creep. That’s when the project grows unexpectedly bigger than what we initially planned for.

Assumptions Change. Sometimes, the details we started with shift as the project progresses.

Change Requests. You might decide you want changes or additions not covered in our original Agreement.

Unexpected Delays. If we’re waiting on information or approvals from you, we may need to charge for the extra time involved.

Just a heads-up, we reserve the right to change our rates occasionally.

Unless otherwise agreed in writing, our payment schedule works as follows:

Before we start work:

We need a deposit payment in advance for 50% of the price we have estimated for the whole project, or if a retainer client, your first months billable, this will always be paid in advance. That will allow us to schedule the time for our guys to do the work. This deposit, or retainer fee is not refundable under any circumstances.

When the deisgns have been finalised

At the point where you have signed off the designs, or 10 weeks after the commencement of the project (whichever comes first) we will invoice for a further 25% of the project estimate.

48 Hours before we put your site live

We require cleared payment in full for the remaining 25% of the project estimate plus any additional chargeable work or expenses that we have quoted during the development process. This is particularly true if the site is to be hosted with another provider. This payment must be made 48 hours before the site goes live, or 20 weeks after the commencement of the project (whichever comes first).

As we need to protect our business, we may immediately cease working on all matters for you if any invoices have not been settled in full after it is due. Our Agreement to undertake work is always subject to payment of fees in accordance with Agreements.

Website Hosting & Ongoing Services

We are not a web hosting company, we don’t own huge data centres and have fancy biometric door locks. We leave that down to other providers who have proven reliable and cost effective.

Basic website support and maintenance is covered in a monthly payment from £60 (+ VAT) payable on the first of the month and covering the proceeding month. We provide hosting for you as part of this and it makes sense for us to include that in those monthly payments where it’s needed, as keeping things together reduces our costs.

If you wish to manage hosting yourself with your own preferred provider, all that we ask is that the support Agreement is continued as a retainer for us to jump in if you need us to. If support time exceeds what we consider reasonable in a given month, we reserve the right to charge extra based on a separate estimate at our discretion. We will therefore be given administrative access to your hosting account to enable us to make changes urgently, and must be notified of changes of access credentials.

What’s included in the Support Agreement

We agree to jump in and fix your site or carry out maintenance as soon as we are aware of a problem via our exclusive client support system. The support Agreement covers the installation of security patches where required, plugin updates and server maintenance. To be effective in this support, we must be allowed to change or temporarily restrict access to any portion of the website for a wide range of reasons. We will endeavour to give notice of any access restrictions or expected downtime where possible.

What if I want to end our monthly Agreement

You need to ask in writing for the support or service Agreement to be terminated allowing 30 days notice. Don’t just lock us out of your hosting account without telling us or we’ll continue to bill you until 30 days has passed following you giving us written notice.

Termination of the support Agreement also implies termination of your hosting Agreement if you are hosting with us, so before the Agreement(s) ends, you will need to arrange alternative hosting, but we’re happy to provide everything you need to move smoothly.

Are there any limits to the hosting we provide with a Support Agreement?

Yes, unfortunately there are. It’s quite possible if your site experiences a lot of traffic (good or bad) that the hosting costs will spiral. As such we reserve the right to terminate your included hosting at any point. We will provide 30 days notice before termination and promise to work with you to find a suitable and cost effective alternative.

Since we effectively provide hosting only as a convenience to you and ourselves, not as a part of our core business model, we accept no liability for downtime, nasty hackers, loss of income or loss of data. The same goes for any email accounts you might host with us. We’re pretty good at keeping on top of it, including regular backups, updates and service monitoring, but do not give any guarantee in this respect. Long and short of it is if that clause worries you, then alternative hosting is probably the way you want to go.

If you choose our support and hosting services, we’ll endeavour to use reliable third-party providers to store your website.

We’ll do our best to choose dependable hosting providers, but we can’t be responsible if they have downtime or technical issues.

We might occasionally need to move your website to a different hosting provider and reserve the right to do so. We’ll endeavour to give you a heads-up if that happens.

If payments are overdue, we may have, and reserve the right to, temporarily suspend your support and hosting services.

If unforeseen circumstances force us to stop providing support or hosting, we reserve the right to suspend or terminate without notice.

If you are a retained digital marketing client

We have a very strong digital marketing department (DM) within britweb encompassing SEO, outreach, content strategies, social media and data insights. DM work will be based on an agreed number of hours each month.

If there are any discrepancies between these terms and the Agreement, the terms of the Agreement will have priority and nothing in these terms means we will undertake any additional work which is not listed in the Agreement. Of course, we are happy to discuss extending the scope of work.

We don’t guarantee improvements to your website’s search engine ranking, but the pages that we develop are accessible to search engines and we utilise best practice techniques. Our minimum number of hours per month for SEO is 10. This is the base number of hours that we have found we need in order to effect positive and sustainable change to organic rankings.

We recognise that things can change from time to time and we will always welcome working in a dynamic way. We therefore plan work from week to week and need at least 3 working days notice in order to book more time into a given week. We will inform you when your agreed hours for the month have been completed and any additional hours agreed upon thereafter will be added to a separate invoice at the end of the month that the work took place.

We will produce a monthly report which highlights your website and marketing performance. We report on all of the core information such as site visits, conversions and goals. If you require a more detailed report, we are happy to provide this at an additional cost.

We will also ask for a regular review meeting with all key stakeholders to ensure that we are delivering on expectations. We are happy to schedule calls, virtual meetings, and other forms of contact, the time for which will be taken from the agreed hours.

From time to time we will also put expectations on the client which may delay progress if not addressed in a timely manner. We will always ensure that we give you an adequate lead time to grant us accessibility so that a program of work can be fulfilled in an effective manner, on time and within scope.

Please note that we will endeavour to complete all work in a timely manner, and have a scheduled amount of work to do each month. We will require sign off to completed work before it is placed live.

But where’s all the horrible small print?

Although of course we will endeavour to satisfy your requirements at every stage of the project, we can’t guarantee that our work will be error-free and so we can’t be liable to you or any third-party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings, lost data or other incidental, consequential or special damages, even if you’ve advised us of them.

Just like a parking ticket, you can’t transfer our Agreements to anyone else without our permission. Agreement stays in place and need not be renewed.

There is a bit more:

Promises We Make To Each Other

Both of us promise we have the right to be in this Agreement. There’s nothing stopping us from doing what we say we’ll do.
We each own (or have permission to use) everything we’re bringing to this project. This means no legal surprises down the line.

You guarantee that the content you provide is good to use. We’re not liable for any issues it might cause.

If you’re not using our hosting services, you promise you’ve got the right setup to make the deliverables work smoothly.

A heads-up: we can’t guarantee how third-party software (like plugins, etc.) will work in the future. They might get updated and change after the project is finished, which is beyond our control.

We don’t promise to fix issues caused by updates to browsers or devices after the project is complete. Technology changes quickly!

Limitation of Liability

The most we’ll be liable for any issues related to this project is the total amount you’ve paid us (not including VAT).

Unless the law says otherwise, we’re not liable for any of the following, even if they seem indirectly related to this project:

Direct or indirect losses to your profits, revenue, business opportunities, contracts, anticipated savings, data, goodwill, or reputation.
Claims brought against you by someone else.

The above applies to any issues that might arise, including mistakes we make, delays, or problems with the final deliverables.

There are some situations the law doesn’t let us exclude from liability:

Death or personal injury caused by our negligence.
Fraudulent misrepresentation or anything else considered outright fraud.
Certain standard protections on goods and services provided to consumers.

Unless you’re buying our services as an individual consumer, any additional guarantees about the quality, fitness for purpose, or other implied terms are excluded, except for those required by law.

Limitation Period for Claims

If you have any issues or potential claims related to this Agreement or our work together, you have to take legal action within one (1) year.

This one-year window starts either from the date the problem happened OR the date you should reasonably have known about it…whichever is earlier.

This clause is about setting a fair time limit to deal with any disputes so that both sides can move forward.

Force Majeure & Unforeseen Changes

Neither of us will be held responsible if something totally out of our control (think natural disasters, war, major strikes, pandemics, endemics and similar) stops us from doing our jobs as agreed.

If this extreme situation keeps going for more than three (3) months, either of us can end the Agreement with one month’s written notice.

Our Services involve analysing a changing landscape where risks aren’t always fully known. Because of this, we can’t guarantee that future events will match our predictions or recommendations.

Our conclusions are based on the information available to us at the time, but many factors outside our control (like technology, politics, economic shifts, or government actions) could impact the results you see.

While we’ll do our best to provide accurate and up-to-date insights, we aren’t responsible for updating our recommendations if circumstances change after our work is done.

Ultimately, you’re responsible for deciding whether and how to use our findings, taking into account your own knowledge and the evolving situation.

Publicity

We love to celebrate successful projects and help each other shine! Let’s share the good news! Unless our Agreement explicitly states otherwise, you agree:

We can mention you as a client in our marketing materials;

We might feature your project in our portfolio or case studies to show off our great work;

We may include a small credit on your project.

You agree to consider giving us a testimonial or even participating in a video testimonial if asked. Of course, you’ll need to have all the rights and permissions to do so.

Subcontracting

Sometimes we need extra help: We might bring in specialists or subcontractors to work on parts of your project. Don’t worry, you don’t need to approve this beforehand.

Even if we use subcontractors, we’re responsible for making sure the project meets the standards in this Agreement.

During the project and for 18 months afterwards, you agree not to try to hire away our employees, consultants, or subcontractors. This protects our business relationship

General

We’re collaborators, not partners: This Agreement doesn’t create any uncomfortable legal relationships like a partnership or employment situation. We’re independent entities working together.

This document (and any Agreement) includes our entire Agreement. Any previous discussions or promises are replaced by what’s written here and in the Agreement.

Neither of us can claim to have relied on statements or promises not directly in this Agreement, unless those were intentionally false.

If one part of any Agreement is found to be invalid, the rest still stands.

All Agreements are strictly between us. They do not create any benefits or rights for anyone else.

Neither of us can transfer our rights or obligations under this Agreement to someone else without permission.

Governing Law

All Agreements follow English law, and any disputes will be handled in courts of England and Wales.

Any changes to any Agreement must be in writing and agreed to by both of us.

Official notices for any Agreement must be in writing and can be delivered in person, by mail, or by email.