Terms & Conditions

The following terms and conditions apply to all website development / design services provided by South West Web Design to the Client.

Last updated: 01/03/2024

1. Acceptance
It is not necessary for any Client to have signed an acceptance of these terms and conditions for them to apply to the Client. If a Client accepts a quote and / or proceed with the design or any hosting services that South West Web Design provide, including domain, email and hosting services, then the Client will be deemed to have satisfied themselves as to the terms applying and have accepted these terms and conditions in full.

Please read these terms and conditions carefully. Any purchase or use of our services implies that you have read and accepted our terms and conditions.

2. Charges
Charges for services to be provided by South West Web Design are defined in the project quotation that the Client receives via e-mail and/or in writing via any other format including official social media channels.

Quotations are valid for a period of 30 days. South West Web Design reserves the right to alter or decline to provide a quotation after expiry of the 30 days.

Unless agreed otherwise with the Client, website design services may require an advance payment of a minimum of twenty five (25) percent or £250, whichever is greater, of the project quotation total before the work is supplied to the Client for review with the remaining seventy five (75) percent, or quotation – £200 deposit, of the project quotation total due upon completion of the work, or after 31 days from the initial payment, whichever is sooner, prior to upload to the server or release of materials.

Payment for services is due by cash, PayPal, Credit Card/Debit Card or bank transfer. Bank details will be made available on invoices.

On a new website project going live, clients enter into a 12 month contract, consisting of either 12 monthly invoices or 1 yearly invoice, whatever is the client would prefer. The first invoice will include any final payments made for the 'website design' element, the remainder of the monthly invoices will be made up of a 'management fee package' which is for the web hosting and management of the website and other services, including domain and email.

After the initial 1 year contract has completed, the customer will automatically continue in a rolling monthly contract, where termination will require a notice period of no less than 1 calendar month. 

Ongoing monthly web hosting maintenance is a package charged on a monthly basis all clients with websites hosted by South West Web Design. This package to cover the monthly hosting and DNS management of the website. Where agreed this may include 1 hour monthly for updating plugins/sites for security purposes. Anything outside of this 1 hour monthly scope may be charged. Hours cannot roll into future months.

3. Client Review
South West Web Design will provide the Client with an opportunity to review the appearance and content of the website during the design phase and once the overall website development is completed. At the completion of the project, such materials will be deemed to be accepted and approved unless the Client notifies South West Web Design otherwise within ten (10) days of the date the materials are made available to the Client and the website ‘goes live’.

4. Turnaround Time and Content Control
South West Web Design will install and publicly post or supply the Client’s website by the date specified in the project proposal, or at date agreed with Client upon South West Web Design receiving initial payment, unless a delay is specifically requested by the Client and agreed by South West Web Design.

In return, the Client agrees to delegate a single individual as a primary contact to aid South West Web Design with progressing the commission in a satisfactory and expedient manner.

During the project, South West Web Design may require the Client to provide website content; text, images, movies and sound files etc. to populate the website in an orderly fashion.

5. Failure to provide required website content:
South West Web Design is a small business, to remain efficient we must ensure that work we have programmed is carried out at the scheduled time. On occasions we may have to reject offers for other work and enquiries to ensure that your work is completed at the time arranged.

This is why we ask that you provide all the required information prior to an agreed completion date or as soon as possible on request. On any occasion where progress cannot be made with your website because we have not been given the required information in the agreed time frame, and we are delayed as result, we reserve the right to impose a surcharge of up to 25%. If your project involves Search Engine Optimisation we need the text content for your site agreed in advance so that the SEO can be planned and completed efficiently.

If you agree to provide us with the required information and subsequently fail to do before the agreed time, one (1) week prior to the project completion date we reserve the right to close the project and the balance remaining becomes payable immediately. Simply put, all the above condition says is do not give us the go ahead to start until you are ready to do so.

South West Web Design agree to make periodical updates to any sites commissioned and hosted by South West Web Design. This is subject to a fair usage clause ad subject to the monthly management charge being paid. South West Web Design reserve the right to refuse to update websites if such requests exceed 2 hours of development time per site per annum and will only be completed if the client is paying on time their monthly maintenance packages.

NOTE: Text content should be delivered as a Microsoft Word, pdf file, email (or similar) document with the pages in the supplied document representing the content of the relevant pages on your website. These pages should have the same titles as the agreed website pages. Contact us if you need clarification on this.

6. Payment
Invoices will be provided by South West Web Design upon completion but before publishing the live website. Invoices are normally sent via email. Invoices are due upon receipt. Accounts that remain unpaid fifteen (15) days after the date of the invoice will be assessed a service charge in the amount of the higher of twenty percent (20%) or £30 per month of the total amount due, whichever is greater.

7. Additional Expenses
Client agrees to reimburse South West Web Design for any additional expenses necessary for the completion of the work. Examples would be purchase of special fonts, stock photography, plugins etc. This payment will be required prior to the purchase of the additional required materials.

8. Web Browsers
South West Web Design makes every effort to ensure websites are designed to be viewed by the majority of visitors. Websites are designed to work with the most popular current browsers (e.g. Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, etc.). The client agrees that South West Web Design cannot guarantee correct functionality with all browser software across different operating systems both now and into the future. If further amendments are required as technology advances further payment may be required based on an hourly rate of the time taken to complete.

South West Web Design cannot accept responsibility for web pages which do not display acceptably in obselete version or new versions of browsers released after the website have been designed and handed over to the Client. As such, South West Web Design reserves the right to quote for any work involved in changing the website design or website code for it to work with updated browser software.

9. Default
Accounts unpaid thirty (30) days after the date of invoice(s) will be considered in default. If the Client in default maintains any information or files on South West Web Design’s Web space, South West Web Design will, at its discretion, remove all such material from its web space without notice. Access to any services or managed by South West Web Design, including but limited to 'domains', 'emails', 'hosting', 'plugins' will be suspended.

South West Web Design is not responsible for any loss of data incurred due to the removal of the services outlined above. Removal of such material does not relieve the Client of the obligation to pay any outstanding charges assessed to the Client’s account.

Clients with accounts in default agree to pay South West Web Design reasonable expenses, including legal fees and costs for collection by third-party agencies, incurred by South West Web Design in enforcing these Terms and Conditions.

If a Client continued in default for an extended period of time, over forty five '45' days, then full termination and deletion without recourse will be issued for all Client services provided by South West Web Design. At which, any domain names, files, media or other services used for Client services will retain the ownership of South West Web Design.

10. Termination
Termination of any hosting services by the Client must be requested in a written notice or email and will be effective on receipt of such notice. Telephone requests for termination of services will not be honoured until and unless confirmed in writing or email.

The Client will be invoiced for any ongoing design work that has already been completed to the date of first notice of cancellation for payment in full within thirty (30) days.

If the Client chooses to terminate the contract of the web design and web hosting services with South West Web Design then South West Web Design can transfer the site files as of the date of termination on request to a third party SFTP provider for a cost of 1 hour at £40/per hour.

Following this and plugins, themes and files that were used in the design and function of the website will no longer be updated by South West Web Design.

We hope you never need to but if you ever felt the need you can terminate out of the initial 1 year contract early, however, an early termination fee of the reminder of the 1 year contract will be required within 7 days of termination.

Websites designed by South West Web Design are usually created using the WordPress framework where we use a variety of themes, plugins and designs to create your website. The ongoing maintenance of the websites is crucial to cover the updates to the themes & plugins as security patches and feature updates are released, if a Client chooses to terminate the ongoing maintenance the Client will not receive future updates to the plugins and themes used to create the site. South West Web Design may ask the client for a further payment or regular monthly payments if the Client wishes to still receive the updates. The website will continue to work without issue when hosted elsewhere.

On termination the website as it currently stands will be provided via a zip, tar or rar compress folder.

Any email, domain or other services provided by South West Web Design will also be cancelled, once terminated these cannot be recovered. Any domain name remains the full ownership of South West Web Design, unless a payment of £20 is paid by the Client to transfer ownership of the domain to another register owned by the Client.

11. Indemnity
All South West Web Design services may be used for lawful purposes only. You agree to indemnify and hold South West Web Design harmless from any claims resulting from your use of our service that damages you or any other party.

12. Copyright
The Client retains the copyright to data, files and graphic logos provided by the Client, and grants South West Web Design the rights to publish and use such material. The Client must obtain permission and rights to use any information or files that are copyrighted by a third party. The Client is further responsible for granting South West Web Design permission and rights for use of the same and agrees to indemnify and hold harmless South West Web Design from any and all claims resulting from the Client’s negligence or inability to obtain proper copyright permissions. A contract for website design and/or placement shall be regarded as a guarantee by the Client to South West Web Design that all such permissions and authorities have been obtained. Evidence of permissions and authorities may be requested but not required.

13. Standard Media Delivery
Unless otherwise specified in the project quotation, this agreement assumes that any text will be provided by the Client in electronic format and that all photographs and other graphics will be provided in .gif, .jpeg, .png or .tiff format. Although every reasonable attempt shall be made by South West Web Design to return to the Client any images or printed material provided for use in creation of the Client’s website, such return cannot be guaranteed.

14. Design Credit
A link to South West Web Design will appear in either small type or by a small graphic at the bottom of the Client’s website. If a graphic is used, it will be designed to fit in with the overall site design. If a client requests that the design credit be removed, a nominal fee of 20% of the total development charges will be applied. When total development charges are less than £500, a fixed fee of £100 will be applied. The Client also agrees that the website developed for the Client may be presented in South West Web Design’s portfolio on websites and social media channels.

15. Access Requirements
If the Client’s website is to be installed on a third-party server, South West Web Design must be granted temporary read/write access to the Client’s storage directories which must be accessible via FTP. Depending on the specific nature of the project, other resources might also need to be configured on the server.

16. Post-Placement Alterations
South West Web Design cannot accept responsibility for any alterations caused by a third party occurring to the Client’s pages once installed. Such alterations include, but are not limited to additions, modifications or deletions.

17. Domain Names
South West Web Design may purchase domain names to be used in conjunction with a clients site. Payment and renewal of those domain names is the responsibility of the South West Web Design team, the domain name cost after the first year may be requested by the Client to cover the costs unless agreed to in the proposal.

At all times, unless otherwise agreed, a domain name purchased by South West Web Design remains the ownership of South West Web Design, we can transfer out this domain name on termination of services only for a cost of £20.

The loss, cancellation or otherwise of the domain brought about by non or late payment by the client is not the responsibility of South West Web Design. The Client should keep a record of the due dates for payment to ensure that payment is received in good time.

18. General
These Terms and Conditions supersede all previous representations, understandings or agreements. The Client’s acceptance via email, text or payment of a monthly maintenance fee or advance fee constitutes agreement to and acceptance of these Terms and Conditions. Payment online is an acceptance of our terms and conditions.

19. Governing Law
This Agreement shall be governed by English Law.

20. Liability
South West Web Design hereby excludes itself, its Employees and or Agents from all and any liability from:
Loss or damage caused by any inaccuracy;
Loss or damage caused by omission;
Loss or damage caused by web hosting being down.
Loss or damage caused by delay or error, whether the result of negligence or other cause in the production of the web site;
Loss or damage to clients’ artwork/photos, supplied for the site. Immaterial whether the loss or damage results from negligence or otherwise.

The entire liability of South West Web Design to the Client in respect of any claim whatsoever or breach of this Agreement, whether or not arising out of negligence, shall be limited to the charges paid for the Services under this Agreement in respect of which the breach has arisen.

21. Severability
In the event any one or more of the provisions of this Agreement shall be held to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable, the remaining provisions of this Agreement shall be unimpaired and the Agreement shall not be void for this reason alone. Such invalid, illegal or unenforceable provision shall be replaced by a mutually acceptable valid, legal and enforceable provision, which comes closest to the intention of the parties underlying the invalid clause.

22. Service Level Agreement
South West Web Design shall guarantee the availability of the website will be 95% in any calendar month, subject to exclusions as defined below. If South West Web Design fails to meet this guarantee a credit shall be available to the Client as defined below.

The availability calculation shall exclude periods when outages arise from, or are otherwise indirectly caused by:

– Outage periods due to any cause other than faults by South West Web Design, including faults or negligence of the Client or problems associated with equipment connected on the Client’s side of South West Web Design delivery point,

– In case that the Client’s equipment should cause negative effects on the performance, quality and/or operation of the South West Web Design Network, South West Web Design will proceed to disconnect the link, for benefit of the rest of users of the South West Web Design Network. This disconnection won’t be cause of penalty under the SLA. South West Web Design will notify the Client as soon as possible about this issue in order for the Client to repair the problems.

– Outage periods reported by the Client in which no fault is observed or confirmed by South West Web Design,

– Any fault period during which service is suspended under provision in this Agreement,

– The Client requesting South West Web Design to upgrade the capacity of the service, if this operation results in an outage.

– During Scheduled Maintenance affecting the Services as defined above.

– Performance degradations and service loss due to Denial Of Service attacks or other unlawful attacks generated inside the Client’s network or executed against users inside the Client’s network or the Client network infrastructure, will be excluded from SLA calculation as it is within the Client’s responsibility to put in place the relevant protection mechanisms inside its network to protect itself and its clients.

Neither Party will be obliged to carry out any obligation under this Agreement where performance of such obligation is prevented by the occurrence of a Force Majeure Event. No commitment from South West Web Design applies in case of Force Majeure.

Should the Client not have access to the Services as defined above, South West Web Design shall credit the client as follows:

(a) 90% to 94.9% = 25% monthly credit

(b) 60% to 89.9% = 40% monthly credit

(c) < 60% = Pro-rata up to a maximum of 100% monthly credit

The credit applies to the contracted service. The Client shall not be entitled to any credits under this SLA if any payment of the price for the Services is overdue under the terms of this Agreement. The credit shall be made for the element of the Services that were not available, it will not be made for the whole service. (E.G. If a dedicated server and backup service are ordered, but the backup service is not available for a period of time, the credit will be calculated based on the price of the backup service, not the combined price of the dedicated server and backup service.) Any credit is subject to the Client notifying South West Web Design within 7 days in writing. This Client agrees the service credits due under this SLA are its sole remedy against South West Web Design for any non-availability of the Services.

23. Contracts
When purchasing one of our plans you will be signing up initially to a 1 year contract of monthly ongoing maintenance payments. By ordering and paying your first invoice you agree to these terms. Once the first year has been completed we roll you over onto a 30 day rolling contract where at any point you can cancel your website plan with us by provided at least 1 calendar month notice period.

Our 1 year contract includes any one-off payment fee and 12 months payments of the agreed monthly value.

We hope you never need to but if you ever felt the need you can terminate out of the initial 1 year contract early, however, an early termination fee of the reminder of the 1 year contract will be required within 7 days of termination.