Our terms

Paying

Half when you say yes, half at launch. Your deposit covers the planning call, the job description and the writing, so it isn't refundable once we've started.

Invoices come by email, and you can pay them online by credit card. Care plans and hosting are billed monthly.

Work outside your package is $75 an hour, billed in 15-minute blocks. For anything we expect to take more than an hour, you'll get an estimate first. If something will cost extra, we'll tell you before we start on it, never after.

Changes and feedback

You get one round of changes on the words before design starts, then two rounds on the finished site. Changing the approved words during the build uses one of those two rounds.

To keep your project on schedule, we ask for each round of feedback within five business days. Changes beyond the included rounds are billed at $75 an hour.

What we need from you

• One person who makes decisions and answers our emails
• Your logo and any photos you'd like to use, early on
• Feedback within five business days of each review
• Access to your web address and Google account at launch (we'll walk you through it)

No photos? We use properly licensed stock photos at no extra charge.

If we don't hear from you for two weeks, we pause the project. Nothing is lost and there's no penalty. We pick it back up when you're ready, as soon as our schedule allows, and the launch date moves to match.

Your logo, colours and fonts

Every package includes a colour palette, a pair of fonts and a one-page style guide for your business. If you already have a logo, we build the site around it at no extra cost.

If you need a logo, it's $450 with any website. You'll see two ideas to start, then get two rounds of changes on the one you pick, and you get it in three versions: main, secondary and a small icon. Our logos are built from lettering, sometimes with a simple symbol. Illustrated logos are quoted separately.

What the Online Shop includes

Shops have more moving parts than other sites, so here's exactly what the $2,200 covers.

• Up to 150 products, brought in from a spreadsheet you fill in from our template, with photos cropped and named to match
• Extra products at $50 per 25
• Product descriptions you supply, tidied up by us, or written from scratch for $15 each
• Options such as size, colour or scent: up to two options per product and 20 combinations
• Ready-made bundles, like a gift basket sold at its own price
• Related items shown together on one page and bought separately
• "Goes well with" suggestions on product pages and in the cart
• Stock tracking, including one-of-a-kind pieces that sell out
• Digital downloads, like patterns and printables
• A notes box at checkout for simple requests, like a name to engrave
• Two discount codes set up at launch, plus steps in the owner's manual for adding more
• Payments through Stripe or PayPal
• Up to two shipping methods, such as a flat rate and local pickup
• Sales tax set up the way your accountant tells us to
• A sign-up form connected to your own mailing service (you send the emails)
• A real test order, start to finish, before launch

Priority scheduling

For 25% of the one-time price, your project moves to the front of the line and launches in about two weeks, with the same steps and the same checks. We take one priority project at a time, so we'll check our calendar and confirm before you commit. Your logo and photos need to be ready on day one.

Hosting

A Starter Site can live on our hosting or on a hosting account in your name. An account like this has a monthly usage limit. A small site stays well under it, but if a site ever goes over, it goes offline until the next month starts.

Full Sites and Online Shops live with a web host you choose and pay directly. Your host needs up-to-date software, daily backups kept for at least 14 days, and a way for us to work on a test copy of your site. If yours doesn't offer these, we'll suggest one that does. We don't resell hosting, so you never pay us a markup on it.

See hosting prices

Care plans

WordPress Care and Shop Care include:

• Security updates within two business days of their release.
• Theme and plugin updates every week. We back up the site first and check it afterward.
• Backups every day from your host, kept for at least 14 days. We also keep our own copy from before every update, stored separately, for 30 days.
• Monitoring around the clock in case the site goes down, plus a monthly check of links and the contact form.
• A short email each month saying what we updated and anything you should know.

Shop Care adds a test order every month, and shop and payment updates tried on a copy of your site before the live one.

For every care plan

• Unused time doesn't carry over to the next month.
• Care plans don't include email, outages at your web host, or new pages and features.
• There's no long-term contract. To cancel, give us 30 days' notice.

Who owns what

The site is yours, and you can take it to another developer at any time. Your web address is registered in your name, and you pay its yearly fee directly. Your Google Business Profile and visitor stats are in your name too. If we host your site, the files are still yours: ask and we'll hand them over or move the site to an account in your name.

Our warranty and make-it-right promise

For one year after launch, if something we built stops working the way we built it, we fix it at no cost. That covers the things we made: layouts, forms, buttons and links.

It doesn't cover things outside our control: outages at your web host, email, domain renewals, third-party tools such as booking or payment services, changes made by you or someone else, or new pages and features.

At 90 days, we check your site against six things we control. If any of them fail, we fix it for free. We also report on visits, calls and sales, but we don't guarantee them, because they depend on more than the website. See the six checks

What we don't do

We don't set up or support email, though we're happy to point you to good options. We don't do ongoing monthly work on Google rankings, custom photography, work on Wix or Squarespace sites, or repairs to sites someone else built.

We also don't build sites for adult content, casino or betting sites, selling alcohol online or anything illegal.

We list you only on reputable local directories, and we never buy links, because bought links can get a site pushed down in Google's results or removed from them. Nobody can honestly promise you'll show up first on Google, so we won't.