Terms of business

This is a plain summary of how we work, so you know what you are getting into before you talk to us. The full agreement is sent with your proposal, and nothing here replaces it. If anything is unclear, ask before you sign, not after.

The free concept

We design a real mockup of your site before you pay anything. It is genuinely free, there is no obligation, and we will not chase you about it more than once. The concept remains our work until a build is paid for, which matters only if you were planning to take it to someone else to build.

How payment works

Fifty per cent when you approve the concept and we start the build. The balance before the site goes live. The site does not go live until the final payment has cleared, which is standard and protects both of us. Paying monthly works differently, and is set out in the next section.

Invoices for anything outside the agreed scope are due within 14 days. We always quote before doing chargeable work. If something urgent comes up, such as your site going offline, we tell you what it is likely to cost before we start, even if that is by phone.

We are not VAT registered, so no VAT is added to any of our prices.

Paying monthly

Paying monthly is for website builds and redesigns. Instead of two halves, a £200 deposit starts the build and comes off the price. The rest is split into equal monthly payments over 6, 9 or 12 months, with no interest, under a written contract. It is the same build price, and it is not rental. If the price does not divide exactly, the last payment is a few pence different, so the total always comes to the build price exactly.

The launch offer. If it applies to your build, 15% comes off the whole build price. The £200 deposit stays the same and the whole saving comes off the monthly payments, so the deposit and the payments add up to the offer price, the same as paying in halves.

Late payments. A payment more than a week late means the site is switched off until it is paid. It comes back on as soon as it is, with no reconnection fee. A late payment adds 10% to that one payment, charged once.

If payments stop. We contact you and try to agree a plan together. If we cannot agree one within 30 days, the agreement ends, what you owe up to then becomes due, and the site stays switched off until the build price is paid in full. Your domain, and the words, photos and logo you gave us, stay yours throughout.

Paying early. You can pay off the rest early at any time. Just email us.

Hosting. Hosting is not part of the monthly payments. While you are paying, your site is hosted on a Cloudflare account set up in your name, which we manage, on our Hosting plan at £44.99 a month, or on a care plan instead, which includes hosting. The Hosting plan keeps the site online and secure, but does not include changes. It ends with your last payment, and then you choose a care plan or take the site elsewhere.

Ownership. Until the last payment clears, the site runs under that contract. Once it has, the site is yours outright, on the same terms as any other build under Who owns what below.

The contract governs. This section is a summary. The contract you sign sets out the full terms, and if the two ever differ, the signed contract is what counts.

Changing your mind

Within 14 days of signing, you pay only for the work we have actually done, at £60 an hour, and we refund the rest of what you have paid.

After 14 days, we keep the first half if you are paying in halves, or the £200 deposit and any monthly payments already made if you are paying monthly. We add a cancellation charge of £150, which covers the time we reserved for your project. The charge is invoiced and due within 14 days.

To cancel, email enquiries@elevantae.com. Private individuals have extra rights, set out below.

What is in scope

Your proposal lists exactly what we are building: the pages, the motion, the integrations and the content. Anything not on that list is extra, and gets a price or a line on the change log before it happens, never a silent yes.

Revisions included: one round at concept stage and one at build stage. Further rounds are quoted.

Changes after sign off. The site is hand coded, so there is no editor for you to log in to. When you approve the finished site on the sign off sheet, the build is complete, and from then on changes are made by us. On a care plan they come out of your monthly allowance. Without one, each change is quoted before we make it and invoiced as a one off, at £60 an hour measured in 15 minute steps, due within 14 days. The sign off sheet says this too.

Who owns what

You own your website once the build is paid for: the design, the content and the code we wrote for you. If you pay monthly, that is once the last payment clears.

You own your domain. It stays registered in your name, at your registrar. If you ever leave, you take it with you. We will never hold your domain or your data hostage. The one time a site is switched off is a site on monthly payments with a payment more than a week late, as set out under Paying monthly. It comes back on as soon as that payment is made, and it is your domain and your data either way.

We keep our own toolkit: the components and code libraries we have built up and reuse across projects. You get a licence to use them as part of your site, for as long as you like.

Third party licences for fonts, stock images and plugins stay with whoever owns them, and any ongoing fees for them are yours. We tell you about these before we use them.

We would love to show your site in our portfolio, but we only do it with your written permission. We ask on the sign off sheet, and you can change your mind at any time.

The care plan

Optional, though we recommend it. A six month minimum term, then month to month with 30 days notice. The prices are on our pricing page and are confirmed in writing before you start.

You can also take a plan on a 12 month term, at 10% off paid monthly, or 15% off paid upfront, as on our pricing page. After the 12 months, the plan carries on month to month at the normal price, with 30 days notice, unless you choose another 12 months. If you end a 12 month term early, there is an early exit charge of 35% of the monthly payments left in the term. We are happy to agree a lower figure with you, but it is never more than that. If you paid upfront, we refund the months not yet started, less the same 35%.

It covers search work, content updates, and Cloudflare and security management. Content updates means changes to existing content within your monthly allowance. New sections and new functionality are quoted separately, however small they sound, unless your plan includes them: Partner includes new pages and sections.

Monthly plans are paid monthly in advance by Direct Debit, on a day you choose from the 1st to the 28th. If a payment is late, nothing extra is added for the first 14 days, and we phone and email to check everything is all right. After 14 days we add a late fee of 10% of that payment, charged once, and pause the plan until it is paid. It restarts as soon as it is, with no reconnection fee.

Our monthly prices may rise at most once a year, with 30 days notice, and if you do not accept a rise, you can leave without penalty. The Hosting plan stays at £44.99 a month for as long as your monthly payments run.

If you leave, we give you everything needed to host the site elsewhere and we will talk your new provider through it.

Microsoft 365 support

Microsoft 365 support runs under its own written agreement, with the prices on our pricing page. A rolling agreement has a 3 month minimum, then 30 days notice. Or you can take 12 months at 10% off the base fee, and if you leave a 12 month term early, you pay back the discount you have had so far.

We do not resell licences. For the data in your Microsoft 365, we are the processor, working to your instructions, and the agreement includes our data processing terms.

Google Ads

Tracking first. We do not manage Google Ads until your conversion tracking works. If it is broken, we fix it first, through the Conversion Tracking Setup.

The Tracking Audit is a fixed price, quoted before we start, and you receive a written Tracking Health Report. If you go on to the setup, the audit fee comes off its price.

Management runs month to month with 30 days notice, and no minimum term.

Your ad budget is paid by you to Google directly and is separate from our fees. We never take a percentage of it.

Your accounts stay yours. Your Google Ads account and Tag Manager stay in your name. After the setup you get a written handover document listing every conversion action, and if you leave, you keep everything.

No guaranteed results. We do not promise positions, clicks, enquiries or a return on your spend. Google runs an auction, and your competitors and Google’s own changes are outside our control. We guarantee the work and honest monthly reporting.

What we guarantee, and what we do not

We guarantee that the work is done with proper skill and care, and that everything in your proposal gets delivered. We fix genuine faults free for 30 days after launch. That covers things not working as they should, not changes of mind or new ideas.

We do not guarantee search rankings. Nobody can. Google decides, and it is affected by the algorithm, your competitors, and changes to your own business. Anyone promising you a position is either guessing or planning something that will get your domain penalised. We guarantee the work and honest reporting, not the outcome.

We do not guarantee the site never goes down. We target 99.5% uptime and monitor it constantly, but hosting infrastructure occasionally fails and that is outside our control.

We only use legitimate techniques. No bought links, no tricks. If you ask us for something that risks a penalty on your domain, we will say no and explain why.

Delays

If we are waiting on content or approval from you for more than 20 working days we may pause your project and move to the next job in the queue. We will chase you several times before that happens.

Your customers data

When your site collects enquiries, you are legally responsible for that data and we handle it on your instructions. We keep it secure and encrypted, tell you within 24 hours if there is ever a breach, and delete or return everything within 30 days of you leaving. You are responsible for your own privacy notice, and we will help you write one.

If it goes wrong

Our liability is capped at the fees you have paid us in the 12 months before the problem happened, and we are not liable for lost profit or knock-on losses. Nothing limits liability for death, personal injury, fraud, or anything else the law says cannot be limited. This agreement is governed by the law of England and Wales.

Ending it

Either of us can end a care plan or Google Ads management with the notice above. Either of us can end it immediately if the other seriously breaches the agreement and does not fix it within 14 days.

Leaving is deliberately easy. Within 10 working days of asking, and once everything is paid, you get a full export of your site and the settings your new provider needs.

If you are a private individual

If you are buying for yourself rather than for a business, you are a consumer, and nothing in these terms takes away your legal rights.

14 days to cancel. If we agree a contract without meeting in person, for example by email and electronic signature, you can cancel within 14 days of signing without giving a reason. We only start work within those 14 days if you ask us to in writing. If you ask us to start and then cancel, you pay only for the work done or the service provided up to the day you tell us, and we refund everything else within 14 days, using the same payment method.

Quality. Our work must be done with reasonable care and skill. If it is not, we put it right, and if we cannot, you may be entitled to some money back. These rights carry on after the 30 days of free fault fixing.

To cancel, tell us clearly by email to enquiries@elevantae.com. You can use the model form below, but you do not have to.

Model cancellation form

(Complete and return this form only if you wish to withdraw from the contract.)

To: Elevantae, enquiries@elevantae.com

I/We (*) hereby give notice that I/We (*) cancel my/our (*) contract for the supply of the following service (*):

Ordered on (*):

Name of consumer(s):

Address of consumer(s):

Signature of consumer(s) (only if this form is notified on paper):

Date:

(*) Delete as appropriate.