This is a draft. It has not been reviewed by an attorney, and the bracketed placeholders below are not yet filled in. Do not send it to a client in this state.
Version 2026-08-10.1 — draft for review. Not legal advice, and not yet enforceable as written.
Read the section titled What this document cannot do before you rely on any of it.
No terms of service make you immune from legal consequences. That is not how they work, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
What a good contract actually does:
What it cannot do:
Two things to do before using this: have an attorney review it for your state, and confirm your errors and omissions (E&O) insurance position. The liability cap below is worth very little if there is nothing behind it.
Placeholders in [SQUARE BRACKETS] must be filled in. Leaving one in is worse than having no contract, because it shows the document was never read.
These terms govern website design and build services provided by the party identified below ("we", "us") to the client named in the accepted proposal ("you").
Connor James Hues, a sole proprietor, of 6112 Via de las Abejas, San Jose, California 95120.
Sole proprietor means you are personally liable for everything in this document, including the capped amount in clause 12. The cap limits what a client can claim; it does not limit which of your assets it comes out of — a claim that exceeds your insurance reaches your personal accounts. A single-member LLC puts an entity in between and is still taxed as a disregarded entity, so it changes your exposure without changing how you file. In California that costs an $800 minimum franchise tax annually, which is the real reason to wait — not the filing fee. Revisit this before the first project large enough that losing it would hurt.
California also requires a Fictitious Business Name filing for any DBA that is not your own surname. It is filed with your county clerk and must be published in a local newspaper within 30 days. Until that is done, a DBA on this contract is a name you have no registered right to use, and some courts will not let you enforce a contract signed under an unregistered FBN.
They take effect when you accept a proposal or pay the down payment, whichever is first. They apply to that project and any later work unless we agree different terms in writing.
The proposal defines the deliverables, the number of pages, and the included revision rounds. Anything not written in the proposal is not included.
Changes to scope after acceptance are quoted separately and may move the delivery date. We will not begin additional work without written approval of the additional cost.
This is a subscription, not a one-off build. The down payment and the monthly fee are stated in the proposal.
[LATE FEE / INTEREST — caps on this are set by STATE law, so check what yours allows before writing a number in].This clause is the one that matters most. Do not weaken it.
You supply the content — text, images, logos, prices, opening hours, statistics, testimonials, credentials, and any other factual statement about your business.
You confirm and warrant that:
We do not verify your claims. Our review process checks that the site does not state anything you did not supply; it does not check whether what you supplied is true. A claim that reaches the public is yours, not ours.
You indemnify us against third-party claims, regulatory action, and associated legal costs arising from content you supplied.
We will not:
If we decline content under this clause, you may supply substantiation or replacement content. Fees for work already done remain payable.
This is the term most likely to be misremembered later, so it is stated twice and plainly. You are subscribing to a website, not purchasing one. Section 10 sets out exactly what happens to it when you cancel.
We use AI tooling to produce initial designs and code. Every deliverable is reviewed before it reaches you.
The legal position on ownership of AI-assisted output is unsettled and varies by jurisdiction. In some jurisdictions, material generated without sufficient human authorship may attract limited or no copyright protection. We assign to you whatever rights we hold in the delivered site; we cannot warrant the scope of copyright protection that will attach to it.
[If you would rather not disclose the tooling, understand the trade: a client who discovers it later has a misrepresentation argument. Disclosure is the cheaper position.]
The proposal states the number of revision rounds. Further rounds are chargeable at $120 per additional round, and work beyond the monthly plan at $95 per hour.
You are responsible for reviewing and approving the site before launch, including checking that every price, contact detail, and factual claim is correct. Approval is the point at which responsibility for the content passes to you. Record it in writing.
Sites are delivered with search engine indexing disabled and are enabled only on your written approval.
Unless the proposal says otherwise, we do not host your site or manage your domain. Where we connect third-party services on your behalf, those services' own terms govern, and we are not responsible for their availability, pricing, or data handling.
We will not connect or deploy to a live domain without your explicit approval.
You may cancel at any time, in writing. There is no notice period and no minimum term.
On cancellation:
That month exists so nobody is cut off the same day, and so there is time to put something else in place. It is not a grace period for continued use of the service.
What you keep, in every case: your own content, your domain, and anything you supplied. What you do not keep: the site itself, its source files, and the hosting. See section 6.
We may cancel on 30 days' written notice, or immediately for non-payment or for a breach not remedied under section 12. Where we cancel for convenience, the same one-month window applies.
The monthly fee is not an unlimited support agreement. It covers the items listed in the proposal — it does not include new features, redesigns, or content rewrites, which are quoted separately.
We build a website. We do not promise a business outcome.
We make no representation that the site will produce any particular level of traffic, search ranking, enquiries, conversions, or revenue. No statement in our marketing, our proposals, or any conversation should be read as such a promise.
The site is provided without warranties beyond those that cannot be excluded by law. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that it will function identically in every browser, on every device, or after a third-party service changes.
Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.
Subject to that, and to the maximum extent permitted by law:
[Confirm this cap with your attorney and your insurer. A cap materially below your realistic exposure can be challenged as unreasonable, and a cap your insurance does not sit behind protects nothing.]
Section 10 covers cancelling the subscription once the site is live. This section covers the period before that, when there is a build in progress and no monthly fee has started.
You may cancel in writing at any time. The down payment is non-refundable once the first draft has been delivered. Work completed to the date of cancellation is payable pro rata, and nothing transfers to you — a part-built site is not delivered, and no license to use it arises.
We may cancel for non-payment, for a breach not remedied within 14 days of written notice, or if we are asked to publish content clause 5 does not permit.
Each party will keep the other's non-public business information confidential and use it only for this project. This survives the end of the agreement.
Where we process personal data on your behalf, we do so only on your instructions and apply appropriate security measures.
[You DO handle personal data of your clients' customers: every contact form submission is written to an enquiry ledger with the sender's email address and IP. That is not hypothetical, so a separate data processing agreement is not optional-in-principle — decide with your attorney whether you need one and how long you retain that ledger.
State law is what binds you: California (CCPA/CPRA) is the strictest and applies based on where the CONSUMER lives, not where you do. GDPR still reaches you if any client's site takes enquiries from the EU or UK. Ask specifically about retention, since the ledger currently keeps entries indefinitely.]
[email protected]. A notice is treated as received on the next business day after it is sent, unless it bounces. Either party may nominate a different address in writing. This is a working business address, not a storefront; there is nowhere to serve paper and none is required.[BRACKETED] placeholder.