Client Service Agreement

Last updated September 9, 2026

This is the public summary. The full agreement, with your project scope, timeline, and price filled in, is provided before you pay the deposit that starts your build.

1. Scope

Every engagement starts with a written scope: the pages, features, and deliverables included, and the price. Anything outside that scope is quoted separately before it is built. There are no surprise line items.

2. How a build runs

  1. Discovery call — free. We talk over what you need and whether a new site is the right call.
  2. Written quote — free. You get a fixed price and a scope in writing, with no obligation.
  3. Deposit — once you approve the scope, a deposit starts the build and reserves your place in the queue.
  4. Build — we build; you review at agreed checkpoints.
  5. Revisions — two rounds of revisions are included in every build.
  6. Launch — the site goes live once the balance is paid.
  7. Care plan — you choose an ongoing care plan after launch, or host the site yourself.

3. Timelines

A target date is set at the start. The most common cause of a missed date is content that has not arrived. If we are waiting on you, the timeline moves; if we are late for our own reasons, we say so and tell you the new date.

4. Payment

  • A deposit starts the build. The deposit and the balance split is stated in your agreement; where it is not, the deposit is 50% on signing and the balance is due before launch.
  • The deposit is authorized and charged under a separate Deposit Payment Authorization, which is the operative permission for that charge.
  • The balance is due before launch.
  • A care plan, if you choose one, is billed monthly starting after launch.

5. Revisions and additional work

Two rounds of revisions are included. Beyond that, or for work outside the agreed scope, we quote a fixed price before starting. You will never be billed for something you did not approve.

6. What you need to give us, and what happens if you do not

A build depends on you supplying content, images, logins, and feedback. Where a specific date is agreed for those and it is missed:

  • the timeline shifts by at least the length of the delay, and possibly more if it pushes the project into other committed work;
  • after thirty days without the material or feedback we need, the project may be placed on hold and any remaining balance for work completed becomes due;
  • after ninety days on hold, restarting may require a fresh quote, because the work already done may need revisiting.

You confirm that you own, or have permission to use, everything you send us — text, photographs, logos, fonts, and video. We rely on that confirmation and do not independently verify it. This is set out in full in the Asset & Content Rights Release you sign at project start.

7. Review and acceptance

You review at agreed checkpoints. If we do not hear from you within ten business days of a checkpoint, that stage is treated as accepted so the project can move forward. Accepted work can still be changed later — it is treated as new work and quoted.

8. Third-party licences and running costs

Some builds need things we do not own: premium fonts, stock photography, paid plugins, a payment processor, an email sending service, a booking system. Where those carry a cost it is quoted to you before purchase and is yours, not ours, unless the quote says otherwise. Licences are registered in your name wherever the vendor allows it.

Domain registration, hosting beyond your plan, and any third-party subscription remain your responsibility to fund. We will tell you before anything lapses, but we cannot pay for it on your behalf.

9. What you own

Until the build is paid in full, ownership does not transfer. Everything we produce is retained by us, and work delivered before final payment is licensed to you for review only — you have no right to use, copy, deploy, publish, or display it until the balance is paid.

On full payment, we assign to you all copyright and other intellectual-property rights in the custom code, design, and content produced specifically for you, and waive any moral rights in it to the extent the law allows. Your domain is registered in your name from day one. Your content is always yours. If you leave, we help you take it with you.

Two things are not transferred: third-party components remain under their own licences, and we keep ownership of our general tools, libraries, techniques, and know-how developed before or outside your project. Where any of that is embedded in your site, you have a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to keep using it as part of that site — but not to extract it for other projects or resell it.

10. Ending the engagement

You can cancel a care plan at any time, effective at the end of the billing period. Cancelling a build in progress means all amounts for work already completed become immediately due; the deposit is not refunded, because it covers work already started and reserved capacity in the build queue. No deliverable or licence passes to you until those amounts are paid. If you dispute part of an invoice in good faith and in writing, that withholding applies only to the undisputed amount.

We may end an engagement where an account is significantly past due, where we are asked to do something unlawful, or where the working relationship has broken down to the point that continuing would not serve you. Either party may also end the engagement for material breach not cured within fifteen days of written notice. Where we end the engagement for a reason that is not your breach, you are billed only for work delivered, and you receive it.

11. Late payment

Invoices are due on the terms stated on them. Work may be paused on any account more than fifteen days past due, and overdue balances may carry interest at 1.5% per month, or the maximum the law allows if that is less. We will always contact you before pausing anything.

12. Confidentiality

Anything you share about your business stays between us, and we will not disclose it except where required by law or where you have made it public yourself. This survives the end of the engagement. The same obligation runs the other way for anything we share with you about how we work. A separate Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement is available on request, and where one is signed its more protective terms apply.

We may show the finished public site, and your name and logo, as portfolio work and in marketing. Tell us at any time and we will stop — no reason needed, and it takes effect within thirty days.

Questions

If anything here is unclear, ask before you sign. Use the contact form or email aidenstewart@stewartsites.com, and you will get a straight answer.