Between ALLEBRUM, LLC (presented as “I”, “me”, “my”, “our”, or “we” ) and YOUR COMPANY as represented by YOU (presented as “you” or “client”).
I will always do my best to fulfill your needs and meet our goals, but it’s best to have a few simple things written down so that we both know what is what, who should do what and what happens if things go awry. In this contract you won’t find complicated legal terms or large passages of unreadable text. I have no desire to trick you into signing something that you might later regret. I do want what’s best for the safety of both parties, now and for future projects.
YOU, representing YOUR COMPANY, are hiring ALLEBRUM, LLC to perform web development work for the estimated total price as discussed and outlined in previous discussions or described here: $ . The agreed payment plan is at the end of this document and more detail on the services to be provided is below.
You:
I:
Detailed Service Overview
This contract includes one main development cycle plus a quality assurance / review phase. If for any reason you’re not happy with the website at this stage, you agree to pay me in full for all of the work that I have produced until that point and you may either cancel this contract or continue to commission me to make further revisions at my standard hourly rate of $250.
I am not responsible for writing or inputting any text copy unless I specified it in the original estimate. I’ll be happy to help though where I can.
If needed, you will supply me imagery in the appropriate digital format for use on the website. If you choose to buy stock photographs I can suggest vendors of stock photography. You are responsible for the licenses of any imagery you supply me.
I retain full ownership of any content developed during the course of this contract. Upon final payment and delivery, I am granting you one perpetual and irrevocable license to use this content as befits our agreement. If this contract is a subcontract to another party, you may claim the efforts of this contract as your own for billing and portfolio purposes. You may not license, resell, or claim ownership of this content in any other context unless granted in written or electronic permission by me.
If you have provided mockups of the design of your website, I will work from these and endeavor to produce a website resembling them as closely as possible. It is not always possible to produce pixel-perfect interpretations of static designs across all browsers and under all circumstances due to technical limitations of the Internet which are beyond my control.
In some cases, compromises may be made in order to ensure the contracted work can be completed within the agreed upon timeframe. If I believe these decisions will affect the look or functionality of the site in a meaningful way, I will notify you as early as possible in the process. I am willing to work with you to find the best solution. In all cases, I reserve the right to make modifications as I see fit.
I am an expert in my field and am capable of creating almost any functionality you may desire. However, I do reserve the right to refuse any feature requests I deem to be unreasonable, unsafe, or unprofessional. This may include forced workarounds for design issues that would lead to invalid or unstable code, features that would compromise user or client security, or content which I find to be harmful or offensive in nature. In any case, I will do my best to notify you of any issues as early as possible, as well as provide an alternative option.
With a fixed-price contract, it is important to me that revisions are handled as efficiently and fairly as possible. Unless otherwise stated, you will not be provided with a demo of the site until the quality assurance period, after the majority of all development work is completed. This ensures we’re not wasting time by having you notify me of things I’m not finished with yet.
In keeping with good development practices, I usually work on my local machine and not a public-facing web server. If certain site features are complex or functionality is unclear from the provided design, I may upload the site to a staging environment and ask you to review a specific portion of the site during active development to provide guidance or feedback. You are free to check out the rest of the site at your leisure, but consider every portion to be incomplete until I indicate otherwise.
During the review phase, you will be given the chance to indicate any errors, missing features or content, or design discrepancies. I encourage you to be as thorough as possible. I will fix any issues identified as being covered by the statement of work or design provided. For additional requests, I may need to charge an additional fee to be estimated separately. A certain degree of change and modification is included in my quote, so I will only charge for additional work if it is absolutely necessary. Any errors found after final payment and delivery are not to be considered covered by this agreement.
If, at any stage, you would like the design or site structure to change, additional page templates created, or new features added, I am happy to oblige. You will be charged my standard hourly rate as mentioned above for minor revisions, and provided a separate estimate for larger changes. Along the way I might ask you to put requests in writing so I can keep track of changes.
Occasionally there are situations that arise where an undetectable issue becomes apparent after the start of work that severely affects my ability to complete my tasks. Examples of this include “spaghetti code” or compiled libraries that need updated. In the event these type of issues appear, I will inform you as soon as possible. If I am capable of resolving the issue, I will provide an estimate to do so. You may decline this with the understanding that I will not be able to complete the contract. I will refund payments as appropriate, and you will forfeit rights to any content I’ve developed to that point. If the issue is beyond my capability, I will likewise refund you as appropriate and terminate the contract.
If the project includes HTML markup and CSS styling, I will develop these using HTML5 and CSS3. We develop for Google (Chrome) and we will test all code in the current version. Development for Chrome generally works the same in Apple (Safari), Mozilla (Firefox), and Microsoft (IE11+). Changes that have to be made to work in other browsers will be an additional cost at my hourly rate. Also note that these browsers (especially Internet Explorer 9 and 10) are functionally built different, so they will display visually similar, albeit not necessarily identical. When developing for multiple browsers every effort will be made to gracefully degrade the website in older browsers so as to not diminish the visitor’s experience. However, I will not test these templates in old or abandoned browsers, for example Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (or below) for Windows or Mac, previous versions of Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera or other unless otherwise specified in the statement of work. If, later on, you decide your site needs to support these older browsers, I will work with you to make necessary adjustments, charging you at the hourly rate specified for any necessary additional code and testing.
Unless specified within the statement of work, a responsive or mobile-focused version of the site is not included with this agreement. While I will include lines of code to encourage mobile browsers to present the site in a readable way, it’s very possible that certain visual elements will not look the same on mobile devices as they do on desktops.
If the statement of work includes the mobile site, mobile browsers are to include the default browsers for Android (Chrome) and iOS (Safari) smartphones and tablets. Due to the sheer number of different devices and display resolutions available on the market, I cannot guarantee absolute consistency across all mobile platforms, but I will test on all devices available to me. I will work with you to provide desired results on other devices as needed, charging you at the hourly rate specified for any additional work needed.
If I am not hosting the site for you, upon completion of development I will provide you with all necessary code and database files to install the site on a server of your choosing. You are responsible for keeping a copy of these files for your own backups. Unless included in the statement of work, this contract does not include installing the site in your or your client’s production environment.
If I am hosting the site for you, the details of file management will be covered in a separate statement of work for the hosting contract.
I am committed to making you feel as comfortable as possible with your new website once it is launched, however I cannot provide on-going training after launch. I will try my best to guide you in the right direction with regards to understanding the CMS. Should you need training on how to use it, I am able to quote this for you at my standard hourly rate or under a Service Level Agreement (SLA). It is assumed no training is included in the quoted amount, unless otherwise specified in the statement of work.
It is your responsibility to identify any issues during the quality assurance phase of the project. Beyond this time, I am happy to offer a quote to perform fixes or modify the site. This does not extend to any bugs in the CMS (content management system) used. It will be your responsibility to keep the CMS and any plugins used up to date for security reasons, unless you contract me on a ongoing basis to do so for you. While I strive to code websites in a future-proof way, there will come an eventual time that modifications may be required to the site to support something in an upgrade.
If I am not hosting the site for you, this contract does not provide any technical support for your hosting environment or other issues that arise from content management after completion of site development, including user-made changes or issues with third party tools and plugins.
To ensure your website is maintained and your web server has all the necessary updates and security patches we recommend signing a monthly service agreement with us. Regular services and maintenance is not covered under this agreement.
Unless indicated otherwise, the site will be demonstrated to work in a standard Linux (Ubuntu) environment, and all code written in such a way as to assume a similarly configured server for the production hosting environment.
I am happy to assist with post-development needs, but will have to charge separately at the hourly rate provided.
Getting hacked is never fun. I will always do my best to make the website I produce for you as secure as possible but I can neither be responsible for nor accountable for your website after it has been launched. I can also not be responsible for providing a backup of your website files should any loss or damage occur. Most web hosting companies will be able to provide you a recent website backup for a fee and I am also able to offer a regular backup storage service for an ongoing fee which can be discussed. That being said, if I can help out I will surely try.
If part of our agreement includes services that I am not able to offer, I will either recommend someone to perform these for you or I can sub-contract these on your behalf. These services may include the likes of Web Design, Search Engine Marketing (SEA) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services. I love writing code and certainly prefer to manage all work myself, but if need be I do reserve the right to utilize the services of third party contractors.
If your web development service includes the integration of online purchasing/e-commerce facilities, you will be responsible for both the set-up and ongoing costs of these services. These may include merchant gateway fees, purchase of an SSL certificate and any other fees for services provided by this third party functionality. When the time comes to integrate these services, I will do my best to fully inform you of what costs may be involved.
You may, at any time, choose to terminate this contract. In doing so, you may request to have all code in its current state transferred to you. I will provide an estimation of what percentage of the project this includes. If this amount is greater than 50%, you will be responsible for paying the prorated amount of the remainder of the agreed contract fee before delivery will occur. If the current project status is less than 50%, I will provide you with the project content as it currently exists and no further payment is owed on your part, nor is any refund due.
You may choose to decline this request for partial payment, at which time you forfeit all rights to the content detailed in this agreement. All other clauses in this contract will remain in place.
As detailed in my previous correspondence, payment is divided into two parts. The first payment must be received before development may begin. The second payment is due before delivery of final content. You will not be granted access to code files or administrative accounts before this time in order to protect my ownership of the project content. If the situation demands development on a server I do not exclusively control, complete payment will be made at the start of the project.
The details of our agreement for payment are below:
I do not place any interest on late payments, but reserve the right to stop work on the project and withdraw any staging or development site up until the time any outstanding amount is settled.
I can’t guarantee that the functions contained in any webpage templates or in a completed website will always be error-free and so I can’t be liable to you or any third party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages arising out of the operation of or inability to operate this website and any other webpages, even if you have advised us of the possibilities of such damages.
If any provision of this agreement shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this agreement and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.
The terms and conditions detailed in this agreement are to be considered an integration with other contracts as required by you or your client. In the event specifics differ or conflict between contracts, the terms of this contract are to supersede those of any others in place.
Just like a parking ticket, you cannot transfer this contract to anyone else without my permission.
This contract stays in place and need not be renewed. If for some reason one part of this contract becomes invalid or unenforceable, the remaining parts of it remain in place.
Although the language is simple, the intentions are serious and this contract is a legal document.
Please keep a copy once signed for your records. I look forward to working with you.