Terms of Service

Who these terms are between

These terms cover work between you or your business and Tended, a sole practice operated by Bryan from Castle Rock, Colorado. They apply from the moment you start a maintenance plan or accept a project quote. If we have signed something separate that contradicts a clause here, that signed document wins.

Maintenance plans

What is included

Each plan includes exactly what the plans page says it includes, and the comparison table there is the authoritative description. Included time covers edits and small fixes to content and functionality that already exists. New page templates, new features, and anything that amounts to a project are quoted separately before any work begins.

Included time

Included time is measured per calendar month. Unused time does not roll over, and has no cash value, except on the Partner plan, where up to one month of unused time may be carried forward for planned work scheduled in advance. Time is not transferable between clients or sites.

Work beyond your included time is charged at $85 an hour, the same rate on every plan. You always receive an estimate and approve it before that work starts. You will never receive an invoice for work you did not agree to.

Response times

You will hear back the same business day on every plan. Weekdays. Anything sent after 4pm Mountain gets a reply the next business day. That is an acknowledgement, not a commitment to finish anything — how quickly work starts is what differs by plan, and those figures are in the comparison table.

This is a weekday service and not a 24/7 one. There is no on-call rota, no contractual uptime guarantee, and no service level agreement with penalties attached. Anything sent overnight, at a weekend, or on a US public holiday is picked up the next business morning. This applies to every plan, including Partner. If your business genuinely needs round-the-clock cover, an agency with a support team is the right choice and I will tell you so.

Billing and cancellation

Plans are billed monthly in advance by card, on the same date each month, and continue until cancelled. There is no contract, no minimum term, and no setup fee.

You may cancel any month by email. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the billing month you have already paid for, and you keep the service until then. Upgrades take effect immediately and the difference is prorated. Downgrades take effect at the start of your next billing month.

If you choose to pay annually, the year is paid in advance at the discounted rate. That is still not a contract: cancel at any point and the full months you have not used are refunded.

If a payment fails, I will tell you and try again. If it has not been resolved after fourteen days, the plan is paused — monitoring, backups, and updates stop — and I will tell you before that happens rather than after. Nothing is deleted; the service resumes when payment does.

I may also end a plan, with thirty days' notice and a refund of anything paid for time not yet served. That is not something I expect to use, but a one-person practice that cannot decline work it is unable to do well is a practice that does the work badly.

Project work

Projects are quoted as fixed scope, in writing, before anything starts. The quote states what is included, what it costs, and roughly how long it will take. Once you approve it the price does not move unless you ask for something outside that scope, in which case I quote the change before doing it.

Projects are billed 50% before work starts and 50% on completion, unless the quote says otherwise. Larger projects may be split into more stages. Timelines assume you supply content, feedback, and access reasonably promptly; where they do not arrive, the finish date moves rather than the quality dropping.

On final payment, ownership of the finished website and its custom code transfers to you. Third-party components — themes, plugins, fonts, stock imagery — remain under their own licences, which are named in the quote where they carry a recurring cost.

What I need from you

• Access. Hosting, domain registrar, and site administrator logins, kept current. Work cannot proceed without them, and time spent chasing access is time not spent on your site.
• Ownership of your content. You confirm that the text, images, and other material you supply are yours to use, and you are responsible for what your website publishes.
• Licences and fees. Hosting, domain renewal, and any commercial plugin or theme licences remain in your name and are paid by you. I will tell you what they cost before anything is bought.
• Reasonable notice. Included time is a monthly allowance, not an on-demand queue. Requests are handled in the order they arrive.

What you keep

Your hosting, your domain, and your accounts stay in your own name throughout. I do not resell hosting and I do not hold your domain. If we stop working together for any reason, I hand over access and your most recent backup within seven days, without conditions, argument, or an exit fee.

What I cannot promise

• That nothing will ever break. Maintenance sharply reduces the chance of a failure and shortens recovery when one happens. It does not make a website immune to hosting outages, third-party failures, or attacks.
• Search rankings. The quarterly SEO review is an audit: it tells you what is wrong and what is worth fixing. Nobody can guarantee a position in Google's results, and anyone who does is selling you something.
• Third-party software. WordPress, its plugins and themes, your host, and your payment gateway are made by other people. I keep them updated and tested, but I cannot warrant software I did not write.
• Recovery of what was never backed up. Backups begin when your plan begins. Data lost before that, or held somewhere I do not have access to, may not be recoverable.

Liability

I will do this work with reasonable skill and care, and I will tell you promptly when something goes wrong. To the extent the law allows, my total liability for any claim connected to this work is limited to the amount you paid me in the twelve months before the claim arose, and I am not liable for indirect or consequential losses such as lost profits or lost business.

Nothing here limits liability for anything that cannot lawfully be limited.

Confidentiality

Anything I learn about your business in the course of the work stays private. I will not name you as a client publicly without asking first, and a refusal costs you nothing.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Colorado, United States. If something goes wrong, email me first — nearly everything is solvable in a conversation, and neither of us wants the alternative.

Changes to these terms

If these terms change in substance, the date at the top of the page changes with them, and existing clients are emailed rather than left to notice. Continuing on a plan after that notice means the revised terms apply.

Questions

Email hello@yoursitetended.com. If a clause here is unclear, that is a fault in the writing and I would like to know about it.