Terms of service

1. About these terms

These terms govern the supply of services by Smarter Web Solutions Limited, trading as SmartersWeb ("we", "us", "our"), a company registered in England & Wales under number 12504462, registered office 85 Shelbourne Road, London, N17 9YL, United Kingdom.

Please read them before engaging us. By accepting a quote, paying an invoice or subscribing to a care plan, you agree to them. If there is a conflict between these terms and a written quote or statement of work you have signed, the quote or statement of work takes precedence for that engagement.

Consumers. If you are buying as an individual rather than for the purposes of a business, you have statutory rights that these terms do not affect, including the cancellation right described in section 10. Nothing here limits those rights.

2. Definitions

• Services — the web design, development, search, marketing, hosting, maintenance or support work described in a quote, statement of work or plan.
• Deliverables — the websites, designs, code, documents and other materials we produce for you.
• Care plan — a recurring monthly subscription for maintenance and support, as described on the pricing page.
• Client materials — text, images, logos, data and anything else you supply for use in the Services.

3. How a contract is formed

Our quotes are invitations to proceed, not binding offers, and remain valid for 30 days unless stated otherwise. A contract is formed when you accept a quote in writing — email is sufficient — or when you subscribe to a care plan and the first payment is taken. At that point these terms apply.

4. Our services

We will perform the Services with reasonable care and skill, in accordance with the scope set out in your quote or plan. We will keep you informed of progress and raise problems as soon as we identify them rather than at the end.

Timescales given in a quote are estimates made in good faith on the assumption that you provide content, feedback and access promptly. Where a delay is caused on your side, dates move by a corresponding amount.

5. What we need from you

• Content, images and information in reasonable time, and feedback on drafts within the agreed review period.
• Access to hosting, domain, or website accounts where the work requires it.
• A single named contact who can make decisions and approve work.
• Confirmation that Client materials you give us do not infringe anybody else's rights. You keep ownership of them and grant us the licence we need to use them for the Services.

If work is held up waiting on you for more than 60 days, we may invoice for the work completed to that point and reschedule the remainder against our then-current availability.

6. Prices

All prices are shown in GBP (£). Prices published on this website are indicative starting points; the price that binds us is the one in your written quote.

Care plan prices may be reviewed once in any 12-month period. We will give you at least 30 days' written notice of any increase, and you may cancel before it takes effect without penalty.

7. Payment terms

• Project work is normally invoiced 50% on acceptance of the quote and 50% on completion, unless the quote sets out different stages.
• Invoices are payable within 14 days of the invoice date.
• Card payments are processed by Stripe. We also accept UK bank transfer. We do not store your card details.
• We may charge statutory interest and compensation on overdue business-to-business invoices under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998.
• Where an invoice is more than 30 days overdue we may suspend work and, after written notice, suspend hosting or support. We will not withhold access to a domain you own.

8. Care plans and subscriptions

Care plans are recurring monthly subscriptions. The first payment is taken when you subscribe and each subsequent payment on the same date of each month. There is no minimum term, no joining fee and no charge for cancelling.

Each plan includes a stated allowance of work per month. Allowances do not roll over into the following month. Work beyond the allowance is quoted separately and only carried out once you approve it; we never bill overage automatically.

Upgrades take effect immediately and the difference is pro-rated for the current month. Downgrades take effect from your next billing date. Full cancellation terms are in the refund and cancellation policy.

9. Changes to scope

If you ask for something outside the agreed scope, we will tell you before doing it, together with the cost and any effect on the timeline. You will never receive an invoice for work you have not approved in writing.

10. Cancellation and refunds

Our full terms are set out in the refund and cancellation policy, which forms part of this agreement. In summary:

• Care plans can be cancelled at any time with 30 days' notice; your plan runs to the end of the period you have paid for.
• If we have not started work on a project, a deposit is refunded in full.
• Consumers have a statutory right to cancel within 14 days under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. If you ask us to begin within that period, you may be charged for the work done up to the point you cancel.

11. Intellectual property and ownership

On payment in full of all sums due for an engagement, ownership of the Deliverables produced specifically for you transfers to you. That includes the design, the page templates, the custom code written for your project and the content we wrote for you.

Two things are excluded and remain ours, licensed to you perpetually, non-exclusively and free of charge for use in the Deliverables: (a) general-purpose tools, libraries, snippets and techniques we developed before or independently of your project; and (b) third-party components licensed to you under their own terms, such as commercial plugins, themes, fonts and stock images. Where such components require a paid licence, that licence is registered in your name and is yours to renew or cancel.

Before payment in full, you have a temporary licence to use the Deliverables for review purposes only. We may include your project in our portfolio and case studies unless you ask us in writing not to.

12. Third-party services

Our work often depends on services we do not control, such as hosting platforms, domain registrars, payment processors, plugin vendors, search engines and social media platforms. We will advise you sensibly on which to use, but we are not responsible for their availability, their pricing changes, their policy changes, or their failures. Where you buy such a service through us, the supplier's own terms apply to it.

13. Hosting, domains and backups

Where we arrange hosting or domains for you, they are registered in your name and you own them. We will tell you the renewal dates. We are not responsible for a lapse caused by a renewal payment you have declined or a card that has expired, though we will always warn you first.

Care plans include backups at the frequency stated in your plan. Backups are a safety net, not a guarantee: you should keep your own copy of anything you could not bear to lose. We will restore from backup as part of your plan where a restoration is needed.

14. Acceptable use

You agree not to use our services, or anything we build or host for you, for any purpose set out in the acceptable use policy, which forms part of these terms. We may suspend services immediately where use breaches that policy and creates a legal or security risk.

15. Confidentiality

Each of us will keep the other's confidential information confidential, use it only for the purposes of the engagement, and not disclose it except to people who need it and are under equivalent obligations. This does not apply to information that is public through no fault of the receiving party, was already known to it, or must be disclosed by law. These obligations continue for three years after the engagement ends. We will sign your own NDA on request.

16. Data protection

Each party will comply with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. How we handle your personal data as a controller is set out in the privacy policy. Where we process personal data on your behalf, we act as your processor under a written data processing agreement, which we will provide on request at no charge.

17. Warranties and what we do not promise

We warrant that the Services will be performed with reasonable care and skill, and that for 30 days after launch we will correct, free of charge, any defect in our work that stops a Deliverable functioning as specified. That warranty does not cover changes made by you or a third party, faults in third-party software, or content and hosting problems outside our control.

We do not warrant that:

• a website will achieve any particular search engine ranking, volume of traffic, number of enquiries or level of sales;
• search engines or social platforms will index, rank or display your site in any particular way, since we do not control their algorithms;
• any website will be uninterrupted, error-free or invulnerable to attack.

Anyone who guarantees a search ranking is either guessing or misleading you. We will tell you what we believe is realistically achievable, and report results you can verify in your own analytics.

18. Liability

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Nothing limits a consumer's statutory rights.

Subject to that:

• We are not liable for loss of profit, loss of business, loss of revenue, loss of anticipated savings, loss of goodwill, or any indirect or consequential loss.
• Our total liability arising out of or in connection with an engagement is limited to the total sums you have paid us under that engagement in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.
• We are not liable for loss or corruption of data where you have not kept your own independent backup.

We recommend you hold your own insurance appropriate to your business. This clause survives termination.

19. Suspension and termination

Either party may terminate an engagement immediately by written notice if the other commits a material breach that is not remedied within 14 days of being asked to remedy it, or becomes insolvent. On termination you must pay for all work performed up to the termination date. On payment, we will hand over the Deliverables completed to that point, together with credentials and files.

20. Events outside our control

We are not liable for failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including utility or network failure, failure of a third-party platform, epidemic, industrial action, or government action. We will tell you promptly and take reasonable steps to limit the effect. If the event continues for more than 30 days, either party may terminate the affected engagement and you will pay only for work already performed.

21. Complaints

If something is wrong, tell us at hello@smartersweb.uk. We will acknowledge within two working days and give you a substantive response within ten. We would far rather redo a piece of work than have you go elsewhere unhappy.

22. General

• Entire agreement. These terms and your quote or plan form the whole agreement between us on their subject matter.
• Variation. Changes must be in writing and agreed by both parties. We may update these terms for new engagements; the version that applies to you is the one in force when your contract was formed.
• Assignment. You may not assign this agreement without our written consent, which we will not unreasonably withhold.
• Subcontracting. We may subcontract parts of the work but remain responsible for it.
• Severance. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest continues in force.
• Waiver. A delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver of it.
• Third parties. Nobody other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

23. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England & Wales, and the courts of England & Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere in the UK, you may bring proceedings in your own jurisdiction.

24. Contacting us

Smarter Web Solutions Limited
85 Shelbourne Road
London, N17 9YL
United Kingdom
Company number 12504462
Email hello@smartersweb.uk · Telephone +44 7912 315516