Terms and conditions

01About these terms

These terms govern the website design, build, hosting, maintenance and related services (“Services”) provided by Nerdsharks of Exeter, Devon, England (“Nerdsharks”, “we”, “us”) to you, the customer (“you”).

Our Services are supplied to businesses, including sole traders, acting for the purposes of their trade. They are not offered to consumers. By booking with us you confirm you are acting in the course of business.

A contract is formed when you book a plan and we confirm your booking in writing (email is enough). The contract is made up of these terms, the description of your plan on our pricing page at the date you booked, and anything else we agree with you in writing. If there is a conflict, what we have agreed with you in writing takes priority, then these terms, then the pricing page.

02Our services

We design and build a website for your business, write its content with you, then host and maintain it for as long as your monthly plan continues. What is included, and what is not, depends on the plan you choose and is set out on the pricing page.

Optional add-ons (such as missed-call text back or review booster) can be added to any plan and are billed monthly alongside it. Larger features - live booking, card payments, customer accounts or an online shop - are quoted on your call and agreed in writing before work begins.

We will carry out the Services with reasonable care and skill, using suitably experienced people, and in line with good industry practice.

03Fees and payment

1. Monthly plan: the setup fee is paid when you book, and it starts the design work.
2. Own It and Pro: the build fee is paid in two equal halves - the first when you book, the second when your website goes live.
3. Monthly fees start on the day your website goes live and are collected monthly in advance by Direct Debit, covered by the Direct Debit Guarantee. Add-ons are billed in the same way.
4. All prices are in pounds sterling. We are not VAT registered, so there is no VAT to add to these prices.
5. If a payment is not made when due, we will tell you and give you 14 days to pay. If it is still unpaid after that, we may suspend the Services (including taking the website offline) until it is paid, and we may charge interest and compensation under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998.
6. We may change our monthly fees by giving you at least 60 days’ written notice. Fees will not increase during a minimum term. If you do not accept a change, you may end the affected Services before it takes effect without any charge for doing so.

04Timescales and your responsibilities

We aim to have you live within 3 working days of your 15-minute call and your approval of the design. That is our aim, not a guarantee, and it depends on you being able to take part in the call, supply what we need and review the design promptly.

You agree to:

1. give us accurate information about your business, services, prices and contact details, and tell us promptly when anything changes;
2. supply any photographs, logos, text and other materials you want used, and make sure you have the right to use them;
3. make sure any regulatory registrations, accreditations, reviews and claims shown on your website are true and current;
4. respond to our questions and review requests within a reasonable time; and
5. keep any login details we give you secure.

You are responsible for the content you supply and approve. You will reimburse us for any reasonable losses we suffer because material you supplied infringes someone else’s rights or breaks the law.

05Design approval and changes

You see your finished design on your phone and approve it before anything goes live, with two full rounds of changes included. Nothing launches until you are happy with it. The Monthly plan runs for 12 months from launch.

A change is a small content or layout edit - new opening hours, a swapped photo, a new service added, a reworded paragraph. Redesigns and new pages are quoted separately.

After launch, your plan includes the number of small changes per month set out on the pricing page. Unused changes do not roll over. Anything beyond your allowance, or outside the definition above, is quoted before it is carried out and only done once you agree.

06Ownership and intellectual property

On Monthly, you pay the website off as you go: we own and run it while you are paying, and after 24 monthly payments it becomes yours and the monthly drops to £49 for hosting and care, with no minimum term. Your domain, words and photos are yours from day one. On Own It and Pro, you own the website outright once the build is paid for. Once a website is yours, cancel the monthly service and it is still yours - we hand over everything so you can host it anywhere.

1. Your materials. You keep ownership of all content, photographs, logos and data you give us. You grant us a licence to use them for the purpose of providing the Services.
2. Monthly plan. Until you have paid 24 monthly fees on the Monthly plan, the website - its design, code, frameworks and components - remains ours and is licensed to you for as long as your plan is active. The words written for your business and your domain name are yours from the start. Once 24 monthly fees have been paid, ownership of the website’s design and content passes to you on the same basis as Own It, and your plan becomes hosting and care at £49 a month with no minimum term.
3. Own It and Pro. Once the build fee has been paid in full, ownership of the website’s design and content passes to you. Shared code libraries and tools we reuse across our work stay ours, and are licensed to you for use with your website without time limit.
4. Domain. Your domain is registered in your name. If you already have one, we connect it; if not, we set one up for you and hand over the login.
5. Our portfolio. We may show your website in our portfolio and marketing unless you ask us not to in writing.

07Hosting, availability and backups

Your monthly plan includes: managed hosting, SSL certificate, uptime monitoring, security updates and daily backups.

We aim for continuous availability and will work to restore service promptly if something goes wrong, but we cannot guarantee the website will be uninterrupted or error-free. Planned maintenance will be kept short and, where possible, carried out at quiet times.

08Support

WhatsApp and email support from the person who built your site, usually answered the same working day.

Support covers the website we built and host. It does not cover your email provider, your devices, your social media accounts or third-party services we did not set up, although we will always point you in the right direction.

09Third-party services

Your website may rely on services provided by others, such as domain registrars, email providers, payment processors, booking tools, maps and Google Business Profile. Those services are governed by their providers’ own terms. We are not responsible for their availability, changes or charges, but we will help you manage any that we set up for you.

10Results

We build websites designed to win enquiries, but we do not guarantee any particular search ranking, volume of traffic, number of enquiries or revenue. Search engines and AI assistants decide their own results, and no one can promise a position in them.

11Acceptable use

We will not build or host content that is unlawful, infringes anyone’s rights, is misleading, or breaches the UK advertising codes or the rules of a professional regulator. If we become aware of such content we will ask you to change or remove it, and may suspend the affected pages until you do. Where the law requires us to act immediately, we may do so without notice.

12Term, cancellation and ending the contract

The Monthly plan is a 12-month plan, then one month’s notice any time after that. Leave inside the 12 months and the remaining monthly fees for the term are payable. Pro works the same way, on a 12-month plan. Own It has no minimum term and no exit fee.

1. Minimum terms run from the date your website goes live. If you end the Services during a minimum term, the monthly fees for the rest of that term become payable.
2. Leaving the Monthly plan before it is paid off. If the Monthly plan ends before 24 monthly fees have been paid, the website stays ours and comes offline. Monthly fees already paid are not refunded or credited, and ownership does not pass in part.
3. After the minimum term, and on plans without one, either of us may end the monthly Services by giving one month’s written notice. Email is enough.
4. Before launch. If you cancel before we have started the design, we refund the setup or build fee in full. Once design work has started, fees paid are not refundable, but you will not owe any monthly fees.
5. Ending for cause. Either of us may end the contract immediately by written notice if the other commits a serious breach that is not put right within 14 days of being asked, or becomes insolvent. Unpaid fees that are more than 30 days overdue count as a serious breach.
6. What happens next. On Monthly, if you stop before 24 monthly payments, the site comes offline when the plan ends and we send you your domain, words and photos so they can go into a new site. After 24 payments, and on Own It and Pro, the website is yours: stop the monthly service and we hand over the complete site so you can move it to any host. We will help transfer your domain to you or your new provider.

13Liability

1. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.
2. Subject to that, we are not liable for any loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or data, or for any indirect or consequential loss, however it arises.
3. Subject to that, our total liability to you under or in connection with the contract is limited to the fees you have paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.
4. We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as failures of third-party infrastructure, power or internet outages, or cyber attacks we could not reasonably have prevented. If such an event continues for more than 30 days, either of us may end the affected Services by written notice.

14Data protection

We handle your personal data as described in our privacy policy.

Where your website collects personal data about your own customers (for example through a contact form), you are the controller of that data and we are your processor. When we process it on your behalf we will:

1. process it only on your documented instructions, which are these terms and your use of the Services, unless the law requires otherwise;
2. make sure anyone who has access to it is bound by confidentiality;
3. keep it secure with appropriate technical and organisational measures;
4. only use the sub-processors listed in our privacy policy, and tell you before adding or replacing one so you can object;
5. help you respond to requests from individuals exercising their rights, and with your own security and compliance obligations;
6. tell you without undue delay after becoming aware of a personal data breach affecting that data;
7. delete or return the data at the end of the Services, at your choice, unless the law requires us to keep it; and
8. make available the information reasonably needed to show we meet these obligations.

You are responsible for having a lawful basis for the data your website collects and for your own website’s privacy notice. We can help you put one in place.

15Confidentiality

Each of us will keep the other’s confidential information (including business plans, pricing, customer information and login details) private, and use it only to perform or receive the Services. This does not apply to information that is already public or that must be disclosed by law.

16General

1. These terms and the documents referred to in them are the entire agreement between us about the Services, and replace anything discussed earlier.
2. We may update these terms. Changes will not apply to an existing contract unless we give you at least 30 days’ written notice; if a change is to your material disadvantage you may end the contract before it takes effect without charge.
3. You may not transfer the contract to someone else without our written agreement. We may transfer it to a business that takes over our Services, provided your rights are not reduced.
4. If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest remains in force.
5. If we do not enforce a right straight away, we can still enforce it later.
6. No one other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
7. Notices under the contract may be given by email to the address each of us has given the other.

17Governing law

These terms, and any dispute arising from them, are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. Before starting any claim, we each agree to try to resolve the matter in good faith by discussion first.

18Contact us

Nerdsharks, Exeter, Devon, England.
Email: hello@nerdsharks.com