Terms of service

Every project is defined by a written quote describing the scope, the deliverables, the timeline and one fixed price. The quote is the agreement: work begins when you approve it, and anything outside its scope is quoted separately before it's built.

Approving a quote accepts these terms as well. They apply to every engagement, as they read on the date of your quote, and we'll send you that version with it — so the copy that binds you is the copy you were handed, not whatever this page says later. Where your quote and these terms disagree, the quote controls.

A note on the clocks in this document. Days are calendar days. Business days are weekdays that aren't a public holiday in Maryland. Where something is worked out as a share of a month's fee, we divide by 30 whatever the length of the month — it keeps the arithmetic the same every month, and it's the same figure every time.

We're an independent contractor, not your employee. We decide how the work gets done, we use our own equipment, and we handle our own taxes and insurance.

We may bring in a subcontractor for part of the work. We stay responsible for whatever they deliver, and they're held to the same confidentiality we are.

Unless your quote says otherwise, setup is billed 50% to begin work and 50% at launch. You can also spread setup across up to 12 equal monthly payments at no extra cost — the same price, on different dates; just ask before we start. If you cancel mid-project for your own reasons, you pay for the work completed to that point (payments made count toward it) and a cancellation fee of 15% of the remaining contract value — the part of the fixed price the completed work hasn't already earned. That fee covers the schedule we held for you and can't refill at short notice. No cancellation fee is due where you end the engagement because we materially breached and didn't put it right in the time Ending the engagement allows. Everything built for your website so far is yours either way, with the single exception set out in the design guarantee below — where you take the refund instead of the work. If a finished site sits waiting on your go-ahead for more than 30 days, the final invoice falls due.

Before we build anything, you get a decision rather than an invoice. We design first, and if the direction isn't right we'll use the revision rounds your quote includes to put it right. If it still isn't right, say so within 10 business days of the last design we show you, and we refund everything you have paid us toward the build, with no cancellation fee — less only any third-party cost we've already bought for you, like a domain or a licence, which is yours and already spent. It is the refund or the work, never both: take the money back and the design stays with us, unbuilt. Nothing is being held back from you — nothing was paid for. Approving a design ends the guarantee, and so does going quiet past that window, the same way it ends any other review.

Whichever monthly plan you're on — Care, Care Plus or Care Complete — it is billed monthly, in advance, unless your quote says you're paying for a term up front, and either of us can end it with 30 days' notice. Care is $99 a month, Care Plus is $199 a month and Care Complete is $349 a month.

Invoices are due within 14 days of the date we send them. If one is still unpaid 30 days after that date, we may add 1.5% a month to the outstanding balance until it's settled, and pause the services we run for you until it is. We would far rather send a reminder than a late fee — if money is tight, tell us before the due date and we'll work something out.

Third-party costs — domains, paid directory listings, stock imagery, software licenses, API usage — are yours, and we pass them on at what they cost us rather than marking them up. We'll tell you the figure before we commit you to any of them. This covers costs we buy on your behalf and pass through; it isn't a statement about what our own services cost us to run.

After your monthly plan has run for 12 months we may raise its rate by up to 4%, and not more than once in any 12-month period. The cap doesn't accrue — a year without an increase doesn't permit a larger one later. We'll tell you in writing at least 60 days before a change takes effect, and an increase applies only to billing periods beginning after that date. Continuing past the effective date is how the new rate is accepted; if you'd rather not, end it under the 30 days' notice above and you'll never be billed at the new rate.

Maryland charges 3% sales and use tax on web design, development and IT services (Chapter 604 of the Acts of 2025, effective 1 July 2025). That includes every monthly plan — Care, Care Plus or Care Complete — and a monthly plan is taxed on each payment rather than once when it starts. Where it applies it appears as its own line on your invoice rather than being folded into the price, so you can always see what is our fee and what is tax. If your organisation holds a Maryland sales and use tax exemption certificate, send us the number and we'll apply it.

Maryland's 3% is what we quote, because Maryland is where we sell from and where our clients are. If your business is registered outside Maryland, tell us before we quote — what you owe is a question about your state as well as ours, and we would far rather settle it in the quote than discover it on an invoice.

Moving up takes effect at your next billing date, and we'll prorate the difference for the current period if you'd rather not wait. Moving down takes effect at the first billing date at least 30 days after you tell us. Changing plan doesn't restart the 12-month clock on rate increases — that clock runs from the day your first plan started.

If your quote has you paying for a term up front, the rate is locked for that term — an increase can't reach it — and if either of us ends the plan early we refund the unused whole months pro rata. Paying up front doesn't change the notice period: the same 30 days applies either way.

Content-edit time beyond your plan's monthly allowance is billed at our current hourly rate, quoted to you before we start. Unused time doesn't roll over.

Your plan states a response commitment — next business day on Care and same business day on Care Plus and Care Complete. If we miss it, tell us and we'll credit a day of that month's fee — the monthly fee divided by 30 — for each business day we were late, up to that month's whole fee in any one month, claimed within 30 days of the miss. That credit is the remedy for a missed response: it doesn't create a claim beyond itself.

Your website is yours. The design, the code and the content are yours from day one, and your domain and business accounts — analytics, email tooling, your Google Business Profile — are registered in your name. The site is a standard Next.js application: it runs on any host that supports one, and you can take it and go at any time.

Two honest carve-outs. Our pre-existing tools, code libraries and reusable components remain ours, and your site ships with a permanent license to use them. Third-party assets (fonts, stock images, open-source software) come with their own licenses, set up in your name wherever possible.

Hosting is a service, not an asset. We host your site as part of Care, which comes with every build, and every plan above it includes the same hosting — so a site on any monthly plan is hosted by us. Our current rates are $99 a month for Care, $199 a month for Care Plus and $349 a month for Care Complete, as at the date below. Care Plus can also cover a site we didn't build: we audit it first, as separate paid work, and whether we can host and look after what it runs on is what that audit decides. If you would rather host the site yourself, tell us and we will hand over the code instead. If your monthly plan ends, your domain, code and content remain yours and we will hand over a working copy of the site, but it will not stay live on our hosting; you will need somewhere to run it.

If invoices go unpaid, we may pause work and the services we operate until they're settled, and until an overdue invoice is settled the license to use our pre-existing tools and components is suspended. Your design, code and content stay yours throughout — this suspends what makes them run, not what you own. We retain the right to describe the project in our portfolio unless you ask us not to.

The quote includes the revision rounds described in it. We work in weekly check-ins precisely so feedback lands early, when changing direction is cheap. Substantial new direction after approval is new scope — we'll always tell you before it costs anything.

If we deliver something for your review and don't hear back within 10 business days, we'll treat it as accepted and carry on. We'll always chase you before that happens. Going quiet doesn't spend a revision round — if you come back later with feedback we'd have taken in time, we'll still take it while the round is unspent. This is a different clock from the 30-day one under Payment: that one is about a finished site waiting to go live, and what it triggers is the final invoice, not acceptance.

We promise work that matches the quote, built to the scope and standards written in it, delivered when we said. You promise timely feedback, accurate business facts for the copy, and the materials we agree you'll provide. Timelines shift when one of those promises does, or when something genuinely outside both our control intervenes — flagged to you in the open, never discovered on an invoice.

We don't promise particular search rankings, traffic, inquiry volumes or revenue. Search engines, directories and booking platforms set their own rules and change them without notice or explanation. What we promise is the work your plan describes, done properly and reported honestly. The 90+ score we quote is measured on the pages as we deliver them — Google changes that test, and scripts added later change the result.

Where the work depends on a service we don't control — your Google Business Profile at launch, a directory, a search engine, your booking tool — we work within what that service allows. If one of them changes or withdraws a capability, that isn't a failure on our part. We'll tell you, and propose the nearest alternative.

Some of the work runs inside accounts you own. A build wires your Google Business Profile to the site and sets up your analytics in your name, and we keep the read-only analytics access we need to host the site and report on it. What no monthly plan does is hold standing control of a profile, a directory account or a listing. Whatever access we hold, you grant it, it stays in your name, and we use it only for the work you're paying for. When the work it was granted for ends we remove our access within 10 business days, and you can revoke any of it yourself at any time without asking us first.

Each of us keeps the other's non-public information confidential and uses it only for the work. That lasts 3 years past the end of the engagement. It doesn't cover information that was already public, or that becomes public later through no fault of whoever received it; anything either of us worked out independently; or anything a court or regulator requires us to disclose. Our right to describe and show the work in our portfolio, set out under Ownership, is a carve-out from this too — and it stays subject to your asking us not to.

Our total liability to you, for everything and however a claim arises, is capped at the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim. Where the claim concerns a fixed-price project, the cap is the lower of that figure and the fees paid for that project. Neither of us is liable to the other for indirect or consequential losses — lost profits, lost data, lost business.

You're responsible for the accuracy of the business information you give us to publish — on your site, and in the Google Business Profile a build wires to it — and for what follows from publishing it, including a platform suspending or penalizing your listing because the information was wrong. We're responsible for publishing what you gave us, as agreed. Each of us covers the other for claims arising from our own side of that line, and neither of us owes the other more than the same figure the cap uses: the fees paid in the 12 months before the event, or for a fixed-price project the lower of that and the fees paid for that project.

Neither of us is in breach for a delay, or for not performing at all, where the cause is genuinely outside our control — an outage at a provider we depend on, a natural disaster, war, a change in the law. We'll tell you as soon as we know, and pick the work back up as soon as we can. It doesn't excuse paying for work already done. If it runs past 60 days, either of us can end the affected work and settle up for what was delivered.

Unless your quote says otherwise, Maryland law governs.

Either monthly plan ends the ordinary way described under Payment: 30 days' notice, from either of us, for any reason or none.

Either of us can also end the engagement immediately if the other materially breaches these terms and hasn't put it right within 14 days of being asked in writing.

After an engagement ends we keep your backups for 30 days so you can retrieve what you need, then delete them. That is on top of the working copy of the site we hand over, not instead of it.

Questions about these terms: contact@theharbortree.com. Last updated August 13, 2026.