Terms of Service

1. How payment works

Project work — website builds, one-time SEO setup, and similar fixed-scope engagements — is billed 50% upfront and 50% on delivery. The deposit reserves your project on our schedule and covers the planning, design, and early build work that begins immediately, so it's due before we start. The remaining 50% is due when the work is complete and ready to hand off or go live; final files, source access, and site transfer happen once that balance is paid in full. Monthly plans — maintenance, hosting, SEO management, and similar ongoing services — are billed monthly in advance, starting on the date the plan begins. Hourly work — technical support, PC optimization, and anything outside an existing package's scope — is invoiced after the work is done, based on time logged.

2. Deposits and refunds

Once a deposit is paid and work has begun, it is non-refundable. This isn't a penalty — it reflects that your deposit covers real time and resources already committed on your behalf: research, planning, design work, and the project slot itself, which we turn other work away to hold. If you need to pause or cancel after the deposit is paid but before work has started, talk to us directly; we handle that case by case. Completed monthly billing periods are also non-refundable for the period already billed, since that service was already provided; you're welcome to cancel future billing at any time as described below.

3. Cancelling an active project or monthly plan

You can cancel a one-time project before the final 50% is invoiced; the deposit covers the work completed to that point and is not returned, and you'll receive whatever was completed up to that stage. Monthly plans can be cancelled at any time, effective at the end of the current billing period — there's no long-term contract and no cancellation fee. We may also pause or end an engagement on our end, with notice, in which case you'll be refunded for any period of monthly service paid for but not yet delivered.

4. Revisions and project scope

Each project includes a reasonable round of revisions as part of the agreed scope, discussed before work begins. Requests that go meaningfully beyond the original scope — a redesign after final approval, additional pages, new features not in the original plan — are treated as new work and billed at our hourly rate of $65/hour, agreed to before we start on it.

5. Ownership and copyright

Once a project is paid in full, you own the final website, its content, and any custom code written specifically for your project. Until final payment is made, the work remains our property. A few things work differently: general-purpose tools, code libraries, or design systems we use across multiple client projects remain ours, though you're free to keep using them as part of your finished site. Stock photography, fonts, icons, or other licensed assets used in your project remain subject to whatever license they were obtained under. If you provide us with your own logo, photos, written content, or other materials, you're confirming you have the right to use them, and you agree to cover us if a third party ever claims otherwise.

6. About search rankings and results

We can't guarantee a specific search ranking, a specific position on Google, or a specific amount of traffic — and nobody legitimately can. Google's ranking algorithm is not public, it changes constantly, and it weighs hundreds of factors beyond what happens on your own website, including what your competitors are doing. Any company that guarantees you'll be "#1 on Google" is not being straight with you.

What we do commit to is everything within our control: building your site on a clean technical foundation, following current best practices for local SEO and on-page optimization, setting up and optimizing your Google Business Profile correctly, writing real, locally-specific content instead of generic filler, and continuing to monitor and adjust your SEO work over time rather than setting it up once and walking away. That combination genuinely improves your odds of ranking well — we just won't pretend that "odds" means "guarantee."

7. What we're not responsible for

We aren't responsible for outages, policy changes, or algorithm updates from platforms we don't control — Google, your hosting provider, social media platforms, or payment processors — though we'll help you respond to them when they happen. Our total liability for any claim related to our services is limited to the amount you've paid us for the specific service in question over the preceding three months.

8. Ending this agreement

Either of us can end an ongoing engagement as described in Section 3. These terms continue to apply to anything that happened while the agreement was active — the ownership and payment terms above still apply even after the relationship ends.

9. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Indiana. This is a general business agreement, not a substitute for legal advice specific to your situation.

10. Contact

Questions about these terms can be sent to StarkeWebIndustry@gmail.com or (219) 841-2872.