Terms and Conditions

Last updated: October 31st, 2020

Please read these terms and conditions carefully. Any purchase or use of our services implies that you have read and accepted our terms and conditions.

It is not necessary for any Client to have signed an acceptance of these terms and conditions for them to apply. If a Client accepts a proposal then the Client will be deemed to have satisfied themselves as to the terms applying and have accepted these terms and conditions in full.

We have tried to keep these Terms and Conditions brief, easy to understand, and as straightforward as possible. If you have any questions however, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Terminology:

You ­ (‘the Client’)

Us ­ (Catalyst Design Studio and hereinafter referred to as ‘Catalyst’)

The Project / Services ­ the body of work that is being undertaken, normally consisting of several connected parts, such as consultation, graphic design, website development and/or hosting

1. What do both parties agree to?

1. The Client agrees to:

1. 1. Provide Catalyst, within a reasonable timescale, everything that is requested from you to complete the Project ­ including text, images and other information.
   2. Provide Catalyst with text and images in the format as stated below (see photographs and images)
   3. Writing or inputting any text copy unless this has been specified by the client and quoted for.
   4. Proofread the content and check for incorrect information, this is the sole responsibility of the client.
   5. Review Catalyst ’s work, provide feedback, and sign­off approval in a timely manner.
   6. Make every effort to adhere to all agreed deadlines.
   7. Adhere to the payment schedule laid out in the accepted proposal and charges section below (see payments).
   8. Advise, in advance, of any confidential information to be presented by email, written, or verbally, between both parties. Also, for this to be marked as ‘confidential’ in the subject of the email, or clearly on any written documents.
   9. Reimburse Catalyst for any additional expenses necessary for the completion of the work. Examples would be purchase of special fonts, stock photography, plugins etc. This payment will be required prior to the purchase of the additional required materials.
   10. Provide a minimum of one months notice in writing, or by email should you wish to cancel any contract.
   11. Provide and comply with the Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions to publish on your website to adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the Data Protection Act 2018,(GDPR) regulations. (We can recommend a paid plugin to help with this, but the client is legally responsible for this)

2. Catalyst agrees to:

1. 1. Carry out services in a professional and timely manner.
   2. Make every effort to adhere to any deadlines agreed between us and you.
   3. Make a reasonable number of revisions to the design, layout, colours etc, until you are satisfied with the design concept or such time as both parties feel an agreement is likely to be reached but no more than 2 major revisions. Additional revisions or design work outside the scope of the project will be charged separately.
   4. Endeavour to complete requested website revisions or updates within 48 hours, wherever possible. Revision entitlement per month is dependent on your support package – see catalystdesign.studio/hosting-and-care-plans/
   5. Maintain up to date skills and knowledge through regular training and research.
   6. Contact you before the end of the first 12 month period, to discuss the various options open to you for continuing website maintenance and support and/or hosting.
   7. Provide editor access and user account/ administrator right upon request from the Client.

2. Payments:

1. Charges for the Services are defined in the project proposal that the Client receives from Catalyst via email. Quotations are valid for a period of 30 days. Catalyst reserves the right to alter a quotation or decline to provide the relevant Services after expiry of the 30 days.
2. Unless agreed otherwise with the Client, all design services require an advance payment of a 50% quotation total before the work commences. With the remaining amount of the project proposal due upon completion of the work, prior to upload to the server or release of materials.
3. The Client agrees to reimburse Catalyst for any additional expenses necessary for the completion of the work. Expenses may include (but are not limited to) purchase of domain names, plugins, special fonts and stock photography.
4. Additional work requested by the Client that is not specified in the agreed proposal is subject to an additional quotation by Catalyst. If the work is needed as part of an existing project, then this may affect time scale and overall delivery time of the project.
5. Alterations to standing order mandates to reflect new or changed contracts are the sole responsibility of the client. Overpayments to Catalyst as a result of not updating a standing order mandate will not be reimbursed to the Client. Underpayments or missed payments, however, shall be backdated to the point at which the underpayment or missed payment was discovered and the Client shall be responsible for bringing their account up to date within a reasonable period of time.
6. All invoices must be paid within 15 days of the day the invoice is issued. There cannot be more than one unpaid invoice outstanding. In such case where an invoice is outstanding more than 30 days, Catalyst will terminate services. Once an invoice is outstanding for 60 days, Catalyst will terminate hosting services at this time.
7. All monthly services that Catalyst provides are charged every 1st of the month. This includes all the hours that have been tracked during the previous month, in addition the monthly plan fee.
8. Catalyst Hosting and Care plan clients will be charged at our normal hourly rate of £30 for any further changes or updates to their website during the month (min £30). An hour of content changes is included in our Monthly Care plan.
9. All Charges are exclusive of VAT.

3. Refunds and Cancellation

1. 1. All Projects require a non-refundable 50% deposit covering the total project. The approval of this non-refundable deposit will be at the sole discretion of Catalyst. This deposit covers time and resources to begin a project. All Projects fees or deposits may be refundable if you, the client,
   2. Cancel within 3 business days, after purchase.
   3. Approved refunds are calculated based on the total number of tracked hours worked minus the total project fees or 50% deposit.
   4. Should you wish to cancel/downgrade your hosting or care plan, please see hosting and care plans below.

4. Domain Names

1. 1. Catalyst can purchase domain names on behalf of the Client. Payment and renewal of those domain names is the responsibility of Catalyst. The loss, cancellation or otherwise of the domain brought about by non or late payment by the client is not the responsibility of Catalyst. The Client should keep a record of the due dates for payment to ensure that payment is received in good time.

5. Website Development

6. 1. Development of a Wordpress website begins based on the approved design and content. There may be an additional fee for any design changes requested after the initial agreed design has been signed off.
   2. The Client agrees that the website may not exactly match the original design because of the difference between the display in design software and the rendering of code by Internet browser software. The Developer agrees to try to match the design as closely as is possible when developing the site.
   3. Once a site is live (or the site is ready to go live and merely requires the customer to add content) then the project is deemed to be complete. The client has 1 month in which to provide evidence of errors caused by Catalyst, these will be reviewed and if errors are genuinely caused by Catalyst they will be put right. If errors are caused by the client (i.e. during the use of the Content Management System) then steps taken to remedy errors will be chargeable.
   4. After site completion, a Client or a third party of their choosing may wish to edit their website code themselves to make updates. Notification MUST be given to Catalyst. However, the Client agrees that in so doing they assume full responsibility for any issues which occur as a result of changing the code themselves. If the Client or a third party of their choosing edits the website code and this results in functionality errors or the page displaying incorrectly, then Catalyst reserves the right to quote for work to repair the website.
   5. Catalyst reserves the right to assign subcontractors in whole or as part of a project if needed.
   6. Catalyst will keep a copy of the site and design source files when a website project is being worked on. However, the Client agrees that it is their responsibility to have regular backups made by themselves or the third party hosting services in case of a software or hardware failure at the third party hosting servers. We provide regular backups in our hosting plans, see catalystdesign.studio/hosting-and-care-plans/

6. Web Browsers

1. 1. Catalyst makes every effort to ensure websites are designed to be viewed by the majority of visitors. Websites are designed to work with the most popular current browsers (e.g. Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, etc.). The client agrees that Catalyst cannot guarantee correct functionality with all browser software across different operating systems.
   2. Catalyst cannot accept responsibility for web pages which do not display acceptably in old, redundant or new versions of browsers released after the website have been designed and handed over to the Client. As such, Catalyst reserves the right to quote for any work involved in changing the website design or website code for it to work with updated browser software.

7. Photographs, Images and video:

1. Any images or photographs that you supply should good quality digital images, usually no smaller than 1024x768 pixels, with a suitable resolution that will allow them to be resized and used on screen.
2. Traditional paper photographs requiring scanning are acceptable, however, there may be additional costs incurred due to time spent scanning and retouching the images. This depends entirely on the project and the number of images involved.
3. Images needing special editing (i.e Photoshop compositing, masking, touch-ups) other than standard editing (i.e compression, cropping, resizing, adjusting brightness) will be charged as an additional cost of £30 per hour (min £30)
4. Video and sound clips needing special will be charged as an additional cost of £30 per hour (min £30).
5. Any images that Catalyst are asked to obtain from third party photographers or stock photography will be charged as an additional cost.

8. The Copyright:

1. The Client retains the copyright to data, files and graphic logos, visual and sound elements provided by the Client, and grants Catalyst the rights to publish and use such material in connection with the project.
2. The Client guarantees that any elements of text, graphics, photos, designs, trademarks, or other artwork furnished to Catalyst for inclusion in their website, or other design, are owned by the Client, or that the Client has permission from the rightful owner to use each of these elements, and will hold harmless, protect, indemnify and defend Catalyst and its subcontractors from any liability (including solicitors fees and court costs), including any claim or suit, threatened or actual, arising from the use of such elements furnished by the Client.
3. Evidence of ownership or permissions may be requested by Catalyst.
4. The copyright to the design and images that Catalyst may have supplied to or for you are licensed to you in connection with the Project, and will be licensed solely to the domain name on which the website files reside. If you own the domain name, then you own the copyright.
5. At the bottom of the website page(s) after payment has been completed, usually it will say Copyright and the name of your business or company. Catalyst do however reserve the right as Catalyst responsible for the design and/or development to place a small and unobtrusive link at the bottom of your website, thereby not hindering or distracting from your own website design.
6. As the design company Catalyst also reserve the right to display and link to your completed project as part of our portfolio, and to write about the project on other web sites, in magazine or ezine articles, books, written or digital publications of any design and source. Please inform us in advance of the website going live if you DO NOT want us to add your site to our portfolio of work.

9. Hosting and Care plans:

1. To ensure superior levels of reliability and performance, all our clients websites are offered Catalyst hosting and care plans catalystdesign.studio/hosting-and-care-plans/
2. A hosting plan (Catalyst hosting or an external hosting provider) needs to be selected and paid for by the day the website is made live.
3. The Client agrees that Catalyst is not liable for any bugs, performance issues, virus, trojan, or malware attacks or failure of their WordPress (and WooCommerce) software as WordPress (and WooCommerce) is open-source software distributed under the GPL (GNU General Public License) and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers. Any bugs, performance issues or failure with the software will be directed to the WordPress (and WooCommerce) Development community via WordPress (and WooCommerce).org. It will be necessary to regularly update WordPress, WooCommerce, and any plugins (and any other software used in the website). Unless a support contract is opted for by the client then updates are NOT the responsibility of Catalyst. Catalyst cannot be held responsible for any faults, bugs, viruses, trojans, malware etc., or problems occurring on the site or with the hosting and care plans.
4. If you are hosting the website elsewhere, Catalyst cannot guarantee that the website is fully compatible with all hosting provider’s server operating systems, especially any contact forms, Content Management Systems, database driven websites, etc.
5. Catalyst do not offer any technical support for any other web site hosting company that you may choose (if you elect not to host the website with us).
6. Should you wish to cancel/downgrade your hosting or care plan:
   1. Notification must be received in writing at least 15 days before the date of cancellation. All invoices must be paid. Once there are no invoices outstanding, the transfer to another hosting provider will be permitted.
   2. In the instance where you decide to cancel your subscription to any of our hosting or care plans and there is an outstanding invoice, Catalyst is not obliged to transfer the website to another hosting company. In addition, access to transfer the website yourself will not be granted unless and until all invoices have been paid in full.
7. An admin fee is payable for switching the client to another hosting provider. Charged at £30 per hour.

10. Liability:

1. Catalyst will not be held liable for any missed launch date or deadline, if the Client has been late in supplying materials, or has not approved or signed off work on­time, at any stage.

11. Confidentiality:

1. Catalyst adheres to all national and EU data protection, data transfer, data retention, and confidentiality regulations and always stores data sent to us in a secure manner within our security policy.

12. Jurisdiction & Governing law:

1. This Release and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with it or its subject matter or formation (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the law of England and Wales and the parties agree that the courts of England and Wales shall have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any dispute or claim that arises out of or in connection with this agreement.

13. Disclaimer:

1. If any provision of this agreement shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this agreement and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.
2. Just the same as a fine, you cannot transfer this contract to anyone else without our consent or permission.
3. This contract remains in force and need not be renewed.
4. Although Catalyst have tried to keep this contract language simple, the intentions are serious, and the contract is a legal document under the exclusive jurisdiction of English Law and Courts.
5. It is agreed that Catalyst Design Studio is not responsible or held liable for any errors contained in the final product, after the final product has been approved by the client, (approval may be given either verbally or in writing), committed to print or posted in view of the public. Catalyst Design Studio will not be held responsible for any changes or amendment made after approval. It is the sole responsibility of the client to proof read and approve all final artwork and notify Catalyst Design Studio of any such errors during the revision cycle and before the final files have been generated.