The use of services from Efficient Websites, LLC (also referred to as “we,” “us,” or “the Company”) constitutes your (“you,” “the customer”) agreement to these terms.
General Terms of Service
Service Level Agreements. Content updates are not provided by the Company unless specifically stated. The Company takes precautions against, but cannot provide any guarantees with regard to website downtime, hacking, unauthorized access, and viruses. Custom web designs are generally tested on the current versions of the major web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari), but we do not guarantee uniform appearance, or current or future compatibility. Search engine indexing and placement/ranking are not guaranteed.
Use in Other Media. Efficient Websites has the right to reuse components of any website design we create, with the exception of any trademarked materials (e.g. logos, photos) that you provide. Unless specifically agreed upon before payment, Efficient Websites has the right to use and distribute, as examples of our work, screenshots from and links to websites we have designed or made substantial design changes to.
Privacy Policy and Email Communications. We may collect any or all of the information you provide through your communications with us, including but not limited to, contact information, dates and types of services provided and products purchased, and payment history. If any financial information is collected, it will only be used to bill you for services and products you purchased from the Company. This information may be collected via sources including but not limited to, in-person conversations, phone conversations, emails, faxes, online messages, text messages, business cards, and marketing materials. This information may be used for billing purposes and to provide better service and support to our customers. We do not sell your contact information to third parties. As an Efficient Websites customer, you will receive our monthly email newsletter at the primary email address(es) on record. You may opt out at any time. Additional emails will be kept to a minimum and sent only if deemed necessary. If you no longer wish to receive any communications from us, please notify us.
Support. At this time, we will try to provide a reasonable level of support assistance by email and phone consisting of instructions. However, we recommend that you try to get your answer from our support website first, and perform a search on the support website if you cannot easily find what you are looking for.
Warranty and Licensing. WordPress is open source software, licensed under the GPL (GNU General Public License). The code (software, themes, plugins, etc.) is free to use, modify, and distribute. Derivatives of the code are also required to follow the GPL. The GPL explicitly states that there is no warranty for WordPress, or liability for damages for anyone distributing and/or modifying the code. For the official license, please visit http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
Indemnification and Limitation of Liability. The customer agrees that he or she shall defend, indemnify, save and hold the Company harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including all attorney’s fees asserted against the Company, its owners and employees, and its customers, that may result from any service or product provided by the customer or its employees. The customer agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless the Company against liabilities arising out of: 1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with the Company, 2) any material supplied by the customer infringing or allegedly infringing on the proprietary rights of a third party, 3) copyright infringement, 4) any defective products sold to customers through the Company’s products or services, and 5) any loss of business, communications, or other data from the Company’s products or services. The customer further agrees to the terms of these indemnification and limitation of liability terms in the event that the agreement between the customer and the Company becomes terminated or expired.
Billing and Payment Terms
Hourly Rate and Billable Time. Please be aware that we consider any tasks that require our attention to be billable time, such as: reading and responding to your emails, phone calls, meetings, training, graphic design, and any changes we make to your website. We generally do not bill for any time we spend on site errors, site downtime, or invoice processing. We may track billed time in exact amounts or round to the nearest 30-minute increment. In order to make the workflow efficient and reduce billed time, we recommend that you be as clear and detailed as possible, edit and organize materials before sending them to us, and combine your requests into as few emails and/or phone calls as possible.
Payment Terms for New Customers. Upon establishing the project scope, we will send you an estimate. Once you approve the estimate, we will send you a corresponding invoice. The minimum deposit is the lesser of $500.00 USD or the full invoice amount. Upon receipt of the deposit, the Company will begin project development. We will not begin work until we have received your initial deposit. For larger projects, we may require a higher deposit amount and/or subsequent payments in order to avoid an excessive number of transactions. In such cases, we will discuss invoice amounts and the payment schedule after approval of the initial project estimate. If the customer is hosting with the Company and a new domain name needs to be purchased, the domain name will be purchased by the Company and the hosting contract will begin at this time, unless the customer specifically requests the purchase to be delayed. We reserve the right to hold project development, or website launch, if you have outstanding unpaid invoices. For new customers first invoiced January 1, 2012 or later, we will only accept online payments.
Payment Terms for Existing Customers. If you approve our estimate or agree to a continuous billing arrangement, we will invoice you upon completion of the work, up to a certain amount. The amount is at our discretion, and it depends on the amount of billed work and your payment history. For larger projects, we may require payments as the project proceeds. Starting January 1, 2013 for existing customers, we will only accept online payments.
Business Address. Checks (only for existing customers until January 1, 2013) and other physical correspondence should be sent to Efficient Websites LLC, P.O. Box 615, Allendale, NJ, 07401.
Additional Costs. The Company reserves the right to impose additional costs for work not covered in the scope of the agreement and/or failure of the customer to meet reasonable deadlines for communication. Examples may include, but are not limited to: repeated rejection or modification of layout designs, editorial and stylistic changes to content sent by the customer, editing and organizing images or other multimedia, and long delays in responding to communication (e.g. 5 business days or more).
Late Payments. The late fee for invoices is 1.5% of the total invoice amount, compounded every 30 days after the invoice date (approximately 19.87% compounded annually).
Cancellations and Refunds. At project completion or termination, if the total hours worked are less than what you paid for, you will receive account credit for the remaining balance. We provide a 60-day money back guarantee for Managed Hosting. Other refunds are provided at the sole discretion of the Company. If a refund is provided, the Company reserves the right to pro-rate the refund and/or deduct any necessary service charges.
Custom Web Design and Additional Web Services
Procedure. The typical procedure for custom web design projects is as follows:
- You fill out the Request a Custom Web Design Estimate form, agreeing to the Terms of Service. Provide specific, detailed descriptions of your content or send all materials and content for your website to us, including but not limited to:
- The outline of how you want your navigation menu ordered. Preferred file format: .doc (Microsoft Word Document) or .odt (OpenDocument Text). Other file formats accepted: .rtf, .txt.
- The content of your website pages, with each page in a separate document. Preferred file format: .doc (Microsoft Word Document) or .odt (OpenDocument Text). Other file formats accepted: .rtf, .txt. You must designate the title of each page. If you do not indicate a title, we will use the document file name. If you want headings or any special formatting within the content, those must be marked as such or indicated with square brackets [] in the documents. Images, galleries, videos, maps, contact forms, etc. must also be indicated with square brackets.
- Logos for your company and/or other affiliations. Preferred file format: .png. Other file formats accepted: .gif, .jpg. You must have permission to use any logos you send. They must be properly sized; if we need to resize them, it will require billed time. If you want the logo to appear with a different colored background, you must save the logo file with a transparent background.
- Photos and other images. Preferred file format: .jpg. Other file formats accepted: .gif, .png. You must have permission to use any photos and images you send. They must be properly sized; if we need to resize them, it will require billed time.
- Other files, such as audio, video, documents, and PDFs that you want embedded on your site or available for download. They must be properly formatted; if we need to format them, it will require billed time.
- We will send you the estimated project time and cost. This is based on your Request a Custom Web Design Estimate form and materials sent. Any tasks or materials sent after this estimate is made are considered to be outside the scope of the original project. Please review the Additional Costs section.
- You make the initial payment. Please review the Billing and Payment Terms section.
- We will construct a draft website for your review. The first draft will typically consist of 50% or less of the original time estimate. We will notify you how much time has been spent towards the project.
- You provide feedback for changes, and we respond to those changes, until you are satisfied with the draft website. You make subsequent payments if necessary.
- We publish the finished website. Publication (or “activation” or “launch”) can take place on the same day as the Company receives final approval from the customer, or as many as 5 business days later, depending on various factors. Once the website is published, we will provide you with a login for you to manage your website and set up any third-party accounts, such as Google Apps and Google Analytics.
For Self-Hosted Websites. If you are hosting the website yourself, you must use WordPress-compatible, Linux-based hosting and provide us with full, administrator-level access to the hosting account, including full read/write access to the file system and databases.
Compatibility. For custom development projects and work done on websites not hosted with Efficient Websites, we have no control over the software, or the tens of thousands of available themes and plugins. As such, we cannot guarantee compatibility with future upgrades or past versions of WordPress, future upgrades or past versions of your current theme, any versions of other themes not being used, future upgrades or past versions of your current plugins, or any versions of other plugins not being used. Upon delivery of the code or completion of the stated work, you will be responsible for maintaining and updating the new or modified code. If you upgrade, change themes or plugins, modify the software, or change any configuration settings, you could break the custom development work. In such cases, if you need to fix compatibility issues, we will typically charge for the services provided.
Browser Compatibility. We design websites to be compatible with the latest versions of the four most popular web browsers only: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. We do not guarantee compatibility with the many older versions and infrequently used web browsers.
Search Engine Visibility. After publishing your website, we will make it available to the Google, Bing, and Yahoo! search engines unless otherwise requested. We cannot guarantee inclusion in the search engines or rankings in the search engine results.
Managed Hosting (Also Referred to as “Premium Web Hosting”)
Scope. Our Managed Hosting plan does not include anything that could be considered billable work, such as making content updates or configuring your website on your behalf.
Administration Options. For websites hosted on the Efficient Websites network, we limit your administration options. If you want a greater degree of control (and responsibility) over your website and hosting, then our managed hosting plan is probably not for you. For security reasons, we do not provide you with the ability to configure your hosting details, access the databases, configure WordPress, modify WordPress source code, install themes, install plugins, or otherwise change the software provided. We do not provide e-commerce capabilities (with the exception of PayPal Standard) and SSL certificates on our network at this time.
Renewal Policy. The Company will bill the customer via email no later than 60 days prior to expiration of the customer’s hosting contract. If payment is not received by the Company by 30 days prior to expiration of the customer’s hosting contract, the Company will cancel the hosting contract on the date of expiration. In this event, the Company cannot guarantee renewal of the domain name, and on the date of expiration a third party may be able to take ownership of the domain name. The Company is not responsible for any costs incurred, business lost, or other damages resulting in the loss of the domain name.
Domain Renewals. The domain name renewal is only included as part of the hosting contract if the Company has ownership of the domain.
Transferring Domain Names from Other Providers. We cannot guarantee the transfer of a domain name from a given hosting provider. We have successfully transferred domains from GoDaddy, HostMonster, and Register.com; however, this is not a guarantee. You will need administrative access to the account in order to transfer the domain name(s) to Efficient Websites. It is your responsibility to unlock the domain(s), remove or disable domain privacy, and provide the EPP code(s) for transfer. It may take several business days to transfer your domain name from another host. Some hosting providers will not allow you to transfer a domain name away from them for the 30-day period before and the 30-day period after the domain name’s renewal/expiration date. If you would like us to transfer the domain for you, we will need administrative access to your domain registrar account and possibly other account verification information, such as the answers to security questions or the credit card number you use with the domain registrar account. Transferring a domain is considered billable time and can sometimes take more than an hour per domain name. In the past, transfers from GoDaddy have typically taken very little time.
Registering a Domain Name Yourself and Hosting with Efficient Websites. If you want to keep your domain name registered in a separate account, it is your responsibility to change the nameservers for your domain name. You must change the first two nameservers to “NS1.EFSITES.COM” and “NS2.EFSITES.COM” (without the quotes). If you do not already have a domain registrar, we recommend GoDaddy for its low cost and ease of changing nameservers. However, you should know that the checkout process has many steps and you must be careful not to inadvertently purchase additional services, especially web hosting, if you are hosting your website on the Efficient Websites network.
Content. Prohibited content includes, but is not limited to the following: spam, computer and Internet viruses, hacking, terrorism, hate crimes, privacy violation, torture, slander, defamation, threats, harassment, abuse, illegal drugs, distribution of prescription medication without authorization, impersonation of another identity, pornography, obscenities, and other content that may be considered morally objectionable or illegal in the United States and any countries in which you do business. The Company reserves the right to suspend and/or terminate any services immediately and without prior notice if your website is found to contain any prohibited content.
Upgrades. Upgrades for WordPress core, themes, and plugins are mandatory and performed by the Company when available. As a result, your website appearance could change after an upgrade. In most cases, we will not charge for fixing errors caused by upgrades.
Backups. The Company does not provide any guarantees for the availability of backups, or the backup or restoration of your website content or files. Database backups are typically performed twice daily, and file backups are typically performed weekly.
Cancellation Procedure. Upon receiving notice of cancellation, the Company will provide the following services, if requested within 30 days of the cancellation notice: 1) Unlock the domain name(s) associated with your account. 2) Send the EPP code(s) for the domain name(s) via email to your email address on record. 3) Send a MySQL database backup and file backup of your account, if less than 10MB in combined size, via email to your email address on record. If the backups exceed 10MB in combined size, you will be given FTP access to the files for 30 days. The Company does not guarantee the quality or completeness of any backups provided. Upon cancellation of hosting, you will no longer have access to the “Customize” administration pages, which contain proprietary code from the Company. Additionally, the Company is not responsible for transferring your domain name(s), transferring your files, installing software, setting up accounts, setting up databases, upgrading software, and any problems during or resulting from the aforementioned activities. The Company does not provide any guarantees for the appearance, functionality, or continued operation of your website once hosting has been canceled. We will not provide upgrades to any premium themes or plugins used for your site; you must purchase them yourself if you want to upgrade. Once the Company unlocks your domain name(s), if you do not properly transfer your domain name(s) to another account or registrar, a third party may be able to take ownership of the domain name(s). The Company is not responsible for any costs incurred, business lost, or other damages resulting in the loss of the domain name(s).
Search Engine Optimization Services
Results of Service. We cannot guarantee any improvements in website traffic, keyword position, website performance, or any other measurable statistics. We do not provide any warranty, guarantees, or assume any liability whatsoever for services provided.
Referral Program
Referral Payments. If you refer a new customer to us, we will issue you a referral payment of (1) $50.00 USD if the new customer signs up for an initial project of 5 or more hours or (2) $100.00 USD if the new customer signs up for an initial project of 10 or more hours. Referral payments will be issued at the end of each calendar year quarter, for paid invoices only. By default, they will be in the form of Amazon.com gift cards. If you wish to receive payment in the form of account credit or a check, you must inform us before we issue payment.
Referral Procedure. (1) The new customer must identify you as the referring party before their invoice payment is processed. We will not issue a referral payment if you inform us that you referred someone, but he or she fails to identify you as the referring party. (2) If a new customer identifies more than one referring party, only the first referring party identified will receive the referral payment. (3) Unless explicitly agreed upon, you do not have permission to advertise on behalf of the company, which includes sending mass emails to your contacts. If you refer someone to us, please request that he or she visit our company website first, in order to better understand our services and pricing.
Referral Program Participation. At this time, only Efficient Websites customers are eligible to participate in the referral program. All Efficient Websites customers are automatically enrolled in the referral program.
Additional Terms of Service
These terms and pricing are subject to change at any time and without notice. Last revised December 6, 2011.