Terms of service

We like to keep things simple. These terms outline the agreement between Fixels (“us”, “we”) and You (“the client”) when we build your website.

1. Project Scope & Quotes

Before we start, we will provide you with a quote (via email or message). This quote is valid for 30 days. The quote includes exactly what is listed: usually design, development, and basic SEO setup.

If you ask for extra features halfway through the build (scope creep), we may need to charge extra. We will always tell you the cost before doing the extra work.

2. Payments

We are a small business, so cash flow is important to us.

• Deposit: If you pay for your build up front, we typically require a 50% deposit to book your slot in our calendar.
• Balance: The remaining 50% is due when the website is finished and you are happy with it, but before we launch it live to the world.
• Paying monthly instead: If you choose to pay monthly rather than up front, there is no deposit or balance. Section 4 explains how that works.
• VAT: We are not currently VAT registered, so our quotes and invoices do not include VAT. If our turnover crosses the UK VAT threshold and we register, we will let any existing clients know in advance and apply VAT only to new quotes issued from that point.
• Late Payments: If an invoice is overdue by more than 30 days, we reserve the right to pause your services. For business clients, we may also charge interest and recovery costs on overdue amounts under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998.

3. Hosting & Care

Every website we build includes our Hosting & Care plan. Your quote confirms the price, which is currently £29 a month.

• What it covers: hosting your website, keeping it secure and up to date, its SSL certificate, uptime monitoring, and small edits (for example a new photo, updated opening hours or a price change) of up to 30 minutes in total each month. Unused time does not carry over to the next month. Anything beyond that, and bigger changes, are quoted separately before we start them.
• Minimum term: the plan has a 12-month minimum term, starting on the day your website goes live. After that it rolls on monthly.
• Payment: it is paid monthly in advance, by Direct Debit or another method we agree with you.
• Cancelling: once the minimum term has ended, you can cancel at any time by giving us 30 days' notice by email. If you cancel during the minimum term, the remaining months of the term are still payable.
• Price changes: we will not change the price during your minimum term. After that, we will give you at least 30 days' notice of any change.

4. Paying Monthly (No Upfront Fee)

Instead of paying for your build up front, you can choose to pay monthly. If you do:

• Price: you pay a fixed monthly amount for the first 12 months (currently £39 a month for a Landing Page and £55 for a Brochure Site). Your quote confirms the exact amount. Custom builds are quoted individually; any payment plan for one is agreed in writing with your quote. This covers the build and your Hosting & Care plan for those 12 months.
• When payments start: the first payment is taken when we start work, then on the 1st of each month, by Direct Debit.
• Minimum term: there is a 12-month minimum term. After 12 payments, your plan moves to the standard Hosting & Care price and works as described in section 3, so you can cancel any time with 30 days' notice.
• Ownership: the website becomes yours once all 12 monthly payments have been made (see section 7). Until then, we own the website and you have the right to use it.
• Paying off early: you can pay off the remaining monthly payments at any time, and the website becomes yours straight away.
• Ending early: if you want to end the agreement during the first 12 months, the remaining monthly payments are still due. If payments stop, we may take the website offline after the late payment period in section 2.

5. Consumer Cancellation Right (B2C Clients)

If you are a consumer (an individual contracting for personal use, rather than a business), you have the right to cancel this contract within 14 days of agreeing to it, without giving any reason, under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.

If you ask us to start work within that 14-day period and we do so, you must pay for the work we have carried out up to the point you tell us you want to cancel. You will lose the right to cancel altogether once the service has been fully performed, where you asked us to begin during the cancellation period and acknowledged that you would lose that right.

To cancel, contact us at hello@fixels.co.uk before the 14 days expire. You can do this by a clear written statement (for example, by email); you may use the model cancellation form set out in the Regulations, which we will provide on request, but you do not have to. Most of our clients are businesses, so this clause may not apply to you.

6. Content & Materials

You are responsible for providing the text and images for your site (unless you have paid us to write/source them).

We assume that you own the rights to any images or text you give us. If you give us a copyrighted image and we get sued, the liability falls on you.

7. Intellectual Property

This is the big one. Unlike many agencies who try to “rent” you a website:

Upon full payment, you own the website code, the design, and the content.

“Full payment” means paying the quoted build fee. If you pay monthly, it means completing all 12 monthly payments, or paying off the remainder early (see section 4).

We reserve the right to display the website in our portfolio and put a small “Designed by Fixels” link in the footer (you can ask us to remove this if you really want to).

8. Revisions

We want you to love your site. Our quotes typically include up to 2 rounds of revisions. This means we build it, you give feedback, we fix it, you give final feedback, we polish it. Extensive changes beyond this may incur an hourly fee.

9. Limitation of Liability

We build websites using best practices. However, the internet is unpredictable.

To the extent permitted by law, Fixels is not liable for the following, which are outside our reasonable control or are indirect losses:

• Loss of business due to server downtime (we don't run the servers, hosting companies do).
• Loss of Google rankings (SEO is a moving target).
• Hacks or security breaches, although we set up basic security measures.

Where we are found legally responsible, our total liability to you under or in connection with this agreement (whether in contract, negligence, or otherwise) is capped at the total fees you have paid us for the project in question.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, and, if you are a consumer, for any breach of your legal rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, including our duty to carry out our services with reasonable care and skill. Your statutory rights as a consumer are not affected by anything in these terms.

10. Governing Law & Disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and disputes will be handled by the courts of England and Wales. If you are a consumer, you also benefit from any mandatory consumer protection provisions of the part of the UK where you live, and you may be able to bring proceedings in the courts there.

Before escalating to legal proceedings, we encourage you to contact us to resolve any dispute informally. We are a small, friendly team and prefer to sort things out directly.

11. Force Majeure

Sometimes things go wrong that are nobody's fault. Neither side will be liable for delays or failures caused by events outside their reasonable control. This includes internet or hosting outages, third-party service failures, fires, floods, strikes, pandemics, or government restrictions. If something like this happens, we will tell you as soon as we can and work with you to find a fair way forward, including extending deadlines or, if the situation drags on, agreeing a sensible exit.

12. Subcontractors

We may use trusted freelancers or contractors for parts of a project, for example specialist developers, copywriters, or photographers. Where we do, the work still goes out under the Fixels name, we remain fully responsible for it, and they are bound by the same confidentiality and quality standards we are. You will never need to deal with them directly unless you choose to.

13. Your Client Portal

Every client gets a login for our client portal, where you can see your website and plan, your visitor numbers, your invoices and your Direct Debit, and ask us for changes.

• Logins: we only add the people you ask us to. Signing in uses a code sent to their email address, so anyone who can read that inbox can sign in. Keep it secure, and tell us straight away if someone should no longer have access, or if you think someone else has signed in.
• What it shows: visitor numbers, uptime and Google ratings come from other services, so treat them as a guide. If the portal is ever unavailable, nothing else is affected: email or call us as usual.
• Paying from the portal: if you choose to pay an invoice by Direct Debit there, you authorise one payment of the amount shown, taken under your existing Direct Debit. The Direct Debit Guarantee applies to it, as it does to every Direct Debit payment.
• Access: we may suspend a login to keep the portal secure, and we close logins when you stop being a client.

14. Recommending Us

Clients on our Hosting & Care plan get a referral link in their portal.

• The offer: when a business that got in touch through your link becomes a client, we take one month of your Hosting & Care off your next bill. There is no limit on how many.
• When it counts: a business becomes a client once they have paid for their website. They have to be new to us: a business that was already talking to us before using your link does not count.
• The free month: it is a discount on your bill, so it has no cash value and cannot be transferred.
• Changes: we may change or end the offer. Businesses that got in touch through your link before then still count.

15. Your Visitors’ Data

When we host your website, we handle personal data for you: mostly the names, contact details and messages that your website’s visitors and customers send through its forms. For that data, you are the controller and we are your processor, for as long as we host your site. We will:

• only use it to run and look after your website, following these terms and your written instructions, unless the law requires otherwise, and tell you if we think an instruction would break data protection law;
• make sure anyone who works on it is bound by confidentiality, and keep it secure;
• only use other providers (such as our hosting, email and database providers) under written terms that protect it in the same way, and tell you before we add or replace one, so you can object;
• help you answer requests from people using their data protection rights, and help with security, breach reports and impact assessments where they involve our services;
• tell you without undue delay if we find a breach affecting it;
• delete it or give it back to you when we stop hosting your site, unless the law requires us to keep it;
• give you the information you need to show we are meeting these terms, and allow reasonable audits.

Some of our providers process data outside the UK. Where they do, an approved safeguard is in place, as our privacy policy explains.

16. General

A few standard clauses to wrap things up:

• Severability: If a court decides any part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest still applies. We just lose that one bit.
• Entire agreement: These terms, together with the written quote we send you, form the whole agreement between us. Things said over email or on a call are useful context but do not override what is written here unless we both confirm them in writing.
• Notices: Any formal notices (cancellations, complaints, changes of scope) should be sent by email to hello@fixels.co.uk so we both have a written record.
• No waiver: If we let something slide once (a late payment, a missed deadline on your side), that does not mean we have waived our right to enforce the same point in future.
• Assignment: You cannot transfer this agreement to someone else without our written consent. We can transfer it (for example, if the business is sold), as long as your rights are not reduced.
• Updates to these terms: We may update these terms occasionally. The version that applies to your project is the one published on the date your quote was issued.