Terms and Conditions

Your plan, in plain words

The summary explains; the agreement is what we both agree to. If the two ever differ, the agreement applies.

1. What you get. A website designed, built and written for your business, hosted and looked after, with every change you ask for made within your plan’s turnaround and anything broken fixed within one working day, for one monthly fee plus GST. Your plan, page count and fee are on your cover sheet.

2. How you pay. By card or from your bank account through Stripe, or by invoice if we agree that with you. Your first payment covers the rest of the month you start in; after that the fee is paid on the 1st of each month.

3. You keep the price you joined on while you stay on your plan, even when new clients pay more. Only if what we pay other companies to run your plan ever cost more than your fee covers would we raise it: never inside your minimum term, never above what new clients pay, at most once a year, with 90 days’ written notice, and you can leave before it starts. Move up a plan and you pay that plan’s price at the time.

4. If a payment is missed, we remind you, then pause changes, then suspend the site after written notice, and only then may we end the agreement. Pay what is owed and everything comes back. We charge no late fee and no interest. If we end the agreement inside the minimum term because you haven’t paid, we may claim what we lose for the rest of that term, less what we save.

5. Who owns what. We own the design and the code; you have a licence to use the site at your domain while you are on a plan. Your domain is registered in your name, your Google Business Profile and Search Console are yours, and everything you give us stays yours.

6. When it ends, the site comes down. You get back your material and you may keep using the words we wrote about your business. Your domain, Business Profile and Search Console stay with you. The design and code stay with us.

7. If we end it without your fault after the minimum term, on 60 days’ notice, we refund anything paid past the end date and give you a static copy of your public pages to keep showing.

8. Your customers’ details go straight to you from your site’s forms. We do not store them, we act only as your agent, and we tell you within two working days if anything goes wrong.

9. If we disagree, we talk first. After 20 working days either of us can go to the Disputes Tribunal, or to the courts where the Tribunal cannot hear it. New Zealand law applies.

Refunds and cancelling

Refunds. Until you approve the home page design by email, you can end your plan for any reason and we refund every payment you have made, within 10 working days, to the card or bank account you paid from. After the design is approved we don’t refund because you’ve changed your mind; if something is wrong, we fix it. Where your plan ends part-way through a month you have paid for, because we raised your fee, replaced a service or ended the agreement without your fault, we refund the days after the end date. The law may give you other rights we cannot limit. To ask for a refund, email craig@boringweb.co.nz or ring 027 831 6910.

Cancelling. Your plan is paid on the 1st of each month until it ends. Every plan has a six-month minimum term, which ends on the last day of the sixth full month after the month you start in; the date is on your cover sheet. To cancel, email us. After the minimum term, 30 days’ notice ends your plan on the last day of the month it runs out in, and you pay nothing after that. Inside the minimum term, you can tell us any time: your notice takes effect at the end of the minimum term, the site stays up and looked after until then, the monthly payments continue to that day, and nothing extra is charged. When your plan ends the site comes down; your domain, your Business Profile and everything you gave us stay yours.

The footer of your site says “Website by The Boring Web Co” while you are on a plan, and we may show your site when we talk about our work unless you ask us not to.

The agreement

This is the agreement between The Boring Web Co Limited, company number 9461823, of 155 Gulf Harbour Drive, Gulf Harbour, Whangaparaoa 0930, New Zealand (“we”, “us”), and the business named on your cover sheet (“you”). You accept it by ticking the box at checkout and authorising the first payment, or by replying to the proposal by email and paying. The cover sheet, this agreement and your plan’s inclusions below are the whole deal. The summary that comes with it explains; this document is what we both agree to.

1. What your plan includes

1.1 Every plan gets a website designed and built from scratch for your business, the words written for it, hosting, every change you ask for (part 4), anything broken on the site fixed within one working day (part 4.2), and someone who answers. We set up Google Search Console with you as its owner and submit the sitemap, and we set up your Google Business Profile with you as its owner. Every plan also includes: a check every five minutes that the site is up, with an alert to Craig; a speed re-test every month on Google’s mobile test, with a fix if it slips under 90; a monthly plain-English email with your numbers (visits, phone taps, form sends); spam-filtered forms; an image for when your link is shared; an email address on your domain where the domain has no email already; a redesign every three years while you are on a plan (part 3.5); and, while we build and you review, the ability to comment on the working copy of your site (part 2.3).

1.2 Starter: up to 5 pages. Changes within 5 working days.

1.3 Business: up to 10 pages, a blog, one integration with a service you already use, and changes within 3 working days.

1.4 Growth: up to 15 pages, an editor for the words and photos, the integrations you need with services you already use (set up at build and swapped when you change providers; a new system or an integration that needs its own backend is something new, part 4), an analytics dashboard you can log into, a fuller monthly report with the Google searches that found you, and changes within 2 working days.

1.5 Words we use. A change is a change to what is already on the site: words, photos, prices, hours, a post on a blog your plan includes. A change also includes a new page within your plan’s page count. Something new is a page beyond your plan’s count, a feature, an integration your plan does not include, or a new system. Your material is the words, photos, logos, video and anything else you give us. A working day is Monday to Friday, other than a New Zealand public holiday. Design approval is your reply by email saying yes to the home page design we have sent you. Go-live is the day the site answers at your domain after your sign-off by email. In writing means by email to the addresses on the cover sheet.

2. Building your site

2.1 The intake comes first. You fill in a fact sheet about your business on our own website, then Craig records a conversation with you about your jobs and customers (we record it, with your consent, so we can quote you accurately), and we send you a numbered email of the lines we have written for you to tick or correct. Everything on your site comes from what you tell us there.

2.2 We build on a private working copy that only you, your reviewers and we can see.

2.3 You comment on the working copy. You tap the part of a page you want changed and type what you want; Craig answers under it and marks it done; you can say it is not done yet. Comments exist while we build and review, never on the finished site; once the site is live, a change is an email or a phone call.

2.4 Design approval. We show you the home page design first. Once you approve it by email, the money-back window in part 8 closes and we build the rest of the site to that design.

2.5 You approve before go-live. Nothing goes live until you have signed the site off in writing, and we do not put a site live until it scores 90 or better on Google’s mobile speed test, unless something you have asked us to include is what holds the score down and we have told you so.

2.6 Timing. Most sites take two to four weeks from the intake to go-live. The pace is mostly yours: answers, photos, approvals. If we are waiting on you, the months still count and are still paid, so send what we need as soon as you can.

2.7 Your part. Give us your material and answers when we ask; approve or correct what we send within a reasonable time; keep your domain registered in your own name and paid for; give us access to your domain’s settings and to your Google accounts when we need it; make sure what you tell us about your business is true; and take your customers’ names and contact details out of any enquiries you send us.

3. Running your site

3.1 Hosting. Your site runs on Cloudflare’s network, in our account. Cloudflare publishes its own status at cloudflarestatus.com. We check your site every five minutes and fix anything that is ours to fix on working days. We do not promise a percentage of uptime and we do not give credits for downtime; what we promise is the checking and the fixing.

3.2 Speed. Every month we re-test your site on Google’s mobile speed test. If it slips under 90, we fix it.

3.3 Your numbers. Each month we email you how the site did: visits, phone taps and form sends. On Growth, the email also shows the Google searches that found you.

3.4 Email on your domain. If your domain has no email already, we set up an address such as hello@yourbusiness.co.nz and forward it to the inbox you use. If your domain already has email, we leave it exactly as it is.

3.5 A redesign every three years. While you are on a plan, every three years from go-live we redesign and restructure the site at your plan’s page count, at no extra cost. If the new version needs more pages than your plan allows, you move up a plan.

3.6 Your Google Business Profile is set up with you as its owner. Looking after it afterwards is not part of any plan.

4. Changes and new work

4.1 Changes are included and unlimited. Email or ring, and we make the change within your plan’s turnaround: 5 working days on Starter, 3 on Business, 2 on Growth. Changes are done in batches, so several requests in a week land together.

4.2 Anything broken. On every plan, if something on the site is broken we fix it within one working day of your telling us.

4.3 Something new is quoted first. A page beyond your plan’s count, a feature, an integration your plan does not include, or a new system is work outside your plan. We tell you the price in writing before we start, and we only start once you have said yes in writing.

4.4 Outgrowing your plan means moving up a plan, at that plan’s price at the time.

5. Paying

5.1 Your fee is the monthly fee on your cover sheet, plus GST at the rate the law sets (15% when this version was written). There is no build fee: your first monthly payment starts the plan.

5.2 How you pay. Through Stripe, by card or from your New Zealand bank account, at the checkout link we send you, or by invoice where we have agreed that with you in writing. The payment method’s own terms (Stripe’s, and your bank’s for a direct debit) apply to the payment itself.

5.3 When you pay. Your first payment covers the days from your start date to the end of that month, so it is a part-month amount. From then on, Stripe charges the monthly fee on the 1st of each month, in advance. You get an emailed receipt for each payment.

5.4 You keep the price you joined on. The monthly fee on your cover sheet is fixed for the whole minimum term. After that it stays the same for as long as you stay on that plan, even when we charge new clients more. The one exception: if what we pay other companies to run your plan (hosting, the editor and analytics tools and the like) rises so far that your fee no longer covers it, we may raise your fee. If we do, we tell you in writing at least 90 days before, with the new fee and the date it starts. That date is the 1st of a month and never inside your minimum term. The new fee is never more than the price new clients pay for your plan at the time, we raise it at most once in any 12 months, and we show you the costs if you ask. You may end this agreement by telling us in writing before that date, without the notice in part 7.2: it ends on the last day before the new fee starts, and you pay nothing at the new fee. If you move up a plan, you pay that plan’s price at the time. GST changes if the law changes it.

5.5 One invoice, one amount. Nothing is added because you asked for a change. Something new (part 4.3) is invoiced separately, at the price you agreed to first.

6. If a payment is missed

6.1 If a payment fails, or your bank later reverses a payment from your bank account, it counts as unpaid. Stripe retries a failed payment over the following days. If it is still unpaid 8 days after it was due, we remind you.

6.2 If it is still unpaid 14 days after it was due, we tell you in writing that changes to your site are paused until you have paid.

6.3 After that, if it stays unpaid, we tell you in writing that the site will be suspended, and give you 10 working days to pay. If you do not, we take the site down until you do.

6.4 If the amount is still unpaid 30 days after that suspension notice, we may end this agreement (part 9.1). Paying on time is an essential term of this agreement. If we end it inside the minimum term because you have not paid, you still owe what was unpaid up to the end date, and we may claim what we have lost for the rest of the minimum term, less what we save by no longer running your site. After the minimum term, you owe only what was unpaid up to the end date.

6.5 Paying puts everything back. Pay what is owed and the site goes back up and changes resume. We charge no late fee, no interest and no reinstatement charge. If a court ever gives judgment for money owed, the law may add interest to it; that is the court’s doing, not a fee of ours.

6.6 If money gets tight, tell Craig before it gets to any of this. We would far rather work something out than go through the steps above.

7. The minimum term, and stopping

7.1 The minimum term is six full months. Your plan starts on the day you tick the box at checkout and authorise the first payment (or, where we have agreed you pay by invoice, the day that invoice is paid). If that first payment never arrives, the plan has not started. The minimum term ends on the last day of the sixth full month after the month your start date falls in. The date is on your cover sheet. For example, a plan that starts on 20 November has a minimum term that ends on 31 May.

7.2 After the minimum term, you can stop whenever you like. Give us 30 days’ written notice; the agreement ends on the last day of the month that notice runs out in, and you pay to that day and no further.

7.3 Stopping inside the minimum term. You can tell us at any time that you want to stop. Your notice takes effect on the last day of the minimum term. Until then the monthly payments are still owed, and your site stays up and looked after. Nothing extra is charged and nothing falls due early.

7.4 If you come back later, it is a new agreement with a new minimum term: the site has to go back up and be looked after again.

8. Before the design is approved, your money back

8.1 Until you have given design approval (part 2.4), you can end this agreement for any reason by telling us in writing. We refund every payment you have made within 10 working days, to the card or bank account you paid from (a bank-account payment more than 90 days old is refunded by bank transfer). The agreement ends, the minimum term ends with it, and nothing more is owed.

8.2 If we have heard nothing from you for 60 days before design approval, we may end the agreement by giving you 14 days’ written notice. If we do, we refund every payment you have made.

8.3 After design approval we do not refund payments because you have changed your mind. The work has been done by then, so if something is wrong we fix it. Parts 5.4, 9.2 and 14.3 say when we refund days you have paid for after an end date, and the law may give you rights we cannot limit (part 14.5).

9. If we end this agreement

9.1 For your breach. We may end this agreement in writing if: a payment is unpaid 30 days after a suspension notice (part 6.4); you do not put right, within 10 working days of our written notice, content or conduct that is unlawful, infringes someone’s rights, or is abusive to us or to anyone working with us; or you break this agreement in a way that cannot be put right.

9.2 Without your fault. After the minimum term, we may end this agreement by giving you 60 days’ written notice. If we do, we refund any payment that covers days after the end date, and we give you a static copy of your site’s public pages as they were served (the pages, their styling, images and text) with a licence to keep displaying that copy, as it is, wherever you choose to host it. Forms and anything else that ran on our systems will not work in the copy. This is the one case in which a copy of the built site leaves us. We cannot end this agreement inside the minimum term except under part 8.2 or 9.1.

10. When this agreement ends

10.1 The site comes down on the end date, or on a later date we agree in writing. Our licence to you to use the site ends then, except as part 9.2 says.

10.2 What goes back to you: your material, as you gave it to us; the words we wrote for your business, which you may keep using (part 11.4); your domain, which has always been registered in your name (we hand its settings back and help you move them); and your Google Business Profile and Search Console, which have always been yours.

10.3 What we delete: the working copy of your site, its comments and your reviewers’ names and email addresses, your site’s settings in our systems, and the material from your intake, within 90 days of the end date, unless the law requires us to keep something (invoices and this agreement, seven years) or you ask us in writing to keep it.

10.4 What stays ours: the design and the code (part 11.1).

11. Who owns what

11.1 The design and code are ours. Everything we make to build and run your site (the design, the mock-ups, the code, the build and its settings) is owned by us or licensed to us. The Copyright Act 1994 would otherwise make you the first owner of code you commission and pay for; this agreement is the agreement to the contrary that the Act allows, so commissioning and paying for the site does not make you its owner.

11.2 Your licence. While you are on a plan, you have a non-exclusive licence to use the site at your domain. You may not copy the design or code to another site, give the licence to anyone else, or let anyone change the site except us and, on Growth, you through the editor. The licence ends when this agreement ends (part 10), except as part 9.2 says.

11.3 Your material is yours. You give us a licence to use, edit and publish it on your site and in our work for you. You confirm you have the right to give us what you give us, and that what you tell us about your business is true.

11.4 The words we write for you. We own the copyright in the words we write. While you are on a plan they are part of the site. After this agreement ends, you may keep using those words, about your business, anywhere, for as long as you like, and this licence survives the end of this agreement. The design and code do not come with them.

11.5 Your domain is registered in your name, and you pay its renewal. We never register your domain in our name or hold its transfer code. We manage its settings only while you are on a plan.

11.6 Our credit. The site’s footer says “Website by The Boring Web Co”, linking to our site, for as long as you are on a plan.

11.7 Our portfolio. We may show your site and name your business when we talk about our work. Tell us in writing if you would rather we did not, and we will stop.

12. Your content, and the law

12.1 You decide what the site says about your business, and you approve it before it goes live. We make the design and technical decisions needed to build and run the site within your plan and the brief we agreed from your intake.

12.2 We may decline to publish something we reasonably believe is unlawful, misleading, or infringes someone’s rights, and we will tell you why. If something already on the site turns out to be unlawful or to infringe someone’s rights, we may take that part down while we sort it out with you, and we will tell you the same day.

12.3 If we disagree about whether something is a change or something new, we tell you why before any work happens, and part 16 applies.

12.4 Your privacy notice. Your site collects your customers’ details through its forms, so it needs a privacy notice. We write one for you from what the site does; you check it is right for your business and keep it current.

13. Privacy

13.1 Your customers’ information is yours. When someone fills in a form on your site, their details go straight to the email addresses you nominate. We do not store them. We count how many people visited, tapped your number or sent a form, without recording who they were.

13.2 We handle your customers’ information only as your agent, only to run your site, and never for our own purposes. We keep it secure in the way the Privacy Act 2020 requires of a service provider, and we delete anything we hold when this agreement ends (part 10.3).

13.3 If something goes wrong with your customers’ information while it is in our hands, we tell you within two working days of our knowing, with what we know, so you can meet your own obligations under the Privacy Act. You do the same for us.

13.4 What we hold about you (your contact details, your intake material, your invoices) is covered by our privacy policy at boringweb.co.nz/privacy/. Craig is our privacy officer.

13.5 Confidentiality. Each of us keeps the other’s confidential information (your business details that are not public; our prices to you, our methods and our systems) confidential, and uses it only for this agreement, during it and after it. This does not cover information that is public, or that we have to disclose by law.

14. What we promise, and what we don’t

14.1 We do the work with reasonable care and skill, and at go-live your site works in the current versions of the major browsers (Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox) on phones and computers.

14.2 What we build is ours to build. We confirm that our design and code do not infringe anyone else’s copyright. We will defend and pay for any claim that they do, if you tell us promptly and let us handle the response. This does not cover your material (part 15.4).

14.3 Other people’s services. Your site relies on services we do not control: Cloudflare for hosting, Google for Search Console and your Business Profile, Stripe for payments, and on Growth the editor and analytics tools. Each has its own terms. If one of them changes or closes, we may replace it with an equivalent and will tell you. If that would change what your plan gives you, we tell you at least 30 days ahead and you may end this agreement before the change takes effect, without anything further owed, and we refund any payment that covers days after the end date.

14.4 Beyond anyone’s control. Neither of us is responsible for failing to do something under this agreement because of events outside our reasonable control (a natural disaster, a network-wide outage, a change in the law). We still do what we reasonably can to put things right. This does not excuse paying money that is due.

14.5 Your legal rights. You are buying these services for your business. If the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 would otherwise apply, you agree that it does not. Nothing in this agreement limits a right the law does not let us limit.

15. If something goes wrong

15.1 What we are not liable for. Neither of us is liable to the other for indirect loss: loss that does not follow directly and naturally from the breach.

15.2 The cap. Each of our total liability to the other under or in connection with this agreement, in contract, tort or otherwise, is limited to the greater of the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose and six months’ fees at your plan’s rate.

15.3 What the cap does not cover. Parts 15.1 and 15.2 do not limit liability for fraud, for a breach of part 13 (privacy and confidentiality), for our promise in part 14.2 or yours in part 15.4, or for anything the law does not let us limit. They do not limit your liability to pay the fees you owe.

15.4 Your material. You will defend and pay for any claim against us that material you gave us infringes someone’s rights or is unlawful, if we tell you promptly and let you handle the response.

16. If we disagree

16.1 Talk first. Craig and your named contact talk it through. Either of us may put the dispute in writing to the other at any time.

16.2 Then the Tribunal, or the courts. If we have not resolved it within 20 working days of that written notice, either of us may take it to the Disputes Tribunal where it has jurisdiction, and otherwise to the New Zealand courts. Undisputed unpaid fees, and any dispute about who owns the design or code, go to the courts, because the Tribunal cannot hear them.

16.3 This agreement is governed by New Zealand law.

17. General

17.1 Notices are in writing, by email, to the addresses on the cover sheet (or any new address one of us gives the other in writing). A notice counts as received when it reaches that inbox.

17.2 Changes to this agreement must be agreed in writing by both of us. Email is fine.

17.3 Passing it on. Neither of us may transfer this agreement to someone else without the other’s written consent, which will not be unreasonably withheld. You agree now that we may transfer this agreement, with every obligation we owe you, to a company that carries on the same business, by written notice to you.

17.4 The whole agreement. The cover sheet and this agreement are the whole agreement between us about your site. The summary that comes with it explains; if the two ever differ, this document applies. Nothing here limits any right you have under the Fair Trading Act 1986.

17.5 Independent. We are an independent contractor to you, not your employee, partner or agent.

17.6 Only us two. This agreement gives rights only to you and to us, not to anyone else it mentions.

17.7 If a part is unenforceable, the rest still applies.

17.8 Letting something go once does not mean letting it go again.

17.9 What lasts after the end. Parts 9.2, 10, 11.4, 13, 14.2, 15 and 16, and any money owed, continue after this agreement ends.