Terms of
service.

Who these terms are between

These terms cover the website design, hosting, and care services provided by Stonekept, a web studio based in Buffalo, Minnesota ("we," "us"), to you as a client ("you"). The specifics of any project (scope, price, and schedule) are set out in the written quote we agree before work begins; where a quote and these terms differ, the quote wins.

Builds & payment

A website build is a one-time fee quoted up front based on agreed scope, billed 50% to start and 50% at launch. Work begins once you've approved the quote. Additional work beyond the agreed scope is quoted separately before we start it.

Before the second half is due, we design your home page and one key inner page for you to review. If you don't want to continue at that point, tell us and we refund your deposit in full. There's no refund after launch, because from launch the finished site is yours outright.

Care plans

Care plans are billed monthly, or yearly in advance if you choose, and begin when your site launches. They include hosting, HTTPS, backups, monitoring, and a reasonable allowance of content edits and small improvements, as described on the care plans and pricing pages. Larger changes are quoted separately.

The hand-off plan is a hosting, security and light-maintenance plan, not a care plan. It includes hosting, HTTPS, off-site backups, and monitoring, together with correction of faults arising from our own hosting or code at no charge, and one content update per calendar month. A content update means a single request covering a reasonable number of small changes to existing content (text, images, hours, prices) submitted together. An unused update does not carry over. New pages and sections, substantial rewrites, SEO work, integration and design changes are not included; that work is quoted and agreed before it begins. The hand-off plan is available for sites we built, on Launch and Standard builds; sites with payment, booking, or event integrations require a care plan. You may move onto a care plan at any monthly billing date.

The 12-month care term

You can choose a lower build fee in exchange for committing to 12 months of care. The term prices are on the pricing page, and the figures for your project (the discount and the monthly pay-back) are set out in your quote and in a short term agreement you sign with it. The term starts the day your site launches, when your care plan begins, and runs for 12 months on your plan's care tier, paid monthly or as one yearly payment. If you decide not to continue at the design stage, your deposit is refunded in full as described above, and no term applies.

You can move up to a larger care plan at any time. If you cancel, or move to the hand-off plan, before the term is up, you pay back the part of your build discount you haven't earned yet: an equal monthly share of it for each month of the term remaining after the month you cancel in ($100 a month on Launch, $150 on Standard, $200 on Growth). We charge it to the payment method on file, and the build can never end up costing you more than its regular price. If you prepaid the year, the pay-back comes out of your refund for the unused months and the rest comes back to you. Your site, content and files are yours from launch whatever you decide, and once the term is up your plan simply continues month-to-month.

Cancelling

Care plans and the hand-off plan are month-to-month unless you've chosen the 12-month care term above. Either way, you can cancel anytime, effective at the end of your current billing period. Because hosting is bundled into every plan, cancelling means you'll arrange hosting elsewhere; we'll hand over your site files and help you point your domain so the transition is smooth.

If you've paid for a year up front, cancelling works the same way, and we refund the unused part of the year: a full month for every whole month remaining after the one you cancel in. Paying annually gets you a lower rate; it isn't a commitment, and it doesn't cost you the balance if your plans change. On the 12-month care term, the pay-back described above comes out of that refund.

Ownership

You own your domain, your content, and your finished site. Because every site is plain HTML and CSS, you can take the files to any developer or host. There's no proprietary platform locking you in. Any third-party tools or fonts we integrate remain governed by their own licenses.

Your responsibilities

To build and maintain your site we rely on you to provide accurate information and the content and approvals we need, on a reasonable timeline, and to hold the rights to any materials (text, images, logos) you give us to use.

Third-party services

Your site may rely on third-party services, for example Cloudflare for hosting, Resend for contact-form email, or Stripe or Snipcart for payments. Those services have their own terms and availability, and we aren't responsible for outages or changes on their side, though we'll help you work through them.

Liability

We take real care with your site, but we can't guarantee specific business outcomes such as search rankings, traffic, or sales, and we're not liable for indirect or consequential losses. Nothing in these terms limits liability that can't be limited under law.

Changes

We may update these terms from time to time; we'll change the date at the top when we do. Questions about any of it? Get in touch. We're happy to explain in plain language.