Client Agreement

Summary

We’ll always do our best to fulfill your needs and meet your expectations, but it’s important to have things written down so that we both know what’s what, who should do what and when, and what will happen if something goes wrong. In this contract you won’t find any complicated legal terms or long passages of unreadable text. We’ve no desire to trick you into agreeing to something that you might later regret. What we do want is what’s best for both parties, now and in the future.

In Short

You ("You") are hiring us, MadSky Creative ("We" or "Us" or "Our") located at PO Box 1071, DeLand, FL to provide design and/or development services for a website or other digital service, such as email marketing, scheduling tools, or membership tools. Or you are hiring us for marketing, search engine optimization services , or third-party integrations with a website. Specifics are provided in either a product description, estimate, proposal, scope of work document, quote, invoice or other document such as email, text messages and/or fee payment schedule. By providing us access to your website or authorizing us to set a website up on your behalf binds this agreement.

What do both parties agree to do?

As our client, you have the authority to enter into this contract on behalf of yourself, your company or your organization. You agree to provide us with everything that we need to complete the project including text, images and other information as and when we need it, and in the format we request. You agree to review our work, provide feedback and sign-off approval in a timely manner too. Deadlines work two ways and you will also be bound by any dates that we set together.

You agree to keep our trade secrets, fees, services, materials, suggestions, code or other resources or recommendations confidential.

You also agree to stick to the payment schedule set.

We have the experience and ability to perform the services we've agreed upon with you and we'll do it all in a professional and timely manner. We'll endeavor to meet every deadline that's set but we can't be responsible for a missed launch date or deadline if materials or approvals are not supplied by you and on time. Also, we'll maintain the confidentiality of everything you give us but we may share your information with third parties in order to complete our work.

Relationship

We remain an independent contractor, not an employee, partner, or agent of or joint venturer of your business. We will be open to conducting similar tasks or activities for other entities or businesses. We retain discretion to the manner and means of carrying out the work.

Design

We create or customize the look-and-feel of the designs along with functionality and flexible layouts that adapt to the capabilities of many devices and screen sizes. However, sites may not look identical on all devices or screen sizes. We may begin with a template or theme as a starting point and custom content and/or design iteratively using HTML and CSS. We may use visuals to indicate a creative direction (color, texture and typography.)

You'll have the opportunity to review our work and provide feedback.

If, at any stage, you change your mind about what you want to be delivered or are not happy with the direction our work is taking, you'll notify us to stop work, pay us in full for our work up until that point and either cancel this contract or continue to commission us to continue working after redefining both deliverables and direction of the work. We also reserve the right to cancel this contract at any time with advanced notice to you.

Copy, Graphics, Photographs

Unless agreed, we’re not responsible for developing, writing or editing page content or for inputting text or images into your content management system or creating every page on your website.

Unless agreed, we are not responsible for providing graphics or photographs. You should supply graphic files in an editable, vector digital format. You should supply photographs in a high resolution digital format. If you choose to buy stock photographs, we can suggest stock libraries.

HTML, CSS and Javascript

We may use a combination of HTML markup, CSS or JavaScript in your project. We may use combinations of code-generating tools, library code, code we have written or code sourced through a third party. We may utilize frameworks, templates, visual editors and themes in creating our designs. We may use a variety of plugins and widgets. We attempt to adhere to HTML5 and CSS standards. We will test customizations in supported browsers.

Supported Browsers

Browser testing no longer means attempting to make a website look the same in browsers of different capabilities or on devices with different size screens. It does mean ensuring that a person’s experience of a design should be appropriate to the capabilities of a browser or device.

Technical Support–Hosting

We’re not a website hosting company so we don’t offer support for website hosting, email or other service relating to hosting. The platforms we use do offer website hosting.

Website and Product Support

We do offer support related directly to updating and maintaining the design and content of your website and related integrations or products. Additional fees for support and maintenance will apply and we are happy to provide a quote. Additionally, ongoing maintenance plans are offered with a discount.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

We don’t guarantee improvements to your website’s search engine ranking or any specific amount of traffic. SEO is broad, time consuming and multi-faceted work; there are many strategies and approaches to reaching your ideal customer or client. Additionally, there are many things that can impact search results.

We can work with you to establish on-page SEO including guidance on content structure, page titles and descriptions. We can help you in connecting with Google and Bing. Fees for basic SEO set-up will be detailed in the proposal, scope of work document, estimate, quote, invoice or other document such as email, text messages and/or fees payment schedule.

Should you select, we do provide ongoing SEO and marketing support. All ongoing SEO/marketing work requires a minimum six-month to twelve-month contract. We are happy to provide a customized estimate.

Third Party Tools and Terms

For third-party development tools, software or hosting services that we use or that we implement, you are bound to their respective “Terms of Service.” You understand that any violation of terms would be between you and them.

Security and Performance

We do not guarantee security of your site, the platform, framework/theme, code, widgets, plugins or other tools used.

We can’t guarantee uptime or eliminate any possible potential downtime or performance issues for online tools, frameworks, generators, themes or plugins. We cannot guarantee that frameworks, generators, themes, plugins or other tools will always continue to be supported or upgraded.

Changes and Revisions

We don’t want to limit your ability to change your mind. The price at the beginning of this contract is based on the time that we estimate we’ll need to accomplish everything you’ve told us you want to achieve, but we’re happy to be flexible. If you want to change your mind or add anything new, that won’t be a problem as we’ll provide a separate estimate for those additions or changes.

Compliance with Government or Local Rules

You are solely responsible for compliance with any and all federal, state, local and/or international laws related to setting up, running or maintaining a website including but not limited to covering disclosures (e.g. cookie disclosure) and electronic commerce conducted through your website. You will hold us and any of our subcontractors harmless from any claim, causes of action, penalty, tax, and/or tariff arising from any violation.

Legal Stuff

We can’t guarantee that our work will be error-free or that the functions of any platform, web page template, website theme, or a completed website will always be error-free and so we can’t be liable to you or any third party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings, loss of use, business interruption, cost of substitute goods or services, or other incidental, consequential or special damages, even if you’ve advised us of them.

Finally, if any provision of this contract shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this contract and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.

Usage Rights and Intellectual Property Rights

You guarantee that all elements of text, images or other artwork you provide are either owned by your good selves, or that you’ve permission to use them. When you provide text, images or other artwork to us, you agree to protect us from any claim by a third party that we’re using their intellectual property.

We guarantee that all elements of the work we deliver to you are either owned by us or we’ve obtained permission to provide them to you. When we provide text, images or other artwork to you, we agree to protect you from any claim by a third party that you’re using their intellectual property.

Provided you’ve paid for the work and that this contract hasn’t been terminated, we’ll assign all intellectual property rights to you as follows:

We maintain ownership in and to all works of authorship and all copyrights, patents, trade secrets and any other intellectual property rights, business concepts, plans and ideas, reports, manuals, visual aids, documentation, inventions, processes, proposed products, services, techniques, marketing ideas, and commercial strategies, that have been or will be created by us, for you. Upon receipt of final payment, we grant you a non-exclusive, unlimited license to use the work for both personal and commercial purposes.

Displaying Our Work

We love to show off our work, so we reserve the right to display all aspects of our creative work, including sketches, work-in-progress designs and the completed project on our portfolio and in articles on websites, in magazines and in books.

Things Change

Your website will take updates and maintenance to stay running smoothly, to keep versions of frameworks, themes, plugins, widgets or other components up to date. These updates may be to improve features, security or performance. It’s your choice which updates to make.

We are glad to help you maintain your site on a scheduled, routine basis or occasionally and as needed, and that should be addressed in fees/scope or an additional agreement.

We can’t predict the future. So, if the internet in its current iteration dies or if we or a third-party product, component, framework, template, theme, plugin, widget, software or other similar tool(s) do any of the following we can’t be responsible and you may encounter associated expenses in keeping your site well maintained: cease to exist as a company, cease to provide updates, fixes/patches, release a new product version that significantly impacts your site, release a version that breaks a previously working tool(s).

We are also not responsible for you overwriting SEO work, deleting content that cannot be recovered, or other changes you make to your website after we launch it.

But where's all the horrible small print?

Just like a parking ticket, neither of us can transfer this contract to anyone else without the other’s permission.

This contract stays in place and need not be renewed. If for some reason one part of this contract becomes invalid or unenforceable, the remaining parts of it remain in place.

Although the language is simple, the intentions are serious and this contract is a legal document under exclusive jurisdiction of Florida courts.

Project Fees and Payment Schedule

Invoices: We will invoice you for the work we complete based on the terms and schedule outlined in the proposal, scope of work document, estimate, quote, invoice or other document such as email, text messages and/or fees payment schedule.

We’re sure you understand how important it is as a small business that you pay the invoices that we send you promptly. As we’re also sure you’ll want to stay friends, you agree to stick tight to the following payment schedule.

If at any point during the project, a portion of the fee is not paid in accordance with the fee schedule, we may select to cease work on the project and withhold or withdraw delivery of work product until the outstanding fee is paid. We reserve the right not to continue work or deliver work product until all outstanding payments have been made.

Hosting Fees: Will be paid directly to the hosting provider, such as Squarespace, Ghost, Webflow, Cargo, or Framer by you. Discounts may be available through sites we initiated and set up—annual discounts can apply. Hosting provider fees: Squarespace, Ghost, Webflow, Cargo and Framer.

Other fees – only as applicable

Product Fees: Fees for other products, to extend the functionality of your site or to integrate with other systems, will be paid directly to the product or integration provider.

Extensions and/or Third-party Fees: Any fees for third-party tools or extensions will be paid by you.

Purchases on your behalf: Any purchases of code, plugins, extensions by us on your behalf will be invoiced to you.

Late Notice Rescheduling or Multiple Reschedules Fees: We value your time and strive to be efficient, concise, and reliable in both synchronous and asynchronous communication. We ask that you extend the same consideration to us. Significant preparation often goes into meetings, training, or consulting sessions. If you need to reschedule, please provide at least 24 hours’ notice. Repeated rescheduling or late cancellations may incur a fee of up to $250 per instance.

The Dotted Line

Adding us to your website or other service, or asking us to create a website or start other services on your behalf binds this agreement according to terms outlined in either a product description, estimate, proposal, scope of work document, quote, invoice or other document such as email, text messages and/or fee payment schedule.

Updated: 05/30/2025
Originally adapted from the Contract Killer Contract.