Last updated: February 21, 2023 at 12:19pm
This Agreement is for the Matter Storm Design Website Care Plans. By requesting or signing up for one of our Website Care Plans, you agree to be bound by this policy. If you don’t agree with any part of this policy, you don’t have permission to sign up or access our Website Care Plans.
This Agreement is in addition to our other site policies, including our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service and Disclaimer.
We reserve the right to deny access to the service or cancel the service for anyone, for any reason and at any time and you acknowledge that the decision is ours alone.
The numbering and captions of the various sections of this Agreement are solely for convenience and reference only and shall not affect the scope, meaning, intent or interpretation of the provisions of this Agreement nor shall such headings otherwise be given any legal effect.
If we don’t enforce any part of this Agreement, it does not constitute a waiver of our rights to later enforce that or any other part of this Agreement. Non-enforcement in any particular instance does not mean that we will not or cannot enforce this Agreement in the future.
If any provision of this Agreement shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this Agreement and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.
While we always strive for excellence in our work, we don’t make any guarantees and our products, services and work are offered, supplied and sold “as is”. We won’t be liable to you or any third-party for lost data or content, damages, liabilities, costs, losses, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages, even if you’ve advised us of them.
We also don’t guarantee any specific results, a particular outcome, or uninterrupted access to the service, including a faster site, higher search engine rankings, always having a backup for a specific date or that your site will never be hacked.
You acknowledge that we’re not a lawyer or a law firm and do not provide legal advice or legal representation and that any and all information we provide is for informational and self-help purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional legal advice.
Cancellation
You can cancel immediately through your account at any time. You can also cancel by contacting us on a weekday at support@matterstorm.design with at least 24 hours notice before the end of your billing cycle. There is no fee to cancel. When you cancel, you’ll continue to have access to the service until the end of your billing cycle (the end of the month, or the end of the year, depending on your subscription). After that you’ll no longer have access to the service. You can sign up again in the future though, if you’d like.
If you dispute a transaction with your bank or credit card company, initiate a chargeback or otherwise revoke your pre-approval of any current or future transactions, your subscription will be canceled immediately and you’ll lose access to the service immediately, instead of at the end of your billing period. In some circumstances, you may also not be allowed to sign up for any services offered by Matter Storm Design again in the future.
The service will be canceled if invoices are late or unpaid.
Removing tools after cancellation or your subscription ends
In order to offer the service, we use premium and proprietary tools, plugins and software. If you cancel, we cancel, or your subscription period ends, we’ll need to remove and un-register these plugins. You do not retain access to these tools or their licenses once your subscription ends. By signing this Agreement, you guarantee that you will allow us access to your website and if needed, your website hosting for up to five business days after the end of your subscription period in order for us to delete and remove these tools.
Requirements
Your website must be built using WordPress as the service is intended for WordPress based websites only. Websites that are over 8 GB in size may have an additional fee.
To provide the service, we use a number of tools which require that your site’s hosting plan has sufficient resources in order for our tools to work properly. An underpowered hosting plan can be overwhelmed when your site is updated or backed up, leading to downtime or other problems. If your site is slow or regularly unavailable, we recommend upgrading your hosting or switching to a reputable website hosting provider. If we’re unable to use our tools due to inadequate hosting, we’ll get in touch and outline some options. If we can’t come to a consensus, we may cancel the service.
If you have premium themes or plugins, you’ll also want to make sure you have active licenses to receive updates. There will be a limit to what we can do to maintain your site if you don’t have access to patches and comparability fixes for your premium plugins and themes. We don’t include licenses for premium plugins or themes for you as part of the service.
For the duration of the services, you certify that Matter Storm Design will be the sole provider of website care services for your website and that no other party, website user or employee, will tamper with the website, complete any of the covered services themselves or adjust the foundational setting on the site or the tools that we rely on to offer the service
If another party has tampered with the site or it’s foundational settings, we may cancel the service. Fixing problems that are due to actions by anyone besides ourselves, whether another party or another site user, are not covered as part of the service and we cannot be held liable for any actions or results taken by another party.
Refunds
Overall, we don’t offer refunds for any reason, whether they be full or partial. The only circumstance in which we provide refunds is if we cancel the service after you sign up but before we actually start providing the service. In this case we’ll offer a full refund.
If we cancel the service, whether that be at the end of your current billing cycle or with immediate effect, after having started providing the service, there will be no refunds.
If you cancel, you’ll continue to receive access to the services until the end of your billing cycle.
Contact, communication and availability
We only offer support via email. You can contact us with any questions about the service at hello@matterstorm.design. We’ll generally get back to you within 48 hours on business days during regular business hours. We are not available before or after hours, during the weekends or on major and “observed” holidays. In rare circumstances, we may respond to communications outside of business days and hours, but it is not guaranteed and it should not be expected.
We’ll ask that any questions that your team members have are combined and sent to us via you, the main account holder.
You may receive occasional emails from us that have to do with any changes or additions to the service that will impact you, as well as other announcements from us.
We don’t tolerate any abusive or threatening behavior, whether it be physical, verbal or implied. Any behavior like this will result in the immediate cancellation of the service.
Emergency services
The service is not and does not include emergency services. While we can help with emergency problems, we are only available during business hours on weekdays and do not offer 24/7 services.
Limited access to the tools we use for the service
The service is fully managed by us, which means that you as the customer won’t have direct access to some of the tools we’ll use to deliver the service. For example, we don’t let our customers access the tools we use to make and manage site backups or let them restore their sites from a backup themselves. This allows us to maintain the integrity of our services and prevent backups or configurations from being inadvertently changed or deleted. If you need something you don’t regularly have access to, like the most recent backup of your website for example, get in touch and we’ll see what we can do.
Scope of the services
Our website care plans are for protecting and maintaining existing websites that are fully functioning and working well. By signing up, you certify that your site is in good working order and that there aren’t any major problems that you’re aware of. We may cancel the service if we find out later that there were known problems with the site before we started the service. You also acknowledge that fixing pre-existing problems with your site is not included. Problems that arise during our work together that are outside the scope of the service also won’t be included. We’d be happy to provide a quote though. You agree that we will make the final decision as to whether a fix or service request is within scope or not.
Some things that are outside the scope of the service and therefor not included:
- Creation of new content; for example, design, copywriting, illustration, images, video production
- Creating new pages, forms, landing pages or posts
- Digital, marketing or communication strategy or compliance, speed, accessibility, content, design or search engine audits/optimizations
- IT support for email management, website hosting, network infrastructure, printers, computers or other business technology
- Support for third-party services (like Zappier, Mailchimp, Instagram etc.)
Additional charges
You won’t be charged any additional costs for the service without being notified before. If something falls outside the scope of the service or would require excessive time to complete, we’ll get in touch and let you know your options and give you an estimate before starting or continuing any work.
Troubleshooting
If your site goes down due to an update or for another reason, we’ll restore the site back to the most recent restore point. From there we’ll investigate to try and determine the cause of the issue. Depending on the plan, we’ll spend between ½ – 1 hour trying to diagnose and fix the problem. If we can’t do it within that time, we’ll get in touch and make suggestions on how best to proceed.
Security and hacked site
Any security services or products offered as part of the service are designed to be preventative only. No security method is flawless, so we do not guarantee that your website will never be hacked, compromised or subject to vulnerabilities or malicious activity, even with these preventative security measures in place.
Cleaning or fixing a hacked site is not included in the service. This often requires specialized expertise and may be best left to dedicated site cleaning specialists. If you think your site has been hacked, let us know immediately. From there we’ll advise the best course of action to get your site cleaned.
Restores
If you request that your website be restored to an earlier point and we have a backup available to make that happen, we’ll do that free of charge once per month.
Prohibited content
We value equality, respect and inclusiveness and love helping businesses that share these qualities. There are a number of kinds of content that we don’t want to be involved in sustaining and promoting, so if your site contains the kinds of content outlined below, we can’t provide or continue to provide the service to you. We think that the vast majority of sites won’t be affected by this and if your site does contain and promote these kinds of content, we’re likely not a good fit anyway.
If your site contains, promotes or advocates for any of the following non-exhaustive list, you are not eligible for the service and aren’t allowed to sign up. If we’re already providing you the service and your site later contains the following, your access to the service will be canceled.
- Content that harasses others, is discriminatory, offensive or abusive
- Content displaying, depicting, suggesting or promoting violence, violent nationalism or violent ideologies
- Sexual depictions of children or content that exploits or abuses children
- Content encouraging or committing illegal acts
- Content sharing personal information without consent, dogpiling or doxxing
- Content that infringes on someone’s rights, including intellectual property rights
- Racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, casteism, hate speech or advocation thereof
- Discrimination against sexuality, gender, gender identity, sexual minorities, disability status or advocation thereof
- Intentionally false or misleading information
If your site contains sexually explicit content, but none of the other content above, please let us know beforehand. This does not necessarily mean you are ineligible for the service.
Independent contractor
You agree that we are an independent contractor and not your employee. Although you may provide general direction to us, we will determine, at our sole discretion, the manner and ways in which we will complete the work for you. The work that we create for you will not be deemed a “work-for-hire”, as that term is defined under U.S. Copyright Law. This Agreement also doesn’t create or constitute an agency, partnership, joint venture or employee-employer relationship between us.
Nothing in this Agreement shall be construed to prohibit us from serving customers in similar or the same line of business or with directly competing objectives.
We reserve the right to bring on independent contractors or service providers in connection with the service.
Hold harmless
Except as set forth herein, in no event shall Matter Storm Design or any of our owners, officers, shareholders, employees, agents, contractors, subcontractors or affiliates be liable to You or any of Your affiliates for any consequential, incidental, indirect, special, punitive or exemplary damages (including, without limitation, lost profits, business or goodwill) suffered or incurred by such other party or its affiliates in connection with this Agreement.
Changes
We reserve the right to make changes to this Agreement at any time. We’ll notify you immediately of making any changes to this Agreement by posting the updated Agreement to this website.
We reserve the right to discontinue the service at any time and for any reason. We also may change the pricing of the service from time to time. We’ll notify you of any price changes via email with at least 30 days notice.