Terms of Service

SiteMonk Web Studio ("SiteMonk", "we", "us") is a web design studio based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. These terms apply to every website build, monthly Care plan, and add-on we provide, and to your use of the SiteMonk client portal.

By paying a deposit, subscribing to a Care plan, or using the client portal, you agree to these terms. Your written quote sets out the specific scope and price of your project; where the quote and these terms differ, the quote wins for that project.

• Initial Build ($4,999, one-time): everything from the first conversation to the day your site goes live. The build covers a complete business website within the scope listed on our pricing page. It is a website, not an open-ended software project.
• Care plan (from $699 per month): hosting, security, backups, and a monthly work budget for changes to the site you have. The plan starts the day your site goes live.
• Add-ons: larger systems such as an online store, a members-only area, or a custom booking system. Each add-on is quoted separately, with a one-time build price and a monthly Care uplift, and always carries a fixed price agreed before work begins.

Before we quote any custom build, we check whether an existing third-party tool can do the job. If it can, we set it up as part of your site at no extra cost rather than building it from scratch.

• Initial Build and add-on builds are paid in two parts: 50% to start, and the remaining 50% once you approve the finished work, before it goes live. We do not schedule work until the deposit is received, and we do not launch until the final payment is received.
• We accept credit card (via Stripe), Interac e-Transfer (Canada), Zelle (USA), wire transfer (international) for one-time fees.
• The Care plan is a Stripe subscription, billed monthly from the day your site goes live. It renews automatically each month until you cancel. Card payments are processed by Stripe; we never store your card details.
• An add-on's monthly Care uplift is added to your plan from the day that add-on goes live.
• All prices are in USD and exclude applicable taxes, which are added where the law requires.

Your client portal shows whether work on your build has started and, once it has, exactly what has been done. That is the line that decides refunds:

• Before work starts: Until work begins, you may request a full refund of your deposit yourself from your client portal. We process it within 10 business days to the payment method you used.
• After work starts: Once work has started — you will see it in your portal — the deposit is no longer refundable in full. You can still cancel the order, and we refund the deposit minus the cost of the work already done, which you can see itemised in your portal.

The cost of work already done is calculated from the work recorded in your portal at the time you cancel, at the rates in your quote. We send you that breakdown with the refund. Work you have already approved, and any third-party costs we have paid on your behalf, are not refundable.

• Each plan includes a monthly work budget. Requests for content edits, new sections, design changes, and new pages are drawn against it, with no separate quotes or hourly invoices. You can see the remaining balance in your portal at any time.
• You may pull budget forward from the weeks ahead within the same billing period. Budget you do not use resets at the start of the next month; it does not carry over.
• When the month's budget is used up, new requests join a queue and start on your next cycle. Nothing is refused or silently dropped, and you can see where each request stands.
• If a request is genuinely large, we split it into phases across months and show you the plan before starting.
• We do not guarantee a specific turnaround time. We work through requests in the order they arrive and keep you informed of their status.
• Larger systems that need customer logins, take payments on the site, maintain a changing dataset, need heavy 3D or video work, or publish to an AI platform are add-ons. They are quoted separately and are not covered by the monthly budget.
• Cancel any time; billing stops at the end of the current month. There is no long-term contract and no cancellation fee. We do not refund the remainder of a month already billed.

• Provide the business information, logo, images, and any existing materials we ask for, and confirm that you have the right to use them.
• Review our work and give feedback within a reasonable time. If we wait on you for more than 30 days without a response, we may pause the project and reschedule it around other work.
• Keep your contact and billing details up to date in your portal.
• Do not use your site for anything unlawful, deceptive, or harmful, or for content you do not have the right to publish.

We do not launch until you have approved the design direction and the finished site. Once you approve, we treat the build as complete: the final payment is due, and further changes are handled under your Care plan rather than as build revisions.

If, during the initial design stage, it becomes clear we are not the right fit, either of us can end the project. Section 4 sets out what happens to the deposit.

• Your domain is registered in your name and stays under your control whether or not you stay with us.
• You own the content you provide and the finished website. If either of us ends the relationship, for any reason, we hand over the full source code of your site.
• We keep ownership of our general know-how, internal tooling, and any components we built before or independently of your project, and we may reuse them for other clients. That never includes your content, branding, or business data.
• We may show your finished site in our portfolio and case studies. If you would rather we did not, tell us in writing and we will not.

Your site may rely on services run by other companies, such as your domain registrar, hosting and CDN providers, payment processors, booking tools, analytics, or an AI platform. Your use of those services is governed by their own terms and fees, which you pay directly to them. We set them up and keep them working as part of your plan, but we cannot control their availability, pricing, or policy changes, and we are not responsible for outages or losses that originate with them.

Hosting, SSL, backups, and security monitoring are included in every Care plan. We build on a static-first architecture so that there is no application server to patch and very little that can break. We keep regular backups of your site and restore it if something goes wrong. We aim for continuous availability but do not guarantee uninterrupted service.

We are careful to promise only what we control. We build your site to be fast, secure, well-structured, and readable by search engines and AI systems. We do not guarantee search rankings, traffic, leads, sales, or that any AI assistant will recommend your business. Those outcomes depend on your market, your offer, your competitors, and the platforms themselves.

Except as expressly stated in these terms, our services are provided without warranties of any kind.

• You can cancel your Care plan at any time as described in section 5.
• If a Care payment fails, we will let you know and retry. If it remains unpaid 14 days after we notify you, we may pause work on new requests and, after 30 days, take the site offline until the balance is settled.
• We may end the relationship if you breach these terms, if your use of the site is unlawful or abusive, or if we are unable to continue providing the service. We give you at least 30 days' notice unless the breach makes that unreasonable.
• Whoever ends the relationship, section 8 applies: you keep your domain, your content, and the full source code of your site.

To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for anything arising out of our services in any 12-month period is limited to the fees you paid us in that period. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, including lost profits, lost data, or loss of business, even if we were advised they were possible. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

We may update these terms from time to time. If a change materially affects an active Care plan, we will email you at least 30 days before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that date means you accept the updated terms. The version on this page is always the current one.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of British Columbia and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. Any dispute will be resolved in the courts of British Columbia, after we have both made a genuine attempt to resolve it directly first.

If anything here is unclear, write to hello@sitemonk.studio. We would rather explain a clause up front than have it surprise you later.