Terms & Conditions

Please read these terms carefully — they constitute a legally binding agreement subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

These terms set out the basis on which Webartifice (Stephen Tunnicliffe, trading as Webartifice — “we”, “us”, “our”) provides services to you, our client (“you”, “your”). Please read them carefully: they form a legally binding agreement governed by the law of England and Wales. By engaging us, or by using our website, you agree to them.

1. How a contract forms

We provide a written proposal or quotation for the work. A contract between us comes into being when you accept that proposal in writing (email included), or when work begins with your agreement — whichever is first. The proposal, together with these terms, forms the whole of our agreement. Where a signed proposal conflicts with these terms, the proposal takes precedence.

2. Fees, invoicing and payment

We invoice electronically in pounds sterling (GBP). Unless an invoice states otherwise, payment is due within 30 days of the invoice date, and full payment must reach us by then.

We accept payment by bank transfer (BACS) only; account details appear on every invoice. We do not accept cheques, card payments, or payment in goods or services.

We are not VAT-registered, so no VAT is charged. We do not offer discounts for early or cash payment, and we do not provide extended credit.

3. Payment schedules

For contracts above £5,000, payment is structured as agreed in writing when you engage us, and set out in the proposal. It is typically one of:

• 50/50 — half before work begins, half on completion;
• Thirds — one third before work begins, one third at an agreed milestone, one third on completion;
• Milestone-based — payments tied to specific deliverables defined in the proposal.

No work will begin, and no stage will proceed to the next, until the preceding payment has cleared in full. If a scheduled payment is not received by its due date, work is suspended automatically. There is no grace period.

Once work has begun, the agreed schedule forms part of our agreement and cannot be changed by either party alone.

4. Invoices and your responsibilities

We communicate by email throughout every project. It is your responsibility to:

• give us a working email address that you monitor every working day, and keep it current;
• check your junk or spam folder regularly;
• confirm receipt of each invoice within 48 hours. If you neither acknowledge nor query an invoice within that time, it is deemed to have been received.

Querying an invoice does not, by itself, defer its due date unless we agree otherwise in writing.

Invoices are not transferable. If your name is on an invoice, you are responsible for paying it, whatever arrangement you may have with anyone else. You may not pass liability for an invoice to a third party without our written consent.

5. Late payment

5.1 Hosting and domain services

If a payment is missed, the service is withdrawn automatically on the expiry date shown on the invoice. No reminders are sent. Please note:

• recommissioning charges apply to reinstate a withdrawn service;
• we do not retain backups of a service once it has expired;
• missing a domain payment means you may lose control of that domain. Registrar recovery charges are significant, outside our control, and recovery is sometimes impossible. Our fee for handling any recovery reflects the work involved and can be considerable.

5.2 Design, development, consultancy and SEO services

Under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, we may charge interest on overdue amounts at 8% above the Bank of England base rate, together with the fixed compensation set by that legislation (£40, £70 or £100 depending on the sum owed) and our reasonable costs of recovery.

If a scheduled payment is missed, work stops automatically. We are under no obligation to resume work, agree revised timescales, or absorb delays caused by late payment.

6. Debt recovery and legal action

We believe in straightforward dealing, and we don’t trade in repeated reminders — this isn’t a threat, it’s simply our process. If an invoice passes its due date without payment or an agreed way forward, our next contact may be a formal letter of claim or a referral to debt recovery. Where the law requires a pre-action letter and a period to respond before court proceedings, we follow it; but we will not chase indefinitely.

If recovery becomes necessary, you will be liable for its reasonable costs — including legal fees, court costs and debt recovery charges — to the extent the law and the court allow. We may refer overdue debts to a debt recovery service.

If an unpaid debt results in a County Court Judgment (CCJ) against you, that judgment is a matter of public record. Credit reference agencies routinely take CCJs from the public register, where they can affect your credit rating for up to six years.

7. Suspension

We may suspend any or all services — hosting, active project work and support included — while any invoice, of any kind, remains unpaid beyond its due date. Suspension does not reduce or remove your liability to pay what is outstanding.

8. Termination

Either of us may end the engagement by written notice.

• We may end it immediately for non-payment, for repeated failure to provide materials or approvals, or for any conduct that makes continuing the work unreasonable.
• If the engagement ends — for any reason — you remain liable for all work done and costs committed up to that date, and sums already paid are non-refundable to the extent they represent work done or commitments made.
• Ownership of any work transfers only once it has been paid for in full (see clause 12). Until then, all rights remain ours.
• Clauses that by their nature should survive termination — payment, intellectual property, liability and confidentiality — continue to apply.

9. Your responsibilities

To do our work, we rely on you to provide the materials, content, access and approvals we need, when we ask for them, and to give feedback within any timescales we agree. We are not responsible for delays, added costs or results affected by late, incomplete or inaccurate information from you, or by changes you request after a stage has been approved.

10. Hosting

Where we provide hosting, we do so as a reseller of a third-party provider. We don’t guarantee that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free or available at all times, and we give no specific uptime guarantee unless one is expressly agreed in writing.

Our hosting is provided subject to the terms and limitations of our upstream provider, and we cannot offer you a greater level of service, availability or remedy than that provider offers us. We are not liable for interruptions, downtime, data loss, or other issues caused by that provider, by infrastructure or network failures, or by anything else outside our reasonable control.

You are responsible for keeping your own backups of any content and data, unless a backup service is expressly included in what we provide.

11. Content you publish

Where we provide hosting, or any other facility that lets you publish, upload or store content, you are responsible for that content — including anything published by anyone you allow to use the facility. You must keep it lawful: it must not infringe anyone’s intellectual property, breach data protection law, defame anyone, or contain anything illegal, obscene or otherwise prohibited.

We don’t monitor or check what you publish, and we’re not responsible for it. If content hosted by us is unlawful, or we’re required to act on it — by a court, a regulator, or a valid takedown notice — we may remove it or suspend the service without notice and without liability to you.

You agree to reimburse us for any loss, cost or claim we incur as a result of content you publish through a facility we provide.

12. Intellectual property and ownership of work

Intellectual property rights in the deliverables we create specifically for you — designs, layouts, code and bespoke copy — transfer to you only on full payment of all sums due for that work. Until then, those rights remain ours.

We keep ownership of anything we bring to a project that pre-dates it or that we use across our work generally — our methods, tools, code libraries, templates and know-how — and you receive a licence to use these as part of the deliverables.

Third-party materials (stock images, fonts, plugins, software) are supplied under their own licences, and you are responsible for complying with and, where applicable, maintaining them.

Unless you ask us in writing not to, we may show the work we’ve done for you, and name you as a client, in our portfolio and marketing.

13. Confidentiality

Each of us will keep the other’s confidential business information private and use it only for the work. This does not apply to information that is already public or that we are required to disclose by law.

14. Data protection

Where we process personal data on your behalf as part of a project, each of us will comply with UK data protection law, and we will process that data only as needed to provide the services. How we handle personal data more generally is set out in our Privacy Policy.

15. Subcontractors

We may engage trusted specialists — designers, developers, copywriters, marketers — to help deliver your project. We remain responsible to you for the work, and any specialists we use are bound by confidentiality consistent with these terms.

16. Warranties and liability

We provide our services with reasonable care and skill. Beyond that, and to the fullest extent the law allows, we give no other warranties and exclude all terms that would otherwise be implied.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Subject to that, our total liability to you for everything arising out of or connected with our work — whether in contract, negligence or otherwise — is limited to the total fees you have paid us for the specific work giving rise to the claim. We are not liable for loss of profit, loss of revenue, loss of data, or any indirect or consequential loss.

17. Events beyond our control

Neither of us is liable for any failure or delay in meeting our obligations caused by events beyond our reasonable control — including failures of third-party hosting, networks, power or internet infrastructure, as well as fire, flood, industrial action and similar events. While such an event continues, the affected obligations are suspended.

18. Our website

All content on our website belongs to us. You may not reproduce, distribute or use it without our written permission. If you need original content, we offer a copywriting service — get in touch. By using our website, you agree to these terms.

19. General

These terms, with the relevant proposal, are the whole agreement between us and replace anything discussed beforehand. Any change must be agreed in writing. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. A delay in enforcing a term is not a waiver of it.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and any dispute is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of its courts.

Last reviewed: 13/06/2026