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Terms of Service

These standard terms and conditions apply to all website design, management, and marketing projects undertaken by Seabound Studio, unless alternative arrangements are explicitly agreed upon in writing.

Summary

You are partnering with Seabound Studio to deliver creative audit, design, development, marketing, or management services for the total investment outlined in your project proposal.

Your Responsibilities

  • Authority: You confirm you have the legal right to sign this agreement for yourself or your organization.

  • Assets: You agree to provide all text, imagery, and required business details on time and in our requested formats.

  • Feedback: You agree to review our work and provide constructive feedback or approval promptly.

  • Payments: You agree to strictly follow the payment schedule detailed in your proposal.

Our Responsibilities

  • Professionalism: We bring the skills and creative experience needed to fulfill your project proposal professionally.

  • Deadlines: We work diligently to meet every milestone.

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Please note: Deadlines work both ways. We cannot be held responsible for missed launch dates if materials or approvals are delayed. Any communication gap or asset delay exceeding one week will result in your project being paused and rescheduled based on our current availability.

Website & Design Projects

We want you to love your new website. Your project proposal includes a specific allocation of design revision time (typically 2 hours unless stated otherwise) to fine-tune the layout to your satisfaction.

Project Scope & Revisions

Our initial project quotes are accurate estimates based strictly on your original requests. Frequent changes to the project requirements or goals will create additional production work.

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If you remain unsatisfied after your included revision time is exhausted, we reserve the right to invoice you for all work completed to date. At that point, you can choose to conclude the project or hire us for further design revisions at our current hourly rate.

Approvals & Going Live

As a professional creative studio, we design and build exclusively on the Wix Studio platform. Once we reach mutual agreement on the final design phase, we will issue an invoice for your remaining project balance.

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Your site will be launched and published live on the internet on our agreed schedule, provided that:

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  • The final project invoice is cleared in full before the live launch.

  • The required Wix Studio hosting/subscription plan is active.

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If we deliver a completed site for your review and receive no feedback within a reasonable timeframe, the final invoice will automatically become due. Published launch dates mark the completion of the initial design project. Any further edits, text changes, or platform maintenance will be managed under a separate ongoing support agreement.

Copywriting & Text Content

  • Your Responsibility: You are responsible for providing all final text copy unless copywriting services are specifically itemized in your project proposal.

  • Formatting Support: We will happily format and lightly edit your text to ensure it looks beautiful within the website layout.

  • Scope Changes: If we are required to write or heavily rewrite content from scratch, we reserve the right to bill this extra labor at our standard hourly copywriting rate.

  • Typos & Errors: We accept no liability for factual errors, grammatical mistakes, or typos present in the text assets you provide.

Photography & Video

  • Digital Delivery: All client-provided images and videos must be delivered in high-resolution, production-ready digital formats.

  • Content Rights: We reserve the right to reject any media assets that are low-quality, offensive, or violate intellectual property and copyright laws.

  • Free Stock Options: We are happy to source and integrate high-quality, free stock imagery into your design within the quoted project cost. For premium paid stock assets, we can recommend preferred vendors.

Getting on the Calendar

  • Booking Policy: Production slots are booked on a strict first-come, first-served basis.

  • Activation Requirements: Your project will not be officially added to our active design schedule until we have received your deposit, completed onboarding questionnaire, and all initial website content in full.

  • Estimate Assumptions: Initial start dates discussed during consultations are non-guaranteed estimates. They rely on the assumption that you will submit your materials and payment within a few business days.

Maintaining the Timeline

  • Turnaround Expectations: Project timelines assume a standard 1-to-2 business day turnaround for client feedback and approvals.

  • Communication Gaps: Delays in feedback will directly extend your launch date. If communication stalls or phase approvals are delayed for more than two consecutive weeks, your project may be paused and rescheduled based on our current studio availability.

  • Scope Creep: Any requests for features or layout adjustments not included in the original project proposal will naturally increase the development time.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

  • Wix Studio Infrastructure: We build your website utilizing Wix Studio's advanced, clean coding architecture, built-in schema tools, and fast loading infrastructure to give your site a strong search foundation.

  • Ranking Factors: While professional design and solid site architecture are critical, search engine success heavily relies on external, evolving factors such as content quality, search algorithms, social presence, and external backlinks.

  • Our Services: We offer dedicated on-page SEO setup and ongoing optimization packages as detailed in your specific proposal.

  • No Guarantees: Because third-party search engine algorithms change constantly, Seabound Studio cannot guarantee specific page rankings, traffic numbers, or search results positions.

Ongoing Website Management

A successful website requires continuous care to remain secure, accurate, and relevant. To protect your digital investment, Seabound Studio offers monthly support and management plans.

 

Because we design on Wix Studio, your core website infrastructure natively benefits from enterprise-grade cloud hosting, built-in SSL security, and automated cloud backups. Our optional studio management plans build on top of this framework to provide hands-on care, including:

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  • Content Updates: Dedicated studio labor hours each month to implement text, layout, image, or blog modifications.

  • App & Integration Audits: Routine testing of third-party apps, plugins, and custom integrations to ensure uninterrupted performance.

  • Uptime Support: Priority troubleshooting and remediation in the rare event of a platform or integration disruption.

  • Use It or Lose It: Included monthly support hours must be used within the active calendar month and do not roll over to subsequent months. All update requests are subject to our Fair Usage Policy.

Wix Studio Hosting & Subscriptions

  • Native Infrastructure: All websites designed by Seabound Studio are hosted directly on Wix’s enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure. This includes built-in SSL security certificates and global content delivery networks (CDNs) optimized for maximum speed and uptime.

  • Uptime & Service: While Wix targets a 99.9% platform uptime, Seabound Studio operates as a creative partner and does not own the underlying cloud infrastructure. We will work immediately to resolve any unexpected platform issues, but we offer no binding timeline guarantees for third-party hosting outages.

  • Account Access Boundaries: To protect your website’s structural integrity and custom design layouts, we do not grant full co-owner or admin-level access to outside third parties (such as external marketing agencies or independent contractors) while you are under an active management plan with us. If you require specialized third-party integrations, we will gladly manage the implementation for you.

Backups & Data Protection

  • Automated Snapshots: Wix Studio automatically generates regular backups and site history save points. In the event of an integration conflict or user error, these tools allow us to restore the site to a previous stable state.

  • Data Limits: Site restorations cannot guarantee zero data loss. Any content modifications, form submissions, or specific transactions that occurred between the last automatic save and the point of restoration may need to be manually re-applied.

  • Liability Boundaries: Seabound Studio is not liable for data loss, diminished functionality, or content changes resulting from platform-wide Wix outages or user-end modifications.

Automated Platform Maintenance

  • No Manual Patches: Unlike traditional websites, Wix Studio automatically manages all core framework updates, security patches, and server maintenance behind the scenes.

  • Third-Party Apps: If your site utilizes premium third-party applications or custom integrations from the Wix App Market, we will monitor their connectivity under your management plan. You are responsible for maintaining active, paid billing subscriptions for any premium third-party app licenses required by your site.

24/7 Monitoring & Troubleshooting

  • Downtime Audits: We monitor your site's active status. If a site disruption is caused by a platform issue or an error on our part, we will resolve it immediately under your standard management terms.

  • Client-Caused Disruption: If an investigation reveals that you, or an explicitly authorized representative from your team, caused a layout or system break through unauthorized dashboard changes, we reserve the right to bill you at our current hourly rate for all time spent diagnosing and repairing the issue.

Website Content Modifications

  • Monthly Allocation: Your monthly support agreement includes a set number of studio hours for content changes (such as text updates, replacing imagery, or adding blog posts) as outlined in your proposal.

  • No Expiration Rollover: These dedicated hours must be utilized within their specific calendar month. Unused time does not roll over to future months. All tasks are subject to our Fair Usage Policy.

Email Services

  • Dedicated Providers: We do not host email accounts on private servers. We highly recommend and can assist in setting up professional, domain-based emails through secure enterprise providers like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.

  • Liability Exclusions: Seabound Studio does not operate, manage, or guarantee the server performance or deliverability of your third-party email provider. We are not liable to you or any third party for lost profits, lost savings, or incidental damages resulting from email downtime, password issues, or delivery failures.

Fair Usage Policy

Our monthly support and management packages are subject to a Fair Usage Policy. This ensures we can distribute our studio resources equitably and provide sustainable, high-quality support to all clients.

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  • Scope of Updates: Included updates cover standard modifications to your existing content layout (e.g., updating business hours, swapping an image, altering a paragraph of text, or adding a blog post).

  • Out-of-Scope Requests: Included hours do not cover structural redesigns, rewriting major portions of the site, or adding complex new pages and features that expand the site’s original scope. We will gladly provide a separate project estimate for these upgrades.

  • Consolidated Requests: To maximize efficiency, we ask that you thoroughly consider your updates and combine them into a single, detailed email request rather than sending multiple disjointed messages.

  • Rework Fees: If we must rebuild or undo updates due to unclear or inaccurate instructions from your team, those correction hours will be billed at our standard hourly rate.

  • Turnaround & Deadlines: While we often complete minor updates within 24 to 48 hours, they can take up to one business week depending on studio volume. Time-sensitive updates must be submitted well in advance of your deadline.

  • Use It or Lose It: Management hours apply strictly to the active calendar month. They do not accumulate, and unused time will not roll over to subsequent months.

  • Payment Failures: Management services are billed in advance. Support will be immediately paused if your account falls past due.

  • Policy Enforcement: We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your management plan if we determine these Fair Usage guidelines are consistently violated.

  • Cancellation: You may cancel your ongoing management plan at any time by emailing us (subject to the terms in our Billing section).

Client Asset Guarantees

You guarantee that all text, logos, photographs, trademarks, and artwork provided to us for your website are either owned by you or that you possess explicit legal permission to use them. Seabound Studio accepts no liability for intellectual property or copyright violations regarding client-submitted media. You agree to fully indemnify and hold our studio harmless against any such legal claims.

Ownership Assignment

Once your final project invoice is paid and cleared in full, ownership rights are automatically transferred as follows:

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  • Your Ownership: You own the custom visual elements, graphics, layouts, and copy created by our studio specifically for your project, alongside all original materials you provided.

  • File Retention: Because we build exclusively within the Wix Studio environment, your project assets live securely within your platform dashboard. If you request raw source design files from our team, you must do so within 30 days of project completion. We are not required to store offline project assets beyond this timeframe.

Studio Promotion Rights

We take immense pride in our creative partnerships. Seabound Studio reserves the right to showcase your completed website, screenshots, and design layouts within our professional portfolio, case studies, marketing materials, social channels, and industry publications. We also reserve the right to include a small, discreet design credit link in your website's footer.

Project Invoices & Milestones

  • Non-Refundable Deposits: All initial project booking deposits are strictly non-refundable, as they secure your dedicated slot on our studio calendar.

  • Standard Terms: All standard invoices are due within 7 days of the invoice issuance date unless explicitly stated otherwise in writing.

  • The Launch Rule: The final project balance must be paid and cleared in full before your website is officially launched live on the internet.

  • Delayed Feedback Billing: Once we deliver your completed site draft on our staging platform, you must provide feedback promptly. If communication stalls or feedback is delayed for over 7 business days, the final project invoice will automatically be issued and become due.

Monthly Support & Overage Billing

  • Recurring Billing: Ongoing management plans are automatically billed on a recurring monthly cycle on your specific scheduling date. These subscription charges are non-refundable.

  • Automated Overages: If you request essential support work that exceeds your plan's included monthly hours, we will automatically bill your payment method on file for the extra labor (up to a maximum of 5 additional hours) on the 1st of the following month. Any overage requests estimated to exceed 5 hours will require your explicit email approval before we begin work.

Late Payments & Past Due Accounts

  • Late Fees: Any outstanding balances remaining unpaid past the 7-day grace period will incur a late fee of 5% per month, compounding until settled.

  • Service Suspension: If invoices remain unpaid past their due date, Seabound Studio reserves the right to immediately suspend all website services, active management, and support access without prior notice. We accept no liability for any business disruption caused by past-due account suspensions.

Management Plan Cancellation

  • Procedure: You can cancel your monthly support plan at any time by emailing hello@seaboundstudio.com.

  • No Refunds: Cancellation stops future billing cycles but does not entitle you to a refund for prepaid, current, or unused monthly fees. You remain liable for all recurring charges until your formal email cancellation is received.

  • Reinstatement: Our management plans are continuous care agreements, not an on-demand service to turn on and off only during months when updates are needed. Reinstating a canceled plan is entirely at our discretion and will be subject to our current pricing.

  • Wix Account Transfers: Because we build exclusively on Wix Studio, canceling our management plan means we will transfer full ownership of the Wix site directly to your personal Wix account. We are not responsible for configuring your independent billing with Wix. We will withhold account transfers and dashboard access until all outstanding studio balances are paid in full.

Early Project Termination

  • Client Liability: Once design and development work begins on your project, if you choose to terminate the contract early or stall the project by withholding necessary feedback and sign-offs. You are liable for 100% of the final project cost outlined in your proposal.

  • Discretionary Discounts: Any budget reduction below the full contract price for an early exit is made strictly at our studio's discretion.

  • Collections: We reserve the right to deploy collections or legal recovery actions to claim unpaid balances, which includes the immediate suspension of your staging site or active website access without prior notice.

Studio Website Restrictions

  • Saltwater Design Studio retains all intellectual property rights for the creative materials, code, text, graphics, and resources displayed on our official studio website and staging domains. You may access our resources for personal use, but you are strictly prohibited from:

  • Republishing, selling, renting, or licensing our studio content.

  • Duplicating or copying our proprietary design materials.

  • Framing our webpages to alter the visual delivery or appearance of our brand.

Backlink Rules & Custom Code

  • Harmful Links: No third-party links pointing to our studio site may appear on platforms that could be interpreted as defamatory, obscene, illegal, or violating our brand rights. We reserve the right to demand the immediate removal of any link to our website.

  • Proprietary Code: Any custom scripts, Velo code (Wix's development language), or custom API integrations written by our team remain the intellectual property of Seabound Studio. You receive a non-exclusive license to utilize this code on your website, but we retain full rights to modify, reuse, or distribute it for other client projects.

Limitation of Liability

While we utilize Wix Studio's robust cloud ecosystem, we cannot guarantee that your web pages or integrations will remain permanently error-free. Seabound Studio is not liable to you or any third party for operational damages, including lost profits, lost savings, business interruptions, or incidental and consequential damages arising from your website’s performance or downtime, even if we were explicitly advised of such possibilities.

Severability & Legal Jurisdiction

  • Severability: If any provision of these terms is deemed unlawful, void, or unenforceable by a court, that specific provision will be severed from the agreement without affecting the validity and enforceability of the remaining terms.

  • Governing Law: These serious intentions constitute a legally binding document governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of California, United States (or your local state jurisdiction).

  • Dispute Resolution: Any legal actions or disputes arising directly from this contract will be resolved exclusively through binding arbitration in the courts of California, United States.

Policy Updates

We reserve the right to update these terms and conditions periodically to reflect changes in our studio workflows or platform guidelines. The most current version will always be accessible on our website. Revised terms become effective immediately upon posting, and your continued utilization of our design and support services constitutes full acceptance of the updated terms.

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