Terms of Service

The Digital Back Office builds websites for businesses and keeps them running and growing through monthly memberships — hosting, updates, security, search optimization, and reporting, handled for you so you can run your business. We operate from Saint Charles, Missouri, USA.

You may use the Site for lawful purposes only. You agree not to:

• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Site, its servers, or connected systems
• Scrape, copy, or republish Site content without permission
• Use the Site to transmit malware, spam, or anything unlawful
• Interfere with the Site's operation or other visitors' use of it

Site content — text, graphics, logos, code samples, and design — belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by intellectual property laws. Portfolio examples shown on the Site belong to the respective clients and are displayed with permission.

Proposals and scope. Every build begins with a written scope — a proposal or estimate describing the deliverables, timeline, and price. Work outside that scope is a change request and may carry additional fees and timeline adjustments, which we'll communicate before doing the work.

Estimates. Timelines are good-faith estimates. They depend on you providing content, feedback, and approvals promptly (see Section 6). Delays on your side extend the timeline.

Deposits. Builds typically require a deposit before work begins. Deposits are non-refundable once work has started, as they reserve our time and cover initial work.

Revisions. Proposals include a stated number of revision rounds. A revision round is one consolidated set of feedback. Additional rounds, or changes that expand the agreed scope, are quoted separately.

Our monthly memberships keep your website hosted, maintained, secure, and growing. The specifics of your plan — what's included, content update allotments, and price — are set out on the Site or in your Engagement Agreement. Memberships generally include some combination of:

• Managed hosting and domain configuration
• Software, security, and dependency updates
• Uptime and performance monitoring
• Content updates within your plan's allotment
• Search engine optimization (SEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) work
• A monthly report covering traffic, indexing, and performance stats

Billing and renewal. Memberships are billed monthly in advance through Stripe and renew automatically until cancelled. By subscribing, you authorize recurring charges to your payment method.

Price changes. We may change membership pricing with at least 30 days' written notice. Changes take effect at your next billing cycle after the notice period. If you don't agree, you may cancel before the new price applies.

Failed payments. If a payment fails, we'll notify you and retry. If payment isn't resolved within 10 days, we may suspend management services and, after 30 days, treat the membership as cancelled. Suspended sites may be taken offline if hosting runs under our accounts.

Cancellation. You may cancel anytime. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period; we don't prorate or refund partial months. After cancellation:

• We'll provide an export of your website files and content within 30 days of your request.
• If hosting runs under our accounts, it ends with your membership, and you're responsible for arranging new hosting. We can assist with migration as a separately quoted service.
• Domains registered in your name remain yours. We recommend domains always be registered under your own account.

Unused allotments. Content-update allotments don't roll over month to month unless your plan says otherwise.

Fees are set out in your proposal, plan, or invoice, in U.S. dollars. Build invoices are due upon receipt unless otherwise stated. We may pause work on accounts with overdue balances, and final deliverables, credentials, and transfers are released upon payment in full. Balances more than 15 days overdue may accrue a late fee of 1.5% per month or the maximum allowed by law, whichever is less.

Third-party costs. Domains, premium plugins or services, and similar third-party costs are separate from our fees unless your plan or proposal says otherwise. Where practical, these are billed directly to your own accounts so you keep ownership and control.

To keep your project and membership on track, you agree to:

• Provide content, brand assets, credentials, and information we reasonably request, in a timely manner
• Review work and provide consolidated feedback within agreed timeframes
• Ensure you own or have the rights to all materials you give us (text, images, logos, data)
• Designate one point of contact authorized to approve work
• Use your website in compliance with applicable laws, including privacy, consumer protection, and marketing laws

If a build stalls for more than 30 days because we're waiting on you, we may close it out, invoice for work completed, and treat resumption as a new engagement.

Your ownership. Upon payment in full of build fees, you own the final deliverables created specifically for your project — the custom design, custom code, and content we produce for you. Content we create for you during an active membership (posts, page updates) is yours as well.

Our toolkit. We retain ownership of our pre-existing materials: frameworks, libraries, templates, processes, and general-purpose code developed before or outside your project. You receive a perpetual, non-exclusive license to use these as embedded in your deliverables.

Open-source and third-party components. Deliverables may include open-source software and third-party services governed by their own licenses and terms. Those licenses pass through to you, and you're responsible for ongoing compliance and any subscription fees after handoff.

Portfolio rights. We may display completed work in our portfolio and marketing materials, identifying you by business name, unless your Engagement Agreement says otherwise or you ask us not to in writing.

We're proud of our results and happy to show them. That said, search engines and AI answer engines control their own systems, and nobody can legitimately promise specific outcomes there. By engaging us, you acknowledge:

No guaranteed rankings or traffic. We apply proven optimization techniques, but we do not guarantee specific search rankings, indexing timelines, traffic levels, AI answer placements, leads, or revenue.

Past results are illustrative. Results we've achieved for our own properties or other clients — indexing speed, rankings, traffic growth — are real examples, not promises. Every site, market, and starting point is different.

Algorithms change. Google, other search engines, and AI answer platforms update their systems regularly. Changes can affect rankings and traffic in ways outside anyone's control. Membership work responds to these changes over time; it can't prevent them.

Memberships cover maintenance and optimization of your existing website. They do not include redesigns, new custom features, new site sections beyond your content allotment, or recovery from problems caused by third parties you've engaged separately. That work is quoted as a separate project. If your membership lapses, we're not responsible for issues arising while the site was unmanaged.

We use modern professional tooling — including automation and AI-assisted tools — internally to deliver the Services efficiently. All work product is reviewed by us before delivery, and we remain responsible for the quality of what we ship to you.

We warrant that Services will be performed in a professional and workmanlike manner. For 30 days after a build is delivered, we'll fix defects in our work at no charge — meaning the deliverable doesn't materially function as specified in the scope. For active memberships, we'll correct errors in our management work as part of your plan. This warranty doesn't cover issues caused by your modifications, third parties, hosting problems outside our control, or normal evolution of browsers, platforms, and APIs.

EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY STATED ABOVE, THE SITE AND SERVICES ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." WE DISCLAIM ALL OTHER WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SITE OR ANY DELIVERABLE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR SECURE.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OUR TOTAL LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SITE OR SERVICES WILL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE. WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, LOST DATA, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you.

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from claims, damages, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from: materials you provide to us; your use of your website; your violation of these Terms; or your violation of applicable law.

Each of us agrees to keep the other's non-public business information confidential and to use it only for the engagement. This doesn't apply to information that is publicly available, independently developed, or required to be disclosed by law. Our confidentiality obligations survive the end of the engagement.

We may terminate an engagement or membership if invoices go unpaid, if a build stalls under Section 6, or if continuing would require us to act unlawfully or unethically. We'll invoice only for work completed, and the post-cancellation handoff process in Section 4 applies.

We are an independent contractor. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, or employment relationship.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Missouri, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Before filing any formal claim, both parties agree to attempt to resolve the dispute informally by contacting the other in writing and allowing 30 days to work it out. Any dispute that can't be resolved informally will be brought in the state or federal courts located in St. Charles County, Missouri, and both parties consent to that venue.

Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delays caused by events beyond reasonable control, including outages of third-party platforms and providers.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them in connection with a sale of our business.

Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest remain in effect.

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with any Engagement Agreement and our Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between us regarding the Site and Services.

Changes. We may update these Terms from time to time. The effective date above reflects the latest version. Changes apply to engagements and billing cycles that begin after the change.

The Digital Back Office
Email: hello@thedigitalbackoffice.com
Saint Charles, Missouri, USA