Custom Website Service Agreement

Key terms

Term	Details
Build fee	$2,497, paid 50% ($1,248.50) to start and 50% ($1,248.50) at launch
Pages	Up to 25 pages
Care plan	$497 per month, or $5,000 per year paid up front, starting one month after launch
Minimum term	12 months of care plan service, starting when care plan billing begins
First homepage design	Within 5 to 7 business days of receiving everything we need from you
Review rounds	Up to 3 on the homepage design and up to 5 on the full site
Change requests	Unlimited tickets, handled one at a time, about 48 hours each on average
Guarantee	Full refund of what you've paid if you're not happy within the first 30 days of your build
Annual plan	Not refundable; runs to the end of the term if cancelled
Monthly plan	Cancel with 30 days' written notice; fees for any months left in the 12-month minimum are still due
If you cancel	Unless you purchase a handoff, your site goes offline at the end of your paid period, and you receive a copy of your text and photos
Ownership	You own your domain, copy, content, and Google Business Profile; Ridgeline owns the site's code until a handoff transfers it
Handoff fee	Required to keep your site's code or move it to another provider: $350 (simple), $650 (standard), or from $1,200 (complex)

1. The agreement

This Service Agreement ("Agreement") is between Ridgeline Digital Marketing LLC ("Ridgeline", "we", "us") and the business that purchases an AI-Assisted Custom Website ("Client", "you"). You accept this Agreement when you pay the build deposit invoice, which we send after your scoping call. It covers the website build, the care plan, and any add-ons you choose.

2. What we build

For the build fee, Ridgeline will:

• Design a custom website for your business, starting with the homepage, based on the examples and information you provide or, if you have none, from scratch.
• Write the copy for each page, using AI tools with editing by a person.
• Include basic stock photos where the design needs them, used under the stock provider's license.
• Build the site in Astro, with contact or quote forms that send submissions to you by email.
• Set up basic SEO: page titles, meta descriptions, schema markup, and an XML sitemap.
• Connect your domain, configure DNS, launch the site, and redirect pages from your old site where needed.
• Set up or clean up your Google Business Profile: name, address and phone number, website, service areas, primary and secondary categories, social media profiles, and photos you supply.

The build includes up to 25 pages. The final page list is agreed during onboarding, and pages beyond 25 can be quoted separately.

3. How we use AI

Ridgeline builds and maintains sites with the help of AI tools, which write code, draft copy, and handle repetitive work. A person directs the project, makes design decisions, edits copy, and reviews each page before you see it. You agree that AI tools may be used to perform the services. Our primary AI tool is Claude, made by Anthropic. We don't enter your confidential information into AI tools that use it to train their models, and we keep model training turned off in the tools we use. Anthropic explains how it handles data in its Privacy Center.

4. Your responsibilities

You agree to:

• Provide accurate information about your business, your logo, any photos of your team, vehicles, location, or work, and examples of sites you like, through the onboarding questionnaire.
• Respond to questions and review requests in a reasonable time. The timeline pauses while we're waiting on you. If a project is paused for more than 30 days because we're waiting on you, we may close it, and the build deposit is non-refundable once the 30-day guarantee period has passed.
• Register your domain in your name and pay its registration and renewal fees directly to your registrar, and give us DNS access.
• Make sure you have the right to use everything you send us, including text, photos, logos, and video, and that it doesn't infringe anyone else's rights.

5. Timeline and reviews

Your first homepage design will be delivered within 5 to 7 business days of the date we receive everything requested in the onboarding questionnaire. You get up to 3 rounds of revisions on the homepage design. Once you approve it, we build the rest of the site in the approved style, and you get up to 5 rounds of revisions on the full site before launch. Additional revision rounds can be quoted separately. Launch dates beyond the first homepage design are estimates, not guarantees.

6. Fees and payment

• Build fee: $2,497. 50% ($1,248.50) is due when you pay your deposit invoice, which reserves your spot and starts the project. The remaining 50% ($1,248.50) is due at launch, before the site is connected to your domain.
• Care plan: $497 per month, or $5,000 per year paid in advance. Billing starts one month after your launch date and renews automatically. The care plan has a 12-month minimum term, starting when billing begins.
• Payment processing: Payments are processed through QuickBooks. By choosing a plan, you authorize recurring charges for the care plan until it is cancelled under section 11.
• Late payment: If a payment is more than 15 days late, we may pause work and ticket handling until the account is current, and after 30 days we may take the site offline.
• Fees don't include your domain registration or third-party services you choose to use outside this Agreement.

7. 30-day guarantee

If you're not happy with the build within 30 days of paying the deposit, tell us in writing and we'll refund everything you've paid toward the build. When a refund is issued, the project ends and no designs, copy, or code are delivered or licensed to you. The guarantee doesn't apply after launch.

8. Care plan

While your care plan is active, Ridgeline will:

• Host your site on Cloudflare and manage your DNS.
• Make changes you request through our ticket system. There's no limit on the number of tickets. We work on them one at a time, in the order received, and each takes about 48 hours on average. That's a typical turnaround, not a guarantee.
• Keep basic SEO (titles, descriptions, schema, and sitemap) current as your site changes.
• Keep a version history of your site so changes can be undone.

What counts as a change: any update to your existing site, such as text, photos, hours, prices, links, or a typo, including a new page built from your site's existing layouts when you provide all of its content. What doesn't: redesigns of a page or the site, new layouts or features (like booking, payments, or calculators), writing new copy, sourcing new stock photos, photography or video, and in-depth SEO, content marketing, or link building. We'll quote these as separate projects.

9. Ownership

• Yours: your domain, your business name and logo, your Google Business Profile, the text and photos you provide, and the copy we write for your site once the build fee is paid in full.
• Ridgeline's: the site's source code, templates, components, configuration, AI context files, and our methods and tools. The code is stored in Ridgeline's GitHub account and hosted on Ridgeline's Cloudflare account.
• Your license: while your care plan is active and paid, you have the right to use the site as built for your business. A handoff (section 12) transfers ownership of your site's code to you.
• Portfolio: we may show your site in our portfolio and marketing unless you ask us not to in writing.

10. Optional add-ons

• Content editor (EmDash CMS): included at no extra cost if you choose it. You're responsible for content you publish through it. Fixing problems caused by your own edits is handled through the ticket system.
• Google Business Profile management: scoped and priced separately in writing.
• Other services like Local SEO, SEO, GEO, or content marketing are covered by their own agreements.

11. Cancellation

• Minimum term: the care plan has a 12-month minimum term, starting when care plan billing begins.
• Monthly plan: cancel by giving 30 days' written notice through the ticket system or by email. Your plan ends at the close of the billing period after notice. If that falls before the 12-month minimum term ends, the monthly fees for the rest of the minimum term are due when your plan ends.
• Annual plan: the annual fee is not refundable. If you cancel mid-year, your plan continues to the end of the paid year and then ends.
• When your plan ends: unless you purchase a handoff, your site goes offline at the end of your paid period, and we'll send you a copy of your site's text and photos within 10 business days. Your domain stays yours.
• Ridgeline may end the care plan with 30 days' written notice, or immediately for non-payment or misuse, and will offer a handoff on the terms in section 12.

12. Handoff to you or another provider

If you want to keep your site's code or move it to another provider, a one-time handoff fee applies. For that fee, Ridgeline will transfer your site so you or another provider can run it:

• Transfer the GitHub repository to you, with a clean main branch and a tagged release.
• Move the hosting project to your account or help your provider redeploy it.
• Hand over forms, analytics, and other connected accounts.
• Point your DNS to the new host and confirm SSL, redirects, and forms work.
• Provide a handoff document (stack and versions, running it locally, deploying, where content lives, integrations) and our AI context files.
• Hold one handoff call with your new provider.

Site type	What it covers	Handoff fee
Simple	Static pages, a contact form, and analytics	$350
Standard	A blog or content collections, a few integrations, and a hosting move	$650
Complex	Serverless functions, a database, the content editor, booking, or payments	From $1,200, quoted

Support after the handoff call is $125 per hour, or $250 for a 30-day support window. A handoff requires all fees to be paid. Once it's complete, the code belongs to you. Your site is custom code built with AI tools, so your next provider needs to be comfortable with Astro and GitHub, or with AI coding tools.

13. Warranties and limits

• We'll perform the services in a professional manner. We don't guarantee search rankings, traffic, leads, or AI search visibility.
• Hosting depends on third parties, including Cloudflare, GitHub, and QuickBooks. We're not responsible for their outages, but we'll work to restore service promptly.
• To the extent the law allows, Ridgeline's total liability under this Agreement is limited to the fees you paid in the 12 months before the claim, and neither party is liable for indirect or consequential damages.

14. General

• Confidentiality: each party will keep the other's non-public information confidential.
• Governing law: the laws of the State of South Carolina, with disputes heard in Greenville County.
• Changes: we may update this Agreement with 30 days' notice; changes don't affect fees for the current paid period.
• Entire agreement: this Agreement, together with any written add-on scopes, is the whole agreement between us.

Version: November 2026.