Terms of Service

Last Updated 12-1-2024

Inclusions

All of our plans include the following services as a minimum requirement:

  • 1 x domain name
  • 1 x instance of hosting for 1 x website installation
  • 1 x instance of Cloudflare Firewall
  • Website message routing via SendInBlue
  • Uptime Monitoring
  • Malware Scanning
  • Google Tag Manager management
  • Google Analytics management
  • Google Search Console management
  • Google ReCaptcha management
  • Backups
  • WordPress, Themes & Plugins Updates
  • Website Health Report

Services and mix & matching is not negotiable.

Authorisation

You are engaging Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd, as an independent contractor to perform work as described in the package(s) or service(s) you have purchased. In the event access to your website is necessary, you hereby authorise Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd access and “write permissions” to all directories and files of your account with any other third party hosting provider, as well as permission to install any necessary WordPress plugins for maintenance and security.

Domain Names & Available Domain TLDs
One domain name is included in your care plan. The following domain TLD’s are available only:

.com.au
.com
.net.au
.net
.org.au
.org
.au

Other TLD’s are available however a corrected monthly total for your care plan will be discussed upon request.

Additional domain names can be purchased for $30 +GST per annum.

If the client already owns their domain or is through a 3rd party such as an IT provider, the monthly price will not be discounted.

Web Space & Hosting

Your website will be hosted within our partner’s data centre in South Melbourne or Sydney.
Hosting includes 10GB of SSD storage, 2GB of memory and unlimited bandwidth. One instance of hosting will need to be purchased for each individual installation of WordPress.

Email Hosting

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd does not and will not host any emails on behalf of a client. Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd is happy to provide a list of recommended service providers who can assist.

Email Deliverability

Websites may send emails (e.g., contact forms, sales notifications) via a premium email relay service to enhance deliverability. While we assist with deliverability issues, we are not liable for problems beyond our control, including those stemming from third-party IT providers. Clients are responsible for liaising with their IT services for comprehensive resolution.

Website Security

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd has partnered with Cloudflare to provide firewall, SSL Certificates and monitoring to ensure your website is secure. Whilst we cannot place any guarantee against attacks or hacks. We do our best to minimise the risks.

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd is not liable for any downtime or loss of sales due to any outages with the clients website.

Malware Scanning

Malware scanning is automatically undertaken every 24 hours to check for any malicious files or code injections. If any malicious content is found, it is removed and quarantined at no additional cost.

Backups

Backups are taken at separate intervals (depending on the selected plan) to ensure quality in the event of the failure of the website and/or hosting enrolment. The frequency as follows:

Pink Plan – Daily
White Plan – Hourly
Black Plan – Hourly

These backups are taken and kept on the website server for 30 days as well as a secure, offsite location outside of Australia.

Google Services and 3rd party Software and maintenance

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd provides access to Google services such as Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Google Recaptcha and Google Search Console. This data is used to track website performance and repeated via our website reporting. Stoke Design Co is happy to provide access to clients and 3rd parties who require access to these products to provide a service. However, we do require we remain the owner of these properties to ensure we can carry out our intended offering.

Whilst we aim to ensure connections are maintained at all times and the disruption of these connections is rare, Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd is not responsible for any broken connection and there for any loss of data or communications.

Website Health Report

Depending on the selected plan, the client will receive 1 x PDF report via email. This may contain information such as website traffic, updates performed and optimisation. Report are issued at the following intervals:

Pink Plan – Monthly
White Plan – Fortnightly
Black Plan – Weekly

Reports are generated automatically and any concerns should be raised directly by contacting Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd.

Website Review & Strategy Sessions

Website reviews can be undertaken either in person or via ZOOM video conference. For clients outside of our 10km radius of Ballarat VIC 3350, we recommend a video conference otherwise a travel fee may be charged. These sessions are only available to White Plan (annually) and Black Plan (6 monthly) Subscribers.

Responsive Support
Definition of responsive support is as follows:

What it includes:

  • Assistance relating to a website outage
  • Assistance due to client error requiring retrieval of backup

What it does not include:

  • Content Insertion
  • Assisting with general questions in website usage
  • Liaising with external providers engaged by the client
  • Correcting errors due to a change in 3rd party services such as API connections.

Priority assistance (same day) will be given to Black Plan subscribers only. All other subscribers will have their enquiries attended to as soon as possible.

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd are always happy to provide assistance and will be charged at our hourly rate.

Hours of Service

All Services will be carried out between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm (local office time), Monday to Friday excluding public holidays and the Christmas / New Year closure periods. During these closure periods websites will remain online however some non-automated services such as updates and support will not be conducted outside of these times.

Emails sent or messages left outside of these hours will be responded to as quickly as possible. Stoke Design Co will always endeavour to attend to support requests as soon as possible.

SEO Tracking

SEO Tracking is provided as part of the Care Plan for White & Black plan subscribers only. As the website goes live, the client & Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd will agree on a set list of 5 keywords to track. Whilst these keywords will be tracked on their ranking, Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd is not responsible for the increase of those rankings. If you wish to increase your search ranking, it’s advised to discuss with us our SEO Campaigns.

Link Monitoring

Stoke Design Co uses a third party to track all the links on your website to monitor for broken links as they may happen.

WordPress, Theme & plugin updates

Updates are performed and checked over at regular intervals depending on your subscribed plan. This will include WordPress core, themes and plugins. Pink plan subscribers will be updated monthly, whereas White & Black plan subscribers will be updated on a weekly basis.

If your website includes an e-commerce gateway, the gateway will be tested upon each plugin update to WooCommerce. 

24/7 Monitoring

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd utilise a third party to ping your website every 5 mins for uptime. In the case of an outage, Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd will endeavour to make contact with the client and get the website back up as soon as possible.

Content Changes

An allotted time of content changes are allowed for each month depending on your subscribed plan. Content is defined by the following:

  • Insertion of text to any page/post/custom post type or product
  • Insertion of new page/post/custom post type post or product
  • Insertion or update of current content (such as downloadable PDFs, text or images)

Those on a White plan are entitled to 60 mins of support/content changes per month. Black plan subscribers are entitled to 90 mins of support/content changes per month.

No modifications to the websites template, colours, fonts or any other global changes can be considered a content change.

Unused time cannot be rolled over to the next month.

 Content Delivery Network

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd utilises a Content delivery network to store versions of your website on servers across the world to ensure your websites loading time can be minimised by loading the nearest copy of your website. This feature is available for Black plan subscribers only.

Link Monitoring

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd uses a third party to track all the links on your website to monitor for broken links as they may happen. Corrections will be made where applicable. This feature is available for all White & Black plan subscribers.

Database Optimisation

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd uses a third party to ensure the website’s database is free from bloat caused by drafts, spam comments and revisions. This feature is available for all White & Black plan subscribers.

Advanced Analytics (Heatmaps)

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd uses a third party to collect data for advanced analytics such as click maps and heat maps. This is applied to one page only. This feature is available for Black plan subscribers only.

Downtime Measurement

Downtime is measured from the time a trouble ticket is opened with Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd until network availability is restored, or the affected device is powered back on, as applicable. All websites experience a level of downtime that can be caused briefly by website updates and other external factors out of our control.

Pricing & Payments

Once a client of Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd, you authorise Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd to charge the payment method on file you submitted for all the invoices generated for the services rendered by Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd.

If at any point payment has not been made. The service will be suspended 30 days after the initial due date. A one off fee of $140+GST will be invoiced to bring the website back online. After 45 days, if payment has still not been received the hosting environment will be terminated and all costs accrued to that point will be invoiced.

Costs may be subject to change based on new standards, policies, data and hardware infrastructure costs. We will provide you with 30 days notice in relation to any proposed fee changes.

Cancellation & Refunds

Cancellation of any monthly recurring service can occur at anytime after your first month (30 days) of service.

No refunds are available after your purchased package or service has been started, unless otherwise specified in any authorised correspondence by Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd. After cancellation, Your website will be taken offline, packaged as files/database and supplied. The domain password will also be provided so the client may transfer their domain away from Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd

Upon cancellation, All plugin licenses will be cancelled and the client will be responsible for providing their own licenses. This includes but is not limited to page builder plugins, contact form plugins & SEO plugins.

All 3rd party connections including:

  • Google Tag Manager
  • Google Analytics
  • Google Search Console
  • Google ReCaptcha

will need to be reconfigured by the new host and the data Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd has obtained to date will be erased.

As the architects of the website, Stoke Design Co will still be available to provide assistance for the website but all calls, emails and time spent will be billed at our hourly rate.

You agree to provide feedback or a testimony upon request after the release/closure of the Service.

Refusal of Service

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd reserves the right to refuse service to any individual, website, or blogs that contain offensive, obscene, hateful, malicious content or any other reason. This may be terminated at anytime with no warning.

Third Party or Client Modifications

With a WordPress based website, the client has the option to independently edit or update their web pages after completion of the site (if built by Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd), unless otherwise agreed upon in this agreement by the client and Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd.

If anyone other than Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd, or its subcontractors, attempts to update the website and damages the design or impairs the ability for the web pages to display or function properly, time to repair the web pages will be assessed at an hourly rate per hour needed. Work to repair the website from client and third-party modifications is outside of the support time and scope of the monthly website care for all plans. There is a one-hour minimum.

Limitation of Liability; Disclaimer of Warranties

Although there are limitations to the guarantees we can provide, your satisfaction is very important to us. Please read and understand our limits of liability before ordering services.

We will do our upmost to ensure your website performance and security is optimal, but we did not build the WordPress software, the plugins used on the website, 3rd party services nor the hosting platform it runs on. Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd therefore does not guarantee, represent, or warrant that the functions contained in your webpages or website will be uninterrupted, or error-free.

You expressly agree that your use of, or inability to use, the functions contained within your web pages or the website is at your sole risk. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the web pages and website is with the client.

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd will at no point be responsible for page load times and keyword rankings outside of their control. This includes changes to search engine algorithms, slow down to the website caused by excessive uploads caused by clients or third parties.

To the extent not prohibited by law, in no event will Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd be liable to the client or any third party for any damages, including, but not limited to, any lost profits, lost savings, loss of data, business interruption, or incidental, consequential or special damages arising out of the operation of or inability to operate your webpages or website, however caused, even if Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd does not represent, guarantee or warrant that the functions contained in your webpages or website will be free from loss, corruption, attack, viruses, interference, hacking, or other security intrusions, and Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd disclaims any liability relating thereto.

Cost of Service

Costs may be subject to change based on new standards, policies, data and hardware infrastructure costs. We will provide you with 30 days notice in relation to any proposed fee changes. The charge based on the plan chosen will be deducted monthly via the supplied credit card.

Intellectual Property & licensed material

All Intellectual Property Rights in Service Intellectual Property vest in, or will upon their creation vest in Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd.

You must not, without our prior written consent:

  • adapt, create derivative works from or merge the template or other Service Intellectual Property;
  • use the Service Intellectual Property for any purpose other than the specific purpose for which Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd have provided it;
  • reverse engineer, disassemble or decompile the Service Intellectual Property;
  • distribute, lend, resell, transfer, assign or sublicence the Service or other Service Intellectual Property, or allow any other person to use it except in the course of visiting the Service; and
  • remove or attempt to remove any proprietary or copyright notices or any labels on the Service or other Service Intellectual Property;

Stock images and commercial fonts remain the property of Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd, under license or its licensors at all times and are governed under licensing restrictions and rules and are not transferrable.

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd does not assume any responsibility or liability for the content of the websites it manages, maintains and/or hosts.

Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd do not warrant that your use of the designs, materials or content produced by us for you in the course of the Service will not infringe any third party’s Intellectual Property Rights or any person’s Moral Rights, but Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd will advise you if Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd become aware of any infringement.

You agree to carry the Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd logo or Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd text hyperlink in or under the website footer.

Acceptance

Please note that by submitting your payment via our subscription form or requesting payment via invoice, you are agreeing to all of our terms of service as they are written here. Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd reserves the right to change or update these terms at any time without prior notice. The user of this site agrees to the terms of this agreement on behalf of their organisation or business. This Agreement constitutes the entire understanding of the parties. Any changes or modifications thereto must be in writing and signed by both parties.

Please contact us with any questions regarding the Stoke Design Co Pty Ltd care plan terms of service by email [email protected]