Service Agreement
These Terms and Conditions apply to access and the use of our website and services, under the domain name www.Hertsmedia.co.uk. This site is managed and operated by Hertsmedia. By using our website or any of our services, you will be bound to these Terms & Conditions.
- All Website Plans are contracted for a minimum of 12 months.
- Once the contract length is completed a period of 30 days notice is required should you wish to cancel. This will happen automatically, it is therefore the customer's responsibility to ensure they advise us at least 30 days prior that they no longer wish to continue with our services.
- Additional extras, features and pages not included within your chosen plan may incur an extra fee. Content writing is not included as standard within our plans, therefore content is to be supplied by the client. We do however offer this service at an additional cost.
Definition of the terminology used in this document
The terms "client" , "your" or "you" is the end user accessing the website services. “Us” or “We” or “Our” stands for our business Hertsmedia.
The term ‘Project’ stands for any work Hertsmedia undertake or any service provided by us, described on our website based upon the applicable plan.
The term ‘Hosting’ describes an essential service required for your website to work online.
The term ‘Domain’ describes your websites address, which specifies an available domain name or self-owned domain name, which will be used for the your website.
The term ‘Content’ describes both the images and text used on a your website.
The terms ‘Contract’, ‘Contract Agreement’ and ‘Terms & Conditions’ is all terms used for this Contract Agreement.
The term ‘SEO’ stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’.
Late Payment Fees
- Hertsmedia will charge a £25 late payment administration charge for any late invoices exceeding 7 days or over. This fee will be applied automatically, we reserve the right to collect this fee automatically via Direct Debit or Bank Transfer. If no direct debit is set up, this fee will be requested by invoice to be paid by Bank Transfer.
- Any payments exceeding 30 days will incur an additional £25 late payment fee on top of the initial late payment administration charge, we reserve the right to take this payment automatically. You could also be at risk of your services being suspended, in this case you will be given 24 hours notice.
- Invoices exceeding two consecutive months will have their services suspended with the possibility of further action being taken, ie Legal Action.
Website Suspension
- A website is in danger of suspension when a payment is outstanding (late payment), there is a refusal or cancellation of a direct debit or contains inappropriate content. Wherever possible we will notify you in advance of any proposed suspension however, we reserve the right to remove the site from public view without notification.
- We cannot be held responsible for any financial losses due to a website suspension or for the loss of emails during this time.
- We will continue to collect payments as usual for the minimum contract term during a website suspension.
- We reserve the right to remove content that is deemed unsuitable or inappropriate, we will endeavor to contact you within a reasonable time frame should this occur. Persistent use of such material will result in suspension.
The following will be affected during a website suspension
- You will be unable to access your website and the public will be unable to view it.
- You will unable to receive or send emails, any emails sent to you during this period will be unrecoverable.
- Hertsmedia reserves the right to continue a website's suspension until all outstanding monies have been paid. There may be a delay in reinstatement at busy times.
Deadlines & Estimated Date of Completion
- Hertsmedia aim to adhere to agreed time-frames and deadlines however, there may be certain circumstances out of our control, where these time-frames cannot be met. In these instances a client will not be able to cancel the contract.
- All website content and payments must be provided by the client prior to the start of a deadline. Time-frames may have to be extended slightly if you decide to use our content writing service, particularly when there are several pages to write content for.
- We have the right to change or extend an estimated completion date at any time. If this is the case you will be notified by telephone or email.
Payment Terms & Conditions
- If you decide on a different website plan or change your mind, we allow you 24hrs to get in touch and let us know of your intentions. However, once work commences on your website we are unable to accept a cancellation or refund any deposits/installments paid.
- A deposit will be agreed and paid to Hertmedia before any work can commence.
- All prices quoted are plus VAT.
- We reserve the right to charge a fee of £15 should a direct debit be cancelled during the term of your contract. Please notify us should you need to change your bank details before cancelling existing direct debits.
- If a direct debit comes back as 'unpaid' we reserve the right to apply again. Any late or unpaid invoices may also be charged via your direct debit or requested by way of invoice.
- Hertsmedia will contact you should we change our payment gateway provider or method of payment.
We accept payments made via Bank Transfer and cheque (by prior agreement only).
- Should you need to postpone a website commission or delay an amendment to a site, prior approval must be sought from Hertsmedia.
- If 3 months pass and no payment has been received during the minimum contract period, Hertsmedia have the right to claim one payment in order to recuperate the outstanding amount. We also reserve the right to suspend your website.
Communication
- It is your responsibility to notify and update us of any changes to your personal/business information including all contact details such as business name, address, phone number. We cannot be held responsible for any correspondence being sent to a wrong address if you have moved and not previously notified us in writing by email.
- As a web based company our preferred method of contact is via email, this is the case for both web design and technical support. On occasions there may be times where a phone conversation is necessary, if this is the case an appointment must be made via info@Hertsmedia.com
- Contact between Hertsmedia and the client is vital during the development stage. We therefore require a response to any correspondence within two weeks of being sent. Any longer than this and the project may be in jeopardy of being cancelled, the minimum payments however would still have to be paid.
We may send postal correspondence to either your personal and/or business address.
Copyright, Intellectual Property & Legalities
- Any website created on behalf of a client must be legal in all aspects, Hertsmedia will not be held responsible for any website operating illegally.
- All content including images and text copy must be legal and free of copyright. This includes copying text from another business and that all images have been purchased for your own use.
- Images cannot be reused or redistributed, Hertsmedia take no responsibility for any illegal or inappropriate use of these images.
- Any material we deem to be inappropriate or offensive will be taken down as soon as it is brought to our attention, with or without prior notice.
General Business Terms
- Hertsmedia is currently a sole trading business, we reserve the right to change our business type without any effect on existing contracts.
- Hertsmedia reserves the right to charge VAT on payments and invoices.
- The success of your business's profitability, operation and sales is in no way the responsibility of Hertsmedia or the functionality of your website or the services provided by Hertsmedia. We accept no liability for the performance of the website, hosting or email services. Websites are hosted on computer systems and whilst our third party hosting company offer industry standards of excellence and reliability there are short periods of downtime outside our control. Whilst we will investigate wherever possible these inevitable occurrences will not render us or our partners liable in any way.
- We may necessarily share some of your data (essential only) for services relevant to those we provide on your behalf, such as 'IONOS' our hosting partner, where our email and website servers are held. Questions relating to data protection can be directed to their data protection officer by email at privacypolicy@IONOS.co.uk. It is therefore recommended that you read and take note of their 'Privacy Policy' for your information. We will not sell or pass on your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes.
- Hertsmedia retains the right to use your website for its own advertising and marketing purposes. We will also place a small link (Hertsmedia) from your website to ours, this can be found in the footer of your website.
- Security is key, therefore we recommend that any passwords provided by us for your site admin or email accounts are changed by you. Hertsmedia will not keep a record of your passwords and a fee of £35 may be incurred for resetting passwords.
Aftercare
- Our plans come complete with technical support for the duration of the plan and as long as all payments are up to date. This support relates to the functionality of your website and its administration section.
- Any loss of data caused by a client will not be our responsibility and a fee may be charged to try and retrieve it if that is at all possible. We take every care to ensure backups are available however, we cannot guarantee in every case the loss of data can be recovered and reinstated.
- Technical support does not include amendments, these will incur a fee.
Hosting
- All websites must be hosted with Hertsmedia, we cannot allow you access to your website hosting (including FTP access) while on our servers. This applies to all plans and rolling contracts.
- After 60 days cancellation, suspension or non receipt of payment, we reserve the right to remove your site, emails or other data.
As previously mentioned our servers are supported by IONOS therefore their terms and conditions apply. - Should there be rare instances of server downtime affecting the usage of your website and emails, Hertsmedia not be held responsible for any loss of earnings or visibility.
- If after the minimum contract period has ended you wish to move your website we require at least one months notice, there will be a cost involved in providing you with a copy of the front end (public side) web site pages, these will be static copies without edit functionality. The content management system, CMS, image gallery editors, text/copy editors and general functionality for editing the website cannot be transferred as this is part of a hosted solution, all these functions are embedded into our site admin systems, hosted on our servers. This means you will need to find an alternative method of updating and editing your transferred site.
- The website code is covered by our copyright automatically and may not be reproduced or resold. When a contract comes to an end the site cannot therefore be transferred to another hosting provider, measures have been installed to ensure that only sites on one of our hosting plans can be used. All code, CSS, Javascript, images and structure are covered automatically and explicitly by this provision.
- We reserve the right to change these Terms & Conditions at any time, however the latest version will always be published on our website. We recommend that you save or print at the time of agreement.
Domain Name
- We are unable to provide you with access to your domain control panel including DNS and email settings. Neither can domain names be transferred during the minimum contract period or if there are any invoices outstanding. You do run run the risk of your domain name being released if you have unpaid invoices and do not renew it in time.
- All of our plans come complete with one free domain name, either a 'co.uk' or '.com' as long as it is available or you already own it and wish to transfer. All other domain names will be charged to you accordingly.
- We can transfer in existing domain names should you already own one.
- Should you wish to transfer your domain name away at the end of your plan we will require at least one months notice. The onus is on you to provide us with the relevant details to make the transfer to your new provider. Once the release has taken place we are no longer responsible for the transfer and subsequent set up of the domain. This process will incur a transfer fee of £35 and must be paid prior to transfer.
- Domain names are registered by us on your behalf but we respect that you retain ownership as long as all fees are paid. This will be for the duration of the contract and/or until such a time you request a transfer.
Email Accounts
- It is your responsibility to maintain your mailbox and regularly perform 'house keeping' duties. You are provided with 2GB per mailbox, should you exceed this limit emails will not be sent or saved, you may be notified but not always. We may be able to arrange additional storage for an extra fee.
- SMTP for emails are managed via 'IONOS', you will therefore be bound by their Terms, as is the case with all our website or email hosting facilities.
- We advise against sending bulk emails or large volumes of spam as this can create a high bounce rate which in turn can block your ability to send any further emails. This not only impacts you but also other clients. If this continues to be an issue your emails will be discontinued without notice.
- We take no responsibility for any loss of emails if you wish to transfer to a new provider at the end of your minimum contract.
- Customer security is important to us and we take every reasonable step to maintain this. However, we can't be held responsible for spam, lost emails or other vulnerabilities you may be exposed to this includes your own security protocols for ensuring your passwords for email and website admin.
- Emails can be reached via the Hertsmedia web mail link found on our resources page. If you want to connect to a third party's software it is the client's responsibility to do so. If you need assistance to set up email accounts Hertsmedia will charge a fee.
- All email accounts should be connected using IMAP and SMTP settings and not POP.
- An initial password will be created for you to access your email account, it is recommended you reset and create your own strong password for security purposes.
Domain names are renewed each year, automatically, as is the web/email hosting and SSL certificates. Should you wish to cancel any of these services, Hertsmedia require a full 30 days notice before the renewal date becomes due.
Search Engine Optimisation - SEO
- All SEO is the responsibility of the client, this extends to optimising your website and submitting it for a Google My Business listing if not included in your chosen plan. We cannot guarantee your listing, results or the position you will appear in search engine rankings. We cannot be held responsible in any way for your ranking, it is your responsibility to obtain your own marketing separately. However we are always on hand to assist wherever we able.
- Making changes to a site can change your existing ranking either up or down.
Website Copy-writing & Products
- We do offer research and copy-writing services for an additional fee, let us know your requirements when you get in touch by email.
- If you are providing your own copy we ask that you send it clearly laid out with the page title at the top in a word document. Please send this within a reasonable time-frame (usually 2 weeks) from the start of the design. This enables us to try and stick to agreed time-frames.
- Products, categories, blogs/news posts are added by the client via the website administration section, these do not form part of the copy-writing or content writing services.
Online Shops/E-Commerce
- All of our platforms are written in copyrighted code. The payment providers available on our platforms include PayPal, though we can integrate others via a bespoke platform.
- It is the client's responsibility to set up categories and add products to the website. Hertsmedia can provide this service at an extra cost.
Website Design/Development
- We want to make sure every client is happy with the functionality and design of their site. We will make amendments during the draft stage, but once this and the homepage have been agreed, further revisions may incur a charge.
- Each revision will be booked into the next available appointment, requesting several revisions will delay the launch and any previously agreed time-frames will be adjusted.
- On occasions branding and business names may change. In these cases we can upload your new branding, amend and set up domain names for a charge of £50.00 plus vat. We can also obtain your new domain name and charge you accordingly.
- It is not always possible to meet a client's every design specification but we will always try, advising on what it is we can do.
Customer Support
- Our team are available from 9am - 5pm each weekday except Bank Holidays when we are closed. We reserve the right to review these at any time.
- There may be rare occasions where we have to close Hertsmedia without notice these include; staff shortages, annual holidays, extreme weather conditions, software upgrades or any other reasons outside our control.
- Details on how to set up web mail on other third party software will be provided once your online shop or brochure site has been finalised. We do offer only limited support setting up email accounts, if you are unsure then it is best to hire an IT professional.
- Any technical issues reported will be fixed within a reasonable time-frame and within normal business hours. This excludes issues created in error by a customer.
- We want you to be happy with your new e-commerce/website and it is therefore our intention to give our clients the service they expect. If for any reason you want to get in touch please email us at info@Hertsmedia.com
- Due to our hosting with third parties our terms may be superseded and clients therefore bound by the terms of our providers. This includes but not exclusively our website or email hosting facilities.