Terms and Conditions
On this page
1. The agreement
These terms are between you and VettaTech. By ordering a service, using our client portal, or letting us begin work, you agree to them. If you are agreeing on behalf of a company, you confirm you are allowed to.
Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information, and forms part of this agreement.
2. What we provide
Depending on what you order, we provide web hosting, website design and build, custom application development, and related services such as domain registration and site migration.
Anything we describe as a website, an app or a project is defined by the written scope we agree before work starts. Work outside that scope is quoted separately.
3. Your account
You are responsible for keeping your login details secure and for what happens under your account. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has access.
Keep your contact and billing details current. We use them for invoices, renewal notices and service messages, and we are not responsible for the consequences of notices sent to an out-of-date address.
4. Fees, tax and renewals
- Hosting is billed in advance, monthly or annually, on the plan you choose.
- Project work is quoted per project. Unless the quote says otherwise, we ask for a deposit before starting and the balance on completion.
- Prices are in Canadian dollars. Applicable taxes are added.
- Payments are taken through PayPal or Stripe. We do not hold your card details.
- Hosting renews automatically for the same term unless you cancel before the renewal date. We invoice ahead of renewal so you have notice.
We can change our prices. For anything recurring, we will tell you before a change takes effect, and it will not apply to a term you have already paid for.
5. Late payment
These timings are how our billing system is actually configured, so you know exactly what to expect:
- An invoice not paid within 5 days of its due date may have the service suspended. Your data is untouched during suspension, the site simply stops serving.
- An invoice still unpaid 30 days after its due date may have the service terminated, which can include deleting the data.
We would far rather talk than suspend anything. If a payment is going to be late, email us and we will work something out.
6. Refunds
30-day money back on hosting. If you are not happy with a new hosting plan, tell us within 30 days of first paying for it and we will refund that hosting fee.
The following are not covered by that guarantee, because they are either work already carried out or costs we have already paid to someone else:
- Web design and custom app work, which is charged for time and effort already spent.
- Domain registrations, transfers and renewals, which registries do not refund.
- Renewal periods after the first 30 days.
- Accounts terminated for a breach of the acceptable use section below.
Outside the guarantee, we handle refund requests case by case and in good faith.
7. Uptime and service credits
We target 99.9% network uptime per calendar month for hosting.
If we fall short in a given month, you may request a service credit against that month's hosting fee. Contact us within 30 days of the end of the month concerned. Credits are applied to your account against future invoices, and a credit is the sole remedy for missed uptime.
Uptime excludes: scheduled maintenance we have given notice of, problems caused by your own code, plugins or content, and matters outside our reasonable control such as upstream network or datacentre failure.
8. Acceptable use
You may not use our services to host, send or distribute:
- Anything unlawful under Canadian law, or that infringes someone else's copyright or trademark.
- Malware, phishing pages, or material designed to deceive or defraud.
- Unsolicited bulk email, or content advertised by spam sent from elsewhere.
- Material that harasses or threatens people, or sexual content involving minors.
You also may not run activity that degrades the service for others, such as sustained resource use well beyond a shared hosting plan, deliberate attempts to breach security, or operating open relays or proxies.
If something on your account is causing active harm, such as sending spam or serving malware, we may suspend it immediately and tell you straight afterwards. In every other case we will contact you first and give you a reasonable chance to fix it.
9. Your content
You keep ownership of everything you give us: your text, images, logos and data. You confirm you have the right to use it, and that it does not infringe anyone else's rights.
You grant us the limited permission needed to host, back up, display and work on it while we provide the service. Nothing more.
Unless you ask us not to, we may mention that we built your site and show it in our portfolio.
10. Who owns the work
Once a project is paid for in full, the website or application we built for you is yours. No lock-in, and nothing proprietary you cannot take elsewhere.
While we host it, there is nothing for you to do. If you decide to host it somewhere else, ask us and we will hand it over: the site files and the database, in a standard format, plus reasonable help getting it running on the new host.
We keep ownership of our own general tools, libraries, and any reusable components we developed before or independently of your project. Those come with your build under a licence to keep using them, for as long as you use the thing they are part of.
Third-party components such as WordPress, plugins, themes and fonts stay under their own licences.
11. Domains
Domains bought through us are registered in your name and are subject to the rules of the relevant registry and registrar. Registration and renewal fees are not refundable once paid.
Keeping a domain registered is ultimately your responsibility. We send renewal invoices, but if a domain lapses because an invoice went unpaid, recovering it is subject to the registry's own process and fees, and is not always possible.
12. Backups
We take routine backups of hosted sites as part of running the platform, and we will use them to help you where we reasonably can.
Those backups are for our operational use and are not a substitute for your own. Please keep your own copy of anything you cannot afford to lose. We do not guarantee that a backup of any particular file, at any particular moment, will be available.
13. Cancelling
By you
You can cancel hosting at any time from the client portal or by emailing us. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the term you have paid for, and we do not pro-rate part-months. The 30-day guarantee above is separate from this.
For project work, if you cancel partway through, you are charged for the work done to that point.
By us
We may suspend or end a service for unpaid invoices as set out above, or for a breach of the acceptable use section. If we ever discontinue a service for our own reasons, we will give you reasonable notice and refund any unused portion you have paid for.
14. Liability
We take real care with your services, but we cannot promise that hosting will never be interrupted or that software will be free of faults.
To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profits, lost business or lost data, and our total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us for the service concerned in the 12 months before the claim.
Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. If you are a consumer, you keep any rights you have under Ontario consumer protection law, and nothing here removes them.
You agree to cover us against claims brought by third parties that arise from your content or your use of the services in breach of these terms.
15. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms. If a change materially affects you, we will give reasonable notice by email or through the client portal before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that means you accept the updated terms. The effective date at the top of this page always shows the current version.
16. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. The courts of Ontario have jurisdiction, though if you are a consumer this does not deprive you of the protection of the law where you live.
If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still applies.
Questions about these terms
VettaTech
Email: info@vettatech.ca
Response time: within one business day