Terms of service

• The draft is free. You pay nothing until you say yes to it.
• Your first month's $79 is paid before we register or transfer your domain. Paying it is how you accept these terms.
• Once it is live, the price is $79 a month including GST, and that covers design, build, your domain, hosting in Australia, changes, and any booking system, form or app we build for you.
• It is month to month. Cancel any time by email.
• Your domain is registered in your name from day one. Your content and your brand are yours.
• After 12 months with us, you can ask for a copy of your site's code.
• Nothing in these terms takes away your rights under the Australian Consumer Law.

When you send us the form or talk to us, we will build a working draft of your website and send you a link, usually within 24 hours of having what we need from you (business days, and assuming we have enough to go on).

The draft is free and there is no obligation. We will adjust it with you until you are happy, or until one of us decides it is not a fit. Either way there is no charge.

We can decline a job, for example if the business falls outside our acceptable use policy or we are simply full. If we do, we will tell you straight away.

Until you go live, the draft is ours. We may take it down 30 days after we last hear from you.

When you are happy with the draft and want to go ahead, you pay the first month's $79. Paying it is your acceptance of these terms. We then register your domain, or transfer the one you already have, and put the site live. Your subscription runs monthly from that first payment. It includes:

• Design and build of your website, done by us, by hand.
• Your .com.au or .au domain name, registered in your name, with renewals paid by us while you are with us.
• Hosting in Australia, with a security certificate, daily backups and routine maintenance.
• Changes to your site whenever you need them (see the next section).
• Booking calendars, intake and quote forms, online ordering or a small online shop, and other features that belong on your site.
• A mobile app, where an app genuinely helps your business and we agree it is the right call.

Things that are not included: the fees other companies charge, such as Apple and Google developer accounts for an app, paid stock photography, the card processor's fee on each online sale (we add nothing to it), and any paid third-party service you ask us to connect. We will always tell you before anything costs you extra, and we will never add a charge without your say-so.

Changes means updates to the site we built for you: new prices, new photos, new hours, a new service, a new page, a tweak to the design. Email them through and we will make them, usually within two business days. There is no hourly rate and no cap on reasonable requests.

What it does not mean is a brand new site every month. If you want something that is really a rebuild, a second site, or a large new feature, we will scope it with you first. Often it is still included. If it is not, we will quote it clearly before any work starts.

The price is $79 a month, including GST. The first month is paid when you say yes to your draft, before we register or transfer your domain. After that it is billed monthly in advance, by card or direct debit, and you get a tax invoice each month.

If a payment fails we will let you know and try again. If it still has not gone through after 14 days, we may take the site offline until it is sorted. We will not delete anything.

We can change the price, but only with at least 60 days' written notice. If you do not want to pay the new price, cancel before it starts and nothing changes for you.

Cancel any time by emailing hello@twinlakes.au. There is no contract and no exit fee.

Your site stays up until the end of the month you have paid for. We do not refund part months, except where the Australian Consumer Law says we must.

When you leave, we will:

• Keep your domain registered in your name and give you the transfer code, or point it wherever you ask.
• Give you a copy of your content: the text, images, and any booking or enquiry data your site collected, within 14 days of you asking.
• Delete your site and data from our systems 60 days after the subscription ends, unless you ask us to do it sooner.

If you have been with us for 12 months or more, you can also ask for the code. See "Who owns what".

We register your domain name with you as the registrant, which means it is legally yours, not ours. For a .com.au or .au name you need an Australian presence, usually an ABN, and the domain must relate to your business. That is a rule of the .au registry, not ours.

While you are with us we pay the renewals and manage the DNS. You can transfer the domain away at any time, and we will help rather than hinder. We will never hold a domain to make you stay.

If you already own a domain, we will manage it for you with your permission, or leave it where it is and point it at your site. Your choice.

Yours: your business name and brand, your logo, the words and photos you give us, your domain, and the data your site collects. You give us permission to use these things to build and run your site, and nothing more.

Ours while we host it: the site's code, design files and the tooling we use to build and run it. We keep the right to reuse our own tools, components and know-how on other projects. Open source libraries used in your site stay under their own licences.

After 12 continuous months of subscription, you can ask for a copy of your site's source code. We will hand it over within 30 days, with a licence that lets you and any future developer use and change it for your business. Our own reusable tooling and other clients' work are not part of that.

If you leave before 12 months, you still get your domain, your content and your data. The code stays with us.

We may show your site in our own portfolio, and we may put a small "Site by Twin Lakes" link in the footer of your site. If you would rather we did neither, tell us and we will stop.

• Answers to our questions and feedback on drafts, within a reasonable time.
• Content you have the right to use. If you give us a photo, logo or text, you are telling us you own it or have permission to use it.
• Accuracy. If your site says you are licensed, insured, or charge a certain price, that has to be true. You are responsible for what your site claims about your business.
• Your own compliance. You are responsible for the rules that apply to your trade, for consumer law, and for how you treat the personal information of your own customers.

If something you give us gets us into trouble, for example a photo you did not have the rights to, you agree to cover the reasonable costs that causes us.

Your site is hosted in Australia. We aim for it to be up all day, every day, and we monitor it. We do not promise 100 percent uptime, because nobody honestly can. If something breaks on our side, we fix it at no cost to you.

We take daily backups and keep them for 30 days. We do planned maintenance outside business hours where we can, and we tell you about anything that will affect your site for more than a few minutes.

If your site takes bookings or enquiries, that information belongs to you. We store it in Australia, use it only to run your site, hand it to you whenever you ask, and delete it when you leave.

You are the one your customers are dealing with, so you are responsible for telling them how you use their details. If you do not have a privacy policy, we will put a plain one on your site for you.

Our acceptable use policy is short and sets out what the service cannot be used for. If a site breaks it, we will tell you and give you a chance to fix it. For anything serious or illegal we can take the site offline straight away.

The Australian Consumer Law gives you guarantees that cannot be excluded, including that our services will be provided with due care and skill and will be fit for purpose. Nothing in these terms limits those rights.

Beyond what the law requires, our responsibility to you is limited to fixing or re-supplying the service, or refunding what you have paid us in the previous 12 months, whichever we choose. We are not responsible for lost profits or lost business, for things other companies control (payment providers, booking platforms, app stores, registrars, the internet), or for content and claims you asked us to put on your site.

We can end it with 30 days' notice, for example if we stop offering the service. If we do, we refund anything you have paid for beyond that date, and you still get your domain, your content and your data. You also get the code, whether or not you have reached 12 months.

We can end it immediately for serious misuse, for illegal content, or if payment is more than 30 days overdue after we have told you. Even then, your domain and content remain yours.

We may update these terms. If a change matters, we will email you at least 30 days before it takes effect. Keep using the service and the new terms apply. If you do not like a change, cancel before it starts.

The information on twinlakes.au is general and may change. We try to keep it accurate but do not guarantee it. The design, text and images on this site are ours and may not be copied or scraped without permission.

These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia. If we have a disagreement, we will both try to sort it out by talking first. Notices between us can be sent by email. If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still applies. You cannot hand this agreement to someone else without asking us, except as part of selling your business.

Twin Lakes Studio is a trading name of The IT Dept Pty Ltd, ABN 12 665 405 505, Budgewoi NSW. Questions: hello@twinlakes.au.