Terms of service
The terms that apply to work performed by Oogle, and to the use of this website.
These terms cover two things: using this website, including the free website checkup, and the general way Oogle works. They are written in plain English. They are general information, not legal advice. Where a written agreement exists for a specific engagement, that agreement governs.
Using this website
The content of this website is provided for information. It is written carefully and in good faith, and it is general information rather than advice about your specific situation. Acting on it is your own decision. We try to keep it accurate and current. When something changes, we update the page rather than leave the old version standing.
We aim to keep the website available, and we host and maintain it the same way we do for clients. We do not promise that it will be available at every moment or that it will always be free of errors. We may change, move or remove any part of it without notice.
The website checkup
The free website checkup is an automated review of one page of a website. It reads what that site shows any visitor and the domain's public DNS records. It is a starting point, not an audit. Using it is subject to the following.
- It is automated and it is limited. It reads one page, from outside, in seconds. It cannot see everything a person or a full review would see. A clean result does not mean a website is secure, compliant, fast or well built.
- It is not a guarantee. A check can miss a problem. Now and then it can flag something that turns out to be fine. Confirm every finding before spending money on it.
- It is not a compliance verdict. Nothing in a report says that a website meets any law, standard or accessibility guideline.
- Only check sites you own or are responsible for, or have permission to check. The requests come from our server and identify themselves as OogleCheckup in that site's logs.
- Do not use it to load, probe or repeatedly test somebody else's website. There are limits on how many checks one address and one site can run. We may block use that looks like abuse.
- The report is yours to keep, print and share. We do not store it and we do not need anything from you to show it to you.
What the checkup reads, and what we keep, is described in the privacy policy.
Acceptable use
Please don't try to interfere with this website or the systems behind it, probe them for weaknesses, send automated traffic at them, submit forms with false information, or use the checkup against a site you have no business checking. If you find a security problem on this site, tell us and we will fix it. That kind of message is always welcome.
Our material
The text, design, artwork, code and structure of this website, and the checkup and its reports, belong to Oogle unless stated otherwise. You may read, print and share pages and reports for your own use and to show people you work with. You may not copy the site, or large parts of it, to build or promote something else. Client websites shown on the Work page belong to those clients. Their names and marks are theirs.
Third-party services and links
This website links to websites we have built and, in some articles, to other people's sites. Once you follow a link you are on somebody else's website, under their terms and their privacy policy. Our work often depends on third-party software or services, such as WordPress, a hosting platform, a payment processor or a registrar. Those services run under their own terms. We cannot change how they behave or promise what they will do.
Inquiries, quotes and estimates
Sending a form or calling us is an inquiry, not an order. Work is agreed before it starts. Hourly work is billed for the time it takes, at the rate quoted to you in writing before the work begins. Project work is quoted against a written scope. If something outside that scope becomes necessary, we tell you before doing it, not afterward.
Two services are sold as monthly plans with a published price rather than quoted individually: Website Care and Website Design. Both are described below. Everything else is scoped and quoted.
Monthly plans
Website Care is $199 a month. It covers managed hosting and a content delivery network, updates to the site's software, security hardening, malware scanning, a web application firewall, off-site backups, performance work, and two Quick Fixes each month. A Quick Fix is a small change of about fifteen minutes or less. Quick Fixes do not roll over from one month to the next and are not development time.
Where a site under Website Care is compromised during the period it is covered, cleanup and recovery are included. That does not extend to a compromise that already existed when the site was taken on, and it is not a warranty that a site will not be compromised. See "What we do not warrant" below.
Website Design starts at $499 a month. It covers building the website and then keeping it running, and it includes everything Website Care includes, with one difference: three hours of development work each month in place of Care's two Quick Fixes. It also covers onsite search optimization. Ownership is set out under Ownership below.
Both plans are billed monthly. There is no long-term contract on either, and either can be stopped at any time; stopping ends the service, including the hosting, content delivery network and security services it includes, at the end of the period already paid for. These terms apply to both plans for as long as the service runs, and Website Design carries one further condition, set out under Ownership below. Work beyond what a plan includes is quoted before it starts, and plan clients are charged preferred rates for it.
What either plan covers in a particular month, and what falls outside it, is described on that plan's own page and in the agreement for the engagement.
Payment terms
Invoicing schedule, payment period and any deposit for project work are set out in the written agreement for each engagement, and are agreed before work starts. You will not receive an invoice for anything you did not agree to first.
Your responsibilities
- Providing accurate information about the systems involved
- Providing or arranging the access needed to do the work
- Confirming that you have the right to authorize work on the website and accounts concerned
- Reviewing and responding to work within a reasonable period so a project can proceed
Ownership
On work billed as a project, with a written scope and an invoice, you own what was produced for you once it is paid for: the code, the content, the design and the data. Third party software used in a project remains under its own license, and open source components remain under theirs.
Website Design works differently. The plan exists so that a business can have a website built without a large payment at the start, and the monthly payment buys the service rather than the site. After 12 monthly service payments the client owns the website design outright, and from that point may stay on the plan, move to a Website Care plan, or take the website to a different provider. Before those 12 payments have been made, stopping the service ends the service; it does not transfer the website. There is no long-term contract either way, and this condition is stated on the Website Design page and on the pricing page before anyone signs up.
Your own material is yours throughout, on every arrangement: your text, your images, your logo, and your customer, inquiry and order data. We will provide a copy of it on request, whether or not the website itself has transferred.
Domain names registered on your behalf are registered in your name, and you may request the credentials to them at any time. Hosting is different: where hosting is included in a monthly plan, the site runs on infrastructure we operate and there is no separate hosting account in your name to hand over. Where a hosting account is opened for you separately, it is in your name and the credentials are yours on request.
Where a specific engagement is structured differently from anything described here, the terms set out in the agreement for that engagement govern.
Material you supply
Text, images, logos, fonts, video and anything else you give us to publish has to be yours to use, or licensed to you for that use. We will ask if something looks like it might not be, but we cannot verify it for you, and we rely on your confirmation that it is.
Backups and data
Where Oogle provides backups as part of a plan or an engagement, they are kept off the server that holds the site and are tested. Backups are not a substitute for your own copies of anything you cannot afford to lose, and you should keep your own where the data is critical. Where a plan includes security services, those services reduce risk. They do not remove it, and nothing in them is a warranty against compromise.
What we do not warrant
Software, hosting and third party services can fail. We will not warrant uninterrupted availability, that a website will never be compromised, or any particular search ranking, traffic level or business outcome. None of those are within any provider's control. The same applies to the website checkup. It is provided as it is, and we do not warrant that it will find every problem or that everything it finds is a problem. What we do commit to is competent work and honest reporting of what happened.
Limitation of liability
To the extent the law allows, Oogle is not liable for loss or damage that comes from relying on the information on this website or on a website checkup report, or from being unable to use this website. Nothing here limits any liability that the law does not allow to be limited. Any limitation of liability for a specific engagement is set out in the written agreement for that engagement.
Ending an engagement
Ongoing engagements can be ended by either party, on the notice stated in the written agreement for that engagement. Monthly plans can be stopped at any time and there is no long-term contract on either of them. On Website Design, the release condition set out under Ownership above continues to apply.
When work you own comes to an end, we provide access, files and a reasonable handover to whoever is taking over. We will not hold a website, a domain or a hosting account hostage to a billing dispute. That is about billing disputes, and it does not set aside the Website Design release condition, which is a published term of that plan.
Where a Website Design site has not yet been released, ending the service ends the service: we will give you your own content and data, and your domain, and the website itself transfers once the 12 monthly payments have been made.
Changes to these terms
These terms can change as the services change, and the date above moves when they do. A change here does not alter the written agreement for an engagement already under way. If you keep using the website after a change, the current version applies to that use.
Governing law
The governing law and venue that apply to an engagement are set out in the written agreement for that engagement.