The deal,
written down.

01 Who you are dealing with

Northgem Studios is a two person web design studio. Zack works out of Boise, Idaho. Ben works out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can reach either of us at northgemstudios@gmail.com.

In these terms, "we" and "us" mean Northgem Studios. "You" means the person or business buying the work.

02 How we usually meet

Most of our clients did not contact us first. We look for local businesses whose websites are slow or broken on phones, we run a performance audit, and we rebuild the site before we ever say hello. Then we email you one link.

A few things follow from that, and we want them stated plainly:

• The preview is a proposal, not a delivery. Until you pay, it is a demonstration of what we would build for you. It is ours.
• We are not claiming your brand. If a preview shows your business name, your logo or your photos, we are using them to show you your own site. We do not claim any ownership of them, we will not use them for anything else, and we will not license them to anyone.
• Say the word and it disappears. Email us and we will take the preview offline and delete the copies, usually the same day and no later than five business days. You do not have to explain why, and it costs you nothing.
• No obligation, either direction. Receiving a preview does not sign you up for anything. You owe us nothing for it. We are also free to decide not to work with you.

03 What we sell

The Site

$500, one time. A complete redesign, built before you pay. Fast, phone first, click to call ready. Launched on your domain within the week.

The Care

$50 per month. Hosting, security, software updates, and edits whenever you email us. Optional. Cancel any month.

The price is $500 flat and $50 per month. Not "starting at." If we ever quote you something different for unusual work, we will say so in writing before you owe anything.

What is not included

We are a small studio and we would rather say no than do something badly. These are outside what we do today: ongoing SEO campaigns, paid ad management, social media management, online stores and payment checkout, custom web applications, and unlimited redesigns. If you need one of those, we will tell you honestly and point you elsewhere.

04 Paying

• The $500 is due when you decide to keep the site, before we launch it on your domain.
• The Care plan bills monthly on the day you started, and keeps billing until you cancel.
• We will tell you the amount and the date before the first charge. Nothing gets charged that you did not agree to.
• If a payment fails, we will email you before anything is switched off, and give you at least ten days to sort it out.

Refunds

You see the finished site before you pay, so there should be very little to refund. Still: if you pay the $500 and we have not yet launched, ask and we will refund it. Once the site is live on your domain and yours to keep, the $500 is not refundable, because you have the thing.

The Care plan is not refundable for months already served, but you can cancel any time and you will not be billed again.

05 Cancelling the Care plan

Cancel any month. You keep the site either way. When the plan ends we will hand you everything you need to host it somewhere else: the files, the content, and a straight explanation of how to move it. We will keep your site online for 30 days after you cancel so nothing goes dark while you sort out where it lives next.

We will not make cancelling harder than signing up was. If it ever feels harder, that is a mistake on our end and we want to hear about it.

06 What you own

Once you have paid the $500, the site is yours. Outright, forever. That means the design, the code we wrote for it, the copy we wrote for it, and the images we made for it.

• Your domain stays yours. We launch on the domain you already own. We do not hold it, and we will never park it or move it without your say so.
• Your content stays yours. Your logo, photos, text and business information were always yours. Nothing here changes that.
• Leaving does not cost you the site. Cancel the Care plan and you still own everything.
• Two small exceptions. We keep the right to reuse generic building blocks and techniques in other projects, which is how any studio works. And we would like to show your site in our portfolio. If you would rather we did not, say so and we will not.

Some parts of a site come from other people: typefaces, open source code libraries, stock or licensed photography. Those stay under their own licences, which we will pass to you along with the site.

07 What we need from you

Not much, but these matter:

• You have the right to use the logo, photos and text you give us. If you hand us an image you found on the internet, tell us, because we cannot use it.
• The business details you give us are accurate: hours, licence numbers, service areas, prices.
• You will not use the site for anything illegal.
• If you ask us to publish a claim about your business, it needs to be true. We will ask.

If something you give us turns out not to be yours to use, and someone comes after us for it, you agree to cover the cost of sorting that out. This is the one genuinely lawyerly paragraph on this page and we would rather it never mattered.

08 The speed claims

We say every build loads in under a second and scores 95 or better on Lighthouse. Here is exactly what that means, so it is a promise rather than a slogan:

• Measured with Google Lighthouse on the launched site, on the home page, on a simulated mobile connection.
• Measured at launch, on the version we ship.
• Numbers can move afterwards, and often do: adding large images, embedding a booking widget, installing a tracking script, or a slow day at your host will all change them. That part is outside our hands.

If a site we launch misses those marks on the day we hand it over, tell us and we will fix it or refund you. That is the deal.

09 How we use AI

We design and build by hand, and we use modern tools to move fast. We do not generate your website from a prompt. Because that distinction matters and because the rules around it are changing, we wrote it all out separately: see How we use AI. That page is part of these terms.

10 Things outside our control

A website depends on services none of us own: your domain registrar, the host, email providers, the wider internet. We choose reliable ones and we will help you deal with them, but we cannot promise they will never have a bad day. If your site is down because of something on our side, tell us and we will fix it as fast as we can.

We are not responsible for problems caused by someone else editing the site after we hand it over, or by a service you signed up for separately.

11 The legal minimum

We have to include this part, so here it is in as few words as we can manage.

We provide the work with reasonable skill and care. Beyond that, we do not make guarantees about results. Specifically, we cannot promise a new website will bring you more customers, more calls, or a particular ranking on Google. Anyone who promises you that is guessing.

If something goes wrong and you have a claim against us, the most we can be liable for is the amount you actually paid us in the twelve months before the problem. We are not liable for indirect losses such as lost profits or lost business. Nothing here limits liability that the law does not allow us to limit.

12 Ending things

You can walk away at any point before you pay, and you owe nothing. After launch, you can stop the Care plan any month.

We can stop working with someone too. If we do, we will give you 30 days notice, refund anything you have paid for a period we did not serve, and hand over your site so you are not stranded. The only exception is if the site is being used for something illegal, in which case we will stop immediately.

13 Disagreements

Email us first. Almost everything gets solved that way, and we would rather fix a problem than win one.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Idaho, and any dispute that cannot be settled by email will be handled in the state or federal courts located in Ada County, Idaho.

14 Changes

If we change these terms in a way that actually affects you, we will email you before the change takes effect, and the new version will be dated at the top of this page. If you do not like the change, cancel. You keep the site.

15 Reaching us

Email northgemstudios@gmail.com. We answer.

We are a remote studio working out of Boise, Idaho and Minneapolis, Minnesota. There is no office to visit, so email is the fastest way to reach a person. If you need a postal address for a formal notice, ask and we will give you one.