Terms of Service

1. About these terms

These terms set out how we work together: what you are buying, what it costs, when you pay, who owns the finished site, and what happens if something goes wrong. They are written to be read. Nothing here is hidden in language designed to be skipped.

If you have signed a project agreement or a plan agreement with us and anything in it conflicts with anything on this page, your signed agreement wins. These terms fill the gaps it does not cover.

2. Who we are, and who you are

"Velcrest," "we," "us" and "our" mean Kinetic Margin Holdings, LLC, a West Virginia limited liability company doing business as Velcrest Web Development, based in Morgantown, West Virginia, United States. Velcrest Web Development is a trade name of that company, not a separate business, and the company is the party to every agreement made under that name. "You" and "your" mean the person or business engaging us, and anyone authorised to act for that business.

When these terms say "we," that means Velcrest and anyone we engage to work on your project, including employees and subcontractors. If a subcontractor works on your project, we remain responsible to you for their work.

3. When these terms apply

These terms apply from the moment you accept a quote, sign a project agreement, pay a deposit, or ask us to start work — whichever happens first. They also apply to anyone browsing this website.

Our Privacy Policy forms part of this agreement and explains what we do with personal information.

4. What we do

We provide custom web design and development for small and local businesses: discovery and planning, original design, custom coded development, testing, deployment, and — if you choose it — ongoing hosting, care and support after launch.

Exactly what your project includes is written down before work starts, in a project brief or project agreement that lists your pages, your scope and your fixed price. That document, not this page, defines what we owe you.

5. What is not included

Unless your project agreement says otherwise in writing, these are not part of a website project and are quoted separately:

• Writing your copy, and sourcing or licensing photography and video
• Logo design and full brand identity work
• Ongoing SEO campaigns, paid advertising, email marketing and social media
• E-commerce payment processing setup, and the fees any payment provider charges
• Mobile apps, custom web applications, and integrations with your internal systems
• Third-party subscription costs — domains, premium fonts, stock imagery, software licences, additional services
• Legal or regulatory review of your business or your content, and formal accessibility certification such as a VPAT or a published WCAG conformance statement — we build to the accessibility standard described in The Velcrest Standard, but we do not audit or certify your business
• Translation or multi-language versions of the site

If you want any of these, ask. We will either quote it or tell you honestly that someone else is better placed to do it.

6. Your price

One fixed price, in writing, before work begins. Websites start at $1,200. Your number depends on scope and complexity, and you receive it in writing before you commit to anything. There is no hourly billing on a fixed-price project.

The price does not move unless you move the scope. We will not send you a surprise invoice. If you ask for something outside the agreed scope, section 13 explains what happens — you get a written quote first, and you decide.

Prices quoted are in US dollars and exclude any sales or use tax, or any tax or duty that applies where you are, which is your responsibility unless the quote says otherwise. Where tax applies to a payment, it is shown as a separate line before you pay.

7. How and when you pay

At kickoff: a 50% deposit of the project price, plus the first month's fee for a care and hosting plan if you selected one during onboarding. We schedule your project and begin work when that payment clears.

On launch day: the remaining 50%.

The site does not go live until every fee then due has been paid in full. This is not negotiable and it is not a penalty — it is the point at which ownership of the work passes to you, as section 16 explains. You will see the finished site on a private staging link before you pay the balance, so you know exactly what you are paying for.

How to pay: by card, or from a US bank account (ACH), on Stripe's secure page. We do not accept wire transfers, PayPal, Cash App, or other payment methods, or checks unless your agreement allows them in writing. A bank payment is not instant. It can take several business days to reach us, and a payment counts as made only when the funds have cleared on our end: work does not start on a deposit, and a site does not go live on a balance, until they have. Payments are processed by Stripe. We send a formal invoice carrying a secure Stripe payment link, and invoices are due on receipt unless the invoice states a different date. We will never ask you for a card number by phone or by email, and we will never email you to say our payment details have changed.

Card processing fee. We may add a processing fee to a payment made by credit card, to recover what our payment processor charges us to accept that card. Where a fee applies, it is disclosed as a separate line before you pay and again on your receipt; it will not exceed our actual cost of accepting the card and will not exceed 3% of the payment; and it is never applied to a debit card, a prepaid card or a bank transfer. If a payment is refunded, the fee is refunded in the same proportion. The fee is not part of, and does not change, your fixed project price.

Care and hosting plans are billed monthly in advance, starting at $250 per month.

8. Late payment and non-payment

If an invoice is more than 14 days overdue, we may charge interest on the unpaid balance at the lesser of 8% per year or the maximum rate permitted by West Virginia law, and we may pause work until the invoice is paid. If that rate is ever held to exceed what the law allows, it is reduced automatically to the highest lawful rate rather than voided, and any excess already collected is credited against the balance or refunded. Nothing here is intended to charge, and we will not collect, interest above the lawful maximum. Pausing work moves every remaining date in your schedule, including your launch date.

If an invoice is more than 30 days overdue, we may treat the project as ended by you under section 27, keep the fees already paid as payment for the work completed, and — after giving you at least 30 days' written notice — stop hosting or maintaining anything we host for you. We will always give you your files and a chance to move before anything goes offline.

You agree to pay the reasonable costs of recovering an overdue amount, including collection and legal costs, to the extent West Virginia law allows.

9. Timelines

Your timeline — discovery, design, build and launch — is specified in your project agreement, agreed with you before kickoff. We do not publish a number of weeks here, because a real schedule depends on your scope and on how quickly content and feedback come back.

We work to the dates in your agreement. They are target dates rather than guarantees, and they depend on both sides: a late delivery of content, feedback, approvals, access or payment, or a change to the scope, moves every date after it.

10. What you provide, and when

To keep your project on schedule you agree to:

• Give us your content — copy, images, logos, product details — by the dates in your project agreement
• Name one person who can give feedback and sign off decisions on your behalf
• Return feedback and approvals within the time your agreement allows, generally five business days
• Give us the access we need: domain registrar, existing host, analytics, or any third-party account the project touches

If we are waiting on you, the schedule waits too, and every date after it moves by at least the length of the delay. If we are waiting on you for more than 30 days after asking in writing, we may invoice for the work completed to that point and re-schedule your project into the next available slot, which may not be the one you had.

11. The content you give us

You are responsible for everything you give us, and for making sure it is accurate, lawful and yours to use.

You confirm that you own the content you supply or have permission to use it and to let us publish it; that it does not infringe anyone's copyright, trademark, privacy or other rights; that it is not defamatory, deceptive or unlawful; and that it complies with the rules that apply to your industry and your advertising.

We do not verify the ownership or accuracy of what you supply, and we are not responsible for it. If a claim arises from it, section 26 applies.

12. Approvals and revisions

The design phase includes two rounds of revisions. A round means you send us your collected feedback and we work through it together. Sending notes one at a time over several days is not efficient for either of us — gather them, send them once, and we will handle them as one round.

You approve the designs in writing before we write any code. That written approval is the reference point for everything that follows: it defines what the finished site is supposed to look like and do.

Changes to a design you have already approved, and revision rounds beyond the two included, are out of scope and are quoted under section 13.

13. Changes to scope

You can change your mind. It just has to be priced.

If you ask for something that is not in your agreed scope — an extra page, a new feature, a different design direction, a rebuild of something you already approved — we will tell you it is out of scope, quote it in writing with any effect on your timeline, and wait for you to accept before doing the work. We will not start out-of-scope work and invoice you for it afterwards.

14. Thirty days of free fixes

For 30 days after your site goes live, we fix — at no charge — anything that is broken, anything that stops working, and anything that does not match the design and scope you approved in writing. That includes bugs, broken links and forms, display problems on current browsers and devices, and anything we simply got wrong.

The window exists so the site is proven in the real world before you are on your own with it, and so you have time to learn how to run it.

15. What the fix window does not cover

The fix window covers what is broken. It does not cover new work. The following are new work and are quoted separately, even inside the 30 days:

• New pages, sections or features that were not in the approved scope
• Changes to the design you approved — layout, colours, fonts, imagery, structure
• New, rewritten or reorganised content
• Anything broken by a change you or someone else made after launch
• Work needed because a third-party service, plugin, platform or browser changed
• Training, consulting, SEO, marketing or analytics work
• Anything you thought of after the site went live

How we settle a disagreement about this: the test is the design and scope you approved in writing. If the site does not do what that document says it does, it is a fix and it is free. If the site does exactly what that document says and you would like something different, it is new work and it gets a quote. We will tell you which one applies before we start, never after.

The fix window does not extend the warranty in section 23, and it does not roll over or accumulate. It runs for 30 calendar days from launch.

16. Ownership of the finished site

When every fee due is paid, it is yours. At that point we assign to you all right, title and interest we hold in the deliverables made for your project: the source code written for you, the design files, and any content we produced for you. You may use it, change it, move it, hire anyone you like to work on it, or sell it with your business. You do not need our permission and you owe us nothing further for it.

Until then, it is ours. Before final payment we retain ownership of the work, and anything shown to you on a staging link is shown for review only. You have no licence to publish or use it.

What we keep: our general knowledge, methods and technique, and any general-purpose code, components or tooling we built before your project or that we reuse across projects. Where any of that is built into your site, you receive a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use, change and pass it on as part of the site. Nothing we keep limits your ability to host the site anywhere, edit it, or hand it to another developer.

17. Fonts, photography and code libraries

Some parts of a website are not ours to give away. Typefaces, stock photography and video, icons and open-source code libraries belong to their owners. You receive them under the licence their owner grants, not as your outright property.

We will tell you what is in your site, what each licence allows, whether it is one-time or recurring, and who is responsible for keeping it paid. If you later stop paying for a licensed asset, you must remove or replace it. Open-source components stay under their own licences, all of which permit commercial use.

18. Showing your project as our work

We may display your finished site in our portfolio, in case studies, and in marketing material, including a screenshot, a description of the work and a link. You can opt out — tell us in writing at any time and we will remove it.

This right covers the public, published site only. It never covers anything confidential under section 22, and we will not publish figures about your business without your written permission.

19. The founding client

Velcrest is taking one founding project. A founding project is built beyond the scope it is priced at — the additional work included is listed item by item in Schedule A of the Founding Client Addendum, which forms part of your project agreement — and in exchange the finished site is featured as Velcrest showcase work, credited to you. A founding project starts on a Care & Hosting plan at launch, at the standard price for the plan you choose, which you can cancel at any time under section 21. Founding clients are scheduled like every other client.

Because being featured is half of what is exchanged, the opt-out in section 18 does not apply to a founding project. You agree at kickoff that the site may be shown as Velcrest work, with your name on it, for as long as we choose to show it. Everything else in section 18 still applies: the public site only, nothing confidential, no business figures without your permission.

A founding project is not a discount. Standard pricing applies, to the build and to Care & Hosting.

20. Hosting and domains

Hosting: if we host your site, it runs on managed hosting we buy from a third-party provider. We keep an SSL certificate in place and take the backups described in your plan. We do not control that provider's network or hardware, and we do not promise uninterrupted availability or offer uptime credits.

Tools we use: we host, monitor, secure and maintain sites with industry-standard third-party tools and services — for example, an uptime-monitoring service that checks sites around the clock and alerts us when one stops answering. We choose those tools and may change them at any time without changing these terms, and we remain responsible to you for how we use them. Monitoring is part of the service we provide to you, not a separate product, and its alerts come to us. It tells us quickly when something is wrong; it does not prevent problems, and a failure or delay in a monitoring service is not by itself a breach of these terms.

Domains: wherever possible your domain is registered in your name, on an account you control. If we register or hold a domain on your behalf, it is yours on final payment and we will transfer it to any registrar you choose. Registration and renewal fees are payable to the registrar and are not part of your project price unless your agreement says so.

Moving away: you may move your site, your domain, or both, to any host or any developer, at any time. We will hand over your files, the domain authorisation code where we hold it, and a plain explanation of how the site is put together. There is no exit fee, and no lock-in beyond a minimum term you signed for (section 21). If you would rather we carried out the migration ourselves, we will quote that work first.

21. Care and hosting plans

Care and hosting plans start at $250 per month, billed monthly in advance. What your plan covers is set out in the plan description you accepted — typically managed hosting and SSL, daily automated backups, uptime monitoring, and small content and image updates on request. New pages, new features and redesigns are not included and are quoted separately.

Plans are charged automatically, unless a written exception lets you pay by check. You authorise the monthly fee set out in your plan agreement, plus West Virginia sales tax at the rate in force when each charge is taken, and any other charge that agreement's authorisation lists (such as Store upkeep charged by the day), to be charged to the card or US bank account you put on file with Stripe, on the same day each month (the 28th, where that day would be the 29th, 30th or 31st), starting on the date that agreement states (where the start date is the 29th, 30th or 31st, the first month runs until the 28th of the next month, when the second month is charged, and is charged in full), and continuing until you cancel. The card or bank account is held by Stripe, not by us; we never see or store a full card or account number. The amount, the date and the cancellation method are written into the plan agreement and you sign it before any charge is taken. Care plans have no minimum term. We give at least 30 days' written notice before we change the amount, other than a change you ask for in writing, which applies from the next billing date; you may cancel before a change we make takes effect.

Cancel any time. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the month you have paid for, and we do not refund part of a month. If you cancel, or if payment stops, hosting with us ends and you are responsible for moving the site. We will give you at least 30 days' notice before anything goes offline, along with your files.

If your site has a custom-order shop whose order system runs on our server, ending that service takes 30 days' notice, so orders your customers have already paid for are not stranded. Your plan agreement sets out how it ends.

We may change plan pricing with at least 30 days' written notice. You may cancel before the change takes effect.

Groundwork plans. Groundwork is a 12-month website plan with its own signed agreement, which wins where it differs from these terms. On Groundwork there is a 3-month minimum term; the last month paid with the first payment is not refunded if you cancel before month 12; the price is fixed for the 12 months; you pay monthly rather than as section 7 describes; and the site is licensed to you, becoming yours to keep only when all 12 months are paid, instead of as section 16 describes. If you leave earlier, the site files are not handed over, but your domain, text and photos always are.

Groundwork referrals. If a business you refer to Groundwork names you at sign-up and pays through its first three months, you receive one extra page of website work. You must be an active Groundwork client when it is earned. It has no cash value and no plan credit, is not transferable, and counts once per referred business; it does not apply to your own business. We may end this for future referrals; rewards already earned are honoured. If you recommend us publicly, say that you may receive a reward.

Local Growth monthly. An optional service for sites we host, with its own signed addendum, which wins where it differs from these terms: a 3-month minimum, a price fixed for its first 12 months, and it ends when hosting with us ends.

22. Confidentiality

Each of us may learn things about the other that are not public — business plans, pricing, customer information, credentials, internal documents. Each of us agrees to keep that information confidential, to use it only for the project, and to protect it with the same care we use for our own confidential information.

This does not cover information that is already public, that you or we already knew, that a third party shares lawfully, or that a court or regulator requires to be disclosed. It continues after the project ends.

Credentials you give us are used only for your project and are not shared. If you would rather change a password after launch, that is sensible practice and we encourage it.

23. What we promise

We promise that we will perform the services with reasonable skill and care, in a professional manner; that the work we create for you is original to us and, so far as we are aware, does not infringe anyone else's intellectual property; that we have the right to enter into this agreement; and that the finished site will substantially match the design and scope you approved in writing.

If we breach that promise, tell us and we will put it right at our cost. That is the remedy this warranty provides.

24. What we do not promise

We do not promise results. We do not promise a search ranking, an amount of traffic, a number of enquiries, or any level of sales. Those depend on your market, your pricing, your content, your competitors, and decisions made by companies none of us control.

We do not promise perfection or permanence. No website is free of every possible error, and none stays unchanged forever. Browsers, devices, third-party services and platforms change, and a site that is correct today may need attention later.

We do not give legal or regulatory advice. You are responsible for whether your business and your content comply with the law that applies to you — advertising rules, privacy law, accessibility requirements, and anything specific to your industry — unless your project agreement says we are doing that work.

Other than the promises in section 23, the services are provided as they are. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all other warranties, whether express, implied or statutory, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, and in that case they do not apply to you.

25. Limit of our liability

Our total liability to you for everything arising out of or connected with your project is limited to the total amount you have paid us for that project. For a care and hosting plan, our total liability is limited to the fees you paid under that plan in the 12 months before the claim. This applies however the claim is framed — contract, negligence, or anything else.

We are not liable for lost profits, lost revenue, lost business, lost or corrupted data, loss of goodwill, or any indirect or consequential loss, even if we were told the loss was possible.

Keep your own copies. Backups taken under a care plan are a convenience, not a guarantee of recovery. You remain responsible for keeping your own copies of your content and data.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law does not allow to be limited, including liability for fraud, for willful misconduct, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

26. Claims arising from your content

You will defend and indemnify us against any third-party claim — and any resulting loss, damages, settlement and reasonable legal costs — arising from the content, images, logos, data or instructions you gave us; from your use of the site after launch; from your products, services or business; or from your breach of these terms.

We will tell you promptly about any such claim, will not settle it without asking you first, and will co-operate with your defence at your reasonable expense.

27. Ending the project early

You may end a project at any time by telling us in writing.

We may end a project in writing if you do not pay, if we have been waiting on you for more than 30 days after asking, or if you ask us to do something unlawful or behave abusively toward us.

What is owed if you end it: the deposit pays for the place held in our schedule and for work already begun, and is not refundable once work has started. Beyond the deposit, you owe a fair share of the fixed price reflecting the work completed, less what you have already paid. We do not bill by the hour, so we will show you what was completed and what share of the price that represents, and discuss it with you before we invoice.

What is owed if we end it without cause: you owe nothing beyond the work already delivered, and we refund anything paid beyond that.

Either way, nothing we have made transfers to you unless the fees for it are paid. If you pay for partial work, you own that partial work on the same terms as section 16. Sections 11, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 24, 25, 26, 30 and 33 survive the end of this agreement.

28. Events outside our control

Neither of us is liable for a failure or delay caused by something genuinely outside our reasonable control — serious illness, death, natural disaster, war, civil unrest, government action, strikes, a failure of the power grid or the internet, or an extended outage at a hosting, infrastructure, domain or monitoring provider. The affected party will tell the other as soon as practical and both of us will agree a revised schedule. If the event continues for more than 60 days, either of us may end the project and settle what is owed under section 27.

Velcrest is a small business. If the person leading your project becomes seriously ill or otherwise unavailable and the work cannot be reassigned, we will tell you promptly, give you your files, and either arrange a hand-over or end the project under section 27 with fees settled fairly.

29. Our relationship

We are an independent contractor. Nothing here creates an employment relationship, a partnership, a joint venture, or an agency between us, and neither of us may bind the other or hold ourselves out as able to. We may work for anyone else, including businesses in your industry, subject to section 22.

30. Governing law and disputes

These terms, and any dispute arising from them or from your project, are governed by the laws of the State of West Virginia, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Talk first. Before either of us starts a legal proceeding, we agree to raise the problem in writing and try in good faith to resolve it for 30 days. Most disagreements about a website are a misunderstanding about scope, and a phone call settles them.

Then mediation. If 30 days of talking does not resolve it, we both agree to try one session of mediation before filing anything. Either of us starts it by writing to the other; if we cannot agree on a mediator within 14 days of that notice, either of us may ask the West Virginia State Bar to appoint one. The session takes place in Monongalia County, West Virginia, or by video if we both prefer, within 60 days of the notice, and we share the mediator's fee equally. If one of us refuses to take part, the other may go straight to court and may ask the court to take that refusal into account when it allocates costs. Either of us may skip this step entirely to seek an urgent injunction, or to bring a claim small enough for magistrate court.

Where a dispute is heard. If mediation does not work, any claim must be brought in the Circuit Court of Monongalia County, West Virginia, or — where a case belongs in federal court — in the United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia. We both agree those courts have personal jurisdiction over us and neither of us will object to that venue.

If you are outside the United States, this section still applies. You may also have rights under the law where you live that an agreement cannot take away, and nothing here removes them.

31. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The version on this page is always the current one, and the date at the top says when it last changed.

A change applies to projects and plans that begin after it is posted. The version in force when your project agreement was signed continues to govern that project, unless we both agree in writing to move to the new one. For care and hosting plans, we will give you at least 30 days' notice of a change that affects you, and you may cancel before it takes effect.

32. Severability, waiver and transfer

If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, that part is narrowed or removed only as far as necessary and the rest stays in force. If we do not enforce something immediately, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.

You may not transfer this agreement to someone else without our written consent, which we will not unreasonably withhold — if you sell your business, we will normally consent. We will not hand your project to another provider without telling you first.

33. The whole agreement

Your project agreement, any plan agreement, any written quote or brief we both accepted, these terms and our Privacy Policy together form the entire agreement between us about your project and any plan, and replace anything discussed or written beforehand. Nothing said in conversation, email or a proposal changes them unless we both put it in writing.

Where your signed project agreement and these terms conflict, the project agreement controls.

34. Reaching us

Questions about these terms, or about anything in your project, go to a person, not a ticket queue. You will generally hear back within one business day.

Email: info@velcrestwebdev.com
Phone: (304) 602-3470, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM Eastern
Fax: (304) 407-4850
Location: Morgantown, West Virginia, United States