Terms of Service

1. Who We Are and How You Agree

These Terms of Service, together with our Privacy Policy, are the agreement between you andBuilt By Duo LLC ("Built By Duo," "we," "us," or "our"), a limited liability company operating from Ludowici, Georgia. The company is the party you are contracting with, not any individual who works in it. Where you agreed to these terms before the company was formed, the company adopts that agreement on formation and becomes the party to it, so nothing you agreed to is left hanging on an individual.

Texting on your behalf. If your plan includes a tracked phone number, you authorize us to send a missed-call text back from that number when a caller is not answered, and to pass replies to you. Those messages go only to people who called you first. Carriers require the business whose number sends the message to be registered in its own name, so before we can turn this on we will need your business details to complete that registration, and your own site will carry the texting terms and privacy notice for it. If you want us to send anything else from your number, including promotions or reminders, that is a separate conversation and it is your responsibility to have the consent for it. We will not send it without that.

How You Agree. Before you claim a site or start a plan, paid or free, you tick a box confirming you have read and agree to these terms, our Privacy Policy, and, where your plan includes text messaging, our SMS Terms. The box is never pre-ticked. We record that you ticked it, which version you agreed to, and when. Nothing of yours is ever billed until you have ticked it yourself. If we set an account up for you by hand before you have done that, our records mark the acceptance as ours rather than yours, and nothing is charged until you tick it. Ask us any time and we will show you the record.

You Can Sign for Your Business. By agreeing, you confirm you are at least 18 and that you have the authority to enter this agreement on behalf of the business you are signing up.

Who These Terms Cover. They are an agreement with people who tick the box: clients, and anyone who claims a preview site we built. If you are only reading builtbyduo.com you have not agreed to anything, and the only part that concerns you is how we handle your data, which is in the Privacy Policy. Sections 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13 keep applying after you leave; see Section 13.

2. What We Do

Built By Duo builds and runs websites for owner-operators and service businesses. Depending on your plan, that includes:

• Website design and development
• Hosting, security, and technical support
• Ongoing maintenance, updates, and content changes
• Google Search and Maps visibility work
• Analytics, call tracking, and lead capture

What your plan includes is the plan description shown on the page where you signed up, beside the price and the box you ticked, and repeated in your welcome email. That description is part of this agreement, so there is always a written answer to "what does the plan actually buy." Anything beyond it is quoted separately and agreed in writing before we start.

How We Build and Run Your Site. We choose the tools, platforms, hosting, domain registrars, payment processors, and software behind your site, and we may change any of them at our discretion, at any time, without your approval. What we owe you is the result: your site stays online, stays yours, and keeps every ownership right in Section 3. How we deliver that is our call, the same way a builder picks their own suppliers.

Where a change touches something registered in your name, or where it needs you to do something, we tell you first and walk you through it.

What "we keep your site online" means. We are responsible for our own work and for choosing capable providers, and we will fix what we can fix. We are not responsible for outages or failures at those providers that are outside our reasonable control, and we do not promise a specific uptime percentage. Section 9 sets out the limits.

3. Who Owns What

You Own Your Website. Your website is yours. On the monthly plan that is true from day one, with nothing to pay off first; there is no moment where ownership "kicks in." On custom project work billed as a project, ownership transfers when that project is paid in full. What you own includes:

• The design and layout we created for your business
• All written content, images, and media, whether you gave them to us or we made them for you, with one honest limit on machine-generated material set out in Section 8
• The custom code and functionality we built for your site
• Your domain name (see below)
• Every customer inquiry your site collects

Your Domain. If you already own a domain and connect it to us, it stays registered to you the whole time; we never take it. If you buy a domain through us, we register it and hold it for you in our registrar account so we can manage the technical settings without bouncing you between companies. It is still yours: tell us at any time and we transfer it to you, and we start that transfer automatically if you leave. We will not hold a domain hostage, and we do not charge to hand one over.

No Lock-In. You can move your website to another provider whenever you want. We give you the files, the content, and the credentials you need, and we do not build anything designed to trap you.

What We Keep, and What You Get to Use. We keep ownership of the general knowledge and techniques we use, of our reusable code libraries and templates, and of our own brand assets and internal tools. Your site is built on some of those templates and components, so when you leave you get a permanent, free license to keep using them as part of your site, including changing them and having someone else work on them. You cannot resell them on their own or use them to build sites for other businesses. Without that license, "no lock-in" would not be true, so it is not optional.

Studio Credit. Sites we build and manage carry one small footer credit reading "Website Built By Duo," linking to builtbyduo.com. It is a quiet signature, not a banner, and it never collects anything about your visitors. Keeping it is a condition of being on a Built By Duo plan, including the free plan. If it comes off a site we manage, we will ask you to put it back; if it is not back within 10 days we may move the site to the free tier, and that is the only consequence: we will not end your plan or take your site down over a footer link. If you would rather not carry it at all, ask us and we can usually agree an alternative in writing. And once you leave and take your site elsewhere, the credit is yours to remove; we will never ask you to keep it.

Showing Your Site in Our Marketing. Word of mouth and examples are how a two-person studio gets hired, so you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license, which we may pass on to people working with us, to reproduce and display screenshots and images of the site we built for you, together with your business name and logo, on builtbyduo.com, on social media, in advertising, in printed material, and in pitches to other businesses. This license continues after you leave, for work we produced while you were with us, so our portfolio does not have to be dismantled every time a client moves on.

Two things about that. We will not publish a case study containing your revenue, your customer numbers, or your business strategy without asking you first, and that one is a promise, not a courtesy. And if a specific use genuinely bothers you, tell us and we will normally stop that use; that one is a courtesy we choose to extend rather than something the license obliges us to do.

Your Customer Inquiries. When someone fills out a form on your site, that inquiry is yours. We store and deliver it for you and do nothing else with it. We never sell it, never use it to market to that person ourselves, and never share it with another one of our clients. Ask any time and we export your inquiries to you; we include an export automatically if you leave. We keep them for as long as you are with us plus 12 months, then delete them. The people filling out those forms are your customers, and telling them how their information is handled is your responsibility as the business they contacted; we give you accurate notice text for your site so you have something correct to publish.

4. Payment

The Monthly Plan.

• Billed in advance, on the same day each month or each year depending on the plan you chose
• Paid by credit or debit card through our payment processor
• Cancel any time, with no notice period; cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for, and nothing further is charged
• On your card statement it appears as BUILTBYDUO

Your Authorization to Charge You. When you start a plan, you are authorising us to charge the card you gave us, automatically, on the same schedule, until you cancel. You confirm the card is yours to use, that the details are accurate, and that you will keep them current. That authorization stays in force for every renewal; we do not ask again each month. If a charge fails we may retry it and may pause your service until the balance clears, except where the failure is a payment you have disputed with your bank, in which case "Disputes With Your Bank" below applies and your service keeps running.

What You Are Paying For. The plan is a service, not a product you take delivery of once. It covers your site being online, hosted, monitored, maintained, updated, and supported for that month, whether or not you asked us for anything. Some months you will need three changes and some months none; both are covered, and the site was being watched either way.

Project Work. Where we agree a separate project, we will set out the price and the payment schedule in writing before starting. A deposit is non-refundable once work has begun, but we will apply it to a revised scope if the project changes.

Price Changes. We may change our prices. If your plan price goes up, we will tell you at least 30 days before it takes effect, and you can cancel before then rather than pay the new price. We will not change the price of a period you have already paid for.

Taxes. Prices exclude any sales, use, or similar taxes. Where we are required to collect them, they are added to your invoice.

Late Payment. Overdue amounts carry interest at 1.5% a month, or the most the law allows, whichever is lower. If we have to involve a lawyer or a collection agency to recover an unpaid balance, you cover the reasonable cost of that, and we will give you any notice the law requires first. We would rather call you.

30-Day Refund on Plan Payments. If you are not happy in your first 30 days on the plan, tell us and we refund every plan payment you have made, no questions asked, whatever the reason and however the relationship ended. The 30 days run from your first payment, not from whenever you first got a free site from us. You keep the free Built By Duo version of your site, and if a domain was registered for you it is yours to keep.

What the Refund Covers. The refund covers what you paid us for the plan, less what your domain cost. A domain is not a service we can stop providing: the moment you choose one we buy it, for a year, and that money is gone the same day. The domain is yours to keep whatever happens after that, so we subtract what it cost rather than pay for a name you take with you. On an ordinary domain that is around eleven dollars. The same goes for the one-time charge on a domain priced above the standard one your plan includes, and for anything else we buy for you and pass through at cost. Everything you paid for the plan itself comes back.

You are never charged for the domain twice, and we never hold it back to keep you. It is registered for you, it stays yours, and we will transfer it whenever you ask.

After the First 30 Days. If we cannot deliver what we promised, we refund the unused part of the period, prorated to the days remaining.

If You Think a Charge Is Wrong. Tell us first. Email hello@builtbyduo.com or call or text (912) 800-8181 and we will look at it the same way we would want it looked at for us. If we billed you in error, we refund it. If you are inside the 30-day window, you get every plan payment back, no questions asked, on the terms set out above. We would much rather fix it directly than have a bank decide it for us.

Disputes With Your Bank. If you do raise a dispute with your card issuer, your site stays online and your service keeps running; we are not going to take a small business offline over a billing argument. We may present our records to your bank or the card network, including your acceptance of these terms, what we delivered, and your live website. If disputes are repeated after we have already sorted the first one out, or if a dispute is decided in our favour, we may ask you to settle the balance and the processor's dispute fee before service continues. Nothing here takes away any right you have under law. We only ask for the phone call first.

5. Building, Changing, and Maintaining Your Site

Getting Started. We build your initial site promptly and send you a link to review. More complex projects take longer, and we will say so up front.

Changes You Ask For. Ask and we change it. We keep revising the first build until it matches what we agreed and you are happy with it. If we do not hear from you for 14 days after sending you a preview, we treat the build as accepted and move you onto ongoing plan support, which still covers changes every month for as long as you are with us. Accepting the build is not you giving up anything; it only marks the end of the initial build. Genuinely new scope, meaning work beyond what your plan or your written project agreement covers, needs a separate quote, which we agree with you in writing before doing it rather than after.

The Build Log. On a custom build, what you ask for and what we agree is written down on a build log, and that log is the project's record. Everyone you bring onto the project reads it and writes to it, and each of them sees the others' names, words and files. Alongside it we keep detail nobody on the project sees, so that "who approved this" has an answer if the work is ever disputed: an IP address, browser and device detail, and a fingerprint. We delete that detail three years after we record it, and sooner if you ask. What you wrote stays, because it is the shared record the work was agreed on. The Privacy Policy sets out both halves field by field, and it states the same three years as this paragraph.

What We Need From You. Timely delivery depends on you getting us content, feedback, and approvals within about 5 business days of our asking. If that slips, the timeline slips; nothing else about this agreement changes, and in particular it does not affect your refund or your right to cancel.

Maintenance We Do Without Asking. Keeping your site fast, secure, and working is what the plan pays for, so we get on with it. Without prior approval or notice we may apply security patches and software updates; move your site between hosting, build, or delivery systems; adjust technical settings for speed, uptime, accessibility, or search visibility; fix bugs and broken links; and update the underlying code, templates, and components your site is built on.

Improvements We Tell You About. Your visible content is a different matter, because it is your voice. We may update your copy, images, layout, or design on our own initiative, and when we do we tell you what changed. If you do not like it, say so and we put it back. No charge, no argument, no waiting.

Which Rule Applies. Some maintenance changes how your site looks, because updating a template or fixing an accessibility problem can move things around. When a change is technical in purpose, the maintenance rule applies and we may make it without asking. When a change is about what your site says or how it is presented to your customers, the improvements rule applies and we tell you. Either way, if a visible change lands that you do not like, tell us and we put it back, free. That promise covers both.

Emergencies. If something on your site creates a legal, security, or platform-compliance problem, we may change or remove it immediately and tell you as soon as we can afterwards. This is the one case where "we put it back" does not apply: we cannot restore something we had to remove because it created a legal, security, or platform-compliance problem. Routine maintenance, including security patching, is never an emergency and never escapes the promise. We will explain why and help you find a version that works.

6. Your Side of the Deal

Content You Give Us. When you send us text, photos, logos, reviews, or anything else for your site, you confirm you own it or have permission to use it, that it is accurate and not misleading, and that using it does not break anyone else's rights or any law that applies to your trade.

Claims About Your Business. You are the expert on your trade, so you are responsible for the accuracy of what your site claims about it: your license numbers, "licensed and insured," warranties, pricing, guarantees, and anything your industry regulates. Check what we publish for you. If something is wrong or not allowed, tell us and we fix it immediately, and we may remove a claim we believe is not compliant.

Acceptable Use. You may not use our services for anything illegal, deceptive, or harmful. That includes adult content, counterfeit goods, malware, spam, deceptive offers, and any business our hosting providers or payment processor prohibit, whose rules apply to your site through us. We may suspend or remove content, or end your service, for a serious or repeated breach of this.

What Not to Collect Through Our Forms. Without agreeing it with us in writing first, do not use our forms or systems to collect Social Security or government ID numbers, full card or bank account details, health or medical information, biometric data, precise location, or information about anyone under 13. If your business genuinely needs to collect any of that, tell us and we will either set it up properly or tell you honestly that we are not the right fit.

If a Provider Takes Something Down. Our hosting, domain, and payment providers each have their own rules. If one of them suspends or removes something because of your content or your conduct, we are not responsible for that suspension, your plan fees keep running, and we will help you sort it out.

Your Google Business Profile. If we manage your Google Business Profile, you authorize us to act for you on it. We ask for delegated access rather than your password, because sharing a password to your Google account is a bad idea for both of us. You are responsible for the accuracy of your listing details and for following Google's rules; if Google suspends or changes your listing, that is between you and Google, and we will help where we can. The listing stays yours and our access ends when you leave.

Calls and Texts. If your plan includes a tracking phone number or text messaging, calls and texts to it may be routed through our provider and connection details recorded. When you contact the leads your site brings in, you are responsible for following the rules on calling and texting people, including consent where it is required. Do not use anything we provide to send unsolicited bulk messages.

Talking to Each Other. We will be straight with you, keep our word, and treat you decently. We ask the same. We may end the relationship over abuse of our people, and you may end it over anything at all.

7. Cancelling and Ending

The No-Hostage Guarantee. You may cancel any time, effective at the end of the period you have already paid for. Do it yourself from your client portal, in about a minute, or send a message to hello@builtbyduo.com or a text or call to (912) 800-8181. We will ask once why you are leaving, because it is the only way we find out what we got wrong, and you can decline to say. We will show you one alternative if there is a real one, and the button that ends it is on the same page, the same size. When you cancel:

• Your domain is transferred to you
• Your complete site export is free
• A free version of your site stays online at your Built By Duo address
• Your customer inquiries are exported to you

Cancelling is a downgrade, never a deletion, and nothing you own is held back. Nothing elsewhere in this agreement makes that conditional, with one exception, set out in "If We End It" below.

The Free Site. The free Built By Duo address costs you nothing and we intend to keep it that way. If we ever have to stop offering the free tier, we will give you at least 90 days' notice and a full export so you can move it somewhere else. We are not going to switch it off one morning.

Handover. When you leave we give you your website files and content, the credentials for third-party accounts we set up in your name, and documentation of how your site is put together, plus an hour of help getting settled elsewhere. Shared systems we run for all our clients are not handed over, because they are not yours to receive; everything specific to you is.

Project Work in Progress. You may stop a project at any time. You pay for the work completed to that point at the price we agreed in writing, less any deposit already paid.

If We End It. We may end services for non-payment after telling you and giving you 10 days to fix it, or immediately for illegal use, a serious breach of Section 6, or abuse of our people.

If we end it for any reason other than those three, we refund the unused part of what you prepaid, your free site stays online, and your domain still transfers to you. If we end it for one of those three, we still transfer your domain and give you your full export, because those are yours; what we will not do is keep hosting a site we had to shut down. Your 30-day refund under Section 4 applies either way.

Where you stopped a project part-way and the deposit is larger than the work completed, the deposit is not refunded, as Section 4 says.

8. What We Promise, and What We Do Not

What We Promise. We do the work carefully and competently. We keep the sites we host online, on the terms set out in Section 2. We keep the No-Hostage Guarantee in Section 7 and the 30-day refund in Section 4. We revise your site until it matches what we agreed, and we put back any visible change of ours that you do not like, free. The only thing we cannot put back is an emergency change under Section 5, meaning something we had to remove because it created a legal, security, or platform-compliance problem. Routine security patching is not that, and it never limits this promise.

Support. Managed plans include support for problems with what we built. That covers fixing our work; it does not cover building new features or repairing third-party services that are not ours.

No Guarantee of Results. We guarantee the work and your ownership. We do not guarantee search rankings, traffic, leads, or sales; nobody honestly can, and anyone who does is selling you something.

Accessibility. We follow good accessibility practice, but we do not warrant that your site meets any particular accessibility standard or law. If you need a formal conformance review or remediation, we are happy to quote for it as separate work.

Software That Writes Copy. We use automated tools, including AI, to help draft site content and to build faster. Everything published for you passes a human check, and we own or license what we deliver so far as we are able. Because AI-generated material may not carry copyright, we cannot promise exclusive ownership of every generated sentence or image, and we say so plainly rather than promising something we cannot give. You are the last check on any claim about your own business; see Section 6.

Backups. We keep backups of the sites we host and we will restore from them where we can, but we do not guarantee that every version of everything is recoverable. Keep your own copy of anything irreplaceable; your export is free and always available.

9. Limits on What We Owe

10. Covering Each Other

11. If We Disagree

We are two people in Georgia who would rather solve a problem than fight about it.

Talk to Us First. If something is wrong, email hello@builtbyduo.com or call or text (912) 800-8181. Most things end here, usually the same day.

Billing Problems. Section 4 covers charges you think are wrong. Short version: tell us and we sort it out.

Mediation. If we cannot resolve it between us, we both agree to try mediation before going to court. We split the mediator's cost evenly. Either of us can still go straight to court for an urgent order, for example to stop something causing immediate harm, without mediating first.

Court. If mediation does not work, either of us can go to court. There is no forced arbitration in this agreement, and you never give up your right to a judge or a jury. Small claims court is always open to either of us, for any claim that fits there, without mediating first; a small claims case is brought where the party being sued is located, and the venue rule below does not apply to it.

Governing Law. Georgia law governs this agreement, without regard to its conflict of law rules, and court proceedings are brought in Long County or Liberty County, Georgia, where we are. We can agree in writing to somewhere else for a particular dispute, and unless we do, this is the venue.

Time Limit. Any claim arising from this agreement must be brought within one year of when the party bringing it knew, or reasonably should have known, about it. That year pauses while the steps in this section are under way and starts again 30 days after mediation ends, so talking to us first can never cost you your claim. This time limit does not apply to a claim under a law that sets its own deadline, or to our claim for fees you owe us.

12. Changes to These Terms

We may update these terms as our services and the law change. We do not need your approval, and we do need to tell you.

Notice. We will tell you about material changes at least 30 days before they take effect, by email or a clear notice on our website. The version and date at the top of this page always reflect the current version.

Your Choice. If you do not want the new terms, cancel before they take effect and nothing further is charged. Starting a new billing period after that date, or asking us for new work, means you accept them. Simply running out the period you have already paid for does not: if your cancellation lands after the change date, the terms you originally accepted govern the rest of that period.

On the Free Plan. You pay nothing, so cancelling is not much of a choice. If you do not want a change, tell us and we will give you your full export and keep your site online for 90 days while you move it.

What We Will Not Change on You. Changes to the liability limits in Section 9, to how disputes are handled in Section 11, or to any license in Section 3, in either direction, apply to you only if you tick a box saying so. Carrying on using the service is not acceptance of those three, whatever the rest of this section says. They decide what happens when things go wrong, and moving them under someone after the fact is not something we are willing to do.

Never Backwards. A change never applies to a dispute that has already arisen, or that either of us has already raised with the other, before the change takes effect. Those are judged by the terms that were live at the time. That includes changes to Section 11.

Which Version You Agreed To. Every version carries the version date at the top of this page, and we keep a record of which one you accepted and when. Ask us any time and we will tell you exactly what you agreed to.

13. The Rest of the Fine Print

The Whole Agreement. These terms, our Privacy Policy, our SMS Terms, and the plan description we emailed you at signup are the entire agreement between us, and together they replace earlier conversations, emails, and marketing about the same subjects. If we sign a separate written agreement with you and it conflicts with this page, that agreement wins for whatever it covers.

If Part of This Fails. If a court finds any part unenforceable, that part is narrowed to what is enforceable, or removed if it cannot be, and everything else stays in force.

What Survives. After this agreement ends, these keep applying: ownership and licenses (Section 3), amounts you already owe and the dispute-handling rules (Section 4), your content warranties and acceptable use (Section 6), the cancellation and handover promises (Section 7), the disclaimers (Section 8), the liability limits (Section 9), indemnities (Section 10, and what we do about an infringement claim), dispute resolution and governing law (Section 11), and this Section 13. Section 12 does not survive: once you have left, we cannot change the terms that governed your time with us.

Things Outside Anyone's Control. Neither of us is responsible for failing to perform because of something genuinely outside our control, such as a natural disaster, a war, a major internet or utility failure, or a government order. It does not excuse money already owed. If it lasts more than 30 days, either of us can end the agreement and we refund what you prepaid for service you did not receive.

Handing This Agreement On. You cannot transfer this agreement without our written agreement. We may transfer it if our business is sold or merged, and your rights under it come with you.

If We Ever Wind Down. We are two people, and it would be dishonest to promise to keep your site online forever without saying what happens if we stop. If we ever have to close the business, we will give you at least 90 days' notice, transfer every domain we hold for you, give you a full export and your credentials, and help you move. We will not simply switch things off.

Keeping Things Private. We keep your business information confidential, and we ask the same about anything of ours we share with you. This does not cover anything already public, and it does not stop either of us complying with the law.

Getting in Touch Formally. Formal notices to you go to the email address on your account, and are treated as received the day after we send them, so please keep that address current. Formal notices to us go to hello@builtbyduo.com. Anything else, just call.

Letting Something Go Once. If either of us does not enforce something in this agreement on one occasion, that does not mean we have given up the right to enforce it later. Being decent about a late payment or a missed deadline is not us waiving a clause.

We Are Not Partners. We are an independent contractor. Nothing here makes us partners, or makes either of us the other's agent or employee, and nobody outside this agreement gains rights under it.

14. Contact Us

Questions about any of this? Ask. We would rather explain it now than argue about it later.

Email: hello@builtbyduo.com
Phone or text: (912) 800-8181
Response time: quickly, on business days