Terms & conditions

About these terms

These terms apply whenever you use our services: building a website or system, looking after it on a monthly plan, or anything else we agree to do for you. They also apply to your use of this website.

For each piece of work we send you a proposal: what we'll do, the price and the payment schedule. The proposal and these terms together make up our agreement. If the proposal says something different from these terms about that specific piece of work, the proposal wins.

Our Payments & refunds policy, Service level agreement, Acceptable use policy and Data processing agreement are part of these terms.

How we agree to work together

The first chat and your written proposal are free, and you don't have to go ahead. A proposal is valid for 30 days unless it says otherwise.

You accept a proposal, and our agreement starts, when you do any of these:

tell us you accept it by email, WhatsApp or any other written message;
sign it, on paper or electronically; or
pay the first invoice for it.

Agreements made this way are valid and binding under Sri Lanka's Electronic Transactions Act, No. 19 of 2006. The person who accepts must have the authority to do so for your business.

What we do

We do the work described in your proposal with reasonable skill and care. We choose the tools, methods and building blocks we use, as long as the result does what the proposal describes.

We don't hand the building work to other companies. We do rely on other companies for things like hosting, domain names, email and payments. See Accounts, domains and other companies. If a project needs a specialist we don't have, we'll only bring one in with your written agreement.

The proposal gives a target date. We plan our work around it, but it's a target, not a guarantee. It will move if you're late with anything we need, if you ask for changes, or if something outside our control gets in the way.

What we need from you

Good work needs both sides. You agree to:

give us the text, photos, logos, information and access we ask for, on time;
reply to questions and give feedback or approval within the times in the proposal, or within 5 working days if none is given;
name one person who can make decisions for your business;
make sure everything you give us is accurate, legal, and yours to use, including photos and text you didn't create yourself; and
keep the passwords and logins we give you safe.

If something we need from you is more than 14 days late, we may move the project to our next free slot. If a project is held up by you for more than 60 days, we may invoice the work done so far and close the project. Restarting it later is quoted as new work.

Changes to the work

Anything that isn't in the written proposal is a change. Before we build a change, we tell you what it will cost and how it affects the date. We only go ahead once you agree in writing. Nothing is added to your bill without your say.

Changes you ask for after you've approved a stage are changes too, for example a new design after you signed off the design.

Our fixed price

The price in your proposal is fixed for the work described in it. If the work takes us longer than we planned, that's our cost to carry, not yours.

The fixed price doesn't cover:

changes you ask for;
extra work caused by delays on your side, or by information you gave us turning out to be wrong or incomplete;
your domain name and hosting, which you buy and pay for yourself;
other companies' charges, such as paid plugins, SMS or payment fees, unless the proposal says they're included; or
VAT or other taxes, which are added if they apply.

Checking and accepting the work

When we finish a stage, we'll ask you to check it. You have 7 working days to tell us, in writing and specifically, anything that doesn't match the proposal. We'll fix those things and ask you to check again.

A stage counts as accepted when the first of these happens:

you tell us it's approved;
7 working days pass without written feedback from you; or
you start using it for real, for example when it goes live to your customers.

Small issues that don't stop the work being used don't delay acceptance. We still fix them as agreed.

Payments

You pay for build work in parts, and for monthly plans in advance each month. Invoices are due within 7 days. The details, including what happens if a payment is late and when refunds apply, are in our Payments & refunds policy.

If an invoice is overdue, we may pause work and, after giving you notice, suspend services until it's paid.

Who owns what

What's yours

Your content (the text, photos, logos and information you give us) stays yours. You give us permission to use it to do the work.

What we build for you (the design and code we create specifically for your project) becomes yours once you've paid everything you owe for that work. Until then, it belongs to us and you may use it only to review our work.

What stays ours

We keep ownership of our own tools, templates, reusable building blocks, methods and know-how, including anything we made before your project or outside it. Where these are part of what we deliver, you get a permanent licence to use them as part of your website or system. You can't sell or license them separately.

Other companies' software

Some parts may come from other companies or open-source projects. Those stay under their own licences, which we'll follow and tell you about.

Showing our work

We may show the work in our portfolio and name you as a customer. If you'd rather we didn't, tell us in writing and we'll stop.

Accounts, domains and other companies

You buy your domain name and hosting, in your own name and at your own cost. We'll help you choose them and set them up. They belong to you, not to us.

While we look after your website or system, we need admin access to your hosting and other accounts. When our support ends, we remove our access or hand the logins back to you.

Hosting, domain names, email, maps, payments and similar services are provided by other companies with their own terms and prices. You agree to their terms when you use them. We aren't responsible for their outages, mistakes, price changes, policy changes or decisions, though we'll do what we reasonably can to help when they cause problems.

Monthly plans

A monthly plan starts when your website or system goes live, unless your proposal gives a different date.
The monthly fee is for our support. It doesn't include your domain name or hosting, which you pay for directly.
What each plan includes, and how fast we reply, is set out on What it costs and in our Service level agreement.
Plans run month to month. You can cancel with 30 days' written notice. The fee for the notice period is still payable.
You can move to a bigger plan at any time. Moving to a smaller plan takes effect from your next monthly invoice.
We review plan prices once a year and give you at least 3 months' notice of any change. If you don't agree, you can cancel before it takes effect.

If you leave us

You're never locked in. Your website or system is your property, not ours. If you stop your monthly plan, our support stops (the checks, backups, fixes and updates), but the website stays yours. It keeps running for as long as you keep your domain name and hosting paid.

Once everything you owe has been paid, within 30 days we will:

give you a copy of your website or system and its data, in a common format;
remove our access to your hosting and accounts, or hand the logins back to you; and
hand over the notes someone else needs to look after it.

Extra help beyond that, such as working with your new developers, is priced with you first. After a monthly plan ends, we keep backups for 30 days and then delete them.

Fixing problems after launch

If something we built doesn't work the way the proposal describes, tell us within 30 days of launch and we'll fix it free. After that, fixes are included while you're on a monthly plan.

This doesn't cover problems caused by:

changes made by you, your staff or anyone other than us;
other companies' services, or your own devices and internet connection; or
use that goes against these terms or our Acceptable use policy.

No software is perfect. We don't promise that anything we build will be free of every error or never be interrupted. We also can't promise a particular number of visitors, customers, sales, bookings or position on Google. Those depend on many things outside our control.

Limits on our responsibility

We take responsibility for our work. But so that our prices can stay affordable, that responsibility has limits.

We are not responsible for:

lost profits, sales, bookings, customers, business or goodwill;
damage to your reputation;
data you didn't keep your own copy of, beyond restoring our most recent backup; or
any other loss that is indirect or that we couldn't reasonably have foreseen.

Our total responsibility for all claims is limited to:

for build work: the amount you have paid us for that project; and
for monthly plans: the fees you paid us in the 3 months before the event that caused the claim.

Nothing in these terms limits responsibility that the law doesn't allow to be limited, such as for fraud.

When you cover our costs

If someone makes a claim against us because of something on your side, you agree to cover our reasonable costs, including legal costs. This applies to claims arising from:

content you gave us, such as photos or text you didn't have the right to use;
how you or your customers use the website or system;
instructions you gave us; or
you breaking the law, these terms or our Acceptable use policy.

Keeping things private

We each keep private any business information the other shares that isn't public, for example your customer lists, prices or plans, and our methods and pricing. We only use it to do the work together, and only share it with people who need it for that.

This doesn't apply to information that is already public, that we already had, or that the law requires us to share. This promise lasts for 2 years after our agreement ends. How we handle personal data is set out in our Privacy policy and Data processing agreement.

Hiring our people

While we work together and for 12 months afterwards, you agree not to hire or directly engage anyone who worked on your project for us without our written agreement. If you do, you'll pay us a placement fee equal to 25% of that person's first year of pay with you.

Pausing or ending the agreement

When we may suspend services

an invoice is more than 14 days overdue and we've given you notice;
the website or system is being used against our Acceptable use policy or the law; or
there's a security risk to you, your customers, us or our other customers.

Where we can, we'll warn you first. For illegal use or urgent security risks, we may act straight away. We restore services once the reason is resolved and anything owed is paid.

When either of us may end the agreement

the other seriously breaks the agreement and doesn't put it right within 14 days of being told in writing; or
the other can't pay its debts, or goes into liquidation or bankruptcy.

If the agreement ends, you pay for all work done and services provided up to the end date. The sections on ownership, payment, limits on our responsibility, covering costs, confidentiality and hiring our people continue to apply.

Things outside anyone's control

Neither of us is responsible for delays or failures caused by things outside our reasonable control, for example power cuts, internet or telecoms failures, natural disasters, extreme weather, strikes, government action, war, disease outbreaks, or failures of other companies' services.

Our obligations pause for as long as the problem lasts. If it lasts more than 60 days, either of us may end the affected work by giving written notice, and you pay for the work done up to then.

Changes, law and disputes

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. For work already agreed, we'll tell you about changes that affect you at least 30 days before they apply. Continuing to use our services after that means you accept them. A change never alters a fixed price you've already accepted.

The law that applies

These terms are governed by the laws of Sri Lanka.

Sorting out disagreements

If something goes wrong, tell us. Most problems are solved with a conversation. If we can't agree within 30 days, either of us may take the matter to the courts of Sri Lanka, which have exclusive jurisdiction. We may go to court at any time to recover unpaid invoices.

Everything else

Our agreement (the proposal and these terms) replaces anything said or written between us about the same work before it.
If a court decides part of these terms isn't valid, the rest still applies.
If we don't enforce a right straight away, we haven't given it up.
You can't transfer the agreement to someone else without our written agreement. We may transfer it to a company that takes over our business, and will tell you if we do.
We send notices by email to the address you use with us. You can send notices to hello@coredile.com.
These terms are written in English. If they're translated, the English version applies.