These are the Terms and Conditions of services provided to all clients of G4 Design House. By Signing your Agreement for our Web Services, you are agreeing to all the terms listed here.

These terms have been updated on 3/15/19

We may provide notices to you via either email or regular mail. The Service may also provide notices of changes to these Terms or other matters by displaying notices or links to notices to you generally on the Service. These Terms and the relationship between you and G4 Design House shall be governed by the laws of the State of California without regard to its conflict of law provisions. You and G4 Design House agree to submit to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located in San Diego, California. The failure of G4 Design House to exercise or enforce any right or provision of these Terms shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. These Terms constitute the entire agreement between you and us and govern your use of the Service, superseding any prior agreements (including, but not limited to, any prior versions of these Terms). You also may be subject to additional terms and conditions that may apply when you use affiliate or other services, third-party content or third-party software. If any provision of these terms or incorporated documents are found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties’ intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of these Terms remain in full force and effect. You agree that regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action arising out of or related to use of the Service or these Terms must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose or be forever barred. The section titles in these Terms are for convenience only and have no legal or contractual effect. You acknowledge and agree that you are each waiving the right to participate as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class action or representative proceeding. Further, more than one person’s claims may not be consolidated under any circumstances, in any form of any class or representative proceeding or otherwise.

At our discretion, these types of sites will not be made by G4 Design House.

  • Adult: involving nudity in a sexual context, exposed genitalia or adult themes
  • Copyrighted Content: music, movies or games that you do not own the rights to
  • Spam/SEO: a site whose sole purpose is to gain Google ranking, Facebook “likes”, etc
  • Phishing: a site meant to trick users into providing their username and password or other personal information.
  • Illegal Content: content which may be illegal in the United States
  • Scams: get rich quick, pyramid/MLM, or other dubious schemes
  • Excessive Advertising: placing excessive advertising on your site, including more than three ad units per page
  • File Hosting: including sites that are not created by G4 Design House
  • Injurious Experience: sites that provide a horrible user experience, such as extreme flashing banners, excessive animated movement, or content that could provoke seizures in unsuspecting visitors

The client must own the domain that they wish to use for the final website address (ex: www.g4designhouse.com). You may choose to buy one at any registrar you choose, although we recommend GoDaddy or eNom for the ease of management they offer.

You may request for G4 Design House to purchase the domain for you on your behalf. G4 has a reseller account with eNom.com and may purchase the domain via that account and help manage it for until such time that you need to transfer it to your own account.

As a courtesy, we will pay for the first year’s registration and the client will be responsible for the renewals of the domain each year after that. We will invoice the client prior to the renewal of the domain. If the invoice is not paid by the time the domain is set to renew, we will have to let the domain expire. This will affect the website as it will no longer be live once expired. The client will have to try and repurchase the domain. If for some reason someone else acquires the domain, the client will need to purchase a new domain for the site potentially affecting any marketing or SEO efforts done to acquire more website traffic. G4 Design House is not responsible for any adverse effect that is caused by this and is solely the responsibility of the client.

Should you have your website built from scratch or should you utilize the WordPress Platform? Here is some info to help you decide.

WordPress Pros –

Saves Money: WP is an Open-Source community of developers that have built hundreds of useful plugins to work within the WP CMS for all WP websites/themes. Because we can use these plugins, and not have to build them from scratch, it saves both time and money, and quite a bit of both.

Easy to Manage Content:  Since it has a built-in CMS that is very user-friendly and intuitive, managing the website content is very easy to do. So much so that even our clients, with a little training, can manage their own websites without the need for a designer.

WordPress Cons –

Updates: Themes, plugins, and WordPress itself are regularly requiring updates for security patches, new features, and repairs.  These updates can happen often, as in multiple times a month. Some updates may break certain features of the website and we will have to go in a fix them. This is no problem for a developer but could be problematic for someone that does not have the knowledge or experience.

Security-  Developers have actually done a really good job at creating security plugins that prevent spam and hackers. Millions of sites use these tools, but not everyone is privy to them existing. If you do use them, as we do, then you are pretty much safe, especially with good security features on your server. WordPress is a very large connected community in a sense and because of that, it draws more attention from nefarious people looking to do internet harm. Its a con really for any company or platform that is popular and is not unusual at all.

HTML Pros-

Proprietary: This isn’t always the case with an HTML site, but often times when someone is creating a business or product, they are creating something in an effort to provide a service or product that no one else is providing already. If that product is within the confines of your website as a feature or function of the site itself, then you are building something proprietary. With prebuilt plugins and CMS such a WordPress, it’s almost impossible to do that.

Set it and forget it:  A website built from scratch in HTML does not have to worry about updates which can potentially break something on the site. Generally, once it is completed, tested and functioning as it’s supposed to, you can pretty much leave it alone with very little upkeep and management.

HTML Cons –

Development time: It takes much longer to build an HTML website than a WP site, especially any functionality or custom requests. This is because you are hand coding all of the features and elements of the site and do not have the luxury of themes or prebuilt functions.

Cost: Since everything has to be developed from scratch and takes much longer, it requires more resources and development time. In some cases, you may have to use multiple developers and programmers to create a website that a single person could have made using WordPress. More people, plus more time, equals much more money to complete.

G4 Design House is not an email hosting company, nor do we support email. If G4 Design House facilitates the acquisition of emails (this can only be done if we acquire the domain for the client) on the client’s behalf through a third party email hosting service, it is for the sole purpose of providing additional service to you. The emails acquired on your behalf are intended to be used via webmail, which is the default email management account provided by the email provider. You may reach out to us for support on the webmail account and will forward the request to the email service provider on your behalf. G4 is not responsible for your emails or hosting them, so if issues arise support requests and complaints should be directed toward the provider and not G4.

A client may elect to use a third party email program such as Outlook. G4 Design House is not responsible for third party email programs, nor are they responsible to make sure that you are using such programs properly. G4 Design House may choose to assist you at your request, if we can, but cannot guarantee proper usage and settings.

A work order is a per job contract for a specific add-on feature, change or edit that is requested and usually involves either custom programming or custom graphic design. The work order must be signed and agreed upon and payment made prior to the work being initiated. For larger work orders payment may be split into half, one to initiate work and the other upon completion. This will be at the discretion of G4 Design House.

Part 1: We will not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, including but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data or other intangible losses (even if G4 Design House has been advised of the possibility of such damages), resulting from: (i) the use or the inability to use the service; (ii) the cost of procurement of substitute goods and services resulting from any goods, data, information or services purchased or obtained or messages received or transactions entered into through or from the service; (iii) unauthorized access to or alteration of your transmissions or data; (iv) statements or conduct of any third party on the service; or (v) any other matter relating to the service; or (vi) any issues with third party service providers. Our aggregate liability for all claims relating to the service shall not exceed the amounts paid by you to for the past three months of the service in question.

Part 2: By default, G4 Design House does not provide administrative access for Content Management Systems to clients unless we are assisting in transferring the site off our servers to a new hosting company. This is for security and liability reasons as well as to protect the content and code that was used to create the website. If you need to add anything to the site that cannot be done with the editor level user role, we will be more than happy to add it for you and in a timely manner.

G4 Design House may use third party services and /or companies for services such as server hosting, email, website plugins, domain purchases or other services to help facilitate the completion of your project. In most cases, G4 Design House is only acting on the behalf of the client to facilitate the acquisition of the product(s). G4 Design House is in no way responsible and cannot be held liable for any technical issues, complication or downtime that may occur. G4 Design House will not be responsible to provide any sort of credit, refund or discount of the services agreed upon due to problems with third party companies. We do promise that we will work with you and the company to resolve any issues and find an appropriate solution.

Emails / Domain: G4 Design House is not a registrar or email host. We may choose to facilitate the purchase and acquisition of these items on behalf of our clients. If G4 Design House purchases the domain or emails on your behalf without charging you, it is only for the first year and is a courtesy. Any renewals will be the sole responsibility of the client. G4 Design House cannot be held liable for any technical issues such as downtime, connections to third-party email clients such as Outlook or any other technical problems that may occur with these services.

Server / Web Hosting:  G4 Design House uses a third-party server company that’s only purpose is to house and host servers and data and because of that downtime should be minimal. However, there may be times that your website is down due to maintenance or upgrades. This will typically happen in the middle of the night, but on some rare occasions may happen during your business hours. There may also be downtime for unforeseen and/or uncontrollable issues such as power outages caused by weather, computer hackers with nothing better to do than cause problems, etc. We cannot control those issues and therefore cannot be held liable for any damages or loss. These issues affect us as they affect you and we hope they never occur and will do our best to help get them resolved as soon as possible.

Website Plugins – Since we use WordPress as our main platform for most projects we will use different plugins that help create user experiences, site functionality, e-commerce solutions as well as optimizing tools to give you the best end result that is possible. These plugins are created and maintained by a number of different developers and not by G4 Design House. Sometimes they are free and sometimes they have a cost. Any plugin that requires a one time or recurring fee is the sole responsibility of the client and not G4 Design house. Although we do manage your plugins and their updates, we are also not responsible if any plugins have technical issues, have incompatibility issues or cause any sort of date/content loss. We will do our best to assist with the technical issues, and/or put in a support ticket with the developer to get it resolved. Plugins can only be managed/installed /removed by Administrators of the account. Please see Limitation of Liability Part 2 for info on User accounts and Admin Roles.

We’re sure you understand how important it is for a small business that you pay on time each month as agreed upon. As we’re also sure you’ll want to stay friends, you agree to stick tight to the agreed payment schedule. You may also amend your payment dates if needed by contacting an account representative. All payment must be made using a credit/debit card only. Although you are responsible to contact us to update your information, we will issue a warning notice to you via email as well as telephone.

  • In the event that a payment gets returned declined /returned there will be a returned item fee added to the rescheduled payment.
  • Credit Cards – returned credit card transactions will incur a returned item fee of $15 and they will automatically be reprocessed the very next Monday.
  • Checking Accounts – returned checking account transactions will incur a returned item fee of $35 and will be processed the very next Monday.
  • You can avoid any such fee by contacting our accounting department at 1.800.667.7514 at least 3 business days prior to your scheduled payment to amend the date.

All clients will have a money back guarantee during the initial 30 days of their agreement. If for any reason you are not satisfied with our service or work that has been completed up to that point, you may contact us to cancel and receive a full refund of monies paid. Note: If G4 has created a logo for you and have provided the logo files, the 30-day money back guarantee still applies, however, any monies due you will be minus the cost of the logo as cancellation of the agreement voids the free logo offer. (average logo concept development costs: $600) After the 30 days (from the date of contract signing) you will no longer be eligible for a full refund. G4 Design House may decide to allow you out of the agreement and may provide a prorated refund minus costs for any work done up until that point, including a cancellation fee of $99. This will be at the sole discretion of G4 Design House.

What are Management and Hosting?

Management refers to the efforts by G4 Design House staff to keep your website working in good working order as well as keeping up with the security and update requirements put out by WordPress and the subsequent plugin developers that create the core functions of your site. This work is generally done each month and can vary from site to site depending on different factors such as the number of plugins, e-commerce versus not, etc. Since management requirements can fluctuate on a site and vary from site to site our management rates are based on averages of all of the clients.

Hosting refers to the website “living” on our servers after we develop, regardless if the dns and site are live on the internet. A website and its contents take up storage space and require bandwidth to operate. Not to mention all the backup copies we generate for each site. G4 Design House has multiple servers in order to accommodate our many clients. These costs are averaged out and included in the single management and hosting rate we charge.

Please note: G4 Design House wants to provide a great service and value to its clients. In most cases, we will not charge clients for minor changes they need to their site content. However, if a client needs significant changes that will take multiple hours of time on our end or even programming, we may require an invoice to be paid for the labor. This is a case by case basis and at the discretion of the project manager.

Our current management an Hosting rate is $99 on a month to month basis. This rate will begin the following month after the agreement is completed and on the same scheduled date as your website payment was for your convenience.  Our rates are always subject to change, but we will give you advance notice prior to any changes.

 

Inclusions:

  • Server Auto-SSL certificate (https versus http)
  • General Hosting /Storage up to 10GB
  • Plugin maintenance/updates  – keeping updated with security patches and enhancements
  • WordPress maintenance/updates – keeping updated with security patches and enhancements
  • Regular website backups
  • Contact Form support – assist with resolving email or notification issues not caused by the website itself.
  • Theme management/updates –  on an as-needed basis.
  • Minor content edits for text and image replacement (under 45 minutes per month for free)
  • Malware assistance – if your site is hacked we will assist in removing the infestation and recovering the website (non-premium version)
  • Regular access to a Project Manager via email or phone meetings.
  • Consulting for optimizing your website or marketing advice.
  • Onsite training post-launch for WordPress / eCommerce ( if applicable)

Cancellation of hosting services: after cancellation, if you are moving your website to a new host and we provide you the website files, we wil require a minimum two week (14 day) cancellation notice. This will help ensure that the website is officially migrated to the new host and working properly before we delete the website files from our servers permanently. Please be mindful of this policy as we will not offer refunds for hosting fees that are billed in that 14 day period since the website will still be using storage on our server during that period.

Websites, especially WordPress websites are vulnerable to nefarious attacks via bots or individuals looking to cause trouble and do harm. Although we do our best to protect websites on our servers with security plugins, SSL, and other common server side firewalls, there may be times when a bot or attacker is able to a find its way into your site via a plugin, weak passwords, or even WordPress itself. G4 Design House will work on the issue for you to clean out the malware, solve the issue created, etc., but note that we are not a dedicated security company and therefore this process can take a long time to alleviate. Any where from several hours to multiple days in some cases if the attack is bad enough.

For those interested we do have the ability to purchase software for your individual site that will monitor your website daily and can clean out the site within and average of 6 hours depending on the severity of the attack.once discovered.

12 Hour Monitoring: $349 / year (scan the site every 12 hours)
6 Hour Monitoring: $449 / year  (scan the site every 6 hours)

If you are interested in one of these options please contact your project manager.

If you require PCI compliance because your website is ecommerce or you collect certain types of data, you will need to let your project manager know you wish to make sure your website is PCI compliant. We offer a PCI compliance scan and comply service for $50 / month. This server will run a scan each month to make sure you are compliant and if there are any changes and you are not, we will correct those issues to make sure you are. You may also elect to do a a la carte scan and comply for a $75 one-time fee per scan. Any time spent to make your site complaint will be at rate of $100 per hour.

Compliance is not automatic just for signing up with G4 Design House, regardless of the type of website you have. It is your responsibility to make sure your site is compliant if you need it to be.