DOC Legal
The rules for our two client areas — the support portal here, and the billing area at shop.avantis.org.uk — covering accounts, support, payments, and what happens when something goes wrong.
Last updated 28 September 2026
One account per client. Keep the password to yourself, use one that is not used anywhere else, and turn on two-factor authentication where it is offered — the portal can order domains and change DNS, so it is worth protecting properly.
Tell us straight away if you think somebody else has got into it.
Invoices are issued monthly in advance and are due on the date shown. A reminder goes out before anything is suspended, and a second one after.
Services are suspended fourteen days after a missed payment and may be removed after thirty. Nothing is deleted without warning, and a backup is made available for thirty days after removal so nothing is lost while a problem is being sorted out.
Hosting is refundable pro rata within the first fourteen days. Domain registrations are not refundable — the registry charges for them the moment they are bought, and that money is gone whoever asks for it back.
Build deposits are not refundable once the work has started, for the same reason: it pays for time already spent.
No sending bulk unsolicited email from our hosting. No phishing, malware distribution, or content that is unlawful in the United Kingdom. No deliberately using more resource than the plan allows in a way that affects other sites on the same machine.
Where something has to be taken down urgently, you will be told what and why on the same day.
Support requests go through the customer portal, so that every one has a reference, a history and somebody's name on it. Anybody can create an account; each one is checked by hand and approved before it opens.
Problems — something that should work and does not — are covered by your package. You can mark one Low, Normal or High; the helpdesk decides when something is Urgent, so if your site is down, raise it and ring us as well.
Changes are sized when you raise them. Minor changes — new wording, photos, prices, opening hours, a news post, a fixed link — are free. Major changes — a new page, a redesign, a new feature or form, an online shop, connecting another service, or anything that touches lots of pages — are charged at £16 an hour. For a major change you get an estimate first, and no chargeable work starts until you have accepted it in the portal. If a minor change turns out bigger than it looked, we tell you before doing anything you would pay for.
Support covers the site and the hosting. It does not cover training on third-party software, or work on systems Avantis did not build — though if you ask nicely about one of those, you will usually get an answer anyway. The knowledge base has step-by-step guides for the everyday things.
One month's notice, and then you get everything: the files, a database dump if there is one, the domain transfer code, and a hand with pointing the records at wherever you are going. No exit fee and no retention call.