DOC Legal
The arrangement between Avantis and a client, in plain words. Nothing here is a substitute for the written quote you are given, which takes precedence wherever the two differ.
Last updated 28 September 2026
A quote describes what is being built, what it costs and roughly how long it will take. It is valid for thirty days. Work begins once the quote is accepted and the build deposit has cleared.
The deposit is non-refundable, because it pays for the discovery and design work that happens before anybody sees a page.
The monthly fee covers hosting, the SSL certificate, the email addresses included in your package, ongoing maintenance, fixing problems, and minor changes. It is payable monthly in advance.
Either side may end the arrangement with one month's written notice.
Every change you ask for is sized as minor or major when you raise it in the customer portal, and the portal tells you which, and why, before you send it.
Minor changes are included in your package: new wording, swapping images, prices, products and opening hours, contact details, a news post, a replacement document, a fixed or new link, and small adjustments to the look of something that already exists.
Major changes are charged at £16 an hour: a new page, a redesign, a new feature or form, an online shop, payments or bookings, connecting another service, reorganising the site, or anything that touches lots of pages at once. The rate is the one in force on the day the request is raised.
For a major change you are sent an estimate first, and no chargeable work starts until you have accepted it in the portal. You pay for the time actually spent: if it takes less, you pay less, and if it looks like running over the estimate, you are asked before any more is done. If a change raised as minor turns out to be bigger than it looked, you are told before anything you would pay for. Nobody is ever billed for something they did not agree to first.
Problems and changes are raised through the customer portal, so each one has a reference, a history and somebody looking after it. Requests sent by WhatsApp, text or other messaging apps are not tracked and may be missed, so please use the portal. If your site is down, raise it there and ring as well.
The aim is to fix a problem within 1 day and to complete a change within 14 days of it being raised. These are targets rather than guarantees, and the time does not count while a request is on hold — waiting on something from you or from somebody else — or waiting for payment for a major change.
Using the portal is covered by the customer portal policy, and what is kept about you by the privacy policy.
On final payment, the design and code of your site are yours outright. So is the domain — it is registered in your name from the start, and a transfer code is yours for the asking, without a fee and without a conversation about staying.
Third-party components keep their own licences, and stock photography is licensed to the site rather than assigned.
Supplying the content, and having the right to use it. Images taken from a search engine are somebody's property and a claim for one lands with the business that published them, not with the developer who was handed a folder.
Keeping your portal and email passwords to yourself, and telling us straight away if you think somebody else has got into an account.
Hosting is provided through a third-party provider and is subject to their availability. Backups are taken daily and kept for thirty days. No guarantee of continuous availability is offered, and no liability is accepted for loss of profit, business or data arising from downtime.
Liability in any circumstance is limited to the fees paid in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death, personal injury, or fraud.
The technical groundwork for search is included, and it is done properly. No promise is made about where a site ranks, because nobody controls that. Anybody who does promise it in writing is either guessing or selling you something that will eventually cause you a problem.
The free edition is provided as it is, without warranty. It may be used for personal and business work at no charge and may not be resold or redistributed as part of another product.
Avantis Pro is a licence, not a separate download, bought from editor.avantis.org.uk for £7.50 per month. It is for one person on the machines they personally use, and lasts for as long as it is paid for. Keep your own backups of anything that matters, as you would with any software.
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.