Terms of Service

These terms govern your use of carpenterwebworks.com and carpenterweb.works, including the client portal, and they form part of the agreement between Carpenter WebWorks LLC (“we”) and any client we build for. By using this site or accepting a proposal, you agree to them.

They do not cover the websites we build for clients once those sites are live and operated by their owners. Each of those is governed by whatever terms its owner publishes.

Who we are

Carpenter WebWorks LLC is a limited liability company registered in North Carolina and based in Gastonia. We design, build, and maintain websites and related software for small businesses.

What we provide

We offer website design and development in tiered packages, along with optional ongoing plans covering hosting, maintenance, and support. The specific scope, price, timeline, and deliverables for any engagement are set out in the written proposal we send you.

The proposal governs. Where anything on this site, in marketing material, or in conversation conflicts with your signed proposal, the proposal wins. Descriptions on this site are a summary, not an offer, and nothing here is a binding quote until it is in a proposal.

Proposals, quotes, and scope

A proposal is valid for the period stated on it. Where a tier price is described as a starting point or a floor, work beyond the baseline scope is quoted separately or billed at our published hourly rate, and we will tell you before that work begins rather than after.

Changes you request after a scope is agreed are handled as a written change to the scope. We will confirm the effect on price and timeline before doing the work.

Payment

• Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number.
• Project work typically begins on receipt of a deposit. Remaining amounts are due on the schedule set out in your proposal, which may include installments.
• Ongoing plans bill on a recurring basis until cancelled, and cancelling stops future charges rather than refunding the current period.
• Invoices are due on the date stated. If an account falls significantly overdue we may pause work and, after written notice, suspend a hosted site until the balance is settled.
• Fees paid for work already performed are not refundable. If we cannot deliver what was agreed, we will say so and refund the portion covering work not performed.

What we need from you

Projects stall on missing material far more often than on anything technical, so this matters more than it sounds. You agree to provide content, images, access, and feedback within a reasonable time, and to nominate someone who can make decisions.

You confirm that anything you give us, including text, photographs, logos, and trademarks, is either yours or licensed to you, and that we may use it to build and operate your site. You are responsible for that material being lawful and accurate. If a project is inactive for an extended period because material has not arrived, we may close it and invoice for the work completed.

Ownership

On full payment, you own the finished website we deliver for you: the design as applied to your site, the page content, and your brand material, which was always yours.

We keep ownership of the general tools, libraries, internal systems, and techniques we use across clients, along with any component we built before your project. You get a perpetual licence to use those as part of your site. Third-party components, including open source libraries, fonts, and stock photography, stay under their own licences.

Unless you ask us not to, we may show your site in our portfolio and name you as a client.

Client portal accounts

Portal accounts are for you and the people you authorise. Keep your credentials to yourself, and tell us promptly if you think an account has been compromised. We may suspend an account being used in a way that threatens the security of the portal or another client’s data.

Text messaging

Carpenter WebWorks client updates is an optional text message program for our existing clients. If you opt in on our text-updates page or in the client portal, we may text you about your own website project: project status updates, review and approval requests, invoice reminders, and replies to your support requests. We send up to 20 messages a month. Message and data rates may apply.

• HELP: reply HELP to any message, email support@carpenterwebworks.com, or call (302) 524-9679.
• STOP: reply STOP to any message to opt out. You can also withdraw consent on the Account page of the portal.

Consent to receive text messages is not a condition of purchasing anything from us. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. How we handle your number and your consent record is set out in our Privacy Policy.

How we use AI, stated plainly

We build with AI assistance and we do not hide it. AI models help us draft copy, generate imagery, caption photographs, and move projects through our internal pipeline. A person reviews work before it reaches you or goes live.

Two consequences worth stating rather than burying. Material you send us may be processed by the AI services named in our Privacy Policy in order to produce a result. And AI-generated imagery is not photography: where a picture on your site was generated rather than taken, we will tell you, and you should not present it as a photograph of your actual premises, staff, or completed work.

Domain search and affiliate links

The domain availability search on this site queries public registry records and reports what they say. It is provided as a convenience and without warranty. Availability can change between a search and a registration, and a name being unregistered does not mean it is free of trademark or other claims.

Links to register a domain are affiliate links, and we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. That does not change what the search reports. Registration itself is a contract between you and the registrar, under their terms.

Third-party services

Sites we build depend on services we do not control, including hosting, payment processing, email delivery, analytics, and domain registration. We choose them carefully and configure them properly, but we are not responsible for their outages, price changes, or decisions. Where a service is in your name, its terms are between you and that provider.

Acceptable use of this site

Do not attempt to gain unauthorised access to this site, the portal, or any system behind them; do not scrape, overload, or interfere with them; and do not use the intake form or contact addresses to send unsolicited commercial messages. We rate limit some endpoints to keep the site usable for everyone.

Warranties and what we do not promise

We will perform our work with reasonable skill and care, and we will fix defects in what we delivered when you report them within a reasonable period after launch.

Beyond that, this site and its content are provided as they are. We do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted or error free, and we do not promise any particular search ranking, traffic level, conversion rate, or business result. Anyone who does promise you a ranking is guessing, because the ranking is not theirs to give.

Limitation of liability

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential loss, including lost profits, lost revenue, lost business, or lost or corrupted data. Our total liability arising out of an engagement is limited to the amount you paid us for that engagement in the twelve months before the claim.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

Ending an engagement

Either of us may end an engagement on written notice. If you end one partway through, fees for work performed up to that point remain payable, and we will hand over the completed work on settlement of the balance. Ongoing plans may be cancelled at any time and stop at the end of the current billing period.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Gaston County, North Carolina, and we each consent to those courts.

If any provision here is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force.

Changes

If we change these terms we will update the date at the top. Material changes affecting existing clients will also be sent by email. Continuing to use the site or the portal after a change means you accept it.

Contact

Carpenter WebWorks LLC, Gastonia, North Carolina.
hello@carpenterwebworks.com