Terms & Conditions

Acceptance of Terms

These terms govern your use of the Smaoin website. By using our site, you agree to be bound by this Part 1. If you do not accept these terms, please refrain from using the site. If you’re a client engaging us for paid work, Part 2 below also applies to that engagement.

User Responsibilities

You agree to use this site lawfully and in a way that does not infringe upon the rights of others or restrict their use and enjoyment. Misuse of this site may result in legal action.

Intellectual Property

All content, branding, and materials on this site are the property of Smaoin Ltd or its licensors. You may not copy, reproduce, or distribute any content without express permission. This is separate from ownership of work we build for you as a client — see “Ownership of what we build” below.

Website Availability

We aim to ensure uninterrupted access to this website, but we may suspend, withdraw, or restrict access to parts or all of it for business or operational reasons. This is about the smaoin.co.uk website itself — the availability of hosted client platforms is covered separately under your care plan.

Website Liability

We work to keep the information on this website accurate and up to date, but we don’t guarantee it’s complete or error-free, and your use of it is at your own risk. We don’t exclude or limit our liability where it would be unlawful to do so — including for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud. Subject to that, Smaoin Ltd accepts no liability for loss or damage arising from your use of this website. Liability for commissioned work is covered separately in Part 2.

Who this applies to

We provide website builds, systems, hosting, and care plans to businesses and organisations — not to consumers acting outside a trade, business, or profession. If you’re engaging us in a personal capacity, some consumer-protection rights beyond this Part 2 may apply to you by law regardless of what’s written here.

Quotations & scope of work

A written quotation describes the agreed scope of work and is normally valid for 30 days unless stated otherwise. Work begins once you’ve accepted the quote (in writing, or by paying the initial deposit where one applies). Anything not described in the quote is outside scope.

Changes to agreed scope

If you ask for something beyond the agreed scope once work has started, we’ll quote it as a separate change request before doing it — so you always know the cost before we proceed. Change requests may affect the original timeline.

Content & materials you supply

If you supply us with logos, copy, images, or other materials, you confirm you have the right to use them and to let us use them for your project. You’re responsible for the accuracy of any content you provide. We’ll flag anything that looks like it might infringe someone else’s rights, but checking is your responsibility, not ours.

Payment

Payment terms — including any deposit and staged instalments — are set out in your project quotation. Invoices are due on the terms stated on the invoice. Overdue invoices may accrue statutory interest under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, and we may pause work or hosting until payment is brought up to date. We’ll always contact you before doing that.

Reviewing & accepting the work

Before anything goes live, you’ll get access to a private preview to review and approve it. If you don’t respond with feedback or approval within 14 days of us asking, we may treat the work as accepted so the project isn’t left open-ended. Approving the preview doesn’t affect any warranty period that applies after launch.

Ownership of what we build

Once you’ve paid in full for a project, the bespoke code we’ve written specifically for you is yours. Third-party components, libraries, and frameworks we use remain under their own licences (most are open-source) — we’ll never lock you into something you can’t take with you. We retain the right to reuse general-purpose tools, patterns, and know-how we’ve developed across our work, as long as we’re not reusing anything specific and confidential to your business.

Hosting, domains & cancellation

Hosting and domain renewals are billed on the cycle agreed at signup (typically monthly for hosting, annually for domains) and renew automatically unless cancelled. You can cancel hosting or a care plan at any time by giving written notice — see “Suspension & leaving” below for what happens next. Domain renewal cancellations need enough notice before the renewal date to avoid the domain lapsing; we’ll always remind you ahead of a renewal.

Backups & restoration

Hosted platforms are backed up automatically at the frequency and retention described on our Support page for your plan. Backups are a safety net for our infrastructure, not a substitute for your own copies of anything irreplaceable. Restoring from a backup may take time to arrange and isn’t instantaneous.

Security work & what’s excluded

Care plans include the security scanning, patching, and monitoring described on our Support page. This doesn’t cover: issues caused by changes you or a third party make outside our management, compromise of accounts or credentials outside our control, or vulnerabilities in third-party software before a vendor has released a fix. Where remediation falls outside your plan, we’ll quote it as separate work before starting. Monitoring runs continuously and outages are detected automatically, but we respond during business hours — Monday to Friday, 9am–5pm UK time. No plan includes a 24/7 response or a guaranteed time to fix; “priority response” on higher tiers means your issue is worked first within those hours, not outside them.

What’s included, and what’s chargeable

Your care plan covers what’s listed for your tier on the Support page — typically hosting, backups, monitoring, and the security remediation your tier includes. What’s always free is anything that’s genuinely our responsibility: a defect in what we built (within any warranty period), or a security issue covered by your plan.

Everything else — content updates, new features, and other change or support work not covered by your plan — is quoted and agreed before we start, so you always know the cost first. The response times on our Support page are how quickly we’ll respond to you; whether the work itself is chargeable depends on whether it’s covered by your plan or caused by us.

Website MOT report limitations

Our free scans and paid reports (Security, Health, Compliance readiness, and the combined Full Site Report) are automated, best-effort checks of what’s publicly visible at the time of the scan. They’re not a guarantee that a site is secure, compliant, or free of issues, and they’re not legal, security, or compliance advice — including the Compliance readiness check, which is an indicator, not a Cyber Essentials assessment or certification.

If you’re buying as a consumer

Most of Part 2 is written for businesses. If you buy from us as a consumer — for purposes outside a trade, business, or profession — you also have rights under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 and the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Paid reports are digital content delivered automatically, usually within minutes of payment. So at checkout we ask you to agree that we can start straight away and that, once your report has been delivered, you lose the 14-day right to cancel it. Before it’s delivered, you can still cancel for a full refund.

Free scans are free — there’s nothing to pay and nothing to cancel. Self-serve subscriptions (a care plan bought online) also carry a 14-day right to cancel, and are month-to-month with no minimum term — you can request to leave from your client portal, or in writing, at any time.

None of this affects your statutory rights if something you bought is faulty or not as described.

Your responsibilities as a client

You’re responsible for keeping your account credentials secure, responding to us in reasonable time when we need input to keep a project or a security fix moving, and making sure anything you connect to your platform (third-party services, integrations, plugins you manage yourself) complies with that provider’s own terms.

Suspension & leaving

We may suspend a hosted platform that fails our minimum security standard, as described in our Acceptable Use Policy — we’ll always give notice and work with you on remediation first. You can leave at any time with written notice; we’ll package a full data handover (database export, files, and codebase) so you’re never locked in — see how it works on the Support page.

Data protection

Where we host or manage a platform for you, you remain the data controller for your site’s data and we act as your data processor under a separate Data Processing Agreement, which sets out how we handle that data as UK GDPR requires. How we handle data where we’re the controller (your account, billing, and enquiries) is in our Privacy Policy.

Liability for commissioned work

Our total liability to you for any claim arising from a project or care plan is limited to the fees you’ve paid us for that engagement in the 12 months before the claim. We’re not liable for indirect or consequential losses (such as lost profits or lost business). Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud, or anything else that can’t lawfully be excluded.

Things outside our control

We’re not responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control — for example failures at the upstream providers we rely on (such as hosting, network, cloud, or payment providers), internet or power outages, cyber-attacks, or other events we couldn’t reasonably prevent. If something like that affects our service, we’ll let you know and work to put it right as soon as we reasonably can.

If part of these terms doesn’t hold

If any part of these terms turns out to be invalid or unenforceable, that part is treated as removed — or narrowed to the least extent needed to make it valid — and the rest of the terms carry on in full force. One clause not working doesn’t bring down the others.

The whole agreement

Your quotation and these terms — together with the Data Processing Agreement and Acceptable Use Policy where they apply — make up the whole agreement between us, and replace any earlier discussions. If they ever conflict: your quotation governs the scope and price of the work, these terms govern the legal terms, and the Data Processing Agreement governs how we handle personal data.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of Scotland, and the Scottish courts have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.

Scope of Care Plans & Hosting

Every plan is scoped for a single website on a single standard domain, sized for a typical small or medium-sized business. Running more than one site, unusually high traffic, complex integrations, or being part of a larger organisation — broadly, more than around 20–30 staff relying on the platform — falls outside a standard plan. If that’s you, get in touch before signing up (or before renewal) so we can agree a plan that fits. We reserve the right to review pricing, or move an account to a more suitable plan, where actual usage is materially outside what a tier is scoped for.

If something’s not right

If you’re unhappy with any part of our service, tell us — contact us and we’ll acknowledge it within 3 business days (Monday to Friday, UK) and work with you to put it right. If we can’t resolve it between us, we’ll set out the options for taking it further. For privacy or data concerns specifically, you can also contact the ICO — see our Privacy Policy.

Changes to Terms

We may update these terms from time to time. For general use of this website, the current version applies whenever you use the site. For an ongoing paid engagement (hosting or a care plan), we’ll give you reasonable notice of any material change before it takes effect, so you can decide whether to continue. This page was last reviewed in July 2026.