The contract, before you ask
Most people never see the agreement until they are being asked to sign it. Here are mine, blank, in full. Read them now, on your own time, with nobody sitting across from you.
Every one of them ends with you owning your website. That is the part worth checking against anyone else you are talking to.
One-Time Plan, Website Redesign, or Custom Web App
Website Design & Development Agreement
You pay once and own the site. Covers scope, the 50/50 payment split, domain and DNS, revisions, ownership, and what happens if either of us walks away.
- — You own your domain at all times — never held as security for payment
- — Platform migration is included, and a registrar dragging its feet costs you nothing
- — Two revision windows, and anything under 30 minutes is free, always
Paying over a year instead of all at once — $1,900 total
Website Purchase Agreement — Monthly Plan
A payment plan for buying a website, not a subscription. 12 payments, then the site is yours outright, exactly as if you had paid once up front.
- — There is no thirteenth payment and no ongoing obligation
- — Pay it off early at any time — the total never changes
- — Stop after the third payment and you owe nothing further
Ongoing care for a site you already own — $100/month
Website Care Plan Agreement
Content updates, monitoring, security, and someone to email when something looks wrong. It does not affect ownership of anything.
- — No minimum term, no termination fee, cancel any time
- — Cancelling never takes your site down — you drop to Hosting Only at $25/month
- — You own the site. This agreement says so in writing.
Work beyond what we already agreed
Change Order
Quoted in writing, with the price and the effect on your delivery date, before anything starts.
- — Additional pages are $100 each; genuinely custom work is $50/hour
- — Nothing begins, and nothing is billed, until you approve by email
- — You will never receive an invoice for work you did not approve in advance
Don't understand a clause?
Every link above is plain markdown, not a locked PDF. Paste it into ChatGPT or Claude and ask what any section means. Send it to your lawyer. Ask me — but you should not have to take my word for it.
These are blank
Fields in double braces get filled in for your project before you sign — your business, your pages, your dates, your price. Nothing else changes.
Get your own advice
I wrote these to be readable, not to be clever. I am not a lawyer, and publishing them here is not legal advice. If a project matters enough to sign for, it is worth having someone of your own read it.