Terms of Service

My Usual Service Contract

Updated: September 2026

These Terms of Service (“Agreement”) are a legally binding agreement between the user or subscriber of the Services (“User” or “you”) and Johann Swanepoel, freelance web developer trading as Swan Design.

By acquiring the Services or by accessing or using the Services or Website, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by the terms of this Agreement. If you are entering into this Agreement on behalf of a business or other legal entity, you represent that you have the authority to bind such entity to this Agreement, in which case the terms “User”, “you” or “your” shall refer to such entity. If you do not have such authority, or if you do not agree with the terms of this Agreement, you must not accept this Agreement and may not use the Services. You acknowledge that this Agreement is a contract between you and SwanDesign, even though it is electronic and is not physically signed by you, and it governs your use of the Services.

Summary:

I’ll always do my best to fulfil your needs and meet your expectations, but it’s important to have things written down so that we both know what’s what, who should do what and when, and what will happen if something goes wrong. In this contract, you won’t find any complicated legal terms or long passages of unreadable text. I have no desire to trick you into agreeing to something that you might later regret. What we do want is what’s best for both parties, now and in the future.

IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THESE TERMS, YOU MAY NOT ACQUIRE OR USE THE SERVICES.

So in short;

You [customer name], located at [customer address]. You are hiring us, Swan Design (“I, Me, We or Us”) to:

  • Design and develop a website, and, or
  • Design a digital product, such as a logo, business card or brochure. or
  • To provide any of the services as explained on this website.

For the estimated total price of [total] as outlined in our previous correspondence / quote / estimate / invoice.

Of course, it’s a little more complicated, so here goes…

What Do Both Parties Agree To?

You: You have the authority to enter into this contract on behalf of yourself, your company or your organisation. You’ll give us the assets and information we tell you we need to complete the project. You’ll do this when we ask and provide it in the formats we ask for. You’ll review our work, provide feedback and approval in a timely manner too. Deadlines work two ways, so you’ll also be bound by dates we set together. You also agree to stick to the payment schedule set out at the end of this contract.

Me: We have the experience and ability to do everything we’ve agreed with you and we’ll do it all in a professional and timely manner. We’ll endeavour to meet every deadline that is set and on top of that, we’ll maintain the confidentiality of everything you give us.

Design Services

You can hire me for website development and digital design, which includes vector logo design, brochures, company reports, flyers, banners, social media headers, online advertising banners, business cards and printing.

You’ll have plenty of opportunities to review the work and provide feedback. I’ll either share a Dropbox, Google Drive folder, GitHub repository or development site with you and we’ll have regular contact by either phone or Skype.

If, at any stage, you change your mind about what you want delivered or aren’t happy with the direction our work is taking, you’ll pay me in full for the time I’ve spent working until that point and may terminate this contract.

Rates

My quotation or estimate will include the calculated time for me to complete the job. If for some reason, additional work or changes are required, an additional hourly (or in some instances, a daily rate) rate will apply.  During normal business hours, this is usually R350.00 for webwork and digital design work.

All invoices will include VAT.

Responsible A.I. Usage Clauses

Clause 1

Responsible A.I. Usage

SwanDesign may use A.I. tools to support research, ideation, troubleshooting, reporting, and production efficiency. In some cases, A.I. outputs may form part of the final deliverables or professional advice; however, all outputs are reviewed, refined, and approved by human professionals before delivery. A.I. is used to enhance accuracy, speed, and creativity within the project workflow, not to remove human oversight.

Final copyrightable creative deliverables are human‑approved and will not be delivered as raw, unreviewed A.I. output.

Clause 2

Human‑Led Feedback and A.I. Usage

Our strategy and creative process relies on feedback informed by your knowledge of your business, customers, and objectives. Human context, judgment, and experience are essential to creating effective work. While A.I. may assist you in brainstorming or organizing ideas, feedback submitted to SwanDesign must represent your own judgment and perspective.

Extensive lists of raw A.I.‑generated critiques, rewrites, or recommendations fall outside the project scope. If such feedback is submitted, we may request that it be consolidated into clear, human‑directed input before work continues, or additional fees may apply.

Clause 3

Confidentiality, Data Use, and A.I. Transparency

SwanDesign may use A.I. tools to assist with research, analysis, troubleshooting, reporting, and creative production. This may include processing client data such as analytics, sales data, advertising spend, page source data, error logs, email logs, server information, DNS records, and audit data. By engaging SwanDesign, clients acknowledge and consent that such data may be submitted to A.I. systems for the purposes of reporting, optimization, and project delivery.

  • Confidentiality: Client data will never be sold, shared outside project scope, or used to train A.I. models.
  • Liability: While A.I. tools may enhance efficiency and insight, SwanDesign is not liable for inaccuracies, biases, or limitations inherent in A.I. systems.
  • Transparency: SwanDesign does not routinely disclose when or which A.I. tools are used during the development process, but will provide disclosure upon request.
  • Human Oversight: Even where A.I. contributes to deliverables (e.g., SEO, troubleshooting, or content generation), all outputs are reviewed, refined, and approved by human professionals before delivery.

Content, copy and text content

Unless agreed separately, we are not responsible for inputting text or images into your content management system or creating content for every page on your website. Copywriting and editing services are a separate service, so if you’d like us to create new content or input content for you, we’ll provide an additional estimate.

Graphics and photographs

You should supply photographs in a high-resolution digital format. You should supply graphic files in an editable, vector digital format. If you choose to make use of generic stock photographs, we can suggest stock libraries or if you’d like us to search for specific photographs for you, we can provide and purchase these images as a separate line item on your estimate.

Websites

You contract me to develop a website for you because you’ve seen some of my existing work that you like or someone told you I’m not too bad at this sort of thing… whatever reason, I would like to buy you a coffee and discuss your requirements in order for me to come up with a proper solution.

I then present a couple of options and we make sure this ties in with your current branding plan.

Website development and testing no longer mean attempting to make a website look the same in browsers of different capabilities or on devices with different-sized screens. It does mean ensuring that a person’s experience of a design should be appropriate to the capabilities of a browser or device.

I test my work in the following categories to ensure a quality end product:

  • Usability (consistency, appearance)
  • Responsiveness
  • Metadata (images, social, Google Analytics inclusion)
  • SEO (crawler index, basic Yoast plugin setup, H1 tags, Google Search Console link)
  • Functionality (no broken links, logo links home)
  • Performance (page & site speed, SEO site checkup, mobileOK, optimised headers & images, enable page caching)
  • Security (SSL installation, spam prevention, site backups, updates if required)

Website Handover, Administrator Access, and Unauthorised Changes

  1. Access Levels & Purpose
    Upon completion and sign-off of your website, you will be issued an Editor-level login. This level of access is specifically designed for day-to-day content management, such as writing, editing, and updating blog posts or basic page text, without risking the core functionality or design of your website.Where requested, Administrator-level (“Admin”) access may be granted for specific administrative tasks (such as configuring third-party integrations, payment gateways, or accounting software). Admin-level credentials grant total control over the website’s code, plugins, settings, and structural architecture.
  2. Client Responsibility & Administrative Risk
    • Account Usage: Admin credentials must be stored securely and used only for intended administrative tasks. They must not be used for day-to-day editing or set as your default saved login in your browser.
    • Liability: Once Admin credentials have been issued to you or your representative, you assume full responsibility for any changes made to the website’s design, layout, code, database, security, or functionality under that account (or any other account created thereafter).
    • Plugin & Service Compatibility: Installing additional plugins, running updates without testing, adding custom code/snippets, or connecting third-party services can cause severe code conflicts, alter editor behaviours (e.g., overriding page layout or block editors), or break page layouts. You accept all risks associated with installing or modifying third-party tools.
  3. Scope of Repairs & Billing
    • Exclusion of Free Repairs: We do not accept liability for page errors, broken layouts, lost functionality, or service disruptions caused by Admin-level actions, unauthorised plugin installations, or third-party connections. We are under no obligation to diagnose or fix these issues free of charge.
    • Out-of-Scope Work: Remedial work required to restore, fix, or reconfigure a website following user error, plugin conflicts, or unauthorised modifications is strictly classified as Website Repair Work.
    • Maintenance Plans: If you hold an active Monthly Website Maintenance Agreement with us, Website Repair Work is explicitly excluded from your routine maintenance allocation. Monthly maintenance covers routine upkeep, core updates, and scheduled backups; it does not cover repairing site breakage caused by administrative intervention.
    • Hourly Rate Charges: All diagnostic and repair work resulting from Admin-level changes or third-party additions will be billed separately at our standard hourly rate. Work will commence upon your written approval of an estimated repair timeframe.

Rollback & Backup Limits

  • The Reality: Clients often expect that a quick “click of a button” to restore a backup solves everything. However, rolling back a site to a backup prior to their broken edit might mean losing recent shop orders, form submissions, or legitimate content updates made in the interim.
  • Restoring a website backup to fix an error caused by the client is considered billable repair work.
  • Rolling back a website may result in the loss of data generated between the backup date and the repair date (e.g., e-commerce orders or blog posts), for which I am not liable.

Third-Party Plugin Licensing & Security Risks

  • The Reality: Clients using Admin access often install “free” or nulled (pirated) plugins found online, which can introduce malware, bloat, or security vulnerabilities to your server environment.
  • Under no circumstances should or may you install unverified, pirated, or abandoned plugins. If an Admin-installed plugin compromises site security or causes a malware infection, the cleanup and security auditing will be billed at your emergency hourly rate.

      Third-Party API & Gateway Changes

      • I am not responsible for site breakdowns caused by third-party services changing their APIs, subscription models, or documentation (e.g., Google Merchant, Sage, Meta Pixel) after handover.

      Hosting

      That’s keeping your domain name (www.mybusiness.co.za) active each month.

      You may already have professional hosting and you might even manage that hosting in-house; if you do, great. If you don’t, we can offer you one of our hosting packages to keep your website online.

      New hosting services:

      • Register a new domain on your behalf (new domain registrations require an upfront payment before the service is activated).
      • Set up your site on a server.
      • Transfer your existing domain and hosting,
      • Activate any statistics software, such as Google Analytics
      • Setup site security
      • Keep monthly site backups
      • Take care of the monthly CMS / platform maintenance

      We will provide a separate estimate for this.

      Hosting & maintenance can be invoiced monthly (in advance), quarterly or annually, you decide.

      Hosting & maintenance do not include new or added web work, new blog articles and site changes.

      It includes me looking after your site security, updates, backups (last 30 days), fixing sudden issues, analytics tracking and SEO optimisation.

      Monthly hosting service fees differ according to website needs and requirements.  A basic small landing page is much cheaper to host and maintain than a bigger e-commerce site.

      Please note that if you are not subscribed to one of my monthly hosting & maintenance packages, you are yourself responsible for website backups, security and maintenance after handover.

      I use a reputable third-party service provider for hosting services.  I will do my utmost to ensure hosting issues are kept to a minimum and resolve any issues timeously.  Uptime might sometimes be affected by factors outside of my control, such as load shedding.

      Search engine optimisation (SEO)

      I can’t guarantee improvements to your website’s search engine ranking, but the pages that I develop are accessible to search engines. I do include basic SEO configuration in your website.

      Changes and revisions

      I don’t want to limit your ability to change your mind. The price at the beginning of this contract is based on the number of weeks that I estimate I’ll need to accomplish everything you’ve told me you want to achieve, but I’m happy to be flexible. If you want to change your mind or add anything new, that won’t be a problem as I’ll provide a separate estimate for those additional weeks.

      Legal Stuff

      I’ll carry out my work in accordance with good industry practice and at the standard expected from a suitably qualified person with relevant experience. That said, I can’t be held responsible for any third-party incompatibilities causing damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages.

      Your liability to us will also be limited to the amount of fees payable under this contract and you won’t be liable to us or any third party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages, even if we’ve advised you of them.

      Finally, if any provision of this contract shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this contract and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.

      Some Terms and Conditions apply.

      Intellectual property rights

      Just to be clear, “Intellectual property rights” means all patents, rights to inventions, copyright (including rights in software) and related rights, trademarks, service marks, get-up and trade names, internet domain names, rights to goodwill or to sue for passing off, rights in designs, database rights, rights in confidential information (including know-how) and any other intellectual property rights, in each case whether registered or unregistered and including all applications (or rights to apply) for, and renewals or extensions of, such rights and all similar or equivalent rights or forms of protection which subsist or shall subsist now or in the future in any part of the world.

      First, you guarantee that all elements of text, images or other artwork you provide are either owned by your good selves, or that you’ve permission to use them. When you provide text, images or other artwork to us, you agree to protect us from any claim by a third party that we’re using their intellectual property.

      I guarantee that all elements of the work I deliver to you are either owned by me or I’ve obtained permission to provide them to you. When I provide text, images or other artwork to you, I agree to protect you from any claim by a third party that you’re using their intellectual property. Provided you’ve paid for the work and that this contract hasn’t been terminated, I’ll assign all intellectual property rights to you as follows:

      You’ll own the website we design for you plus the visual elements that we create for it.  I’ll give you source files and finished files for digital designs, and you should keep them somewhere safe, as I’m not required to keep a copy. You own all intellectual property rights of text, images, site specifications and data you provided, unless someone else owns them.

      I’ll own any intellectual property rights we’ve developed prior to, or developed separately from this project and not paid for by you. I’ll own the unique combination of these elements that constitutes a complete design and I’ll license its use to you, exclusively and in perpetuity for this project only, unless we agree otherwise.

      Displaying our work

      I love to show off my work, so I reserve the right to display all aspects of my (or sometimes our) creative work, including sketches, work-in-progress designs and the completed project on our portfolio and in articles on websites and in magazine articles. I also include a unobtrusive link to my email address and website at the bottom of your new website.

      Payment Schedule

      I’m sure you understand how important it is as a small business that you pay the invoices that we send you promptly. As we’re also sure you’ll want to stay friends, you agree to stick to the following payment schedule.

      50% deposit.
      Balance on completion of the work.

      I issue invoices electronically to your preferred email address.

      Payment can be made via EFT into my local account for local payments, or PayPal account for international payments.

      Hosting services should be paid by the due date or at the latest on the last working day of the month. This service is paid for monthly in advance and is kept active if payment is received. This also includes your domain name, which needs to be renewed annually. Should you fail to make payment on time, hosting services will be suspended until such time as full payment is made. Failure to renew your domain name will result in you losing your domain name and it is not guaranteed that you will be able to recover the domain name from the registrar.

      Annual price increases may be applicable for domain names and hosting services.

      If you fail to pay an invoice, I reserve the right to cancel your subscription and access to the Services, and any data associated with your subscription or the Services.

      Service Cancellation

      Domains cannot be transferred away from the registered service provider within the first six (6) months of activation.

      Should you wish to cancel or transfer your domain away from my service provider during the first 10 months of service, you will be invoiced for the registration fees originally covered by my service provider. The cancellation/transfer will only take place once this invoice has been paid.

      Cancellation of the domain and/or hosting service should be given in writing (email) at least 30 days prior to the intended cancellation date.

      Once a domain is cancelled, it cannot be transferred to a different hosting service provider.

      Domains (including Parked Domains) will be cancelled in 30 days. If you have a domain linked to this package, it will be downgraded to a domain registration only after 30 days.

      A 30-day cancellation period applies and you will receive an invoice for the final month of hosting fees.

      Any hosting fees settled in advance will be refunded to you, taking the cancellation period into account.

      Your domain will expire upon its renewal date, after which time it will become available for public registration.

      If the renewal date falls within the 30-day notice period, the domain will renew and renewal fees are payable to the registrar and hosting service. Only after the renewal has taken place will the cancellation be actioned.

      But where’s all the horrible small print?

      * I do offer a free .co.za-domain registration if you use my monthly hosting service for the first 12 months.

      ** If you use your own hosting service provider, a registration fee of R199.00 (updated for 2024) applies. 

      *** Unfortunately I cannot be held responsible for downtime causing inaccessibility, loss of income or service disruption caused by Eskom’s load-shedding schedule. That’s out of my hands.

      Just like a parking ticket, neither of us can transfer this contract to anyone else without the other’s permission.

      We both agree that we’ll adhere to all relevant laws and regulations in relation to our activities under this contract and not cause the other to breach any relevant laws or regulations.

      This contract stays in place and need not be renewed. If, for some reason, one part of this contract becomes invalid or unenforceable, the remaining parts of it remain in place.

      The dotted line and consent to SwanDesign’s use of A.I. tools as described above.

      By engaging SwanDesign, you acknowledge and consent to the following:

      • SwanDesign may use A.I. tools to process project‑related data, including but not limited to analytics, sales data, advertising spend, page source data, error logs, email logs, server information, DNS records, and audit data.
      • Such data will be used solely for reporting, troubleshooting, optimization, and project delivery.
      • Client data will never be sold or used to train public A.I. models.
      • SwanDesign does not routinely disclose when or which A.I. tools are used, but will provide disclosure upon request.
      • While A.I. may contribute to deliverables (e.g., SEO, troubleshooting, or content generation), all outputs are reviewed and refined by human professionals before delivery.
      • SwanDesign is not liable for inherent limitations, inaccuracies, or biases in A.I. systems.
      Accept the Terms of Service