$995 to set up, $125 a month after that. The setup fee covers the domain, the certificate, the build and going live. The monthly covers hosting, changes and keeping it working.
No contract and no minimum term. Stop whenever you like. The site and the domain are yours and you keep them — the monthly is not a payment plan for the build.
The setup fee is not refundable, because it is spent on your domains and hosting the day you accept. You can still leave any time and take everything with you.
Radio stations are a separate product at StationSites, priced differently, on the same terms.
1. Who this is between
These terms are between you and Martian Creative, LLC ("we", "us"), a Delaware limited liability company operating from Fairfield, California. They cover the websites we build and look after. Agreeing to a quote, or paying an invoice, means agreeing to these. If you are agreeing for a business, you are confirming you are allowed to.
2. What we do
We design and build your website, put it live on a domain, and keep it running. What is included in a particular job is whatever the quote said. If something is not in the quote, it is not in the price — ask and we will quote for it rather than quietly doing it or quietly not.
3. What the money buys
The setup fee — and why it is not refundable
One payment, due on acceptance. It covers registering the domain, the SSL certificate, provisioning the hosting, and building the site.
It is not a deposit and it is not refundable. The moment you accept, we buy your domains and pay for provisioning. That money leaves our account immediately and the registry will not give it back — so we cannot give it back either.
That is a separate question from what you own, and the two get confused. You can cancel whenever you like and take everything with you — the website, the domains, your content — and we will help you move it. What you cannot get back is the setup fee, because it has already been spent on your behalf rather than kept by us.
The monthly
Covers hosting, the domain renewal, the certificate, monitoring, backups, security updates, and content changes — hours, staff, prices, events, photos and the like. It is billed monthly in advance. If you stop paying, we will tell you before anything stops working.
What "content changes" means
Changing what is on the site. It does not mean building new sections, adding a shop, or rebuilding the design — those are new work and get quoted. We are not going to count your requests or bill you for a fifth one in a month; we will tell you plainly if something has become a project rather than a change.
4. What we need from you
Copy, photos, logos and the facts about your business, and answers when we ask a question. We cannot finish without them. If a build stalls waiting on materials for more than 60 days, we may put it aside and pick it up when you are ready; the setup fee stands, because the time was spent.
You confirm that anything you give us is yours to give — that you own the photos, or licensed them, and that the copy is not somebody else's. If a claim arises from material you supplied, it is yours to answer.
5. Who owns what
- Your content is yours. Text, images, logo, everything you gave us.
- Your site is yours once the setup fee is paid. If you leave, we hand it over — the files, the domain, the lot — without making it difficult.
- Your domain is yours. We register and renew it on your behalf. It is not held hostage.
- Our tools stay ours. The underlying templates, components and systems we reuse across clients remain ours to reuse.
6. Stopping
Either of us can stop with 30 days' notice. There is no penalty and no minimum term. On the way out you keep the site and the domain, and we will transfer them to you or to whoever you name. We do not delete anything for 30 days after the end, so a change of mind is survivable.
Fees already paid are not refunded — the setup fee for the reason in clause 3, and any month already begun because the hosting and the domain were paid for that month. We will not bill you for a month that has not started.
We may stop immediately if the site is used for something illegal, or to attack or defraud people. That is the only fast exit, and we would tell you why.
7. Uptime, and what we actually promise
We monitor your site and aim to keep it up. We do not promise a percentage, because the honest answer is that parts of the internet we do not control — your domain registry, our host, the wider network — can fail, and a number in a document does not change that.
What we do promise: we watch it automatically, we usually know before you do, and we tell you what happened rather than hoping you did not notice.
8. Where our responsibility ends
We will do this work carefully and to a professional standard. But we cannot be responsible for business you believe you lost while a site was down, and our total liability for anything arising out of this work is limited to the fees you paid us in the twelve months before it happened. If that is not enough cover for your situation, say so before we start and we will talk about it honestly rather than hiding behind this paragraph.
9. Changes to these terms
If these terms change, the effective date at the top changes, and we will email existing clients rather than editing quietly. If you do not accept a change, you can stop under clause 6 and nothing bad happens.
10. Law
Martian Creative, LLC is organized in Delaware, but the work is done from California and almost all of it is for businesses here. These terms are therefore governed by the laws of the State of California, and any dispute belongs in the courts of Solano County, California — which is where both of us actually are. Before anybody goes near a court, we would rather you called.