Terms of Service

These terms are deliberately written so you can read them without a lawyer. There are no gotchas hidden here — if anything is unclear, email simondriter@gmail.com and ask before you sign up. "We" is Lakeside Sites LLC of Fond du Lac, WI; "you" is the business subscribing to the service.

1. What you're buying

A website subscription: we design, build, host, secure, maintain, and update a professional website (up to 5 pages) for your business. You pay a one-time setup fee of $349 and then $117 per month. The monthly fee covers hosting, SSL, security updates, backups, performance monitoring, email support, and unlimited small content edits (defined below).

2. The 12-month minimum term

The subscription has a minimum term of 12 months, starting the day your site goes live. After that, it continues month-to-month — no renewal into another long term, ever. Why a minimum at all? Because the setup fee doesn't cover the real cost of building your site; the monthly payments do. The minimum term is what makes the low upfront price possible.

3. What "unlimited small edits" includes (and excludes)

Included — any content change that takes roughly 30 minutes or less, as often as you like, completed within 2 business days of your email. For example:

• Swapping or updating text anywhere on the site
• Swapping or adding photos to existing pages and galleries
• Updating hours, prices, service lists, or contact details
• Adding testimonials or reviews
• Seasonal changes (holiday hours, a promo banner, and the like)

Not included (available as paid add-ons, always quoted before any work happens):

• New pages beyond your included 5 ($99 per page)
• Full or partial redesigns, or changing the site's overall structure
• New functionality: e-commerce, booking systems, member areas, custom applications
• Writing substantial new content (e.g., ongoing blog posts)
• Marketing services beyond the site itself (ad campaigns, social media)

If a request falls in the gray zone, we'll tell you before doing anything. You will never receive a surprise bill.

4. Owning your site — the two states ("no hostage situations")

There are exactly two ways to have a website with us, and you're always in one or the other:

• Subscriber — you pay $117/month and everything is handled: hosting, security, backups, edits, monitoring, support. We run the site so you never think about it.
• Owner — you've bought the site out. It's fully yours, and the subscription (and everything it covers) has ended.

There is no in-between, on purpose: you're never paying a monthly fee for a site you already own.

The buyout price is $1,200 minus every monthly payment you've made, and it never goes below $0. Worked example: at month 8 you've paid 8 × $117 = $936, so the buyout is $1,200 − $936 = $264. From month 12 onward, the buyout is $0 — after a year you can claim full ownership at no cost, anytime.

What you receive when you buy out:

• A complete copy of your website — every page and file (HTML, styles, images), plus the source files it's built from
• All of your content: photos, text, and logo
• Your domain name — registered in your name since day one, so it was never ours to hand over
• Reasonable help moving the site to hosting of your choice

What ends when you buy out: hosting, the unlimited-edits service, performance monitoring, and support. If you want to own your site and have a professional maintain it, that arrangement exists — it's called a website care plan, and our sibling studio North Pier Digital offers them. We'll happily refer you.

5. Cancelling

After the 12-month minimum, you can cancel anytime with 30 days' written notice — one email to simondriter@gmail.com does it. No phone maze, no retention offers. And since the buyout is $0 from month 12 onward, cancelling and taking your site are the same thing: you leave as an Owner (§4), with the complete site and our help moving it.

If you need to leave during the minimum term, the buyout is available at any time at the price in §4, and buying out ends the remaining term along with the subscription — no additional months owed. (The math is designed so that's always fair to both sides.) If something else is going on, talk to us — we'd rather find the fair path than play hardball.

6. The pre-launch guarantee

If you're not happy with your website's design before launch, we revise it until you are. If we genuinely can't get there, you can walk away: you pay nothing beyond the $349 setup fee, and no monthly billing ever starts. The setup fee covers the design and content work already performed.

7. Your responsibilities

• Provide the content we need (photos, business details) reasonably promptly — the "10 business days to launch" clock starts when we have it.
• Only give us text, photos, and logos you have the right to use.
• Keep your payment method current. If a payment fails, we'll reach out like humans before anything is suspended.
• Use the site for lawful business purposes.

8. What we're responsible for (and the honest limits)

We keep your site online, secure, backed up, and updated, and we fix problems at no charge when they're on our end. Like every host on the internet, we can't promise literal 100% uptime or specific business results (rankings, leads, revenue). Our total liability under these terms is capped at the amount you've paid us in the 12 months before the claim. This section is the one a Wisconsin attorney should review before launch.

9. Price changes

Your monthly rate is locked for your minimum term. After that, if the rate ever needs to change, you'll get at least 60 days' notice — and you're month-to-month by then, so you're free to cancel or buy out instead.

10. Questions

Email simondriter@gmail.com. You'll get an answer from the person who wrote these terms and builds the sites.