The deal, in plain English.

1. What I do, and what a package is

I design and build websites and custom business systems and hand them over to you to own. Everything is billed at one flat rate: $300 an hour. Each package is simply a number of hours at that rate — Clarity Hour (1 hr / $300), The Website You Own (10 hrs / $3,000), The System That Runs It (40 hrs / $12,000), The Operation (80 hrs / $24,000), or any amount you build in the shop. There are no tiers that cost more per hour; the rate is the same for all of it.

2. Scope of work

What I’m building, roughly how many hours it should take, and what’s not included get written down before work starts. For the larger builds ($12,000 and $24,000), the short note you leave at checkout — what your business is and what the system needs to do — becomes your written scope. If we exchange emails that refine it, that’s part of the scope too. Anything outside that written scope is a change (see §4), not an assumed extra.

3. Payment — bought outright, no deposit, no financing

Packages are bought outright: one payment, up front, in full, through Stripe. There is no deposit, no half-up-front, no milestone billing, no payment plan, and no financing. The price you see is hours × $300, and that’s the whole price — no hidden add-ons on top. On Call is the one recurring option, and it’s month-to-month access to my time (see §9), not a platform you’re renting.

4. Refunds and unused hours

This is how paying in full stays fair to you:

Before work starts: full refund, any time, no questions. If I look at your scope and decide it isn’t a fit, I’ll tell you and refund you in full before we begin.

After work starts: you’re only charged for the hours actually worked, at $300/hr. If we stop partway, I bill the hours already done and refund every unused hour. Put simply: if I can’t deliver what we scoped, you get back every unused hour.

Chargebacks: if something’s wrong, email or text me first — I’d always rather fix it or refund it directly than fight a dispute. This written refund policy is the record we’ll both point to.

5. Change orders

If you want something beyond the written scope, I’ll give you an honest estimate in whole hours at $300/hr and wait for your written OK (an email is fine) before doing the work. New work is added as its own charge — I don’t quietly expand the bill.

6. Who owns what

When your package is paid in full, you own everything I built for you under that scope — the code, the design files, and your data — outright, to keep, change, move, or hand to another developer. That transfer of ownership happens on full payment.

The one carve-out: general-purpose tools, libraries, and reusable building blocks I made before your project (or use across projects) stay mine, but you get a permanent, paid-up license to keep using them as part of what I delivered. Third-party and open-source components stay under their own licenses, which pass through to you. I can’t assign what I don’t own, so those are called out rather than promised away.

7. Warranty

If something I built breaks or doesn’t do what the scope said, tell me within 30 days of handover and I’ll fix it at no charge. That’s the warranty. I don’t guarantee search rankings, revenue, traffic, or uptime beyond what your host provides — nobody honest can.

8. Limit of liability

If something goes wrong and I’m responsible, my total liability is capped at the fees you paid me for that project in the prior 12 months. I’m not liable for indirect or knock-on losses (lost profits, lost data you didn’t ask me to back up, downtime, and the like). A one-person studio can’t carry unlimited risk, and the price doesn’t pretend to.

9. Support and On Call

On Call is access to me by the month — a set number of hours (2, 5, or 10) at the same $300/hr, billed monthly, cancel anytime (the 10-hour level asks for a 3-month minimum). It covers updates, a backups check, an uptime watch, and small edits. Unused hours roll over one month, then expire. It is not a subscription to a platform; what I build for you is still yours.

10. Hosting and accounts

The goal is always that you hold your own domain registration and hosting account, with me as a user on it. Where I host a site for you to get started, it runs on my server under a clear, itemized arrangement, and I’ll hand the account over to you whenever you ask — passwords, DNS, the lot. Nothing is held hostage. If I ever became unavailable, you’d get a sealed handover of the credentials you need.

11. Your data and confidentiality

I handle your business data (records, inventory, inspection reports, giving data, whatever the system holds) only to do the project, and I don’t share it. South Carolina’s breach-notification law (S.C. Code § 39-1-90) applies; if there were ever a breach affecting your data, I’d notify you as that law requires. When the project ends, I delete working copies of your data on request.

12. Tools and subcontractors

I use some software tools (including AI assistants) to do the work faster, and the final work is mine, reviewed by me, built to your scope — never an unsupervised machine handing you output. If a specific project ever needs a second developer, I’ll tell you before any of your data or code goes to them.

13. Showing the work

I like to show what I’ve built — a screenshot and your business name in my portfolio. If you’d rather I didn’t, just say so in writing and I’ll keep your project off the site. Your call, always.

14. Ending the engagement

Either of us can end a project. If you end it, you pay for the hours worked and I refund the rest (see §4), and I hand over everything done to that point. Clean exits, both directions.

15. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of South Carolina, and any dispute is handled in Greenville or Spartanburg County. I’d always rather talk it out first — a quick call or a round of mediation before anyone lawyers up.

16. Questions

Ask me anything before you buy — that’s the point of the terms being readable. Matt Ebersole · Greer, SC · intake@mattcreates.com · 864-787-3116 (text).

A note on this page’s status: these are my own plain service terms, written to be honest and fulfillable. They are not legal advice and have not yet been reviewed by an attorney. A South Carolina business attorney should review them before they’re relied on in a dispute.