Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern all services provided by Hephaestus Systems Ltd ("we", "us", "our") to clients ("you", "your"). By engaging our services, you agree to be bound by these Terms. Hephaestus Systems Ltd is a private limited company registered in England and Wales. All services are provided on a business-to-business basis unless otherwise agreed in writing.

We provide software development, web development, application development, CMS implementation, and related technical services as agreed in individual project proposals or statements of work. The specific deliverables, timelines, and pricing for each engagement are defined in a separate project proposal or contract, which forms part of these Terms when accepted by both parties.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law: (a) Our total aggregate liability to you arising out of or in connection with any contract, whether in tort (including negligence), breach of contract, misrepresentation, or otherwise, shall not exceed the total fees paid by you to us under the relevant contract. (b) We shall not be liable for any indirect, consequential, special, incidental, or punitive damages, including but not limited to: loss of profits, loss of revenue, loss of business, loss of data, business interruption, or loss of goodwill — even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages. (c) Nothing in these Terms shall limit or exclude our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law. These limitations apply whether the claim arises in contract, tort, statute, or any other legal theory.

Where we manage hosting on your behalf, we target 99.5% monthly uptime for hosted services. This is a target, not a guarantee. Uptime calculations exclude: • Scheduled maintenance windows (notified at least 24 hours in advance) • Outages caused by third-party infrastructure providers (including but not limited to AWS, Cloudflare, Vercel, Railway, and DNS providers) • Force majeure events • Actions taken by you or third parties with access to your systems • Cyberattacks, DDoS attacks, or security incidents outside our reasonable control In the event of a material service outage attributable to us, your sole remedy shall be a proportionate service credit applied to your next billing period. Service credits do not constitute an admission of liability.

Our services may depend on or integrate with third-party platforms, including cloud providers, content delivery networks, domain registrars, payment processors, and software libraries. We are not responsible for outages, failures, data loss, security breaches, or changes in service terms caused by third-party providers. Where possible, we will notify you of known third-party disruptions affecting your service, but accept no liability for their actions or omissions. Each third-party provider operates under their own terms and SLAs. We recommend you familiarise yourself with the terms of any providers used in your project.

Unless explicitly agreed in writing as part of your service package, you are solely responsible for maintaining adequate backups of your data, content, and systems. Where we provide backup services, these are offered on a best-efforts basis and do not constitute a guarantee of full data recovery. We strongly recommend that all clients maintain independent backups regardless of any backup services provided by us. We are not liable for data loss, corruption, or unavailability, howsoever caused, except in cases of our gross negligence or wilful misconduct.

Upon receipt of full payment, all bespoke code, designs, and deliverables created specifically for your project become your property. We retain the right to use open-source components, frameworks, libraries, and tools under their respective licences. We retain ownership of any pre-existing tools, templates, or reusable components we develop independently. You warrant that any content, assets, or materials provided to us do not infringe any third-party intellectual property rights.

Unless otherwise agreed in writing: • Deposit and payment terms are agreed in your project contract — some projects are delivered on a satisfaction-first basis with no upfront payment, while others require a deposit (typically 50%) before work commences • Remaining balance is due upon project completion, prior to go-live or handover • Invoices are payable within 14 days of issue • Late payments may incur interest at 8% above the Bank of England base rate, in accordance with the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 • We reserve the right to suspend services for accounts in arrears

Either party may terminate an ongoing service agreement with 30 days' written notice, unless otherwise specified in the project contract. Upon termination: • All outstanding fees for work completed to date become immediately payable • We will provide reasonable assistance to migrate your services to another provider • Deposits are non-refundable unless we are in material breach of contract We reserve the right to terminate services immediately in the event of non-payment, abusive conduct, or illegal use of our services.

These Terms and any disputes arising from them shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales. Both parties submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales. These Terms do not affect any statutory rights you may have as a consumer under applicable UK law. However, our services are primarily directed at business clients, and consumer protections under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 may not apply in all cases.

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be communicated to active clients with at least 30 days' notice. Continued use of our services after any changes constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms. The current version of these Terms is always available at this URL.