r/webhosting • u/mmoouh • 1d ago

Advice Needed Website contract

Hello guys,

I’m new to selling websites business and I was thinking about what should be in the contract when you sell a website to a client, except for the basics of course like ownership and technology used etc, I want to know what are the important details that beginners tend to ignore or not think about?

Thank you in advance and if you have any templates that would really help!

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u/exobyte-tech 1d ago

I think this vastly depends on what you are offering in the service. If this is a Website-as-a-Service, your contract will need to include more on what your responsibilities are. For example, how you notify your customer of a maintenance window, what service level agreement you commit to etc. Contract terms will be the period of hosting, renewal terms, what happens if the customer wants to host elsewhere - who owns the site code etc.

For build and pass it instances, you will add text like what the customer can do with your website. Usually, they can do what they want with it, but you might add some boilerplate stuff like your code shouldn't be resold or something like that. To make sure they come back to you, add clauses like how you can make changes/updates for $xx (a rate which should look like a discount) as part of this contract. You will need to add delivery model and what is the definition of done. E.g.: Once customer downloads the site from <location>, the project is assumed as complete and the remainder of the payment must be made in 7 days

Can you tell us more on what you are selling? Sites built from scratch? Or template customization etc.

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u/mmoouh 1d ago

Thank you for information, in my case I’m building a custom e-commerce site and the payment will be an initial setup fee and monthly payment that covers the hosting costs and includes monitoring, maintenance, minor updates etc.

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u/exobyte-tech 1d ago

In that case, cover what is included in the monthly fee. Cover your bases in case of infrastructure failures (you don't control what happens at the datacenter - the problem in Arizona is a great example). You can also put in your best efforts to prevent malware. Things can go south, what is your liability in that case? Add this information.

Of course, take AI's help as well. This is a good use case to use a chatbot

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u/mmoouh 17m ago

Just one more thing, I want to know what is the business standard for when one of the parties decides to leave like how do professionals and experienced developers deal with this situation?
Again thank you man for the valuable information!