Terms of service

These terms govern the web design, hosting and support services provided by Project Forward Technologies Ltd ("Project Forward", "we", "us"), registered in England and Wales under company number 16873528. By engaging us or using a website we host, you ("the client", "you") agree to these terms. The scope and price of each project are set out in a separate written quote or proposal, which forms part of our agreement.

1. Our services

We provide custom website design, hosting, and ongoing maintenance and support as described in your quote. Any work outside the agreed scope may be charged separately, and we'll agree the cost with you in advance.

2. Quotes and payment

Fees are as stated in your quote or proposal. The one-off setup fee is due before the website goes live on your domain. The monthly hosting and maintenance fee is collected by recurring card payment through Stripe. If a recurring payment fails, we'll contact you to sort it out. If payment is still outstanding after 30 days, we may temporarily replace your website with a holding page until it's paid.

3. Preview before you pay

Where we produce a design or preview of a new website, it's so you can decide whether to go ahead. No design or hosting fee is due for viewing a preview; fees apply once you agree to proceed, as set out in your quote.

4. Hosting and maintenance

Websites are hosted on Google Firebase or Cloudflare infrastructure, at our discretion. Both provide enterprise-grade hosting with global content delivery networks (CDNs), SSL encryption and high availability. We aim to keep your website available and secure, but we can't guarantee uninterrupted service, as some factors (such as third-party infrastructure) are outside our control.

Ongoing support covers reasonable updates, changes and maintenance as described in your plan, including text changes, photo updates, minor layout adjustments and the occasional new page, such as a page for a new service. It doesn't include major redesigns, large numbers of new pages or new functionality, which we may quote for separately.

We set your website up to be found: we submit it to Google and Bing, check it can be read by search engines and AI tools such as ChatGPT, and write your pages for the searches customers make. Search engines and AI tools decide for themselves what they show, so we can't guarantee where, or whether, your website appears in their results or answers.

We don't sell or host email. If you'd like email at your own domain, you sign up to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace yourself and pay them directly; they provide and support the email service under their own terms. We'll add the DNS records that connect it to your domain at no extra cost, and keep them in place while we manage your DNS. If you already have email on your domain, we copy its records across when we take over your DNS so it keeps working.

5. Missed-call text-back, text and voice assistants, instant callback and text updates

If your plan includes missed-call text-back, we give you a UK mobile number to show on your website. Calls to it ring your own phone. If a call isn't answered, we automatically text the caller (UK mobiles only) with a short message from your business, and text you their number so you can ring them back. Texts sent to the number are forwarded to you, unless the text assistant answers them (see below), and calls and texts are logged so you can see them in your reports.

If your plan includes the text assistant, an AI assistant texts your missed callers instead of the standard text, and answers texts sent to your website number, on your behalf. It runs on Claude, made by Anthropic. It follows the instructions you give us about what to ask, what counts as urgent and where things should go, and it tells people it's an assistant. It won't promise work, prices, pay, dates or call-back times for you, and it tells anyone who describes an accident, injury or danger to ring 999. Each chat is kept short, then it's over to you. We email you a summary of each chat with every text in it, and text you straight away when a chat is urgent by your instructions. If the assistant can't reply, texts are forwarded to you instead.

If your plan includes the voice assistant, an AI assistant answers the calls to your website number that you don't pick up, on your behalf. It says at the start of each call that it's an AI assistant. Twilio turns what callers say into text and speaks the assistant's replies, and the assistant runs on Claude, made by Anthropic. It follows the same instructions as the text assistant. It won't quote for a job, agree a price, book anything or promise when you'll call back, and it tells anyone who describes an accident, injury or danger to ring 999. Calls last up to 8 minutes. We email you a summary of each call with what was said, as written down by speech recognition, and text you straight away when a call is urgent by your instructions. We don't record calls. If a caller hangs up without speaking, or the assistant can't connect, they get the missed-call text instead.

AI can misunderstand people or get things wrong, and speech recognition can mishear what callers say, so read each summary before you act on it. You're responsible for getting back to the people the assistants text or talk to, and for anything you agree with them. They aren't an emergency service, and we can't guarantee that every reply is right or that every urgent chat or call is marked as urgent. Your instructions must keep it to answering people: no marketing, nothing unlawful, and no asking for more personal information than you need. We may decline or change instructions that don't meet this.

Your plan also includes instant callback. When someone sends an enquiry through your website with a UK phone number, we ring your phone from your website number and read the enquiry out. Press 1 and we connect you to them. If you can't answer, we text them to say their message arrived and text you their details. We only ring you during the hours you choose (8am to 8pm, Monday to Saturday unless you tell us otherwise), skip enquiries that look like spam, and limit how many calls we make each day. You can switch it off at any time. Every enquiry is still emailed to you as normal.

You can also update your website by texting your website number from the mobile it rings. Tell us what to change, or text PHOTO to send pictures of a finished job. We text you a preview link first, and nothing changes on your live website until you reply YES. You're responsible for checking the preview: once you approve it, the change is published as shown. Up to 10 changes a month are included. We'll refer some changes to a person rather than make them from a text, such as changes to your contact details, legal pages or deleting pages, and we may decline anything unlawful, misleading or harmful. Only send photos you have the right to use, and leave out customers' faces, house numbers and number plates.

• The messages we send callers and enquirers are there to answer them, not to advertise. If you change them, keep them to that: offers, promotions or other marketing aren't allowed.
• We rely on Twilio and the mobile networks to carry calls and texts, so we can't guarantee every call will connect or every text will arrive.
• The number is provided through our Twilio account and isn't yours to keep. If you leave our service, or move to a plan without text-back, the number stops working, so update anywhere you've published it.
• Fair use: your plan includes normal use for a small business, which we count as up to 500 minutes of calls a month through your website number, and up to 250 texts a month from it to your callers (400 if your plan includes the text assistant). That's several times what a typical trade business gets from its website, and we'll never cut off calls or texts to your callers because of it. If you go over either two months in a row, we'll talk to you before charging anything extra, for example about a plan that suits how much you use it. For busier text assistant users, our high-volume plan is £99 a month and includes up to 1,000 texts a month. For busier voice assistant users, our high-volume voice assistant plan is £149 a month and includes up to 1,000 minutes of calls a month.
• The voice assistant stops answering for the rest of the month once it has answered 750 minutes of calls in that month (1,500 on the high-volume voice assistant plan). This is there to catch something going wrong, such as a phone line diverted to your number by mistake or a run of automated calls. Calls still ring your phone as normal, callers you miss get the missed-call text instead, and we'll let you know.
• The number is for your customers to reach you, so it can't be used for bulk or automated calls or texts. We limit how many automatic texts go to any one phone each day, and we may block callers or senders who send spam or nuisance messages.

6. Your responsibilities

You agree to provide accurate information about your business, including contact details, services and coverage areas. You're responsible for the content you provide and must make sure it doesn't infringe anyone else's rights. You agree to respond to our requests for content and approval in reasonable time. If you have an existing website or domain, you authorise us to manage its DNS and hosting configuration on your behalf.

7. Intellectual property

Once you've paid all fees due, you own the content and the finished website design specific to your business. We keep ownership of any underlying tools, frameworks, code libraries and general know-how we use across projects. We may show your website and business name in our portfolio and marketing unless you ask us in writing not to.

8. Domain names

Where we register a domain name for you, you're the legal registrant and owner of that domain. We manage its DNS and technical configuration through our Cloudflare account. If you leave our service, we'll transfer the domain to a registrar of your choice at no cost (by IPS tag change for .uk domains, or with a transfer code for others such as .com). Domain renewal fees are included in your monthly hosting fee.

9. Cancellation and termination

Either of us may end an ongoing hosting and support arrangement by giving 30 days' written notice. Recurring services then stop at the end of the paid period. On request, we'll provide a reasonable export of your website content. Fees already paid are non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise. If you cancel, you can transfer your domain to another provider at no cost.

10. Limitation of liability

We provide our services with reasonable care and skill. As far as the law allows, we're not liable for indirect or consequential losses, loss of profit, or loss of business or data. Our total liability arising from the services is limited to the fees you've paid us in the 12 months before the claim. Nothing in these terms limits any liability that can't be limited or excluded by law, such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

11. Data protection

When people use the contact form or newsletter signup on your website, or call or text your website number, we process their details on your behalf. That means names, email addresses, phone numbers and messages from forms, and phone numbers, call times, text messages, text assistant chat summaries, and what callers say to the voice assistant with a summary of each call, from calls and texts. You're the data controller for that data and we act as your processor, for as long as we provide the service and only so we can provide it. We store it securely on Google Cloud in the UK (London region) and keep only a one-way hashed version of visitors' IP addresses. We deliver enquiries and assistant summaries to you by email through our email provider, Resend, and run website numbers and instant callbacks through Twilio. If your plan includes the text or voice assistant, Anthropic writes its replies and summaries, and for the voice assistant Twilio turns speech into text and the replies into speech.

As your processor, we:

• only use the data to provide our service to you, as these terms describe or as you tell us
• make sure anyone who handles it is bound to keep it confidential
• keep it secure with appropriate technical and organisational measures
• only share it with the providers we need to run the service (Google and Cloudflare for hosting, Resend for email, Twilio for calls and texts, Stripe for payments, and Anthropic for the AI tools we use to prepare reports and messages and to run the text and voice assistants), each bound by data protection terms. You agree to us using these providers, and we'll tell you before we add or replace one so you can object
• help you respond to requests from people to access, correct or delete their data
• tell you without undue delay if we become aware of a breach affecting it
• delete it within three months of our service ending, or return it to you first if you ask, unless the law requires us to keep it
• give you the information you reasonably need to show that we're meeting these duties

You're responsible for having a lawful reason to collect this data and for telling people how you use it, for example in a privacy policy on your website. We can provide wording for it. Our privacy policy explains how we handle personal data in more detail.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and any disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. The current version will always be published at projectforward.co.uk/terms, with the date it was last updated.

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