Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of the VendTheWeb website at vendtheweb.com and any services you buy from VendTheWeb ("we," "us," "our"). VendTheWeb is operated by Chris Reed as a sole proprietorship based in Effingham, Illinois, United States. By using this site or engaging our services, you agree to these Terms.

1. Who We Are & Who You Are

VendTheWeb is a one-person Shopify agency. We build and customize Shopify stores for market vendors, makers, and small brands. "You" means anyone browsing this site or engaging us for a project.

2. Acceptance of Terms

By submitting the contact form, emailing us, signing a proposal, or paying an invoice, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the site or hire us.

We may update these Terms from time to time. The "Effective date" above shows when the current version took effect. Material changes will be noted on this page; continued use after changes means you accept the new Terms.

3. Scope of Services

What we do is defined in a written proposal, statement of work (SOW), or email scope agreement before we start. Typical services include:

• Shopify theme design, development, and customization
• Store migration and product setup
• Integration with apps and third-party tools
• Consulting, audits, and training

Anything not listed in your SOW is out of scope. Change requests are welcome but may require a revised quote and timeline.

4. Payment Terms

Deposits and Invoices

Most projects require a deposit (typically 50%) before work begins. The remaining balance is invoiced at project milestones or on delivery, as specified in your SOW. Hourly and retainer work is invoiced on the schedule agreed in writing.

Payment Due

Invoices are due within 14 days of the invoice date unless otherwise stated. Late invoices may accrue interest at 1.5% per month (or the maximum allowed by law, if lower). If payment is more than 30 days late, we may pause work until the invoice is settled.

Refunds

Deposits are non-refundable once work has started, as they cover reserved time on our schedule. If we have not yet started, we will refund the deposit minus any work already performed.

Third-Party Costs

Shopify subscriptions, app fees, domain registrations, stock imagery, fonts, and similar third-party costs are your responsibility and are not included in our fees unless explicitly stated.

5. Intellectual Property & Deliverables

What You Own

Once we've been paid in full for a project, you own the custom design files, custom code, and content deliverables we create specifically for you under that SOW. You can modify, extend, and resell the end result (your store) as you see fit.

What We Retain

We keep ownership of any pre-existing tools, code libraries, snippets, frameworks, or know-how we used to build your project. We grant you a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license to use those pieces as part of your store.

Third-Party Assets

Third-party themes, apps, fonts, imagery, and code libraries remain owned by their respective creators and are governed by their own licenses.

Portfolio Rights

Unless you ask us in writing not to, we may display your project in our portfolio, case studies, and social media with your store name and public-facing screenshots. We will never share confidential business details (revenue, internal numbers, private communications) without your permission.

6. Your Responsibilities

• Provide accurate information, content, and access (Shopify admin, domain registrar, etc.) in a timely manner.
• Review deliverables and give clear feedback within the timeframes we agree on.
• Make sure you have the legal right to use any content, imagery, logos, or trademarks you send us.
• Pay invoices on time.

Project delays caused by late feedback, missing assets, or unpaid invoices are not our fault and may push back the delivery schedule.

7. Acceptable Use of This Website

You agree not to:

• Use the site for any unlawful purpose
• Submit false information through the contact form
• Attempt to break, scrape, or overwhelm the site
• Use any automated tools (bots, crawlers, AI scrapers) that ignore our robots.txt or overload our infrastructure

8. Warranty Disclaimer

We work hard to deliver clean, tested stores, but we provide our services "as is". To the fullest extent allowed by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don't guarantee any specific business outcome (sales, traffic, conversion rates, search rankings, etc.) since those depend on many factors outside our control.

9. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent allowed by law, VendTheWeb's total liability to you for any claim arising out of these Terms or our services is limited to the amount you actually paid us for the specific project giving rise to the claim in the 6 months before the claim arose.

We are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages (lost profits, lost data, lost business, etc.), even if we were warned they were possible. This limitation applies whether the claim is based on contract, tort, or any other legal theory.

10. Indemnification

You agree to defend and hold VendTheWeb harmless from any third-party claims arising out of: (a) content, imagery, or data you provided for your project; (b) your use of the store after delivery; or (c) your violation of these Terms or any law.

11. Termination

Either party can end a project for material breach (like non-payment or failure to deliver) with written notice and a reasonable chance to fix the problem. If a project ends early, you pay for work performed up to the termination date, and we hand over work completed. These Terms survive termination for anything that, by its nature, should outlast the engagement (like IP ownership and liability limits).

12. Governing Law & Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, USA, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Any lawsuit or legal action arising out of these Terms or our services will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Effingham County, Illinois, and you consent to the jurisdiction of those courts.

Before filing any lawsuit, we both agree to try to resolve the dispute informally by email for at least 30 days.

13. Miscellaneous

If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. Our failure to enforce a right isn't a waiver of that right. You can't assign these Terms without our written consent; we can assign them to a successor business. These Terms plus your signed SOW are the entire agreement between us about your project.

14. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email chris@vendtheweb.com.