Terms of Service

Who we are

Black Hart Consulting LLC is a Texas-registered consulting firm providing website design, SEO, app development, and hosting services. You can reach us at hello@blackhartconsulting.com or (866) 434-9777.

The work we do

We deliver web design, SEO, app development, and ongoing care under one of three engagement types:

• One-time projects— fixed-price packages (e.g. Single Page, Starter Site, Pro Site, Custom Build) or quick-win add-ons. Delivered against a Statement of Work or an accepted proposal.
• Care Plans— recurring monthly subscriptions (Care, Growth, Scale) for ongoing hosting, monitoring, and small-edit support.
• SEO retainers— recurring monthly engagements for ongoing search-engine optimization work.

Each engagement’s specific deliverables, timeline, and scope are described in the proposal, Statement of Work, or published service description you accept before payment.

Payment terms

All prices are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. Payments are processed by Stripe; we don’t see or store your card details. We accept card, ACH (U.S. bank), Klarna, Affirm, Cash App Pay, and Link.

• Single Page Site, SEO Sprints, and quick-win add-ons under $1,000: payable in full when invoiced. Work begins after payment is received.
• Starter Site, Pro Site, and most other one-time projects $1,000–$5,000: 50% deposit when the Statement of Work is signed; remaining 50% due on launch. The second invoice is net-15.
• Custom Build and projects over $5,000: 50% deposit at signature, 25% on approved design milestone, 25% on launch. Optional installment plans available on request.
• Care Plans and SEO retainers: pre-pay monthly. The first charge runs the day you activate the subscription, with the same amount charged automatically every 30 days thereafter to your saved payment method.
• Late payment: invoices unpaid for 14 days past their due date may be referred to collections or paused for service.
• Refund policy: see the dedicated section below.

These are defaults. Your specific Statement of Work or invoice may set different terms by mutual agreement.

Project timelines and dependencies

Project timelines committed in your Statement of Work assume timely client cooperation: prompt approvals, content delivery, access credentials (logos, brand assets, hosting/domain access, third-party platform logins), and design feedback within 5 business days of request.

• Delays on your side— if we’re blocked waiting on you (content, approvals, credentials), the committed timeline pauses. We don’t pro-rate or refund fees for client-caused delay, and the project may be rescheduled or paused if a client goes unresponsive for more than 14 days.
• Delays on our side— if we slip a deadline for any reason on our end, we’ll keep you informed and reasonable about deadline impact. We don’t apply penalty fees to ourselves, but we make every reasonable effort to recover the schedule and never let a delay become a billing issue for you.

Recurring billing authorization

When you subscribe to a Care Plan or SEO retainer, you authorize Black Hart Consulting LLC to charge the saved payment method on file for the monthly amount disclosed at signup, on a recurring basis, until you cancel. We will not change the amount or frequency without notifying you in advance. You can cancel at any time (see “Cancellation” below); cancellation stops future charges but does not refund the current period.

Cancellation

You can cancel a Care Plan or SEO retainer at any time:

• Through the Stripe Customer Portal link we provide in your signup email and on your post-payment thank-you page.
• By replying to any billing email, or emailing hello@blackhartconsulting.com.

Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period — you keep the service through what you’ve already paid for, and no further charges run after that.

Refunds

Our refund policy depends on the engagement type:

• One-time projects— partial or full refunds are evaluated case-by-case based on what work has been delivered. If we’ve delivered a Figma mockup but no code, you’re typically entitled to a partial refund. If the site has launched and revisions are complete, refunds are generally not available.
• Care Plans and SEO retainers— we don’t prorate or refund partial months. Cancellation stops the next billing cycle.
• Mistakes on our end— if we double-bill you, miss a deadline you depend on, or fail to deliver committed scope, we’ll make it right. Reach out and we’ll work it out.

What you provide

You agree to:

• Provide accurate billing information and keep your payment method current.
• Provide the content, brand assets, access credentials, and feedback we need to do the work, in a reasonable timeframe.
• Not use our services to host or transmit illegal content, spam, malware, or material infringing on third-party rights.
• Have the legal right to share any content, copy, images, or trademarks you provide to us.

Ownership of work

On full payment of the agreed fee, you own the source code, copy, and design assets we deliver, in their final form. We’re happy to hand over the GitHub repo, design files, and any third-party account credentials we set up on your behalf.

Some elements remain ours or third parties’:

• Open-source frameworks, libraries, and components we use (Next.js, Payload, Tailwind, etc.) are licensed under their respective licenses.
• Our internal tooling, methodology, and reusable patterns remain ours. You don’t get the right to resell our process, only the deliverables built with it.
• Stock photography licensed to your project transfers usage rights but not the underlying license — you can use the images for your business but can’t resell them.

Hosting and uptime

Sites we host run on infrastructure operated by reputable providers (DigitalOcean for compute, Cloudflare for CDN, etc.). We target 99.5% uptime measured monthly, but don’t guarantee it — outages caused by upstream providers, DNS issues, your domain registrar lapsing, or content you push that breaks the site are not our responsibility. We monitor uptime and will tell you about extended outages.

We perform daily encrypted backups of databases and media on all hosted sites. Backups are retained for 30 days.

Communication

By providing your email when engaging us, you consent to receive transactional emails from us related to your account, invoices, and the work in progress — this includes project updates, invoice reminders, payment receipts, billing-related notifications, and service announcements. You cannot opt out of these while engaged with us.

Optional marketing emails are separate and you can unsubscribe from those at any time.

Confidentiality

We treat anything you share with us during an engagement as confidential and don’t share it with third parties without your permission, except where required by law.

We may publish anonymized case studies of work we’ve done. If we’re going to credit you by name, logo, or specific result, we’ll get your written permission first.

Limitation of liability

Our services are provided “as is” without warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, except as required by applicable law. Our total aggregate liability for any claim arising out of these Terms or our services is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim.

We are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, including but not limited to lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, or business interruption.

Termination

You can stop using our services at any time by canceling your subscriptions and ending the engagement. We can stop providing services if you breach these Terms, fail to pay, or use our services for unlawful purposes; in that case, we’ll notify you in writing first whenever practical.

Termination doesn’t refund prepaid amounts for already-delivered work. Sections that should reasonably survive termination (Ownership, Confidentiality, Limitation of Liability, Governing Law) survive.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising from these Terms or our services will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Harris County, Texas, and you and we consent to that jurisdiction.

Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms occasionally. Material changes will be communicated by email to active clients at least 14 days before they take effect. Continued use of our services after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email hello@blackhartconsulting.com or call (866) 434-9777.

See also our Privacy Policy and our SMS opt-in disclosure.