The deal, in plain words

ACMeridian is the trading name of Alatriste & Cortes LLC, a limited liability company formed in Maryland. Two people run it, and you'll be dealing with both of them.

These terms cover this website and any work we do for you. Using the site means you accept them. Hiring us means you accept them and the quote we agreed, and where the two disagree, the quote wins.

Build you a working version of your site at a live URL before you owe anything, so you can click through it on your own phone and decide with something real in front of you.

Deliver what the plan you picked says it includes, at the price the board says, with no line item added later that we didn't name up front.

Answer within 48 hours when you need something changed while you're on a monthly plan. That's a working commitment, not a marketing line, and if we miss it you should say so.

Keep the site up, patched, backed up, and holding a valid security certificate for as long as the monthly runs.

Give us the material we need to build the thing: your hours, your address, your prices, your photos, and someone who can answer a question inside a couple of days. Most delays are here, and they're the only ones we can't fix from our end.

Own what you send us. If you hand us a logo, a photo, or a block of text, you're telling us you have the right to use it. If it turns out you didn't, that one's on you, and we'll take it down as soon as we know.

Don't use anything we build to break the law, to mislead people about who you are, or to send mail people didn't ask for. We'll pull a site that does.

Builds run from $900 to $3,400 depending on the plan, and the monthly runs from $125 to $350. Those are the published prices and they're the ones you pay.

• The demo costs nothing. If it doesn't earn the build, you walk away and owe us nothing.
• If it does, half the build price starts the work and the other half is due before the site goes live.
• The monthly starts at launch, covers hosting, security, backups, and changes, and you can cancel it whenever you want. We don't do lock-in periods and we don't do cancellation fees.
• Cancel mid-month and the site stays up until the month you've paid for runs out. We don't refund part-months, and we don't bill you for the next one.

If an invoice goes unpaid for 30 days we'll chase it once, and after 60 days we can take the site offline until it's settled. Your domain and your content stay yours throughout, and we won't hold either hostage.

• The domain is yours from day one. It's registered to you, not to us, and you can move it whenever you like without asking.
• Your content is yours. Text, photos, menus, prices. It was yours before you sent it and it stays that way.
• The code is ours until you buy it. The monthly is for the work, not for holding your site. If you want the code, it starts at $2,200. Stay on a plan for 24 months and that fee goes away, and you can take the code with you. The 24 months are paid months. A month you don't pay doesn't count, and it doesn't reset the count. Pick the plan back up and it carries on from where you left it.
• We reuse what we learned, not what you own. The tools and techniques we built to do the job stay ours to use on the next one. Nothing specific to your business goes anywhere near it.

We'd like to show your site in our work. If you'd rather we didn't, say so and we won't.

You can stop the monthly at any time, by phone or in writing, and nothing bad happens. Tell us where you want the site to go and we'll hand over your content and point the domain wherever you say.

We can end it too, with 30 days notice, and we'll say why. The short list of reasons we'd end it sooner: an unpaid invoice past 60 days, or a site being used for something in section 03.

If a build is cancelled midway, you pay for the work done to that point and not a cent past it. If we're the ones who walked, you pay nothing.

We build carefully and we test, and software still breaks. We don't promise the site will never go down, that a search engine will rank you anywhere in particular, or that a site will bring you a given number of customers. Anyone who does promise that is guessing.

If something we did causes you a loss, what we owe is capped at what you paid us in the 12 months before it happened. We're not liable for money you didn't make, and nothing here limits liability that the law says can't be limited.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Maryland, and any dispute goes to the courts there. If one clause turns out to be unenforceable, the rest of the document still stands.

When we change these terms, the date at the top changes with them. If a change materially affects work we're already doing for you, we'll tell you directly rather than expect you to notice.