Terms of Service
1. What CobaltSites does
We build websites for small businesses, host them, and make changes to them when you ask. Before you have an account, we may build a preview of a site for your business using publicly available information and send you an unsolicited link to it. A preview is a proposal. It is not published, it is not indexed by search engines, and you owe us nothing for it.
2. Claiming a site
A claim token is an invitation to look at a preview and attach it to an account. It is not by itself proof that you represent the business. We may ask for further confirmation, hold a claim for review, or refuse it — particularly where the claiming account's email address differs from the one we invited.
You confirm that you are authorised to act for the business you claim. If you claim a site for a business you do not represent, we will remove it and may close your account.
If we have built a preview for your business and you would rather we had not, tell us and we will take it down and stop contacting you. You do not need an account to ask.
3. Your business information
Previews are built from public sources. We do our best to get the facts right, but you are the authority on your own business: check the details before your site goes live, and tell us about anything that is wrong. We do not invent licences, awards, certifications, testimonials, guarantees, review counts or prices, and we will not add them at your request unless you can substantiate them.
You keep ownership of anything you send us — text, photos, logos. You give us permission to use it for the purpose of building and running your site, and nothing else.
4. Trial and subscription
Claiming a site starts a 7-day free trial. No card is required and nothing is charged during it. Your site is live and working for the whole trial, and the contact form delivers real enquiries to you.
What happens if you do not activate. When the trial ends your site keeps working for a further 10 days while we remind you. After that it stops being served and we archive it — we keep everything for another 10 days, so activating any time in that window brings the site back exactly as it was. Past that point the files are deleted. We will email you before each of these steps, at the address on your account.
Publishing a site and keeping it live requires a subscription, billed monthly per site. The current price is shown in your dashboard before you commit to anything. We will not charge you without telling you first, and a trial does not roll into a paid subscription automatically.
There is also a one-time activation fee per site, charged once when you activate the site and never again for that site. It covers building the site and putting it live. Both the activation fee and the monthly price are shown together, in full, before you enter any payment details — you will never see one of them for the first time after paying the other.
You can cancel at any time. Cancelling stops the next payment; your site stays up until the end of the period you have already paid for. We will help you move the site elsewhere if you want to keep it. Domain registrations are charged separately and only with your explicit authorisation each time.
5. Change requests
You describe what you want changed and a person makes the change. Every edit is checked before it is published, and every publish can be rolled back.
We do not promise a specific turnaround, and throughput is limited by the hours in a day. We will tell you if something will take longer than usual. We may decline a request that is unlawful, misleading, or outside what the subscription covers.
6. Domains
A domain you already own stays yours, registered in your name, at your registrar. We will tell you which DNS records to change; we will never ask for your registrar password, and we will not change records we have not been authorised to touch.
If we register a domain on your behalf, it is registered for you, you are the registrant, and you can transfer it away.
7. Acceptable use
You may not use a CobaltSites site to:
- break the law, or help anyone else do so;
- publish content you do not have the right to publish;
- make claims about your business that are false or that you cannot substantiate;
- send unsolicited bulk email, or collect data deceptively;
- host malware, phishing pages, or anything designed to deceive visitors.
We may suspend a site that does any of these, and will tell you why.
8. Availability
We aim to keep your site up and your contact form delivering. We do not guarantee uninterrupted service and we do not offer a formal uptime SLA at this price. If something breaks, tell us and we will fix it.
9. Liability
The service is provided as it is. To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before it arose. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.
10. Ending the relationship
You can close your account at any time — ask us and we will export your site and delete your data. We may close an account for a serious or repeated breach of these terms, and will give you your site files if we do.
11. Changes to these terms
If we change these terms in a way that materially affects you, we will email you before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that date means you accept the new version.
12. Contact
Questions about these terms: get in touch. A person reads every message.