In these terms, “BespokeForge” means Christian Kelechukwu, trading as BespokeForge, and “you” means the client or the visitor. The prices below are the prices published on the pricing page. Where a signed engagement agreement says something different from this page, the agreement applies.

1. Who you are contracting with

BespokeForge is the trading name of Christian Kelechukwu, working as an individual in Nigeria. Every engagement is a contract with BespokeForge on these terms, together with the written scope and any engagement agreement signed for it.

BespokeForge may transfer a running engagement to a company it forms or controls, on the same terms, after telling you in writing.

2. How an engagement starts

  1. A short conversation, free. It establishes whether this is a problem BespokeForge can solve, and which of the two routes applies: building the system and running it, or taking on a system that already works. It is not a diagnosis, and it does not tell you what is wrong with your system.
  2. The audit, €450. One time and fixed. It is invoiced and paid before it starts, and it is not refundable once it has started. It ends in a written assessment.
  3. A build, a retainer, or neither. All three are valid endings. If a build or a retainer follows, the €450 is credited against it.

SearchOps starts with the Search Baseline instead, ordered from its own page, with no call needed. Upkeep follows a build or a rebuild by BespokeForge.

3. Scope, and changes to it

  • Every engagement is defined by a written scope with a fixed price against it, agreed before work begins. There is no hourly billing.
  • The price covers the agreed scope and nothing else. A change that alters the work is re-scoped, with a new fixed price agreed in writing before that part of the work starts. Small adjustments may be absorbed at BespokeForge’s discretion.
  • You hear that something sits outside the agreed scope before it is done.
  • You are free to say no to a re-scope, or to have that piece of work done by somebody else.

4. Fees and payment

Everything is quoted and invoiced in euros.

  • Builds are billed in two halves: 50% before work starts, and 50% once you have seen the finished build in full, before handover. The first payment reserves the place in the schedule and is not refundable once work has started. A larger engagement can run to a milestone schedule instead, agreed in writing before it starts.
  • The finished build is shown to you on a staging copy that BespokeForge controls. It is deployed to your server and placed in your repository at handover, after the second payment.
  • The finished build is accepted when you confirm it, when you put it or any part of it into live use, or when 10 working days pass after it has been shown to you without a reported material fault, whichever comes first. A material fault is a failure of the build to do what the agreed scope says it must. A matter of taste or a change to the scope is not one, and does not hold acceptance. When BespokeForge fixes a reported fault, you have 5 working days to check that fix only, and the build is accepted at the end of them unless the fix itself fails. The second payment is due on acceptance, and handover follows it.
  • Retainers are billed monthly in advance. Maintain is €1,200 a month, Partner €2,500, Embedded €5,000. Each is the monthly fee for operating the system, not a quantity of hours. A month that has been paid for is not refunded.
  • Upkeep is €95 a month, or €950 paid annually, and it is available only on a system built or rebuilt by BespokeForge. It is a subscription to a fixed routine, not cover against the unexpected, so anything outside its list is quoted before it happens. Server and hosting management sit outside it, and so do content changes, new pages and features, performance and SEO work, and same-day incident response. The list is on the pricing page. Upkeep paid annually is not refunded for the unused part of the year.
  • SearchOps is billed monthly in advance, at the price of its plan on the pricing page. A month that has been paid for is not refunded, and actions not used in a month do not carry over.
  • The Search Baseline is €250, invoiced by email when it is ordered and paid by bank transfer. The ten working days run from payment and read access to Search Console. It is not refundable once the work has started.
  • Third-party costs such as hosting, licences and paid tools are paid by you directly, or billed at cost after you approve them.
  • Invoices are payable within 14 days of the invoice date, unless the engagement agreement sets a different term.
  • BespokeForge is not registered for VAT, so invoices carry no VAT. How you treat that in your own accounts is a question for your accountant.

If an invoice goes unpaid

  • Work and services continue only while the account is paid. If an invoice is still unpaid 7 days after its due date, BespokeForge may suspend any part of the work and the services, monitoring, updates and backups included, after telling you in writing.
  • A suspension does not stop the fees from being due. Work resumes when the account is settled.
  • BespokeForge is not responsible for any loss that follows from a suspension for non-payment.
  • If an invoice is still unpaid 30 days after its due date, BespokeForge may end the engagement. Everything owed up to that date remains payable.
  • BespokeForge may charge the reasonable costs of recovering an overdue amount.

5. What you agree to do

  • Provide the access, the information and the decisions the work needs, in reasonable time. Delays in access or feedback move dates, and the fee stays the same.
  • Confirm you have the right to give BespokeForge access to the systems, accounts and materials you ask it to work on, and that the materials you supply do not infringe anyone else’s rights.
  • Tell BespokeForge about the constraints that bind you: regulatory, contractual, an internal security policy, or an existing supplier’s terms.
  • Keep your own copy of what matters to your business. The last responsibility for your business’s data stays with you.
  • Pay agreed invoices within the term.

6. What BespokeForge agrees to do

  • Do the work with reasonable skill and care, to the scope agreed, at the price agreed.
  • Aim to answer a message sent through the contact form the same working day. That is a target, not a guarantee. A retainer may set a response window in its engagement agreement. Upkeep has no response window.
  • Sign a data processing agreement, with the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses, before taking access to any system that holds personal data. The privacy policy sets out what it covers.
  • Take the minimum access the work requires, keep credentials out of plain text, and give up access when an engagement ends.
  • Put the domain, the DNS and the repository in accounts you own from the start, and the server too unless you choose to host with BespokeForge, and deploy the finished build into them at handover.
  • Keep a written runbook as the work goes.
  • Tell you when something sits outside the scope or the retainer before doing it.
  • BespokeForge may bring in another engineer for a defined piece of work, and stays answerable for that work.

7. What you own

  • The accounts are yours. Domain, DNS and repository sit in your name, and so does the server, unless you choose to host with BespokeForge, in which case the server is BespokeForge’s.
  • The custom work passes to you on full payment. When every fee due for an engagement has been paid, the code, the configuration, the content and the documentation made specifically for you, the runbook included, are yours. Until then, BespokeForge keeps all rights in them, and you may use them only to review the work.
  • Third party components keep their own licences. A plugin, a library or a font is licensed to you by whoever wrote it, on their terms.
  • BespokeForge’s own tools, methods, templates and know-how stay BespokeForge’s. On full payment, you get a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use those built into your system, as part of that system, for as long as you run it. You may not resell them or reuse them elsewhere.
  • BespokeForge may reuse general knowledge, techniques and non-confidential components in other work.

8. Confidentiality

Each party keeps the other’s non-public information confidential, uses it only to do or receive the work, and continues to do so after the engagement ends.

Your systems are not written about, published or used as an example without your written agreement. Infrastructure detail about a client’s systems, meaning providers, hostnames, addresses, paths and specifications, is not published at all.

9. Warranties

  • The work is done with reasonable skill and care.
  • A build carries a 90-day warranty against its agreed scope. If something delivered does not do what the scope said it would, report it in writing within 90 days of delivery and BespokeForge fixes it at no charge. Fixing the fault is the only remedy under this warranty. It does not cover new requirements, changes made by anyone else, third-party services, hosting, or use outside the scope.
  • Except as written here, BespokeForge gives no other warranty. In particular, it does not warrant that a system will run without interruption or error, or that any work will produce a particular result, such as search rankings, traffic, enquiries, revenue or uptime.
  • Monitoring is automated. It is a machine noticing, not a person watching.
  • This website and the guides on it are provided as they are. The code in the guides is published as teaching, not as advice about your system.

10. Liability

  • BespokeForge is not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, business, data or goodwill.
  • BespokeForge’s total liability for all claims arising from or connected with an engagement, whether in contract, negligence or otherwise, is limited to the fees you paid for that engagement in the 12 months before the claim, and never more than €5,000 in total. That limit covers every kind of claim, a claim arising from a personal data breach included.
  • BespokeForge is not liable for loss caused by third-party services, by your instructions or materials, by changes made by anyone else, or by a suspension for non-payment.
  • A claim must be made in writing within 6 months of the event that gave rise to it.
  • You compensate BespokeForge for claims by others that arise from content, materials or instructions you supplied.
  • Nothing here limits liability that the law does not allow to be limited.

11. Term, notice, and ending it

  • A build ends on acceptance of the agreed scope.
  • A retainer runs for a minimum of three months, then rolls monthly, with thirty days notice in writing either way.
  • Upkeep paid monthly ends with thirty days notice in writing either way. Upkeep paid annually runs to the end of the year paid for, and renews only if you say so.
  • SearchOps runs for a minimum of three months, then month to month, with thirty days notice in writing either way.
  • Either party can end an engagement for a material breach the other has been told about in writing and has not put right within 14 days. Non-payment is a material breach.
  • On ending, everything due up to the end date is payable, including work done and costs committed. Payments already made are not refunded, except that when BespokeForge ends an engagement for no fault of yours, a payment for work not yet started is returned.
  • Handover takes place once every invoice is settled: a handover call, the runbook, and the list of access to revoke. Handover work beyond that is quoted before it starts.

12. Using this website

The writing and design on this site belong to BespokeForge. Read it, quote it with a link, and share it with your team. Do not republish it under someone else’s name.

The code samples in the guides may be used in your own systems without asking. They come with no warranty and they are not advice about your setup.

13. Which law applies, and where a dispute would go

These terms, and every engagement under them, are governed by the law of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The courts of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them. A different governing law applies only where a signed engagement agreement says so.

Before either party goes to court, the two sides first try to settle the dispute by talking: one call, within 14 days of the problem being put in writing.

Personal data is handled as the privacy policy describes and, during an engagement, under the data processing agreement.

14. Changes to these terms

BespokeForge may update these terms. An updated version is posted here with its date. The version in force when an engagement starts applies to it, and a later change applies to a running engagement only if both parties agree in writing.

15. Contact

Questions about any of this go to chris@bespokeforgestudio.com, or through the contact page.

See also the privacy policy and the cookie policy.