Terms of Service

Most of our work starts with a signed agreement. It sets the scope, fees and schedule, who owns the finished work, how either of us can end the engagement, and the limits of liability for that work. These Terms cover what surrounds it: your portal account, the files and information you share with us, electronic signing, and how we stay in touch.

If your signed agreement and these Terms conflict, your signed agreement controls. The version of these Terms named when you sign an agreement stays with that agreement, and a later version never changes it. For your use of the portal, the newest version you’ve accepted applies.

If we do work for you without a signed agreement, such as a single consulting session, the quote you approved in writing and these Terms cover it.

We design, build, host and maintain websites and web apps, and we offer hourly consulting: engineering reviews and AI training. Other work, such as photography and video, publishing, IT support or marketing, is set out the same way, in a signed agreement or a quote you approve in writing.

Consulting and training

Consulting is billed by the hour at the rate on our pricing page, with no retainer and no minimum. A session canceled late may be billed as your quote or agreement says.

A session gives you our professional opinion and teaching, based on what you show us and what we know at the time. A review looks at one point in time. It isn’t an audit or a certification, and no review finds every problem. We don’t take control of your systems: you decide what to act on, and you stay responsible for your own systems, data and decisions.

AI training covers tools made by other companies, under their own terms and pricing, which change often. We aren’t affiliated with those companies. Your organization is responsible for how it uses them, including checking what they produce before relying on it.

Nothing in a consulting session is legal, financial, tax or compliance advice.

Your agreement, or the quote you approved, sets your fees, when they’re due and any late fee. Costs charged by other companies, such as registering a domain name, are billed to you only with your approval.

When we bill through Stripe, Stripe emails you the invoice and you pay on Stripe’s own page. Your card or bank details go to Stripe, not to us. We see the invoice and whether it’s been paid.

Our pricing page lists our discounts and who qualifies. They work like this:

• Montana Local and Small Business discounts apply to both project fees and monthly rates (the ongoing fee for hosting, support and maintenance).
• Referral discounts apply only to monthly rates, not to project fees.
• Discounts can be combined, up to 50% off in total.

Your agreement locks in your pricing. The prices and discounts written into your agreement are the ones that apply to it. If we later change the prices or discounts on our website, that doesn’t change an agreement already in place. Any change to your pricing comes only as your agreement describes. Not all of our pricing comes from our website. Some work is priced on its own, and the price in your agreement or approved quote is the one that applies.

We may change or end any discount for new agreements at any time.

Signing in. The portal has no passwords. You sign in with a link we email you, and each link works once, within 15 minutes. Anyone who can read your email can sign in as you, so keep your email account secure, and tell us right away if you think someone else has access to it. You stay signed in on a device for up to 7 days after your last visit, so sign out when you use a shared computer.

Who can have an account. Accounts are for people we’ve added: our clients’ contacts, our own team, and people we’ve invited to fill in a form. No one else can create one. You must be 18 or older to have an account. If you’re a client’s main contact, your account opens that client’s records. Anyone else on a client record sees only the areas we’ve given them access to, and any agreement that names them as a signer. Being listed as a contact doesn’t open anything by itself. An account without client access shows only what’s open to everyone who signs in, such as a public form, and anything you add yourself.

Your email address. We send sign-in links, signing requests, signed copies and notices to the email address on your account. You can change it yourself from your Profile in the portal: we send a confirmation link to the new address, switch only after you use it, and let the old address know.

Your team. Don’t share your sign-in. If other people at your organization need the portal, ask us. We can give each person their own access to specific areas, such as issues, forms or files, and change or remove it when you ask. Access is checked on every request, so a removal takes effect right away. Team access never includes agreements: only the person named on a signature line can sign, signed in with the email address that line names.

Our read-only view. To help you, our team can open your portal exactly as you see it. In that view we can’t change anything or send anything for you, and it never signs us in as you. Each view lasts at most an hour. We don’t notify you when we open it; each time is recorded in our activity log.

Accepting these Terms. Before you use the portal, we ask you to accept the current version of these Terms and acknowledge our Privacy Policy. Each time we publish a new version of these Terms, you’ll be asked again the next time you open the portal. We record the version you accepted, when you accepted it, and the IP address you accepted from. If you’d rather not accept a new version, write to team@creo.design, and we’ll send you copies of anything you’ve signed.

You can send us files from the Files page in the portal and through file questions on forms: any type. Each client account has limits on what it can send. Unless we agree otherwise, that is 5 GB for each file, 25 GB stored in all, and 10 GB sent in any 24 hours. Your Files page shows how much of your storage you’ve used, and we can raise your limits when you ask.

• We keep the original. Each file is stored exactly as you sent it, including any details saved inside it, such as where a photo was taken. Our Privacy Policy explains what that can include and the copies we make.
• Private storage. Files are stored privately with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and are never public.
• Who can see them. Anyone on our team can see what you upload or share with us, and so can contractors or other outside help we hire, when their work needs it. No other client can: your files stay in your own space, and the portal shows you only yours.
• What you see. Your Files page lists the files you and your team sent us. Files our team adds to your record don’t appear there, so ask us for any you need. Your signed agreements stay available in the portal.
• Removing a file. Removing a file hides it from your list and ours. We keep the stored file and its record, and our team can restore it. To have a file erased, email team@creo.design; see Records we keep.
• Locked files. We can lock a file in storage. Until our team unlocks it, no one can delete it, and it can’t be removed from the portal.
• Signed agreements. The copy of a signed agreement filed with your records can’t be removed.

Who owns what you send us, and how to ask us to remove it, is covered under Your content and our work. Please don’t send passwords or other secrets as files or by email. Use a secure request instead.

We may send you forms to fill in, such as a project intake. A form sent to you opens for you and for teammates we’ve given access to forms. A few forms are open to anyone signed in, or to anyone signed in who has the form’s link.

Each time you save, we keep that version of your answers, so earlier answers stay on record and you can update them later. If one of your answers hides a later question, anything typed in the hidden question isn’t kept. When a question asks for links, our server visits each link to check that it works. Files you add to a form are stored with your other files.

We use your answers to plan and deliver your work.

The Issues page is where you ask us for changes, report problems and ask questions. Our team sees each new issue in our admin tools, and our team inbox gets an email with a short excerpt. We tell you about activity on your issues in the portal, and by email too if we’ve turned that on for your project.

You can edit and delete your comments. Our team can still see earlier versions of an edited comment, and a deleted comment keeps its text in our records behind a placeholder.

When we need a password, API key or other secret from you, we send you a secure request link instead of asking for it by email. The link works without signing in and expires after the time we set when we send it, from 1 to 30 days. What you submit is encrypted before it’s stored, with a key protected by AWS Key Management Service. Only our team can reveal it, each reveal is recorded, and a revealed value hides itself again after a minute.

Deleting a secret destroys the stored value and leaves only a record that it existed. Encrypted copies can remain in our database backups until those expire, at most a year later. We recommend changing any password you’ve shared with us once the work that needed it is done.

We do business electronically. Agreements, notices and other records reach you by email or in your client portal, and you sign agreements online.

Your consent. Before you sign a document, the signing page shows our electronic records disclosure and asks you to check a box, never checked in advance, agreeing to use electronic records and signatures for that document. Signing electronically is your choice. If you’d rather not, don’t check the box, and email team@creo.design to talk about another way to sign. Separately, when you accept these Terms in the portal, you agree that we may give you notices and records about your account electronically.

Legal effect. The federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN) and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, which Montana has adopted, say that a signature or record can’t be denied legal effect just because it’s electronic. When you select Agree and sign, you agree to be bound by the document, and the signature you adopt, typed or drawn, is the electronic equivalent of your handwritten signature.

Paper copies. You can ask for a free paper copy of anything you sign by emailing team@creo.design.

Withdrawing consent. You can withdraw your consent to electronic records and signatures for future documents at any time by emailing team@creo.design. Withdrawing doesn’t affect anything you’ve already signed. After you withdraw, we’ll agree with you on another way to handle new documents.

Keeping your email current. To change the address we use to reach you, update it from your Profile in the portal, or email team@creo.design with your new address. Your Profile changes where the portal reaches you. A signed agreement names its own addresses for notices, so to change those, also tell us in writing, as that agreement describes.

What you need. An email account, a current web browser, and the ability to view and save web pages or PDF files. Your signed copy stays in your portal, where you can download it as a PDF, and we’ll email you a copy whenever you ask at team@creo.design.

When an agreement is ready, we email each signer a link. To sign, you:

1. Sign in to the portal with a link sent to your email address. That check ties the signature to your email address.
2. Read the agreement. The signing page shows the whole document, and the place to sign opens once you reach the end.
3. Check 2 boxes: one agreeing to use electronic records and signatures for this document, and one agreeing to these Terms and confirming you’ve read our Privacy Policy. The second box names the version of each in effect when you sign and links to it, so you can read exactly what you’re agreeing to.
4. Type your name in one of 3 signature styles, or draw your signature, then select Agree and sign.

You can decline instead of signing; we ask for a reason so we know what to change.

How the record is sealed. When we send an agreement, we take its fingerprint (a SHA-256 hash), and your signature is accepted only if the document you sign still has that fingerprint. If these Terms or our Privacy Policy change while the signing page is open, a signature made on that page is refused, so you always agree to the versions you were shown; reload the page, read what changed, and sign again. Each step, from sending to opening, consenting and signing or declining, goes into an evidence trail. Every entry is linked to the one before it, and the trail is sealed with a secret key we keep, so a change made by anyone without that key can be detected. To check our records yourself, use the fingerprints in the email with your copy: any copy, ours included, must match them. What we record at each step is listed in our Privacy Policy.

What the record shows. It shows which signed-in account signed, when, and from which network and browser. It can’t show who was holding the device, which is one more reason to keep your email account secure.

Your copy. Once everyone has signed, each signer receives an email with the signed agreement, normally as an attached PDF. The PDF ends with a certificate of completion that lists each signer’s name, email address, how they signed in, IP address, approximate location, browser, reading progress and signing time, so everyone who receives the signed copy can see those details. The email also gives 2 fingerprints, one for the document and one for the attached PDF. You can download the signed copy from your portal.

Keeping the original. We store the signed agreement, its certificate and its evidence trail in a private archive, locked for the period described in Records we keep.

A sent agreement never changes. If something needs to change, we send a new agreement. An agreement we withdraw before it’s signed is marked void.

We email you about your account and our work: sign-in links, signing requests and signed copies, forms to fill in, and updates on your issues and projects. When we bill through Stripe, the invoice email comes from Stripe.

Email we write to you goes out only after a person on our team approves it, or approves the step that sends it, such as sending you an agreement or a form. Some emails go out on their own, because of something you or someone else did:

• Sign-in links, links confirming a new email address, and notices that your sign-in email changed, so you’re never locked out
• Your copy of a signed agreement, once everyone has signed
• Notices about activity on your issues, when email is turned on for that project

We keep a record of every email our system sends you.

Our systems don’t send text messages to clients or to visitors of our site. The only automated texts go to our own team, as alerts about our work. If you’ve given us your phone number, someone on our team may call or text you about our work, as any business contact would.

If we ever offer automated texts to you, we’ll ask for your permission first, tell you what we’ll send and how often, and update this section before the first message goes out. You’ll be able to end them by replying STOP. How we handle a phone number you give us is covered in our Privacy Policy.

For a site we build, host or maintain for you, you allow us to check it automatically and to read its information from the services we manage it on.

• Checks. Our checks send an ordinary web request to your site’s public address and record whether it answered, how quickly, whether its security certificate is valid, and any error. We keep each result for 30 days.
• Heartbeats. If your site runs scheduled jobs on its own server, we can give it a private link to call when each job finishes, so we notice when one stops.
• Hosting and code. Where we manage your site on Vercel and its code on GitHub, our dashboard reads its deployments, domains, build results and security alerts from them. That dashboard only reads.
• A closer look. When looking into a problem, our operations tool may fetch your site’s front page and read the start of its text; see AI in our work.

These checks help us notice problems. They don’t guarantee we’ll catch every one, or that your site will always be up. Your agreement says what support we provide.

We use AI tools every day, for much of our work: writing and checking code, first drafts of business writing, summaries, and running our own tools. A person sets the direction and keeps the final say on what reaches you. We treat what AI produces as a draft to check, not as an answer. Work we deliver is our responsibility whether or not AI helped make it.

Our stance on AI explains where we use it and where we prefer people do the work: creative work meant to carry a human feeling, such as art, music or a story in your own words. If you’d rather AI not be used on some part of your work, tell us before it starts. We’ll talk it through, and anything we agree goes in writing.

The AI tools we use in our work can see the code, content and records we use them on, and some of our internal tools send limited information to an AI model. Our Privacy Policy explains both, and what our internal tools never send.

Please use the portal only for your work with us, and don’t use our website or portal to:

• Reach accounts, records or areas that aren’t yours, or get around a limit or security control
• Probe, scan or overload our systems, or interfere with how they run
• Upload malware, or anything you don’t have the right to share
• Share your sign-in, or use someone else’s

If you find a security problem, tell us at hello@creo.design, and don’t access more than you need to show it.

Ending our work right away. If a client uses our services, or a site we build for them, for fraud, deception, pyramid or multi-level marketing schemes, predatory lending, or anything else that takes advantage of people, we may end our work together right away, or, where a signed agreement sets a notice period, as soon as that notice allows. The handoff your agreement describes for your site and domain still applies.

We may also suspend portal access right away to protect people, data or our systems. That pauses the portal only, never your website, which follows your agreement.

• Your materials. Photos, video, text, files and other materials you give us stay yours if you created them, or bought or paid for them from someone other than us. You let us store, copy and adapt them, and we use them only for our work for you, including keeping them in your portal and showing the finished work as your agreement allows. You can ask us to remove them at any time, as long as removing them only affects your own site or project. You confirm you have the right to share them with us, and that using them as you’ve asked won’t infringe anyone else’s rights.
• What we make for you. Your agreement says who owns the work we make for you and what we may reuse, such as underlying code.
• Without a signed agreement. For work done on an approved quote, such as a consulting session, you may use what we deliver for your organization’s own purposes, and we keep ownership of our own materials and methods.
• Showing our work. We may show finished work in our portfolio as your agreement allows.
• Our tools and methods. We keep all rights in our own tools, templates, code libraries and methods, including the portal itself.
• Other companies’ software. Some work uses open-source software or services from other companies, each under its own license or terms. Where those apply to you, you agree to follow them.

We each keep the other’s non-public business information confidential: anything shared for our work that isn’t already public, such as plans, code, systems, finances and customer information. This doesn’t cover information the receiving side already knew, developed on its own, or received lawfully from someone else. We each use it only for our work together, and share it only with people who need it for that work and keep it confidential, including the service providers named or described in our Privacy Policy, unless the other agrees or the law requires it. This continues after our work ends. Your agreement may say more, and controls where it does.

We build and run the portal ourselves and keep improving it, so features will be added, changed and sometimes removed. We work to keep our website and portal running and your information safe, but we can’t promise they’ll always be available or free of errors. Maintenance, and outages at the companies we rely on, can interrupt them. For a website we host for you, your agreement says what we provide.

You can download your signed agreements and the files you’ve sent us from the portal. If you can’t reach them there, or want a copy of anything else of yours we hold, email team@creo.design.

We do our work with reasonable care and skill. If something we delivered isn’t right, tell us, and we’ll work with you to fix it as your agreement or quote provides.

Apart from that and anything your agreement promises, our website, our portal, and anything we provide without a signed agreement are provided as they are and as available, without any other warranty, express or implied, including any implied warranty that they’re of ordinary, saleable quality (merchantability) or fit for a particular purpose. We aren’t responsible for problems caused by services from other companies that you choose or that your project relies on, such as a domain registrar or a platform’s outage, except as your agreement says.

Neither of us is liable to the other for indirect or consequential damages, such as lost profits, arising from these Terms, our website, our portal, or work we do for you without a signed agreement.

Our total liability for any claim arising from these Terms, our website, our portal, or work we do for you without a signed agreement is limited to the greater of the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose and $100. Your agreement sets the limits for the work it covers, and controls where it differs.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that the law doesn’t allow to be limited, such as for fraud, for harm caused on purpose, or for breaking the law.

If someone else makes a claim against us because content you gave us infringed their rights, or because of how you used our portal in breach of these Terms, you’ll cover our reasonable costs of that claim, including reasonable legal fees. We’ll tell you about the claim promptly and work with you on how it’s handled.

Your agreement says how either of us can end an engagement, and what happens to your site, domain and files when it does. You can also ask us to close your portal account at any time by emailing team@creo.design. When our work ends:

• Anything you owe for work already done stays due
• Each of us keeps protecting the other’s confidential information
• We keep signed agreements and other records as described in Records we keep
• You can still ask us for copies of your signed agreements and of the files you sent us, for as long as we hold them

The parts of these Terms that by their nature should outlast our work, such as confidentiality, the limits of liability and the records we keep, continue after it ends.

• Signed agreements. We keep signed agreements, their certificates of completion and their signing evidence for at least 10 years after signing, and for as long as we work together if that is longer. During that time they’re locked in storage so our software can’t delete them.
• Deleted items. Deleting something in the portal, or in our own tools, hides it and keeps it in our records, and our team can restore it. Secrets are the exception; see Secure requests.
• Erasing on request. To ask us to erase your information, email team@creo.design. We’ll erase what we can and aren’t required to keep, and tell you what we kept and why. We keep signed agreements and their evidence for the period above, records we need for security, fraud prevention or to show what happened, such as our activity log, and anything the law requires us to keep.
• Backups. Copies in our backups expire on their own schedule, at most a year later; we don’t erase them early.

Our Privacy Policy explains what else we keep and for how long.

We may update these Terms. Each update is published as a new numbered version with its effective date, and earlier versions stay readable from this page. If you have a portal account, you’ll be asked to review and accept the new version before you continue using the portal. Each signature records the version of these Terms in effect when it was made, and that version stays with that agreement. If you keep using our website after a change, the updated Terms apply to that use.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Montana. If we disagree about something, we’ll each first try to work it out by talking. If that doesn’t settle it, either of us may take it to the state or federal courts located in Montana, and we each agree those courts can hear it. Either of us may also use small claims court for a claim that qualifies.

We may transfer these Terms to whoever takes over our business. You may transfer them only with our written agreement.

If part of these Terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies. Not enforcing a part right away doesn’t mean giving it up.

Questions about these Terms: hello@creo.design

Legal notices and requests, such as a copy of anything you’ve signed or sent us, a paper copy, erasing your information, closing your account, or withdrawing consent to electronic records: team@creo.design

We send notices about your account to the email address on your account, or show them in the portal. Notices under a signed agreement go to the addresses that agreement names.

Creo Collective LLC, doing business as Creo Design, Montana, USA