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Cuberis Terms of Service

Our ongoing support helps clients to effectively utilize their sites as critical marketing and communications tools. We work hard to establish systems, processes, and policies that enable us to provide dependable and efficient ongoing support. Cuberis offers the following support services to all clients that opt into our proactive maintenance plan.

Proactive Maintenance. Proactive maintenance is essential both for the security of your site, and for maintaining its optimal performance. We offer two options for proactive maintenance.

Direct Proactive ($100 per month, plus $50 per month for any additional sites under the same account). Direct Proactive maintenance is performed directly to your production website. A backup will be made, then the plugins and WordPress core will be updated and the site reviewed. In the event of a plugin or theme conflict we will revert to the backup.

Managed Proactive ($200 per month, plus $100 per month for any additional sites under the same account). Managed Proactive maintenance involves setting up a copy of your website on a developer’s local machine, performing updates and checks there, and then performing the updates on the live site.

Clients that retain us for either option of proactive maintenance also gain access to additional support services.

This section added January 2024

Cuberis provides a necessary and valuable set of WordPress plugins for all active clients enrolled in our proactive support plans. All plugin license costs are covered by our $25 per month plugin management fee ($35 per month for clients using our Elementor framework).

Included plugins: Search WP, Advanced Custom Fields (and Extended ACF), Admin Columns Pro, Ultimate Dashboard, Gravity Forms, WP Code Snippets, WP Rocket, Media Deduper, Media Cleaner, and EWWW Image Optimizer. The Elementor framework plugins include: Elementor Pro, Powerpack, Ultimate Addons, Dynamic.ooo, Crocoblock, and Ele Custom Skins Pro. (Note: not all plugins are used on every site, but they are available as needed. This list is subject to change as new plugins are added, or legacy plugins removed.)

Individual licenses to these plugins would cost more than $600 per year ($1,200 with all Elementor options), but are covered under the $25/$35 per month management fee.   

Additional Support Services

Routine Requested Maintenance. Clients that opt into the proactive maintenance plan also gain support for their routine requested maintenance needs. As an active Cuberis client, you have access to our Support Team form (cuberis.com/support). This form allows you to open tickets for site changes, bug reports, or basic questions. Our Support Team specialists will respond directly to you, enabling them to perform your requests as efficiently as possible. (Note: all support team time, including time spent estimating, or responding to general questions, are measured and billed to your account.)

Routine support tickets are typically completed within three business days (faster service can be requested with an extra rush fee of 50%). Emergency support requests are addressed ASAP. Our support is available Monday through Friday 9:00am to 5:00pm EST.

Hosting. Cuberis does not directly provide hosting services and while our support team is always available to help with hosting related questions or issues, we do not take direct responsibility for your hosting. We recommend that you keep your web hosting account provider’s contact information readily available in case your site goes offline, particularly during times outside our normal business hours.

Terms. Opting into our proactive maintenance plan authorizes us to perform your monthly proactive maintenance. This proactive maintenance agreement also authorizes us to respond to your requested maintenance requests without seeking approval for, or providing estimates for, each individual request—unless we believe that the request may exceed five hours of work. Tickets involving more than just a few hours will be held until we receive client approval for that time. This balanced policy makes routine support requests both efficient and affordable.

Billing. Invoices are sent out at the end of each quarter, or after ten hours of work have been completed, whichever comes first. Our goal is to never send you an invoice for much more than ten hours of work, unless you’ve knowingly approved a batch of maintenance that went over that amount. Feel free to contact billing@cuberis.com for an up-to-date account balance at any time.

Opting Out. Proactive agreements are month-by-month, and you can opt out at any time after paying for any accumulated work. If you decide to opt out of proactive maintenance, we’ll put your account in “inactive status.” Inactive clients can reactivate their account in order to engage us to perform future maintenance requests. However, inactive clients will require a complete site audit before we reactivate your account and perform any requested work. That audit may take between a half to a full day, depending on the complexity of your site, and on how long it has been since the last CMS and plugin updates have been performed. Additionally, it can take a week or two for us to schedule your site audit. Since not proactively maintaining a website can often lead to emergencies, and since reactivating your status can take several days to reestablish, we highly recommend engaging our proactive/requested maintenance services.

Rates.

Routine Maintenance:$140 per hour. Billed in 15 minute increments.
Projects:$160 per hour. (Major projects are fee based, therefore the rate is built into quoted fees. Mini projects (see below) are billed at the project rate in 15 minute increments.
Account Management and Consulting:$180 per hour. Billed in 30 minute increments.
System Administration:$200 per hour. (System administration is rarely, if ever needed, as most such issues are handled by your hosting provider. But in the event that such expertise is needed, we have a system administrator on retainer.) Billed in 30 minute increments.

Other Optional Services

The only requirement for active client status is participation in our proactive maintenance. However, over time, you will likely need more than just proactive and requested maintenance.

Mini Projects. Your site is built on a framework that is readily extendable. Over time you may want to implement new functionality or add entirely new sections to your site. We engage these kinds of upgrade requests as “mini projects.” Mini projects are estimated statements of work. They usually involve multiple team members for wireframing, design mockups, and development.

Mini projects estimates can range anywhere from 20 hours, up to 80 hours or more. While the work involved may only amount to a week or two, completing these projects can often take six to eight weeks. Additionally, we may need up to a month or so to begin mini projects once their estimates are approved. Therefore, in order to facilitate your mini project needs, please discuss them with an account manager as far in advance as possible.

Accessing Ongoing Cuberis Support

Teamwork Support. As an active client you have access to our Teamwork.com project coordination system. We use Teamwork not only for project management, but also for ongoing communications with our clients after their site’s launch. Our entire team monitors and responds to Teamwork messages.

Account Management. Sometimes your questions about how to best utilize your website require higher level discussions and deeper exploration of options. Eric Holter, CEO (eric@cuberis.com) provides consultation and account planning services to help our clients make informed and optimal decisions about the functionality of their websites. Account management and consultation services are billed at the account management rate in 30 minute increments.

Thanks again for choosing Cuberis, we look forward to continuing to support your web design and development needs in the years to come!

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