Client Exit Process

Process

This guide has been written to outline the expired contract/client exit process written as a narrative based on the Terms of Business (Terms of Business take precedence over this document).

Contracts can expire due to a business being wound up, non-payment of services for renewal, overdue payment, or the client no longer wishing to continue the relationship. Or they just forgot (despite all of our reminder emails). Once a contract expires, assuming no monies or materials are owed via either party, you don’t owe us anything and we don’t owe you anything. Everything that was set up and agreed during the contract now gone, it’s done and dusted, water under the bridge.

Email & Websites

If your contract has expired, we’re sorry to see you go.

  1. If the website is managed by us, annual software licence subscriptions used to run your website will be cancelled (software licences cost money).
  2. Email servers and the data will be deleted (servers cost money).
  3. Website servers and the data will be deleted (servers cost money).
  4. The offline backups of your website will be deleted (storage cost money).

Sometimes a client will have a change of circumstances and ask for a deleted website and/or email to be re-established. Several items of note:

  • A fee will be due to re-establish services. The fee will vary depending on the scope of the work, the time passed since the site was live, how quickly the restore is required and any additional fees accumulated/incurred since the contract expired (if all the backups have been deleted, step 4 above, then there’s nothing we can do).
  • If the Email servers have been deleted (step 2 above) then prior emails will be gone, we can set up new accounts.
  • The current annual fee managed fee will be due for our the website services. This fee is unlikely to be the same amount you were previously paying. This fee pays to the website hosting, domain name renewal, a new purchase of the software licences, backups, etc.
  • Payment needs to be completed prior to any re-establishment.
  • Depending on circumstances, our workload, and the client relationship, issuing a new contract is at our discretion.

Unless stated on the initial invoice, ownership of the code, database files etc remains with us as per our Terms of Business. Transfer may sometimes be possible depending on the complexity of the website and the software licences in use. Sometimes transfer may not be possible, the website may use a modified version of the website software, therefore data within the database files may not be portable. Any transfer would be subject to a licence, a fee, and transfer is at our discretion.

Domains

If your contract has expired, we’re sorry to see you go.

  1. If you want to take ownership of the domain name please contact us and advise us of the new IPS tag. Once the IPS tag has been changed, we have no control over the domain.
  2. Domains that are coming up for expiry cannot be transferred and will first need to be renewed via our standard rates. This isn’t our rule, it’s just how transfers work.
  3. Depending on the Registrar your domain name is registered with, a Registrar fee may be due prior to transfer, this fee will need to be paid before the domain can be transferred.
  4. We do not charge an administration fee to transfer the domain. It’s your domain name.
  5. If you do not request transfer the domain will be allowed to expire.

Is it goodbye?

If there are any questions regarding the Client Exit process, please get in touch.

Some small words about software licences:
But WordPress is free … why are there software licences to pay? Yes WordPress is free, but we use commercially purchased and supported software add-ons to build the sites, to give extra function to the sites, to report errors and issues straight back to us here at TMD HQ, keeping everything ticking over nicely. A typical website has an annual subscription of software that would weigh in for a single website of around £550, we buy in bulk, this brings brings costs down, we share the goodness, our clients get the benefit, we add value, everyone’s a winner.