Refund & Cancellation Policy

Every website is paid for in three stages. Knowing which stage you're in is the whole of this policy, so here they are:

1. 1. The deposit — $25 (Pro) or $75 (Signature). Paid when you submit your answers. It pays for the work of producing your website — the Pro versions that get generated for you, or the hand-built Signature first look.
2. 2. The build balance — $275 (Pro) or $425 (Signature). This is the rest of the $300 / $500 total, after your deposit is credited. We invoice it after your website has been reviewed and approved — that is when the payment link reaches you. Your dashboard will also let you pay it early if you would rather; that is an option, never a requirement.
3. 3. Managed plan — from $25/mo (Pro) or from $50/mo (Signature), priced by your traffic. Optional — it exists only if you choose the managed plan when your site is finished (the alternative is downloading your website files, with nothing recurring). If chosen, it starts only when the studio publishes your site, and only if the build balance has been paid. It never starts before that.

When you submit your answers, we start building, and what you have paid is non-refundable from that moment. Not when we deliver — when we start. Pressing submit puts real work in motion: model time we pay for, or a person sitting down to design your site. That work cannot be un-done, so it cannot be un-charged.

This is deliberately a strict policy, and it is strict in one direction only, so there are exactly two exceptions — and both of them are ours to fail, not yours to prove:

• Something breaks and we can't deliver. If our end fails and no website reaches you, you get every penny back. You should never be out of pocket for something you never received.
• We miss 24 hours. If your website isn't with you within a day of us starting, you get your money back — and you don't have to ask for it nicely. There is a countdown and a button in your dashboard. See below.

Outside those two, the answer is no. Changing your mind, going with someone else, deciding you don't need a website after all, or not liking what came back are all reasons we understand and none of them are refunds — the work still happened.

Not liking the result is a rebuild, not a refund. Your purchase includes more than one build for exactly this reason. If what came back isn't right, change your answers and have it built again — it costs you nothing and the button is on your dashboard. Ask before you give up on it.

And whatever happens: you keep the work. Refunded or not, every build we made you stays in your dashboard and its preview links keep working. We don't take back things you've already seen.

The moment we start building, a 24-hour clock starts, and you can watch it at the top of your dashboard. If your website isn't with you before it runs out, we've broken our end of the deal.

When that happens, a button appears in your dashboard that says "get my money back". One click. Nothing to fill in, nobody to email, no reason to give. You don't have to argue about whether a delay was reasonable, and you don't have to catch us at it — the page tells you.

You keep the website anyway. Claiming doesn't cancel your project or delete anything. We carry on building it, you carry on owning what we've made, and you have your money back as well. If you'd rather just wait, ignore the button — it doesn't expire.

Being straight about the mechanics: the button files the claim and tells the studio immediately, and the refund itself is issued by hand to the card you paid with — usually within 14 business days. It is not instant, and this page will not pretend it is.

Once a website has been delivered the clock stops and lateness stops being a refund question — it becomes a rebuild question, and your purchase already includes those.

Non-refundable, same as the start fee. The two exceptions above are the only ones: if we break, or if we miss 24 hours, you get your money back.

The reason we can be this firm about the larger payment is that you are never asked for it blind. You pay the balance after you have seen your finished website — we don't invoice it until your site has been reviewed and approved, so by the time this money is due you know exactly what you are buying. That is the opposite of a deposit.

Your dashboard does let you pay the balance early, before there is anything to look at, if for some reason you want to. Nothing pushes you there, and we'd rather you didn't — waiting until you've seen the site costs you nothing and tells you everything.

And the monthly plan genuinely cannot start until this balance is paid — that one is enforced by our billing code, not by us remembering.

If something has gone genuinely wrong, email us anyway. A policy is not a wall: we'd rather sort it out than have you sit there unhappy with a website you paid for.

Cancel whenever you want. Once the plan has started there are two ways: open your dashboard and use Manage billing, which takes you to Stripe's own billing portal, or just email ImagineSite12@gmail.com and ask us to cancel it. Emailing always works; if the Stripe portal isn't available to you for any reason, that's the fallback, and we'll do it for you.

Before we publish, cancelling is by email — that's the only way, and it works. The monthly plan doesn't exist yet at that point: nothing has been set up to charge you, so there is nothing in the Stripe portal to switch off, and the Manage billing button may not even appear in your dashboard. Email ImagineSite12@gmail.com and say you don't want the plan started. We won't start it, and we'll confirm that back to you in writing.

If you email us to cancel, it takes effect at the end of the billing period you've already paid for. You keep support for the rest of that month and are not charged again. That is how the studio does it, every time.

Stripe's billing portal is Stripe's, and it cancels on whatever terms that portal is configured with — which may not be the same thing. If you want the end-of-period behaviour guaranteed, email us instead. We would rather tell you that than let you find out afterwards.

There are no partial-month refunds. We never prorate. If you cancel on day 3 of a month, that month still runs to its end and is not refunded in part. This is a real limitation, not fine print we're hoping you skip: our billing simply does not do proration.

Cancelling never takes your website down. The support plan buys our availability for updates and changes — it is not rent on your site. Nothing in our system unpublishes a site, deletes a file, or touches your project history because a plan was cancelled, and that is written into the billing code on purpose.

The one honest caveat: hosting a site costs the studio money, so we do reserve the right — as a human decision, with notice to you first — to stop hosting a site whose plan has lapsed, or to remove files after that. Section 14 of the Terms sets out how much notice you get and how you get a copy of your files. We have never done it, and we would tell you long before we did.

If a monthly payment fails, we email you a link to pay it and we email ourselves too. We do not unpublish your website over a failed payment.

If we ever take a site offline, we stop billing for it. Suspending a site is a deliberate decision by the studio, not something that happens by itself. When it happens, the monthly plan is paused at the same time and the charges that would have been raised while you were offline are cancelled outright — not stored up and collected later. You don't pay a support fee for a month you spent suspended. Turning it back on is a manual step at our end, so if a suspension looks wrong to you, email us and we'll sort it out.

Two ways in, and the settlement is the same by hand at the end of both. If we missed the 24 hours, your dashboard has a button — one click and the claim is filed and we are told immediately. Everything else starts with an email. Either way a person issues the refund through Stripe: nothing in this app moves money on its own, which is a one-person studio being straight with you about how it works.

1. 1. Click the button, or email us. If we were late, the button in your dashboard is the whole of your side of it. Otherwise write to ImagineSite12@gmail.com with the address you paid with and roughly what happened. No form, no reason code.
2. 2. Your refund is returned within up to 14 business days — that is the studio's commitment, and it covers issuing the refund through Stripe. If a claim doesn't qualify under this policy you get a real answer explaining why, inside the same window, not silence.
3. 3. The money goes back to the original payment method — the same card you paid with. We can't send it anywhere else. Once we've issued it, it typically reaches your statement in 5–10 business days. That last stretch belongs to your bank and the card network, not to us: we can tell you the exact date we issued the refund, and we can't make your bank post it faster.

Refunding a payment does not unpublish or delete your website, and neither does cancelling. If a refund is meant to end the project too, we'll say so explicitly in the email — it is never implied.

Tell us and we refund it. No conditions, no argument. If you cancelled — by email or through the Stripe portal — and a charge lands afterwards that shouldn't have, forward us the receipt or just tell us the date and we'll put it back. This is the one item on this page with no qualifying test attached to it, because a charge after a cancellation is our mistake, not a judgement call.

The same applies to anything else that looks wrong on your statement: charged twice, charged the wrong amount, charged for a month your site was offline. Email us the details. We'd much rather find it was our error and fix it than have you assume you're stuck with it.

You have every right to dispute a charge with your bank. We'd just ask you to email us first, because a direct refund is faster for you than a chargeback and we would rather fix the problem than argue about it. One person reads that inbox and will actually reply.

Signature projects are quoted individually and are not billed through the checkout on this site, so this policy doesn't govern them. The refund and cancellation terms for a Signature commission are whatever is agreed in writing with you before the project starts. If you're considering one, start at the custom project page and we'll put the terms in the proposal.

California law requires a seller to give buyers its legal name and street address alongside its refund policy, before taking payment. Here it is:

Payments are processed by Stripe. Card details are entered on Stripe's pages and are never seen or stored by this studio — what appears on your statement is a Stripe charge for ImagineSite.

If this policy changes, the version that applies to you is the one that was published when you paid. We won't retroactively make something less refundable than it was on the day you handed over money. The date at the top tells you which version you're looking at.