Terms and Conditions of Service

Version 1.0, effective 17 August 2026

These terms govern all development, diagnostic and support work we do for you. Hosting is governed separately by our Web Hosting Agreement.

---

Summary

• Work is quoted as a flat rate against a written scope. Work outside that scope is quoted separately.
• Business hours are 08:00 to 17:00 SAST, Monday to Friday.
• Ownership of bespoke code passes to you on receipt of full payment.
• Our total liability is capped at the fees paid for the engagement concerned (clause 13).
• Responsibility for the prior condition of a system we did not build remains with you (clause 7).
• You maintain your own backups (clause 8).
• Either party may cancel on the terms in clause 15.

---

1. Who we are

This information is published in compliance with section 43(1) of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 (“ECTA”).

Complaints: contact@stackbou.co.za. We acknowledge within 5 business days.

Access to information: our PAIA manual, compiled under the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000, is published at stackbou.co.za/paia.

Dispute resolution: disputes are handled under clause 18 below. You may also refer a complaint to an accredited industry ombud, a consumer court, or the National Consumer Commission.

Website use. These terms also govern use of stackbou.co.za. Content on the site is general information and is not professional advice for your situation. Prices shown on the site are indicative and are an invitation to do business, not a binding offer; a binding price arises only in a written quote. Unauthorised access to the site or any system behind it is an offence under the Cybercrimes Act 19 of 2020.

In these terms, “we”, “us” and “StackBou” mean the entity above. “You” and “the Client” mean the person or organisation engaging us.

2. Application

2.1 These terms apply as soon as the earliest of the following happens:

    (a) you accept a written quote from us;     (b) you pay a deposit or invoice;     (c) you instruct us to begin work; or     (d) you submit our triage form and we accept the engagement.

2.2 If a signed written agreement between us conflicts with these terms, the signed agreement prevails for that engagement only.

2.3 Your own standard purchase terms do not apply and are expressly excluded, unless we have agreed to them in writing and signed.

2.4 We may amend these terms. We will give you 30 days’ written notice of a material change. Changes do not apply retrospectively to work already quoted or in progress. If you do not accept a change, you may terminate under clause 15 without penalty.

3. Services

3.1 We provide WordPress back-end development, Linux server administration, diagnostic work and emergency remediation, as described in the accepted quote.

3.2 Unless the quote says otherwise, the services do not include graphic design, copywriting, SEO, digital marketing, paid advertising management, or general IT support.

3.3 Every engagement is defined by a written Scope of Work in the quote. Anything not listed in the Scope of Work is not included.

4. Quotes, scope and changes

4.1 Quotes are valid for 14 days and are priced as a flat rate, not an hourly rate.

4.2 All prices are in South African Rand (ZAR) and are stated not subject to VAT.

4.3 A quote is based on the information you give us and on our preliminary assessment. If, once we begin, the actual condition of your system differs materially from what we were told or could reasonably assess, we will stop, tell you, and give you a revised quote. We will not incur unquoted charges without your written approval.

4.4 Change requests. Any request that adds to, or materially alters, the Scope of Work is a change request. We quote it separately, and work begins once you approve that quote in writing. Accepting a change request is at our discretion.

4.5 Your dependencies. You must provide the hosting credentials, DNS access, content, third-party licence keys and decisions the work requires. If you have not provided a dependency within 10 business days of our written request:

    (a) agreed timelines are extended accordingly;     (b) we may reschedule you behind other clients; and     (c) after 30 business days we may treat the engagement as cancelled by you under clause 15.3 and invoice for work completed.

5. Orders and cooling-off period

5.1 Our website and quotes are an invitation to do business, not an offer. A contract forms when we accept your instruction.

5.2 You must give us accurate and complete information. We are not liable for consequences flowing from information you gave us that was wrong or incomplete.

5.3 Before you confirm, you will have an opportunity to review the full transaction and total cost, and to withdraw, as required by section 43(2) of ECTA.

5.4 Cooling-off period. If you are a natural person and you contracted with us electronically, section 44 of ECTA gives you seven days from the date of the agreement to cancel without reason and without penalty. We will refund you within 30 days.

5.5 Under section 42(2) of ECTA, the seven-day cooling-off right does not apply to services that have begun, with your consent, before the seven days expire.

5.6 Consent to immediate commencement.

Emergency work cannot wait seven days. If you ask us to start immediately, you are consenting to us performing the service before the cooling-off period ends, and you acknowledge that once we have started you lose the section 44 right to cancel that work free of charge.

You will still be charged for work already performed. We will ask you to confirm this consent in writing before we begin.

5.7 If you cancel after work has begun, clause 15.3 applies: you pay for work performed up to cancellation.

6. Business hours

6.1 Our business hours are 08:00 to 17:00 SAST, Monday to Friday, excluding South African public holidays.

6.2 Work is performed during business hours only, including work sold under a service name containing the word “emergency”, which denotes the type of fault addressed and not the speed of our response.

6.3 Delivery dates in a quote are good-faith estimates. Time is not of the essence unless we have agreed a firm date in writing and signed.

7. Pre-existing systems

7.1 You confirm that you own the systems we will work on, or that you are properly authorised to instruct us to access them. See clause 10 and our System Access Authorisation form.

7.2 Pre-existing condition.

Where we work on a system we did not build, we are working on code, configuration and data of unknown quality and unknown history.

We are responsible for our own work. That responsibility does not extend to the condition of the system before we began, including pre-existing defects, latent faults, prior compromise, undocumented customisations, nulled plugins or unsupported software, whether or not they surface during our work.

7.3 Backup before remedial work. Remedial work begins once a current, restorable backup exists. You either confirm that one exists, or instruct us in writing to proceed without one.

7.4 Where you instruct us to proceed without a verified backup, the risk of data loss arising from that work rests with you. We confirm the position in writing before beginning.

7.5 Compromised systems. Where a site has been hacked, we remove the malware we find and close the vector we identify. A rebuild from known-good sources is the only assured remedy, and we quote it separately.

7.6 Diagnostic work. Diagnostic work is charged for the investigation. Where we conclude that a fault is not economically fixable, we will tell you, and the diagnostic fee remains payable.

8. Backups and data

8.1 Responsibility for backups.

Except where we host your site under a Web Hosting Agreement, backing up your website, database, files and content is yours to do. Backup is not part of development or emergency work.

8.2 Where we take a working snapshot before performing remedial work, it is a working tool for our own use, held without warranty, and deleted 14 days after the engagement ends.

8.3 You are responsible for keeping your own independent copy of anything we deliver to you.

9. Intellectual property

9.1 Until you have paid us in full, all intellectual property in the work we produce, including source code, remains our property. Nothing in this agreement transfers it earlier.

9.2 During that period you have a limited, revocable, non-transferable licence to use the work solely for the internal business purpose it was made for. If you fail to pay, we may revoke that licence on written notice, and continued use of the work after revocation is an infringement of our copyright.

9.3 On receipt of full payment, we assign to you all copyright and other intellectual property in the bespoke code and configuration written specifically for you under the Scope of Work. This assignment is made in writing as required by section 22(3) of the Copyright Act 98 of 1978, and takes effect automatically on the date the final payment clears.

9.4 Retained rights. We retain full ownership of, and this assignment does not cover:

    (a) our pre-existing code, libraries, frameworks, snippets and boilerplate, whether written before or during your engagement;     (b) our internal tooling, deployment scripts, container configurations and development methodology;     (c) generic techniques, know-how and architectural patterns; and     (d) any third-party or open-source component.

We grant you a perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use the items in (a) and (b) to the extent they are embedded in your deliverable and necessary for you to use it. We remain free to reuse all of them for other clients.

9.5 Third-party and open-source components. Deliverables may incorporate third-party or open-source software. That software remains subject to its own licence, we cannot assign it to you, and you must comply with those licences.

9.6 Your material. You keep ownership of all content, data, trademarks and material you supply. You grant us a licence to use it for the duration of the engagement. You warrant that you have the right to give it to us, and you indemnify us against any third-party claim that our agreed use of your material infringes their rights.

9.7 Portfolio rights. We may identify you as a client and describe the work in general terms in our portfolio and marketing. We will not publish your source code, credentials, data, or any confidential detail. You may withdraw this permission at any time by written notice.

10. Access to your systems

10.1 To perform the work we usually need privileged access, including SSH, SFTP, WordPress administrator, hosting control panel, DNS or database credentials.

10.2 You warrant that you are the owner of each system, or are duly authorised by the owner to grant us access. Unlawful access to a computer system is a criminal offence under section 2 of the Cybercrimes Act 19 of 2020, and our lawful authority to act depends entirely on your warranty.

10.3 We will require a signed System Access Authorisation before accessing any system we do not host.

10.4 Credential handling. We access credentials only for the agreed work, never store them in any database or on our website, keep them in an encrypted store, do not share them with any third party, and destroy them within 30 days of the engagement ending unless we host you.

10.5 Credential rotation. Credentials issued to us should be rotated once an engagement ends. Responsibility for unauthorised access through credentials that were not rotated rests with you.

10.6 We will not access, copy or use your data beyond what the agreed work requires.

11. Payment

11.1 Development work: 50% deposit before we begin, balance on completion and before final delivery or deployment to production.

11.2 Emergency and diagnostic work: payable in full on completion, unless the quote says otherwise.

11.3 Invoices are payable within 7 calendar days of the invoice date, by EFT to the account on the invoice.

11.4 Late payment. Overdue amounts bear interest at 2% per month, simple and not compounded, calculated daily from the due date until payment in full.

This rate is the maximum permitted for an incidental credit agreement under the National Credit Act 34 of 2005.

11.5 Suspension for non-payment. If an invoice is more than 14 days overdue, we may suspend all work for you, having first given you 7 days’ written notice and an opportunity to pay. Suspension does not release you from paying.

11.6 Recovery costs. If we have to recover an overdue debt, you are liable for our reasonable legal costs on the attorney-and-own-client scale, and for collection commission actually incurred.

11.7 No set-off. You may not withhold or set off any payment against a claim you say you have against us, unless a court or arbitrator has decided that claim in your favour.

11.8 Refunds. Where a refund is due under these terms or by law, we pay it within 30 days by the same method you paid us.

12. Warranties

12.1 We warrant that we will perform the services with the reasonable care and skill of a competent practitioner, in a manner and quality that persons are generally entitled to expect, consistent with section 54 of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008.

12.2 Defect remedy period. For 30 calendar days after delivery, we will fix, free of charge, any defect in our own work that is a genuine failure to meet the agreed Scope of Work. Report it in writing within that period.

12.3 The remedy period does not cover:

    (a) changes made by you or anyone else after delivery;     (b) faults caused by WordPress core, plugin or theme updates applied after delivery;     (c) faults in third-party software or services;     (d) hosting or infrastructure faults outside our control;     (e) new feature requests, which are change requests under clause 4.4; or     (f) pre-existing defects under clause 7.2.

12.4 Limits of the warranty.

Our warranty is the one in clause 12.1: reasonable care and skill. To the fullest extent permitted by law, and subject always to clause 13.4, it does not extend to:

• uninterrupted, error-free or secure operation of any website or system;
• software being free of all defects;
• any particular commercial result, including revenue, traffic, search ranking or conversion;
• a compromised system being or remaining free of all malicious code; or
• third-party software, plugins, themes, APIs or hosting continuing to function, remain supported, or remain compatible.

12.5 Your remedy for a third-party product lies against that third party.

13. Limitation of liability

This clause limits our liability to you and is drawn to your attention under section 49 of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008.

13.1 Excluded loss. Our liability excludes indirect and consequential loss, and specifically not for:

• loss of profit, revenue, sales or anticipated savings;
• loss of business, contracts, opportunity or goodwill;
• loss of or corruption of data, except as set out in clause 13.2;
• reputational harm;
• the cost of procuring substitute services;
• downtime of a system we do not host;
• third-party claims made against you,

whether or not we were told such loss was possible.

13.2 Overall cap. Our total aggregate liability to you arising out of an engagement, whether in contract, delict, statute or otherwise, is limited to the total amount you actually paid us for that engagement in the 6 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

13.3 Time bar. Any claim must be brought within 12 months of the date you became aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, of the cause of the claim.

13.4 Liability not excluded. Nothing in this agreement excludes or limits our liability for:

    (a) death or personal injury caused by our negligence;     (b) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;     (c) gross negligence or wilful misconduct;     (d) any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including under section 51 of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008; or     (e) our obligation to refund amounts you paid for services we did not deliver.

13.5 Your statutory rights are unaffected. If you are a consumer as defined in the Consumer Protection Act, you keep every right that Act gives you. Where this clause conflicts with a right you have under that Act, the Act prevails and this clause is read down to the extent necessary, without affecting the rest of it.

13.6 Fair allocation. You acknowledge that these limits reflect a fair allocation of risk given our flat-rate pricing, that our fees would be materially higher without them, and that you have had an adequate opportunity to read, consider and ask about them.

14. Indemnity

This clause requires you to cover our losses in defined circumstances and is drawn to your attention under section 49 of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008.

14.1 You indemnify us against any third-party claim, and against reasonable legal costs we actually incur, arising from:

    (a) content or material you supplied to us;     (b) your breach of clause 10.2, that is, instructing us to access a system you were not authorised to grant access to;     (c) your unlawful use of anything we deliver; or     (d) your breach of any law in operating your website or business.

14.2 This indemnity does not apply to the extent the claim arises from our own breach, negligence or unlawful act. We will notify you promptly of any claim, will not settle it without consulting you, and will let you participate in the defence.

15. Term and termination

15.1 The engagement runs until the Scope of Work is complete, or until terminated under this clause.

15.2 Either of us may terminate for material breach by giving 14 days’ written notice specifying the breach, if the breach is not remedied within that period.

15.3 You may cancel at any time on written notice. If you do:

    (a) you pay for all work performed up to cancellation, valued proportionally against the Scope of Work;     (b) you pay any non-recoverable third-party cost we committed to on your instruction, such as licences or domains; and     (c) any deposit is applied against (a) and (b), and any surplus is refunded to you within 30 days.

15.4 Where you are a consumer under the Consumer Protection Act, any cancellation charge will be reasonable as required by section 14 of that Act, and will never exceed the value of work actually performed plus committed third-party costs.

15.5 We may terminate on 14 days’ written notice if you repeatedly fail to meet dependencies under clause 4.5, if payment is more than 30 days overdue, or if you ask us to do something unlawful. We may terminate immediately if you or your representatives are abusive or threatening toward us.

15.6 On termination we will, on request and once your account is fully settled, hand over completed work, deployment notes and any credentials belonging to you.

15.7 Clauses 8, 9, 10.4, 11, 12.4, 13, 14, 17 and 18 survive termination.

16. Force majeure

16.1 Neither of us is liable for failing to perform, other than a failure to pay money, because of an event beyond our reasonable control.

16.2 Such events include, without limitation: electricity grid failure and load shedding; failure of national or international telecommunications infrastructure, including undersea cable breaks; failure of an upstream hosting, network or cloud provider; large-scale cyberattack not caused by our own failure to take reasonable security measures; fire, flood or natural disaster; epidemic; civil unrest; and government action.

16.3 If the event continues for more than 30 days, either of us may terminate on written notice, and you will be refunded any amount paid for services not delivered.

17. Confidentiality and personal information

17.1 Each of us will keep the other’s confidential information confidential, and use it only for the engagement. This survives for 3 years after termination.

17.2 Confidential information excludes information that is public through no fault of the receiver, was already lawfully known, or must be disclosed by law.

17.3 We handle personal information in accordance with the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 and our Privacy Policy at stackbou.co.za/privacy.

17.4 Where we process personal information on your behalf, you are the Responsible Party and we are the Operator as defined in that Act. Our obligations as Operator, including the written contract required by sections 20 and 21, are set out in clause 11 of our Web Hosting Agreement, which applies to any engagement where we process personal information for you.

18. Disputes, law and jurisdiction

18.1 Complaints. You must send any complaint in writing to contact@stackbou.co.za before taking any further step under this clause. We will acknowledge within 5 business days and respond substantively within 15 business days.

18.2 If we cannot resolve it, we will both attempt mediation in good faith before starting litigation. Each of us pays our own costs and we share the mediator’s fee equally.

18.3 These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa.

18.4 We both consent to the jurisdiction of the Magistrates’ Court having jurisdiction over us, in terms of section 45 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 32 of 1944, even if a claim exceeds that court’s normal limit. This is to keep the cost of resolving a dispute proportionate for both of us. Either of us may still approach a higher court where the law requires it.

18.5 Nothing in this clause limits your rights as a consumer. If you are a consumer under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008, you remain free at any time to refer a complaint to an accredited industry ombud, to a consumer court, or to the National Consumer Commission.

19. General

19.1 Whole agreement. These terms, together with the accepted quote and any signed annexure, are the whole agreement between us and replace anything said or written before.

19.2 Severability. If any provision is found unlawful or unenforceable, it is severed and the rest continues in force.

19.3 No waiver. If we do not enforce a right immediately, we have not given it up.

19.4 Cession. You may not cede or assign this agreement without our written consent. We may cede it to a successor of our business, on written notice to you.

19.5 No partnership. We are an independent contractor. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, agency or employment relationship.

19.6 Notices. Written notice may be given by email to the addresses we use for each other. Email notice is deemed received on the next business day unless delivery fails.

19.7 Plain language. These terms are written in plain language in accordance with section 22 of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008. Questions may be directed to contact@stackbou.co.za.

---

StackBou General Terms and Conditions of Service, version 1.0, 17 August 2026. The current version is always published at stackbou.co.za/terms.