Legal
Terms of Service
The ground rules for using this website and for working with Light Astra on websites, web applications and website care plans.
About these Terms
These Terms of Service cover your use of the Light Astra website at lightastra.com and the services Light Astra offers: website development, web-application development, business applications and internal systems, website redesign, website care plans and related services such as technical SEO setup, security-aware configuration and automation work.
Light Astra is operated by Duong Nguyen, a web developer based in the Boise, Idaho area, United States, who also takes on remote projects. Light Astra is one person, so in these Terms "Light Astra", "I" and "me" mean Duong Nguyen, and "you" means the visitor using the website or the person or organization requesting services.
By using the website or asking for a quote, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the website or the services.
Your written quote adds the project-specific details: scope, price, payment terms, a timeline estimate and the revisions included. These Terms and your quote together form the agreement for your project. If the quote and these Terms say different things about your project, the quote applies.
How I handle your information is described separately in the Privacy Policy.
In short
- Every project is quoted individually after a short conversation about what you need. The pricing page lists starting points, not fixed packages, and no work begins until you have accepted a written quote and scope.
- Your domain stays yours. Once a project is paid in full, the finished website is yours too.
- Website care plans (Astra Care and Astra Plus) are optional monthly plans. They cover routine care, not unlimited work or redesigns.
- Business applications and internal systems are separate projects with their own quote. Their ongoing operation or support plan, where one applies, is described in the quote and in the current pricing information, and is separate from the one-time development fee.
- Security-aware work is designed to reduce common risks, but no one can guarantee that nothing will ever go wrong, and no one can guarantee Google rankings.
Project scope, quotes and pricing
Every project is quoted individually. After a short discovery conversation about your goals, your content and what the website or application needs to do, I send a written quote and scope. The quote describes what will be built, what it costs, how payment works, an estimated timeline, and what revisions are included. No work begins until you have accepted the quote.
Prices
Starting points are published on the pricing page: professional websites start at $300, and most standard website projects fall between $300 and $700 depending on size, pages, features, integrations and complexity. Web applications, dashboards, API integrations, e-commerce systems and other larger or complex work are quoted individually. A starting point is not a quote: every project is priced for the project at hand, all prices are in US dollars, and the quote you accept is what applies.
A quote describes a specific project at a specific time. If the scope changes, or if you come back later with a new project, a new quote applies.
Work outside the agreed scope
Requests that go beyond the agreed scope (new pages, features or integrations that were not in the quote, or a change of direction) are quoted separately before the work is done. Minor changes may already be covered if you have a website care plan (see Website care plans).
Payment
Payment terms are set in your quote. That includes whether a deposit is required, any milestone payments, when payments are due, and which payment methods are accepted. If anything about payment is unclear, ask before accepting the quote; I would rather sort it out up front.
Ownership of the finished website passes to you when the project is paid in full (see Ownership and intellectual property).
Your responsibilities
A website project is a joint effort. To keep it moving, you agree to:
- Provide content, feedback and approvals in a timely way. Content means the text, images, logos and other material the website needs. Timeline estimates assume content and feedback arrive when needed; delays on your side can move the schedule.
- Have the right to use what you supply. You confirm that you own, or have permission to use, the content and material you give me (see Content you provide).
- Keep your own accounts in good standing. Your domain registrar, your hosting and any third-party services the website depends on are your accounts. Light Astra is not responsible for problems caused by an expired domain, unpaid hosting or a suspended third-party account.
Your domain
Your domain stays yours. Clients purchase and maintain ownership of their domain registration. You register the domain in your own name so it stays under your control, and I can help you connect it to your new website.
Domain registration and renewal costs are not included in the website development price unless specifically agreed otherwise in your quote.
Hosting and third-party costs
Some things a website needs come from other providers. Hosting, paid APIs, commercial plugins, SaaS subscriptions and specialty services are separate from Light Astra's fees unless specifically agreed otherwise in your quote. They are billed to you by their providers, and those providers' terms and privacy policies apply to them.
Where a project uses such services, the account and the relationship with the provider are yours. Light Astra is not responsible for a provider's pricing, availability, changes or outages.
Revisions
Your quote states what revisions are included in the project, so you know up front how much back-and-forth is part of the price. Additional revision rounds, or a change of direction after you have approved a design or a stage of the work, are quoted separately.
No project or care plan includes unlimited revisions.
Website care plans
Once a website is live, Light Astra can look after it for you through optional monthly plans: Astra Care ($10/month), basic website care and maintenance, and Astra Plus ($39/month), which adds security-focused care, technical SEO and Google indexing support, monitoring and priority support. Both are optional. The plan you choose, and the site or sites it covers, is confirmed in writing with your quote or when you sign up.
Astra Care covers routine website checks, basic updates, minor content changes, link checks, basic maintenance, backup checks where configured, a general website health review and assistance when minor problems occur. Astra Plus includes everything in Astra Care plus security-focused maintenance, configuration reviews, HTTPS/SSL checks, dependency and software updates where applicable, basic uptime monitoring, backup checks, broken link checks, performance checks, Google Search Console support, sitemap monitoring and submission assistance, indexing checks, technical SEO maintenance, small content adjustments and priority support. The current inclusions of each plan are listed on the pricing page.
Security-focused maintenance is designed to reduce common website risks. No website or security service can guarantee prevention of every cyberattack or compromise. See Security limitations.
Business application and internal-system projects are quoted separately and may use separate operation, support or service plans, as described in the applicable quote, agreement or current pricing information. Those plans are not website care plans, and recurring services are always separate from the initial one-time project or development fee.
How the plans work
- Billing. Plans are billed monthly, in US dollars. Which site or sites the plan covers, the start date and the payment method are confirmed when you sign up.
- Routine care only. Plans cover routine care, not unlimited work. They do not include redesigns or new development; major redesigns and new development are separate projects, quoted separately (see Major redesigns and new development).
- Third-party costs. Hosting, domain registration, paid APIs, plugins, SaaS subscriptions and other third-party costs are separate from the plan price (see Hosting and third-party costs).
- Cancellation. Either side can cancel a plan with notice as stated when you sign up. After cancellation, the plan ends at the end of the current billing period.
Security limitations
Light Astra builds and maintains websites with security in mind: secure configuration practices, security-aware development and, with the Astra Plus plan, security-focused maintenance designed to reduce common website risks.
That work reduces risk; it cannot remove it. No website or security service can guarantee prevention of every cyberattack or compromise, and Light Astra does not guarantee that a website will never be attacked, compromised or taken offline.
Light Astra is not liable for security incidents or other problems caused by:
- third-party services, software or components the website uses;
- hosting providers, including outages and compromises of their systems;
- your account credentials, for example a lost or shared password;
- changes made to the website, its hosting or its accounts by you or by anyone acting for you.
SEO and search engines
Google indexing and technical SEO setup, such as a sitemap, page titles and meta descriptions, canonical URLs, structured data and Google Search Console preparation, help search engines find and understand a site. That is what Light Astra provides.
Google controls its search results and indexing. Light Astra does not control them and does not guarantee any ranking or position, any amount of traffic, or that a page will be indexed or how quickly. The same applies to other search engines.
Ownership and intellectual property
What you own
Once a project is paid in full, you own the finished website deliverables: the pages, design and code created specifically for your site. You always own your own content, meaning the text, images, logos and other material you supplied, and your domain is yours from the start (see Your domain). Until the project is paid in full, the deliverables remain Light Astra's property.
What Light Astra keeps
Light Astra keeps ownership of its pre-existing tools, code libraries, know-how and generic components: the reusable building blocks that are not specific to your project. Where any of them are part of your website, you receive a license to use them within the delivered website.
Third-party components
Websites often include third-party components, such as open-source libraries, fonts, plugins or services. Those keep their own licenses, which apply to you as the owner of the site.
Portfolio
Light Astra may show completed work in its portfolio, for example on the Work page of this website, with a screenshot, a short description and a link to the live site. If you would prefer your project not be shown, tell me in writing (email is fine) and I will leave it out.
Content you provide
You are responsible for everything you supply for your website: text, images, logos, video, product information, downloads and anything else. In particular, you are responsible for:
- legality and licensing: making sure you own the material or have the right to use it, including photos, fonts, trademarks and stock assets, and that it does not break the law or infringe anyone's rights;
- accuracy: the correctness of your own information, such as prices, descriptions of your products or services, contact details and legal notices.
I rely on what you give me and do not review your content for legal compliance.
Prohibited and illegal content
Light Astra may decline a project, or stop work on one already under way, if the website or its content is or becomes:
- illegal, or used for illegal activity;
- deceptive, such as scams or impersonation;
- infringing on someone else's copyright, trademark or other rights;
- hateful;
- a means of distributing malware or spam.
If work stops for one of these reasons, the Cancellation section applies to any work already completed.
Service availability
The website and the services are provided "as is". Access to lightastra.com may be interrupted from time to time, for example for maintenance or because of a hosting problem, and the features, content and services described on the site may change or be removed without notice. Light Astra is one person, so availability for new projects and response times can vary.
Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law:
- Light Astra's total liability for any claim related to the website or the services is limited to the amount you paid Light Astra for the specific service that gave rise to the claim.
- Light Astra is not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential damages, including lost profits, lost data or downtime.
Some laws do not allow certain limitations of liability. Where that is the case, these limits apply only as far as the law allows.
Cancellation
Cancelling a project
Either side may end a project for convenience by giving written notice; an email is enough. When that happens:
- work completed up to that point is payable as set out in the quote;
- any prepaid amounts for work that has not started are handled as stated in the quote.
Cancelling a care plan
Either side may cancel a website care plan with notice as stated when you sign up. The plan then ends at the end of the current billing period.
Major redesigns and new development
A major redesign, a new section of a site, a web application or any other new development is a separate project. It is not covered by a website care plan or by the revisions in an earlier quote, and it is scoped and quoted separately. Like any other project, it starts with a conversation and a written quote.
Governing law
These Terms, and any project or care plan under them, are governed by the laws of the State of Idaho, United States. If you are a consumer somewhere else, this does not take away protections that the law where you live gives you and that cannot be waived by agreement.
Changes to these Terms
I may update these Terms from time to time, for example when the services, the starting points or the care plans change. The dates at the top show the current version. If you keep using the website or the services after a change, that means you accept the updated Terms.
For a project or care plan already under way, a material change is not imposed on you: it is agreed in writing between you and me before it applies.
Contact
Questions about these Terms, a quote or a website care plan go to:
Duong Nguyen
Light Astra
Boise, Idaho area, United States
Email: lightastra.web@gmail.com
You can also use the quote form, which lets you request a project quote or book a consultation and prepares an email for you.
