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What a Good Contract Covers

This is not legal advice. I am a web developer, contract law varies by jurisdiction, and anything with real money attached deserves a lawyer's eye. What follows is what experience says goes wrong when it is not written down.

The useful reframing: a contract is not preparation for a dispute. It is a written record of what two people agreed while they were both being reasonable — which is the moment to write it, because nobody is reasonable in month three. Clear ownership works best when expectations are explicit; accountability and responsibility in the workplace is a useful reference on that distinction.

The nine things

What is being built. Specifically. Number of pages or templates, what functionality, what platform. "A website for your business" is not scope.

What is not being built. The most valuable section and the most frequently absent. Copywriting, photography, logo design, ongoing SEO, content entry, migration of old posts. Each is commonly assumed by one side and not the other.

What you supply, and when. Text, images, logins, product information. Ideally with what happens if it is late — usually that the schedule moves rather than the developer waiting unpaid. This is the single most common cause of a project running over.

Revisions. How many rounds are included at which stages, and the rate beyond. Protects both sides; open-ended revision is where relationships sour. For an independent reference beyond this site, Rocket Lawyer is a useful place to compare approaches.

Money. Total, schedule, what triggers each payment, and what happens on late payment. Staged payments tied to milestones are the fair structure.

Ownership. Domain, files, design, content, accounts — separately. What transfers, when, and what is licensed rather than owned. The most expensive omission on this list.

Timeline with dependencies. What pauses the clock.

What happens after launch. Is there a period during which faults are fixed free? Distinguish a fault from a change, because that boundary causes more friction than anything else.

How either side ends it. Notice, what is owed for work done, and what is handed over. Uncomfortable to discuss and it is exactly what you want written down before you need it.

Two clauses worth pushing back on

A licence rather than a transfer of the design. Some contracts license the site to you rather than transferring it. Sometimes legitimate — a licensed theme genuinely is not yours to own. But a bespoke design you paid for should transfer on final payment, and "you may use the design" is different from "the design is yours."

Ask which components are licensed and which transfer, and get the answer in the document.

Hosting locked to the developer. Being offered hosting is fine and often convenient. Being unable to leave is not. The test is whether you could move to another host next year without the developer's cooperation. If not, that is a lock-in and it should be priced and disclosed as one.

What is reasonable from their side

Even-handedness, because a contract protecting only you will not be signed.

A deposit before work starts. Standard and fair, and it belongs in the payment schedule.

A limit on revisions. Someone has to be able to say the design stage is finished.

A clause pausing the project if content is late, and moving you in the queue. Freelancers cannot hold a month open indefinitely.

Final payment before handover of files or the live launch. Uncomfortable and it is the standard protection against non-payment.

Portfolio rights — permission to show the work. Reasonable, and if your work is confidential, say so before signing rather than after.

Limitation of liability. Normal, and it should not extend to gross negligence.

Small projects

A twenty-page contract for a small brochure site is overkill and its absence is not.

For a small job, an email that both parties reply to, containing the nine points above in plain language, is a contract in most jurisdictions and is dramatically better than a handshake. What matters is that the terms exist in writing and both sides acknowledged them.

If someone will not put a page of plain terms in an email, that is the finding. It takes fifteen minutes and it is not a big ask.

The thing that actually prevents disputes

Most disagreements are not about clauses. They are about two people holding different pictures of the finished thing.

The contract's real value is that writing it forces both pictures into the open. If drafting the scope is difficult, that difficulty was going to show up later as an argument; better now, when it costs an email.

So read the scope section as a description, not as legal text. Ask yourself whether it matches what you are imagining. Where it does not, that gap is the entire risk in the project.

The short version