The Software Rental Agreement provides simple, plain English contracts with easy-in and easy-out terms. Please note that RecruiterWEB does not issue a contract for signing; you are bound by these terms when you engage us to create a site for you.
Customer
And
RecruiterWEB Limited (RWEB) 28 Brick Kiln Lane Shepshed Loughborough LE12 9EL
1 Rental Conditions
RWEB agreed to rent RWEB CMS on the terms set out in this agreement.
1.1
RWEB is the sole owner of the RWEB CMS regardless of the rental period; the RWEB CMS is never owned by anyone else.
1.2
RWEB will host RWEB CMS; the software never leaves our environment. A service level for that hosting is covered later in this agreement.
1.3
RWEB only permits the sub-rental of RWEB CMS by the Customer to another company with a prior agreement.
1.4
RWEB does not permit other website developers to use or access the admin area of our CMS. This area contains confidential information (see our confidentiality clause).
1.5
RWEB will permit the Customer to move their software agreement to another company when a new rental agreement is issued to the new Customer, and a fee of £180 is paid to change and exchange the rental agreement.
1.6
Images and the rights to use those images not provided by RWEB are the client's sole responsibility. We may help find images outside our image banks, but the clients must purchase the right-to-use images. Test images for beta sites, if used by the client, must have rights to publish purchased by the client.
1.7
RWEB reserves the right to withdraw services for payments later than seven days past due. If sites are suspended, a reconnection fee of £240 will be due. RWEB accepts no liability for losses your business may incur during the website suspension period.
1.8
Payment plans are issued at the discretion of our directors; if payment plans are not met on their monthly due date, then we reserve the right to call in all the outstanding payments under the plan.
1.9
If the Customer wishes to perform security testing on their website, they may do so only by agreement with RWEB in advance. This is because customers share their hosting space with other clients, and not all testing providers are proficient at their jobs, so they can crash servers in a way that would not be typical of a cyber-attack.
The service provider must submit a list of the tests they wish to perform for approval in advance of any testing. All testing needs to take place outside of core job-seeking hours, which RWEB counts as 08:00 to 22:00 GMT.
If the service provider you are working with does not wish to follow this path, your website can be set up on its own server for testing. Testing will affect only your site.
The fee for this will be quoted at the time of the request, as your service fees do not cover it.
Failure to follow this path can result in the immediate termination of your services and/or damages being sought on behalf of other clients if your service providers damage the RecruiterWEB environment and lose other customer uptime.
2 Template Design Delivery
2.1
RWEB offers several graphical designs for job boards, recruiter sites and microsites. If the Customer chooses the template design option, the design rights of that template remain with RWEB.
2.2
Customers with a rental agreement with a template design who wish to leave the rental agreement and move that design to a new vendor/platform may do so for a fee of £1360. This entitles them to a lifetime rights licence to the template design but does not prohibit RWEB from future use of the said template. Customers may not replicate any part of a template design without said payment.
2.3
RWEB retains the right to publish in our portfolio websites we have made for customers. We also set up links between our sites, which reciprocally help the Customer and RWEB with SEO needs.
3 Bespoke Design Delivery
3.1
Bespoke design entitles the Customer to structural page designs (figma wireframes) of bespoke pages to which the client's brand asset will be loaded. However, it does not include RWEB-sourcing images, videos, or icons unless Branding Services have been purchased from us.
If the client has its own brand guidelines/brand book, the Customer will provide RWEB with the videos, images, and icons to load into the final design.
RWEB offers Customers the ability to use our trade accounts with Envato, Freepik, and Flaticon to source like-for-like video, image, or icon branding materials if they need more brand collateral in their current brand assets. If the Customer seeks RWEB help in this process, branding services will be quoted to cover this work.
3.2
Customers with a rental agreement with a bespoke design own the rights to that design for the duration of the contract with RecruiterWEB. RWEB will not replicate the design for future projects during the contract period. On termination, RecruiterWEB retains all rights to use the recruitment website design, and we reserve the right to use the design again unless you intend to leave and use the design with your next supplier.
3.3
RWEB retains the right to publish our portfolio of bespoke websites we have made for customers. We also set up links between our sites, which reciprocally help the Customer and RWEB with SEO needs. If a third party makes the design, equal credit will be given.
4 Specification
4.1
All software rentals require RWEB to raise a specification document covering the template or bespoke design to be used and the features to be used on the Customer's Project. Sites are then provided according to this spec. Future changes to this spec are not covered by the rental fees but will be estimated as a change request for approval.
4.2
Please see termination rights for what is required to cover the specification time if the Project is not launched/cancelled.
4.3
The Specification can produce items that need to be charged for in addition to those quoted. In this instance, the Customer has the right to pay those items on a separate invoice payable on 30-day terms, or they may terminate the agreement at this stage in accordance with the termination post-specification terms covered in clause 11.
4.4
The Specification will be delivered to the Customer in Google Doc format with images of the website's pages provided in Figam, save for one build type, which is where we are replacing your current tech with our tech on a like-for-like design/feature basis.
4.5
Specification creation time is dictated by many factors, not least the Customer's ability to provide feedback. An initial face-to-face customer meeting will take place, followed by items being emailed and then discussed in telephone conference calls. No set timeline can be given for this process, but around 2-4 weeks is typical.
5 Configuration & Build
5.1
The Specification document will be used to configure and build the RWEB CMS the Customer will use under this rental agreement document.
5.2
The prices for the rental contract are based upon delivery according to the specification document. Changes by the Customer to that Specification post-build will incur charges as follows: £50 an hour to estimate the change, £50 an hour to deliver any agreed changes. Payments for these changes will be on a separate invoice payable on 30-day terms.
5.3
Configuration and build time are based upon the spec choices made and the time taken to agree on bespoke designs, etc., and are dictated by many factors, not least the Customer's ability to provide feedback. A formal build slot for RWEB resources will be allocated to the Project, and a team will be put in place within two weeks of the Specification being signed off and delivered back to RWEB by the Customer.
5.4
The price for Configuration and Build is listed in your quote if it is a bespoke site or our published prices on our website for start up and template sites.
6 User Acceptance Testing
6.1
Once the site has been configured and built, it will be delivered to the Customer as a beta site for testing. A beta site is the actual Customer's version of RWEB CMS that will be made live for its customers.
As part of user acceptance testing, the Customer will look through all pages and use all features of the website to ensure they are happy the beta site reflects the specification documents' version of what the software should be, plus any amendments to that Specification that occurred during the process. This process will be possible because the RWEB CMS site is live on a beta URL.
The client will be advised if a deadline from build to launch does not permit user acceptance testing. A demo site will also be shown to the client with the features their site is expected to have so that testing can take the place of the features of our products. The client site is then taken live in good faith. Changes that can be controlled in the site admin will then be made by RWEB but changes to code or site features will incur further costs.
6.2
An RWEB representative will provide the Customer with a round of training via screen share so they can navigate the RWEB CMS site and its features.
6.3
Sites may stay in the beta stage for a maximum of 90 days before annual site fees kick in. This is because we maintain a rigorous software and cyber security update plan for our sites, and beta sites must not fall more than 90 days behind that plan.
7 Payment
7.1
Payment for your website project is listed in your quotation or prices given by your account manager. Payment plans over 12 months must be made in full. For example, a payment plan of 12 £249+ VAT instalments is a debt to us of £2988+ VAT. Giving you the ability to pay over 12 months does not allow you to stop paying any of the 12 instalments.
7.2
Annual site fees year 2 onwards are as follows:
Starter site: £149+ VAT per month or pay yearly and pay £1200+ VAT
Template site: £149+ VAT per month or pay yearly and pay £1200+ VAT
Semi bespoke site: £249+ VAT per month or pay yearly and pay £2400+ VAT
Fully bespoke site: £299+ VAT per month or pay yearly and pay £3000+ VAT
7.3
SEO investigation services are payable on 14-day invoices.
7.4
SEO retained campaigns are paid monthly in advance; if you take a 6-month retainer, all 6 payments need to be made; if you take a 12-month retainer, all 12 payments need to be made. There is no provision to give notice. Retained campaigns are rolling campaigns and require 45 days notice to cancel the roll-on. If a campaign roles on all payments are due there is no provision to give notice.
7.5
The Customer will be liable for all costs incurred by RWEB in recovery due to the Customer's breach of the agreed repayment terms of this agreement, including fees for a Letter Before Action £50.00, Debt Collection Agent fees at 20% of the amount overdue, Interest at 8% above the Bank of England's Base Rate, and Late Payment Compensation per Invoice in accordance with EU regulations.
7.6
RWEB accept no liability for losses you may incur due to your site being taken down for non-payment.
7.7
RWEB will charge £50 per hour for investigating third-party systems that lead to the fault being with the third-party software/service provider. Faults with RWEB are fixed free of charge.
7.8
All prices mentioned in this document exclude VAT, which will be added at the invoice stage according to the transaction's VAT rules.
8 Software Training
8.1
Two one-hour screen-share training sessions on handover software will be provided free of charge. Further training can be booked for a fee of £50 per hour. However, most of the training advice is based inside the website admin in video format.
8.2
Videos covering standard features of the RWEB CMS site will be displayed on the RWEB website for free and unlimited use by the Customer.
8.3
Standard features of the RWEB CMS software will be covered in quick-reference PDF guides. These will be downloadable from the RWEB website.
8.4 Bespoke features on the Customer's Project will be covered by video and/or quick reference Google Doc files supplied to the Customer within three weeks of the beta site being available.
9 Launch
9.1
The launch process requires the beta site to be taken offline and moved to our live customer server for RWEB CMS projects 24 hours before the intended launch date.
9.2
The Customer will be required to point their domain name's A record to our customer server IP, which will be given when the Customer is ready to start the launch process.
10 Maintenance & Hosting
10.1
RWEB CMS is built in Java and Postgres SQL. Any bugs arising in this code will be fixed free of charge by RWEB for the contract's life.
10.2
The graphical layer of the RWEB CMS software is presented through the universal software HTML. This HTML will be delivered to be compatible with the relevant web browsers (Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Firefox) and mobile device browsers (Apple & Android) at the time of launch and for those versions which were in place for two years before the site going live. Future updates for browser compatibility will be estimated as and when the browser companies make changes to their product lines.
This is for several reasons, not least because browsers often deliver their products with bugs that users find for six months before the browser company fixes them and because browser updates by the Customer's users are not given to keep pace with the browser. This causes a specific problem if you have the majority of your customers on Explorer 9, and then in Explorer 11, Microsoft takes out features which will no longer work with Explorer 9; you will alienate your customers overnight by making the site work better with Explorer 11 than with Explorer 9.
10.3
RWEB staff cover hardware maintenance on a daily, weekly, and monthly schedule. This work is provided free of charge for the lifetime of the contract.
Hosting is provided by RWEB (see clause 1.2); the servers are set up with a Raid 3 drive set up and then mirrored.
10.4
Explanation of raid and mirroring: the server has three hard drives; hard drives two and three act as backup drives to hard drive one, where RWEB CMS is run daily. The second server with three hard drives takes an identical copy of the first server on a one-second delay. This means if server one fails, server two will take over. 99.99% uptime is offered as a result, save for maintenance downtime and catastrophic failure listed in 10.5 and 10.8.
10-5
In the event of a catastrophic failure of servers one and two, the site can be out of action for 2-4 hours while a replacement server is put in place. No compensation will be provided to customers if a catastrophic event occurs because these events are outside the control of what can be considered maintenance. Furthermore, the income derived from renting the site is minimal to RWEB and provides no margin for loss. Catastrophic failure is not part of the 99.99% uptime mentioned in 10.4. However, RWEB warrants that it takes all necessary precautions to spot and/or prevent catastrophic failures due to maintenance tasks.
10.7
RWEB provides no maintenance for 3rd party software that RWEB CMS is connected to; this includes software like payment gateways, job posting software, and Google Analytics. You remain the Customer of the 3rd Party and should have your contract for what work you complete, or you request RWEB to complete on your behalf to keep their service connection live. Our work in this respect is free at the beta/launch stage; after that, we will charge £50 an hour to estimate the change and £50 an hour to deliver any agreed changes.
10.8
Hosting is provided unlimited bandwidth, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, save for instances mentioned in 10.5 and 10.9.
10.9
In rare instances, servers may need to be re-booted, where the loss of uptime will be 5-15 mins for minor updates and up to 2 hours for major updates. Major updates will typically be done at 6 am UK time to avoid disruption to typical day-to-day usage. Planned downtime for maintenance is not part of the 100% uptime mentioned in 10.4.
10.10
Technical SEO updates are offered on a pay-as-you-go basis and are not covered by standard annual site fees.
10.11
Sites may stay in the beta stage for a maximum of 90 days before planned maintenance fees kick in. This is because we maintain a rigorous software and cyber security update plan for our sites, and beta sites must not fall more than 90 days behind that plan.
11 Termination of the Rental
11.1
Pre-delivery: The Customer may give notice at any point in the Project. If we have entered the specifications stage (considered to be when the build spec is taken), half of all payments are due at the point of cancellation. No refunds will be due if we have moved to the build phase. This includes payments on extended payment plans.
11.2
Post-launch, the Customer goes onto an annual rolling contract, but the client may give 90 days notice during that contract if they wish to end services. If they have been given an extended payment plan for the site build, then all outstanding payments fall due when the account is cancelled.
11.3
Post-launch, RWEB runs annual maintenance contracts, which will be issued annually and invoiced as an annual figure. Failure of the Customer to pay for annual service fees. Late payments made more than seven days after their due date are considered non-payment. A first warning will be issued; if payment is not met, a second warning will be given with a 3-day payment deadline. If that deadline is not met, the client's account will be terminated, and services will be withdrawn.
The website we rent you will be held for reconnection for a maximum of 14 days past this point; reconnection fees of £240 plus VAT will apply. Past this date, no reconnection will be offered, and you will be fully terminated as a client.
At this point, outstanding debts to us will be passed to debt collectors, and our terms state that the client will bear the cost of the collection fees.
11.4
If the Customer and RWEB disagree on contract renewal terms on the anniversary of the site launch each year for ongoing fees, RWEB will give the Customer 90 days' notice to quit. The 90 days will be charged at the previous commercial rates.
11.5
An act of abuse, aggression, or threat of violence against RWEB staff members by the Customer will result in immediate termination of services.
11.6
On termination, all rights to use the recruitment website design are retained by the RecruiterWEB for template designs.
11.7
In the event that RWEB ceases to trade, save for the RWEB company vehicle being closed due to the company's sale, RWEB assets and contracts will be moved to a new company, which will take on the responsibilities under this Customer rental agreement.
Then, RWEB will make provision for a third-party service company to take on servicing the software and hosting the website. If this is not possible, the client will receive a full copy of the software to host themselves after paying a source code fee to RecruiterWEB Limited. That fee is set at the product's retail price at the date of termination.
12 Customer's Responsibilities
12.1
The Customer will provide RWEB with the information it may need concerning the Customer's operations and answers to queries, decisions and approvals necessary for the RWEB staff.
12.2
The Customer is responsible for ensuring that such information and answers are accurate and complete and acknowledges that RWEB shall not be liable for any delay or defect caused by or contributed to by any inaccurate or incomplete information or answers.
12.3
The Customer agrees to allow RWEB to reference them as one of RWEB's customers and reproduce screenshots or parts thereof from the Project on the Developer's website or in other marketing or advertising undertaken by RWEB.
12.4
For all solutions, including where RWEB undertakes initial registration of a domain name, the re-registration of domain names is solely the Customer's responsibility.
13 Warranties
RWEB warrants and undertakes:
13.1
That the design of the RWEB CMS Software will be suitable to fulfil and perform the function described in and in accordance with the Specification.
13.2
That the RWEB CMS Software will be virus-free.
13.3
RWEB entirely owns the RWEB CMS Software and does not infringe any IP copyright, moral rights, database rights, trademark rights, design rights, rights in passing off, or other intellectual property or other rights of any third party.
The Customer warrants and undertakes:
13.4
That, to their knowledge, any information or specifications given by the Customer to RWEB will not infringe any intellectual property or other rights of any third party.
13.4
They have supplied and shall continue to supply accurate replies, information, and specifications in response to all RWEB enquiries, requests for information, and specifications regarding all matters relating to the Project.
13.5
They have consulted with and complied with data protection policies for the service they are providing, and if they wish RWEB to be a Data controller in common, the Customer will bear the cost of such a scheme.
13.6
The client warrants they will abide by GDPR, the Data Protection Act, PERC and all other laws that govern websites, data on websites, communications by websites via email/API/Cookies and other forms of technology.
13.6 The Customer will use unique logins and passwords for all people who are given access to the website admin.
14 Limitation of Liability
14.1
Notwithstanding the above, the total public liability, employer's liability, and professional indemnity of both parties must not exceed the value of the Project's net profit (estimated at 20% of the pre-VAT sales price).
14.2
Neither party will accept any liability for consequential loss arising from a breach of this agreement. Nothing in this agreement shall limit or exclude either party's liability in respect of death or personal injury arising out of any breach of this agreement.
15 Confidentiality
15.1
For the purposes of this clause, "Confidential Information" means all information (whether commercial, financial, technical or otherwise, including strategy and marketing material) relating to the disclosing party, its sub-contractors, its customers and suppliers, disclosed to or otherwise obtained by the recipient party under or in connection with the Project and which is designated as being confidential or which is by its nature is clearly confidential.
15.2
Each party undertakes in respect of Confidential Information of which it is the recipient:
15.2.1
To treat such information as confidential.
15.2.2
Not without the disclosing party's prior written consent to communicate or disclose any part of such information to any person, with the exception of only those employees, agents, sub-contractors and other suppliers on a need-to-know basis who are directly involved in the Project.
15.2.3
To ensure that all persons and bodies mentioned in the confidentiality clause are made aware, prior to disclosure, of the confidential nature of the Confidential Information and that they owe a duty of confidence to the disclosing party and to use all reasonable endeavours to ensure that such persons and bodies comply with the provisions of this clause.
15.2.4
Nothing in these terms and conditions will prevent RWEB at any time from using for any purpose it thinks fits any know-how or experience, including programming, tools, skills and techniques, gained or arising from the performance of the Project, subject always to complying with the obligations in this clause in respect of the Confidential Information of the Customer.
15.2.5
The Customer hereby agrees that they will use such Confidential Information and all other data solely for the purposes of this agreement and that they will not, at any time during or after the completion, expiry, or termination of this agreement, use or disclose the same, whether directly or indirectly, to any third party without RWEB's prior written consent.
15.2.6
The Customer further agrees that they will not themselves or through any subsidiary or agent use, sell, license, sub-license, create, develop or otherwise deal in any confidential information supplied to them by RWEB or obtained pursuant to this agreement. This clause will continue in force notwithstanding completion or termination of the Project for any reason.
16 Non-solicitation
16.1 The Customer and RWEB will not, during the Project and for 12 months after completion, without RWEB's or the Customer's prior written agreement, directly or indirectly solicit or offer employment or engagement to any employee of RWEB and/or the Customer, respectively.
17 GDPR
17.1
GDPR and RWEB. RWEB acts as the Data Controller for the personal data we hold on our client's decision-maker contact information and the staff we must interact with. The information on those contacts is held in one system, which is used for our accounting needs and is accessed by one employee of RecruiterWEB. The accounting package is a cloud-based system by Xero, a recognised vendor with a straightforward undertaking to support GDPR.
17.2
RWEB acts as a Data Processor for the data that passes through the websites; we rent to you on a software-as-a-service basis. Clients are offered three approaches to handling that data, which we refer to as GDPR Lite, GDPR Essentials, and GDPR Advanced. GDPR Lite is the default service we provide. It means that our technology stores no personal data it collects, rather than data sent to our clients via fully encrypted transfer, which may or may not include third-party APIs nominated by the client to their job posting tool providers or applicant tracking vendors. GDPR Lite permits no access to the data being transferred to RWEB employees or to the employees of third parties we work with, like our server providers. The solution is self-managed inside the code and software tools of the website and subsequent communications tools. A further statement on GDPR is available from Darren Revell, our founder.
17.3
Changes to the website that cannot be completed in the website admin do not form part of planned maintenance for the website, and costs related to change to meet GDPR compliance will be borne by the client.
18 Governing Law
18.1
These terms and conditions will be construed in accordance with and governed by the law of England, and each party agrees to submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England. RWEB reserves the right to amend the terms of service, without notice, to meet the demands of the laws of England.