‪(502) 437-9619 hello@thesproutstudio.com
Select Page

Terms of Service

Updated 11/16/2023

As a company, we pride ourselves in customer satisfaction. These terms of service are provided to clarify our relationship with clients and to make sure that mutual expectations are set and followed. Please read through these terms carefully, and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out via ticket to our Business Manager for assistance.

These Terms of Service outline our official relationship. Although we made an effort to use language that’s very accessible and clear, they do express our mutual obligations to one another for any service that we provide, either at your request or under an existing Service Agreement. These may be updated periodically. Although it remains your responsibility to stay informed of the Terms of Service, we will notify you any time these terms are updated.

I. General Terms of Service

1. The Ticket System:

  • The quickest and most efficient way for you to reach our team is by opening a ticket via our support email. Our entire team has access to your requests; this allows us to communicate internally, and to respond promptly within our turnaround times, and according to the urgency level of your requests.
  • While email is the easiest way to open a ticket and communicate with our team, you can also access ALL your tickets via our online ticket system. This allows you to have an overview of the status of each ticket at any time. You will also be able to see a dashboard of your company information, users, domains, services and invoices. It remains your responsibility to keep your information up to date.
  • In these Terms of Service, “Ticket” refers to a work or meeting request opened by a client, or by a member of our team at the request of a client, either via email or via the online ticket system.
  • Our standard hourly rates and escalation fees can be found under technical support.
  • For large projects requiring 10 hours or more, we can provide a custom quote.

2. How to request support

  • To open a ticket, simply send us an email or create a new ticket via the online ticket system.
  • All work and meeting requests must be submitted using a ticket.
  • Please open one ticket per request, so that our communication remains clear and complete until the ticket is completed, approved by you and closed out.

3. How your requests get on the calendar

  • Requested work will be scheduled according to our turnaround times only after clarifying any deadlines and the full scope of work and receiving all necessary assets from you: this could be logins, files, copy, or whatever else we’ll need to accomplish the work.
  • If we estimate that your ticket request will take us longer than 1 hour, we will provide you with a time estimate, and an approximate turnaround time and get your authorization before scheduling the work.
  • Regular support is available during our business hours (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm EST).

4. How to schedule a meeting

  • Staff are available by video chat or phone during scheduled meetings.
  • Meetings can be scheduled by opening a ticket. Since calendars fill up quickly, you will need to confirm meeting dates and times via a ticket at least 2 days in advance, otherwise we’ll need to coordinate a later meeting date.
  • You may cancel – or request us to reschedule – work or meetings with a 2 business days notice. Any scheduled work or meetings that are canceled within 1 business day of the scheduled time will still be considered billable work.

5. How to approve our work

  • Once we’ve finished the work requested in a ticket, we’ll inform you what we accomplished and give you a 48 hour window to check and approve our work. We cannot guarantee that our work will be free of mistakes, so if you find any errors, we’ll make it right.
  • It’s very important to understand that, if we do not hear back from you in 48 hours, the work will be considered completed to satisfaction, and the ticket will be closed. Any requests for changes or corrections as of that point will be billed at our regular rates.

6. Urgent escalations

  • To request an urgent response, simply include the word “URGENT” in the ticket subject line.
  • Escalations are billed at our standard escalation fee per hour or per escalation, whichever is greater.
  • Urgent escalations apply to any tier of support.

7. Payments

  • You agree to pay all charges associated with the transfers of funds. The appropriate payment details will be printed on our electronic invoice. We reserve the right to charge interest on all overdue debts at the rate of 5% per month or part of a month.
  • Payment terms for large projects requiring 10 hours or more of work will be defined in a custom contract.

8. Other Key Components

  • While we do offer high end consulting on marketing, IT and design, our advice cannot be considered legal or financial.
  • To protect your organization we provide a NDA and staff trained in security best practices.

II. Terms specific for Service Level Agreements

1. Scheduling work

  • Our regular turnaround time for clients on a service agreement is 3-5 business days only after clarifying any deadlines and the full scope of work and receiving all necessary assets from you: this could be logins, files, copy, or whatever else we’ll need to accomplish the work.  When sending in multiple tickets, we may ask you to define which tickets have the highest priority.
  • Scheduled work that is unable to be completed because of missing assets will count against your monthly reserved hours, so make sure we have everything we’ll need from you up front.

2. Work parameters

  • Hourly work is scheduled and tracked in 15 minute increments.
  • Quick ticket consultations is an exclusive service we provide retainer clients. Brief questions will be answered within 2 business days. If your question requires more than 15 minutes to answer, we will schedule it during your reserved monthly hours.
  • Client hours are reserved per month. We do not offer that time to any other clients so we can be available for you; this means that unused hours expire and cannot be rolled over month to month.
  • All initial work requests and any change orders to existing work from clients must be submitted and approved by an appointed representative that serves as the Single Point of Contact. This is to ensure that work requests and hours utilized in any given month are prioritized appropriately and helps prevent miscommunication.
  • It is important to respond in a timely manner when we request information, feedback, or approval for work we’ve accomplished. Deliverables and timelines that are affected by a client’s failure to respond in a timely manner may need to be renegotiated.
  • Ideally, work requests are spaced out evenly week to week. We reserve weekly hours per client based on their Statement of Work. We will make every effort to be flexible, however we cannot guarantee our availability if work requests are extremely unbalanced over the period of a month.

3. Urgent escalations

  • Depending on your Service Agreement, you may also be able to reach our team for urgent needs via phone or text.
  • Work escalated to urgent will be scheduled within 24 hours any day of the week.
  • Urgent time will be taken from your monthly prepaid hours.
  • Service Agreements with a minimum of 10 hours of support will include 2 FREE urgent escalations per month.
  • Any additional escalations requested per month will be charged per hour or per escalation, whichever is higher, as an overage fee at our standard rates.

4. Emergency response & monitoring

  • For emergencies involving downtime, lost sales, or a hacked site, we make every effort to respond 24/7 within 30 to 60 minutes.
  • For Service Agreements that include “Emergency downtime response and monitoring”: if your site crashes or is attacked, we will try to respond within 30 minutes during business hours, and as soon as possible at other times. We will escalate up to 2 hours of work to urgent at our discretion. We will try to notify you immediately, but will prioritize securing your site and ensuring it stays online.
  • If we go over your 2 urgent escalations included with your Service Agreement, you will be charged at our standard escalation rates for any additional hours escalated as an overage fee.

5. Monthly overages and Payments

  • While our turnaround times remain the same for work requests beyond your service agreement, our availability may be limited by our current workload.
  • Monthly overages are billed at our regular pricing and are due NET-30 from date of invoice.
  • All support escalated to an urgent level will be billed at our standard escalation fees per hour or per escalation, whichever is higher.
  • For Monthly Retainer Service Agreements, we offer a prepaid discount of $15/hr in our custom quotes. To qualify for this discount, advance payments are required before the beginning of each month.
  • In order to receive a prepaid discount with your Service Agreement, we reserve the right to include a link to our website on the footer of yours.

6. Contract Changes & Renewal

  • Since your organization’s needs may change, your Service Agreement can be modified by means of a “Change Order” as long as both parties are in agreement and give their expressed consent in writing (or email).
  • Service Agreements on a Monthly Retainer will automatically renew for a one-year period, unless either party provides written notice of desire to change or cancel at least 45 days prior to end of contract term. This affects all contracts that have been signed on or after 18 Jan 2023.
  • Overage and escalation fees are locked in for the duration of a contract. Upon contract renewal, overage and escalation fees will automatically update to reflect the company’s current prices for technical support as listed online.

III. Terms for Hosting, Consulting & Technical Support

1. Technical Support

  • Technical support is scheduled and tracked in 1 hour minimums, with 15 minute increments.
  • Our turnaround times for regular support is usually 1-2 weeks, however this depends on our availability.
  • Our turnaround times for urgent support is 24 hours, however this depends on our availability.
  • Work escalated to urgent will be scheduled within 24 hours or less during our business hours.

2. Payments

  • New clients are required to prepay for up to three hours of work before we schedule any requests, or 50% deposit for projects that will take longer than three hours.
  • Our payment terms for existing clients without a Service Agreement is NET-15 from date of invoice, after the work is complete.

3. Hosting

  • If you do use our hosting services, we endeavor to provide 99% uptime on our servers measured annually. There may of course be times when the server will not be available, this can be scheduled or unscheduled.
  • Scheduled downtime is when we know it is going to happen and tell you about it in advance. Scheduled downtime will, wherever possible, almost certainly be outside of normal office hours. We’ll do our stuff in the evening or on weekends to minimize impact on your business.
  • There may be very rare occasions when we need to restart the server during normal office hours and it is not possible to inform you beforehand. We don’t make these decisions lightly and if this does happen we apologize.
  • Unscheduled downtime is when the server stops without us knowing it is going to stop. For a simple server hiccup, we’ll get it back up and running as fast as we can.
  • We will do everything we can to ensure that your website is available 99% of the time, if we fall short of this, you are entitled to have a refund for any down time.

The quickest and most efficient way for you to reach our team is by opening a ticket via our support email. Our entire team has access to your requests; this allows us to communicate internally, and to respond promptly within our turnaround times, and according to the urgency level of your requests.

While email is the easiest way to open a ticket and communicate with our team, you can also access ALL your tickets via our online ticket system. This allows you to have an overview of the status of each ticket at any time. You will also be able to see a dashboard of your company information, users, domains, services and invoices. It remains your responsibility to keep your information up to date.

In these Terms of Service, “Ticket” refers to a work or meeting request opened by a client, or by a member of our team at the request of a client, either via email or via the online ticket system.

Our standard hourly rates and escalation fees can be found under technical support.

For large projects requiring 10 hours or more, we can provide a custom quote.

1. How to request support

  • To open a ticket, simply send us an email or create a new ticket via the online ticket system.
    All work and meeting requests must be submitted using a ticket.
  • Please open one ticket per request, so that our communication remains clear and complete until the ticket is completed, approved by you and closed out.

2. How your requests get on the calendar

  • Requested work will be scheduled according to our turnaround times only after clarifying any deadlines and the full scope of work and receiving all necessary assets from you: this could be logins, files, copy, or whatever else we’ll need to accomplish the work.
  • If we estimate that your ticket request will take us longer than 1 hour, we will provide you with a time estimate, and an approximate turnaround time and get your authorization before scheduling the work.
  • Regular support is available during our business hours (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm EST).

3. How to schedule a meeting

  • Staff are available by video chat or phone during scheduled meetings.
  • Meetings can be scheduled by opening a ticket. Since calendars fill up quickly, you will need to confirm meeting dates and times via a ticket at least 2 days in advance, otherwise we’ll need to coordinate a later meeting date.
  • You may cancel – or request us to reschedule – work or meetings with a 2 business days notice. Any scheduled work or meetings that are cancelled within 1 business day of the scheduled time will still be considered billable work.

4. How to approve our work

  • Once we’ve finished the work requested in a ticket, we’ll inform you what we accomplished and give you a 48 hour window to check and approve our work. We cannot guarantee that our work will be free of mistakes, so if you find any errors, we’ll make it right.
  • It’s very important to understand that, if we do not hear back from you in 48 hours, the work will be considered completed to satisfaction, and the ticket will be closed. Any requests for changes or corrections as of that point will be billed at our regular rates.

5. Urgent Escalations

  • To request an urgent response, simply include the word “URGENT” in the ticket subject line.
    Escalations are billed at our standard escalation fee per hour or per escalation, whichever is greater.
  • Urgent escalations apply to any tier of support.

6. Payments

  • You agree to pay all charges associated with the transfers of funds. The appropriate payment details will be printed on our electronic invoice.
  • We reserve the right to charge interest on all overdue debts at the rate of 5% per month or part of a month.
  • Payment terms for large projects requiring 10 hours or more of work will be defined in a custom contract.

7. Other Key Components

  • While we do offer high end consulting on marketing, IT and design, our advice cannot be considered legal or financial.
  • To protect your organization we provide a NDA and staff trained in security best practices.

II. Terms specific for Service Agreements

1. Scheduling work

  • Our regular turnaround time for clients on a service agreement is 3-5 business days only after clarifying any deadlines and the full scope of work and receiving all necessary assets from you: this could be logins, files, copy, or whatever else we’ll need to accomplish the work.
  • When sending in multiple tickets, we may ask you to define which tickets have the highest priority.
  • Scheduled work that is unable to be completed because of missing assets will count against your monthly reserved hours, so make sure we have everything we’ll need from you up front.

2. Work parameters

  • Hourly work is scheduled and tracked in 15 minute increments.
  • Quick ticket consultations is an exclusive service we provide retainer clients. Brief questions will be answered within 2 business days. If your question requires more than 15 minutes to answer, we will schedule it during your reserved monthly hours.
  • Client hours are reserved per month. We do not offer that time to any other clients so we can be available for you; this means that unused hours expire and cannot be rolled over month to month.
  • All initial work requests and any change orders to existing work from clients must be submitted and approved by an appointed representative that serves as the Single Point of Contact. This is to ensure that work requests and hours utilized in any given month are prioritized appropriately and helps prevent miscommunication.
  • It is important to respond in a timely manner when we request information, feedback, or approval for work we’ve accomplished. Deliverables and timelines that are affected by a client’s failure to respond in a timely manner may need to be renegotiated.
  • Ideally, work requests are spaced out evenly week to week. We reserve weekly hours per client based on their Statement of Work. We will make every effort to be flexible, however we cannot guarantee our availability if work requests are extremely unbalanced over the period of a month.

3. Urgent escalations

  • Depending on your Service Agreement, you may also be able to reach our team for urgent needs via phone or text.
  • Work escalated to urgent will be scheduled within 24 hours any day of the week.
    Urgent time will be taken from your monthly prepaid hours.
  • Service Agreements with a minimum of 10 hours of support will include 2 FREE urgent escalations per month.
  • Any additional escalations requested per month will be charged per hour or per escalation, whichever is higher, as an overage fee at our standard rates.

4. Emergency response & monitoring

  • For emergencies involving downtime, lost sales, or a hacked site, we make every effort to respond 24/7 within 30 to 60 minutes.
  • For Service Agreements that include “Emergency downtime response and monitoring”: if your site crashes or is attacked, we will try to respond within 30 minutes during business hours, and as soon as possible at other times. We will escalate up to 2 hours of work to urgent at our discretion. We will try to notify you immediately, but will prioritize securing your site and ensuring it stays online.
  • If we go over your 2 urgent escalations included with your Service Agreement, you will be charged at our standard escalation rates for any additional hours escalated as an overage fee.

5. Monthly overages and Payments

  • While our turnaround times remain the same for work requests beyond your service agreement, our availability may be limited by our current workload.
  • Monthly overages are billed at our regular pricing and are due NET-30 from date of invoice.
  • All support escalated to an urgent level will be billed at our standard escalation fees per hour or per escalation, whichever is higher.
  • For Monthly Retainer Service Agreements, we offer a prepaid discount of $15/hr in our custom quotes. To qualify for this discount, advance payments are required before the beginning of each month.
  • In order to receive a prepaid discount with your Service Agreement, we reserve the right to include a link to our website on the footer of yours.

6. Contract Changes & Renewal

  • Since your organization’s needs may change, your Service Agreement can be modified by means of a “Change Order” with the expressed consent of both parties in writing (or email).
  • Service Agreements on a Monthly Retainer will automatically renew for a one-year period, unless either party provides written notice of desire to change or cancel at least 45 days prior to end of contract term. This affects all contracts that have been signed on or after 18 Jan 2023.
  • Overage and escalation fees are locked in for the duration of a contract. Upon contract renewal, overage and escalation fees will automatically update to reflect the company’s current prices for technical support as listed online.

III. Terms for Hosting, Consulting & Technical Support

1. Technical Support

  • Technical support is scheduled and tracked in 1 hour minimums, with 15 minute increments.
    Our turnaround times for regular support is usually 1-2 weeks, however this depends on our availability.
  • Our turnaround times for urgent support is 24 hours, however this depends on our availability.
    Work escalated to urgent will be scheduled within 24 hours or less during our business hours.

2. Payments

  • New clients are required to prepay for up to three hours of work before we schedule any requests, or 50% deposit for projects that will take longer than three hours.
  • Our payment terms for existing clients without a Service Agreement is NET-15 from date of invoice, after the work is complete.

3. Hosting

  • If you do use our hosting services, we endeavor to provide 99% uptime on our servers measured annually. There may of course be times when the server will not be available, this can be scheduled or unscheduled.
  • Scheduled downtime is when we know it is going to happen and tell you about it in advance. Scheduled downtime will, wherever possible, almost certainly be outside of normal office hours. We’ll do our stuff in the evening or on weekends to minimize impact on your business.
  • There may be very rare occasions when we need to restart the server during normal office hours and it is not possible to inform you beforehand. We don’t make these decisions lightly and if this does happen we apologize.
  • Unscheduled downtime is when the server stops without us knowing it is going to stop. For a simple server hiccup, we’ll get it back up and running as fast as we can.
  • We will do everything we can to ensure that your website is available 99% of the time, if we fall short of this, you are entitled to have a refund for any down time.