Effective September 4, 2026 · Last updated September 4, 2026 · 5th Draft, New York, NY · liamrieber@gmail.com
5th Draft ("5th Draft," "we," "us," "our") is a web design and local-search services studio operated by Liam Rieber, an individual doing business as 5th Draft, based in New York, NY. These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are a binding agreement between 5th Draft and the business or person purchasing services (the "Client," "you," "your").
These Terms govern every service we provide, including the website design and build ("Launch Build"), the standalone build, monthly service plans ("Profile Only," "Keep the Lights On," "The Pulse," "Own the Block," and any plan added later), audits, hosting, Google Business Profile work, and your use of 5thdraft.com (together, the "Services").
You accept these Terms when you do any of the following: tick the acceptance box on a checkout page, pay any invoice or checkout that references these Terms, sign or text your approval of a proposal or quote, give us content or credentials so we can start work, or use any Service. Our payment processor records the date, time, and IP address of your acceptance, and that record is conclusive evidence that you agreed.
Authority. If you accept for a company, you confirm you are at least 18 and have authority to bind that company. Whether or not you do, the individual who accepts also agrees to Section 4.9 (personal guarantee).
Business use only. The Services are sold to businesses for business purposes, not for personal, family, or household use.
Order of precedence. A written quote, proposal, or checkout page describing a specific job (an "Order") plus these Terms form the whole agreement. If they conflict, the Order controls scope, price, and schedule for that job, and these Terms control everything else. Your own purchase-order terms, vendor forms, or email footers do not change these Terms.
We perform search-optimization and visibility work using current industry practices. However, we make no promise, warranty, or guarantee of any specific outcome, including but not limited to:
Search engines, review platforms, and AI systems are operated by third parties, change constantly, and are outside our control. Historical or illustrative results, demonstrations on our website, projections, and examples are illustrations, not predictions or commitments. Results, or the lack of them, are never a basis for a refund, chargeback, or withholding of any fee. You are paying for professional work performed, not for outcomes.
We help clients build honest review programs (for example, asking real customers for feedback). We do not write, purchase, incentivize with undisclosed compensation, or post fake reviews, and we do not suppress genuine negative reviews, and you agree not to ask us to. Fake-review practices violate platform policies and U.S. FTC rules, and we will refuse such requests. You are responsible for any review activity performed by you or anyone acting for you, and you will approve any review-request program before it runs. Nothing in these Terms restricts your right to post honest reviews about us.
The Launch Build fee is $950 (or the amount on your Order) and is due in full at signing, before work begins. It becomes fully non-refundable once either the working session has taken place or any design or build work has started, whichever is first. If you cancel before both of those events, we refund the fee less a $150 scheduling and administration charge and any non-cancellable third-party costs. A standalone build ($2,400 or the amount on your Order) is due 50% at signing, non-refundable once work starts, and 50% before the site goes live or files are delivered, whichever is first.
Monthly plans are billed in advance, month to month, and renew automatically until cancelled under Section 6. When a plan includes a free first month, the free period starts on the activation date shown at checkout and in your confirmation email. Unless you cancel before the first-charge date shown in that confirmation, your card on file is charged the plan price on that date and on the same day of each month after. Our payment processor emails you a reminder at least seven days before the first charge, with cancellation instructions. Paid months are not refundable in whole or in part, including if you cancel mid-month, do not use the Services, do not send us content or approvals, or your site is paused under Section 5.
By providing a payment method you authorize us and our processor (Stripe) to store it and to charge it for all plan fees, approved extra work, taxes, and any other amount due under these Terms, on the dates they fall due, without further notice. You authorize automatic retries of failed charges, automatic updates of expired or reissued card details from the card networks, and charges to any other payment method you have given us if the primary one fails. You will keep a valid payment method on file for as long as any plan is active or any balance is unpaid. We never see or store your full card number.
Any amount not paid when due accrues interest at 1% per month (12% per year) or the highest rate permitted by law, whichever is lower, from the due date until paid. A $25 late fee applies to each invoice that remains unpaid 15 days after its due date. You will also reimburse every cost we reasonably incur to collect what you owe, including collection-agency fees, court costs, and reasonable attorneys' fees, to the extent permitted by law. Payments are applied first to costs, then to interest and fees, then to the oldest balance.
Every charge we make is one you authorized under these Terms, and we keep timestamped records of your acceptance and of the work performed. You agree to contact us before disputing any charge with your bank or card issuer and to give us ten days to resolve it. Disputing an authorized charge with your bank is a breach of these Terms. If a chargeback is filed and reversed in our favor, or is later found to have been unjustified, you will pay a $35 administrative fee plus any processor fees we were charged, and we may treat the disputed amount as past due from its original due date. We may suspend all Services immediately while a chargeback is open.
If you believe an invoice is wrong, tell us in writing within ten days of the invoice date and explain what you dispute. Invoices not questioned within ten days are accepted as correct. You will pay any undisputed portion on time, and we will work in good faith to resolve the rest.
Work beyond what your Order or plan includes is billed at $150 per hour or at a fixed price we quote in writing, and is due on completion. We will tell you before we start billable extra work, and your written or texted approval is your authorization to charge the card on file for it.
Prices exclude sales, use, and similar taxes, which we will add where required. You are responsible for third-party costs we approve together in writing (for example, domain registration, premium plugins, stock photos, or advertising spend), which are billed at cost and are non-refundable.
If the Client is a company, LLC, partnership, or other entity, the individual who accepts these Terms on its behalf personally and unconditionally guarantees payment of every amount the Client owes under these Terms. We may pursue the guarantor directly without first pursuing the Client. This guarantee survives any sale, transfer, dissolution, or bankruptcy of the Client's business.
We may change a plan price with at least 30 days' written notice by email. Changes apply only to billing periods starting after the notice period, never to a period you have already paid for. You may cancel before the change takes effect.
Quarterly and annual plans are billed in advance for the full term at the discounted rate shown at checkout and renew automatically for the same term unless cancelled under Section 6 before the renewal date. Prepaid plans do not include a free first month. If you cancel a prepaid plan within 30 days of its first charge, we refund the unused whole months less the difference between the discounted rate and the monthly rate for the months used; after 30 days prepaid fees are non-refundable and the Services continue to the end of the paid term.
Photo packs, rush delivery, Spanish versions, review cards, corridor and district reports, and audit packs are one-time purchases billed at the price shown at checkout. They become non-refundable once the shoot, rush work, or research has begun. Reports describe what third-party platforms display on the day we run them and are not a guarantee of any outcome. Third-party ordering or booking tools we set up for you are opened in your name under their own terms; we may receive a referral fee from those providers and will disclose it on request.
Life happens and cards expire. Here is the exact sequence, so nothing is a surprise:
We will not pause Services over an amount you disputed in good faith under Section 4.6 while you keep paying the undisputed portion.
You may cancel a monthly plan at any time by any of these methods:
Cancellation takes effect at the end of the billing period you have already paid for. It stops future charges. It does not refund the current period, and it does not erase any balance already owed. We confirm every cancellation in writing within two business days; if you do not receive a confirmation, your cancellation has not been received and you should resend it. Free-trial cancellations received before the first-charge date mean you owe nothing further for the plan.
When you cancel in good standing, we hand you the complete site files and your domain, exactly as our website promises. See Section 7.
Your content is yours. Photos, logos, text, menus, and other material you give us remain your property. You grant us a license to use them only to perform the Services and to show the finished public site in our portfolio.
Your site becomes yours when it is paid for. Upon our receipt of full payment of the Launch Build fee (or standalone build price) and every other amount then owed, we assign to you all rights in the final, client-specific website design, copy, and code we created for you (the "Deliverables"). Until then, the Deliverables are our property and you have a revocable license to use them only while your account is current. If your plan ends with an unpaid balance, ownership does not transfer, we may take the site offline, and we are under no obligation to release files, code, content exports, or account access until the balance, interest, fees, and costs are paid in full.
Our tools stay ours. Templates, components, design systems, scripts, processes, and know-how we built before or outside your project ("Studio Materials") remain ours. When they are embedded in your site, you receive a perpetual, non-exclusive license to use and modify them as part of that site once it is paid for. You may not resell or distribute Studio Materials separately.
Your domain is registered in your name and is yours from day one, subject to the registrar's terms and to any unpaid balance for registration costs we advanced.
Leaving. When hosting ends and your account is paid in full, we provide one export of the site files and content in a standard format within ten business days. You have 30 days to retrieve it, after which hosted copies and backups may be deleted. Migration to a new host is your responsibility unless you purchase transition help.
Portfolio. After launch we may show your public site and name in our portfolio and marketing. Ask us in writing and we will remove it from materials we control within 30 days.
The Launch Build covers a standard business site: home, menu or services, about, contact, and booking or ordering links, as described on our website or in your Order. Online ordering systems, e-commerce, custom software, multiple languages, and other larger work are quoted separately.
The 7-day clock starts the business day after our working session and after we have received your content and any credentials we need. Delays in your feedback, approvals, or content extend our timeline by at least the length of the delay and never pause billing. Two rounds of revisions are included before launch; further rounds are extra work under Section 4.7.
A deliverable is accepted when you approve it in writing or by text, when you publish or use it, or five business days after we send it without a written list of specific problems, whichever is first.
Hosting is included only while a monthly plan is active and paid. We use reputable third-party infrastructure and take reasonable care, but we offer no uptime guarantee and no credits for downtime. We are not responsible for outages or losses caused by you, your registrar, cloud or internet providers, third-party platforms, attacks, or events outside our control. We may take a site offline temporarily to deal with malware, a security threat, unlawful content, or a platform violation, and will tell you when we can. Third-party services (domains, fonts, plugins, maps, analytics, search engines, AI systems, review platforms) are governed by their own terms and may change or shut down at any time; we are not liable for their actions.
Each of us will keep the other's non-public business information, pricing, passwords, and customer data confidential, use it only to perform or receive the Services, and protect it with reasonable care. This does not cover information that is public, already known, or independently developed, and either of us may disclose what the law requires after giving notice where permitted. These duties last five years after the Services end, and forever for passwords and customer data. Both of us will use two-factor authentication where available and tell the other promptly about any suspected compromise.
Where we handle personal information about your customers (for example, through a contact or booking form on your site) we do so only on your instructions and only to provide the Services. We will not sell it or use it for our own marketing, we will use reasonable safeguards, and we will notify you promptly after confirming a security incident involving it. You are responsible for giving your customers any required notices and for the legality of what your site collects. How we handle information about you and visitors to 5thdraft.com is described in our Privacy Policy.
Except as expressly stated in these Terms, the Services, Deliverables, hosting, and 5thdraft.com are provided "as is" and "as available." We disclaim all other warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, uninterrupted or error-free operation, and any warranty arising from course of dealing. We do not warrant that a site will comply with every law, accessibility standard, or platform rule unless your Order expressly says so.
Our only warranty is that we will perform the Services in a professional manner and that Deliverables will materially match your Order at acceptance. Your sole remedy for a breach of that warranty is for us to fix or redo the affected work, provided you tell us specifically what is wrong within 15 days of acceptance.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, 5th Draft will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, lost goodwill, or business interruption, arising out of or relating to the Services or these Terms, however caused and under any theory of liability, even if we were advised of the possibility. Our total liability for all claims arising out of or relating to the Services will not exceed the fees you actually paid us in the six months before the event giving rise to the claim.
These limits do not apply to your payment obligations, to either party's fraud or willful misconduct, or where the law does not allow them. Any claim you have against us must be brought within one year after it arises or it is waived. These limits are a fundamental part of the price we charge.
You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless 5th Draft and Liam Rieber from all claims, damages, penalties, and reasonable legal fees arising out of content or information you provide, your products, services, or business practices, your violation of law or platform rules, instructions you gave after we warned they could infringe or violate law, or your breach of these Terms. We will defend you against a third-party claim that original code or design we created for you infringes a U.S. copyright, provided the claim does not arise from your content, third-party materials, changes made by others, or use after we offered a non-infringing replacement; our options include modifying the work or refunding the portion of fees attributable to it, which is your exclusive remedy for such claims.
Either party may end an Order if the other materially breaches these Terms and does not cure within ten days of written notice. Non-payment is governed by Section 5. We may suspend or end Services immediately, with notice when practical, for fake-review requests, unlawful or infringing content, abuse of our staff, a security threat, or conduct likely to harm us or a platform. We may also end an ongoing plan for our own convenience on 30 days' notice, in which case you owe nothing for periods after the end date. Ending the Services does not cancel amounts already owed. Sections 2, 4 through 7, and 11 through 19 survive termination.
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Before filing anything other than a small-claims case or a request for emergency relief, each of us agrees to send the other a written description of the dispute and to try in good faith to resolve it for 30 days. After that, disputes will be resolved exclusively in the state or federal courts located in New York County, New York, and both parties consent to that jurisdiction and venue. We may also sue to collect unpaid fees in any court where you or your assets are located.
To the extent permitted by law, each party waives trial by jury and agrees that claims may be brought only individually, not as a plaintiff or class member in any class or representative proceeding.
In any action to enforce these Terms, the prevailing party may recover its reasonable attorneys' fees and costs. Unauthorized use of our Deliverables, Studio Materials, or confidential information would cause harm that money cannot fully repair, and we may seek an injunction without posting a bond.
We may update these Terms. The current version always lives at 5thdraft.com/terms with its effective date. For active monthly plans, material changes take effect no sooner than 30 days after we email you and never before your next renewal; you may cancel before then. Questions: liamrieber@gmail.com or text (331) 235-4141.