These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of dotcity, which designs, builds and hosts websites for businesses, and its related services (the "Service"). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.
1. Eligibility
You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding agreement to use the Service. By using the Service you represent that you meet these requirements.
2. Accounts
There is nothing for you to sign in to. We do not offer customer logins. You deal with us directly — by Messenger, or by email — and we look after your site and your domain for you. Logins on this service belong to dotcity staff.
If we introduce customer accounts later, we will say so here first. If you do hold an account with us, you are responsible for the activity on it and for keeping your credentials secure, and you should tell us promptly about any unauthorised use.
3. Your website and its content
We build your website from material about your business — descriptions, hours, prices, photos and the like ("Content"), whether you send it to us or we take it from what your business already publishes. You represent that you have the right to use the Content you give us and that it is accurate and lawful. You retain ownership of your Content and grant dotcity a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host and display it for the purpose of building and running your website.
Anything we cannot confirm from your own material, we check with you rather than invent. You are responsible for the accuracy of the Content once your site is live. We may decline to publish, or may remove, Content that breaches these Terms or the law.
4. The preview and your free first month
We build a preview of your website free of charge, usually within 48 hours of you sending us your business's page. The preview places you under no obligation and costs you nothing.
If you decide to go ahead, we put your site live on your own domain and the first 30 days are free. The only amount payable at that point is the cost of the domain itself, described in section 6.
Your free month does not turn into a paid subscription on its own. Keeping your site at the end of it is a decision you make: you choose a plan and arrange payment. If you do not, your site is taken offline and you keep your domain. We will never begin charging you because you did not cancel.
5. Fees and payment
There is no setup fee. We do not charge to design, build or launch your site.
- Standard — ₱1,499 per month.
- Pro — from ₱3,000 per month, quoted once the work is scoped.
- Social media management is a separate service, priced separately, and is not part of a website plan.
Plans are billed monthly in advance and paid by GCash. Today that means we invoice you and you pay each invoice. Your domain renewal is billed once a year and appears on that month's invoice.
Automatic payment. We may later offer automatic monthly payment, such as GCash auto-debit. Where we do, it will apply only if you have set it up and authorised it yourself. We will tell you before the first automatic payment is taken, each one will be for an amount you have already agreed, and you may withdraw the authority at any time — after which we go back to invoicing you. We will not put an existing customer onto automatic payment without them asking for it.
We may change our prices. If we change the price of a plan you are on, we will tell you at least 30 days before it applies to you, and you may cancel before it takes effect.
6. Your domain
If you do not already have a domain, we can buy one on your behalf at approximately what it costs us. The price depends on the name, and we tell you the price before we buy it. It is the price of the domain rather than a fee for our work.
If you already own a domain, you may use it instead. It stays registered where it is and in your name; you point it at our servers, and nothing is payable for it. The rest of this section then applies only to the domains we buy for you.
The domain is registered in your business's name, as registrant. We hold that registration within our registrar account and look after the technical settings and the renewals for you, so that your site keeps working without you having to manage it. You are given your own login with access to your domain's settings, so you can see it and manage it yourself if you wish.
Domains are subject to the rules of the registry and our registrar, including availability and the transfer restrictions those bodies impose. We will tell you before you pay if the name you want cannot be registered.
Your domain is yours whether or not you continue with us. If you decide not to keep your site, the site is taken offline and the domain and your access to it remain. If you would like the registration moved into a registrar account of your own, ask us and we will arrange it, subject to any transfer restrictions then in force.
While you are a subscriber we renew your domain and bill you for it annually. If you are not a subscriber we are under no obligation to renew it on your behalf, and we will tell you before it is due so that you can take it over or let it lapse.
7. Suspension, cancellation and what happens to your site
You may cancel at any time. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the month you have paid for, and we do not refund part of a month.
If payment is overdue we may take your site offline. We do not delete it. Your site and its content are kept, and we will put it back online when the outstanding amount is paid. We will contact you before taking a site offline for non-payment, and we will not delete a site without telling you first.
This section is about your website. It does not affect your domain, which is dealt with in section 6.
8. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- post false, misleading, unlawful, infringing, or harmful content;
- impersonate any person or business, or ask us to build a site for a business you are not authorized to represent;
- scrape, harvest, or bulk-download data from the Service without our written permission;
- interfere with, disrupt, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service; or
- use the Service to send spam or to violate the privacy or rights of others.
9. Third-party services
The Service relies on third-party hosting, infrastructure and domain registration providers. We are not responsible for third-party services we do not control.
10. Intellectual property
The Service, including its software, design, and branding, is owned by dotcity and protected by intellectual property laws. These Terms do not grant you any right to our trademarks or branding except as needed to use the Service as intended.
11. Disclaimers
The Service is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind. We do not guarantee uninterrupted availability of a hosted website, nor the accuracy of Content supplied or approved by you. Nothing here limits any right you have under Philippine consumer law.
12. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, dotcity will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits, or goodwill arising from your use of the Service.
13. Indemnity
You agree to indemnify and hold dotcity harmless from claims and expenses arising out of your Content, your use of the Service, or your breach of these Terms or applicable law.
14. Termination
You may stop using the Service at any time, and you may ask us to delete the personal data we hold about you by emailing jaron@dotcity.ph. We may suspend or terminate your access if you violate these Terms or if needed to protect the Service or other users. Cancelling a website subscription, and what happens to your site and your domain afterwards, are dealt with in sections 6 and 7 — closing your login is not the same thing as cancelling your plan.
15. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of the Philippines, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any disputes will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the Philippines.
16. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. We will revise the "Last updated" date above and, where appropriate, notify you. Your continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.
17. Contact us
Questions about these Terms? Contact dotcity at jaron@dotcity.ph.