Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern everything Mateusz Podeszwa, a sole trader operating under the name podeszwa.dev (the “Studio”, “we”, or “us”), supplies to you (“you” or “the Client”). By submitting a request via the /hire form, buying anything from the shop, accepting a subscription offer, signing in to the client portal, or paying any invoice issued by the Studio, you confirm that you have read, understood, and accepted these Terms in full.

0. What these Terms cover, and where to look

The Studio sells three different things, and not every clause below applies to all of them. This is the map.

“Consumer” and “business”. Where these Terms distinguish the two, you deal as a consumer if you are an individual buying wholly or mainly for purposes outside your trade, business, craft, or profession. That is the test in section 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and if it is in doubt the Studio treats you as a consumer. Everything marked as applying only to a business client does not apply to you.

Your statutory rights come first, always. Nothing in these Terms, in the Refund Policy, or in any agreement you sign, reduces a right the law gives you and does not let you give up. Where any of those documents appears to, the law wins and the rest of the document carries on unaffected.

1. Definitions

• Engagement — a single project or assignment for which the Studio has accepted a brief from you, identified in the client portal as a “gig”.
• Brief — the description of the engagement submitted by you and accepted by the Studio.
• Deliverables — any output, draft, or work product produced by the Studio in connection with an engagement, whether transmitted to you or held internally.
• Milestone — a discrete, defined unit of work within an engagement.
• Final Revision — the deliverable formally tagged as such by the Studio at the conclusion of an engagement and released to you on settlement of all outstanding invoices.

2. Engagement and acceptance

1. You may submit a hire request via the /hire form. Submission does not constitute acceptance by the Studio.
2. The Studio reserves absolute discretion to accept or decline any request, with or without explanation.
3. Acceptance is confirmed by the Studio promoting the gig to “Active” status in the client portal.
4. Once active, the engagement is governed by these Terms together with any milestones, scope notes, and budget figures recorded in the portal.

3. Fees and payment

1. Fees are quoted per engagement and may be split into one or more invoices at the Studio’s discretion.
2. All invoices are issued via Stripe and payable in pounds sterling (GBP) unless expressly agreed otherwise in writing.
3. Payment is due by the date stated on the invoice. Where no date is stated, payment is due within fourteen (14) days of the invoice issue date.
4. Where any sum is more than fourteen (14) days overdue, the Studio may, on written notice, suspend work, withhold deliverables, and refuse to release the Final Revision until payment is made. The Studio is not liable for the consequences of a suspension properly made under this clause.
5. Where you are acting in the course of a business, overdue sums bear statutory interest and fixed compensation under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 (interest at 8% above the Bank of England base rate), together with the Studio’s reasonable costs of recovering the debt. This does not apply where you deal as a consumer.
6. Refunds are governed by the Studio’s Refund Policy, which forms part of these Terms.
7. Where required by law or by tax registrations recorded with the Studio’s payment provider, applicable VAT, sales tax, or equivalent levies will be added to invoiced amounts and remitted to the relevant tax authority.

4. Scope, milestones, and revisions

1. The scope of the engagement is set out in the brief and any milestones added to the gig in the portal.
2. The Studio includes free in-scope revisions per milestone (see Refund Policy clause 4).
3. Out-of-scope changes will be quoted separately as additional work and require your written acceptance prior to commencement.
4. The Studio is not obliged to undertake any work outside the agreed scope.

5. Deliverables and intellectual property

1. The rights you receive in the deliverables are those set out in the signed agreement for your engagement, which will state whether you are receiving ownership (an assignment) or a licence, and on what terms. The Studio will tell you which is proposed before you sign, and either is available — ownership is priced differently from a licence, so ask before work begins if you need it.
2. Where no signed agreement covers the engagement, then on full payment of all invoices the Studio grants you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive licence to use, reproduce, and modify the Final Revision deliverables for the project they were commissioned for, subject to clauses 5(e) and 5(f). Use in a further project or product, and any resale, redistribution, or sublicensing of the deliverables as a standalone item, requires a separate agreement. This is the same default the Studio’s Services Agreement offers, so signing that agreement never leaves you with less than not signing one.
3. Whichever applies, no rights pass until every invoice for the engagement is paid in full.
4. Until full payment, all rights in deliverables (including drafts, work-in-progress, and unfinished materials) remain the sole and exclusive property of the Studio.
5. The Studio retains:
   1. ownership of all underlying tools, frameworks, libraries, methodologies, and pre-existing materials used in the production of deliverables;
   2. the right to retain copies of completed deliverables for the Studio’s portfolio, archive, and case-study purposes, save where you have agreed otherwise with the Studio in writing before work begins; and
   3. the right to identify itself publicly as the author of the work, save where you have requested anonymity in writing prior to engagement acceptance.
6. Third-party assets (fonts, stock imagery, plug-ins, third-party libraries, etc.) are licensed under the terms of their respective providers and are not assigned to you.

6. Client responsibilities

1. You will provide, in a timely manner, all information, materials, access credentials, brand assets, content, and approvals reasonably required by the Studio to perform the engagement.
2. You warrant that you have the right to use, and to authorise the Studio to use, all materials you provide.
3. Delays caused by you will extend any agreed timeline on a day-for-day basis and may incur additional charges where they cause the engagement to span multiple billing periods.

7. Confidentiality

Each party will treat as confidential any information marked or reasonably understood to be confidential, and will not disclose such information to any third party without the other’s prior written consent, save where disclosure is required by law. This obligation survives termination of the engagement.

8. Liability

1. Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded. Where you deal as a consumer, nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights, including under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
2. Subject to clause 8(a), and unless the signed agreement for your engagement states a different limit, the Studio’s total aggregate liability arising under or in connection with an engagement is limited to the fees paid by you for that engagement in the twelve (12) months before the event giving rise to the claim. The Studio’s fees are set on the basis of this allocation of risk, and a higher limit can be agreed in exchange for a proportionate increase in fees — please ask before work begins if you need one.
3. Where you deal as a consumer, the limit in clause 8(b) is never less than the total amount you have paid the Studio for that engagement, however long ago you paid it. A term that stopped a consumer recovering the price they paid would not bind them under section 57 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and the Studio does not ask for one.
4. Neither party may bring a claim under these Terms more than twelve (12) months after it became aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, of the facts giving rise to it. This does not apply where you deal as a consumer, who has the full period the Limitation Act 1980 allows.
5. The Studio is not liable for any of the following, in each case whether direct or indirect: loss of profits, revenue, or anticipated savings; loss of business, contracts, opportunity, goodwill, or reputation; wasted expenditure, wasted management or staff time, and the cost of work thrown away; loss of use; loss of or corruption of data; and any indirect, consequential, or special loss. Where you deal as a consumer this clause does not apply; instead, the Studio is not liable for losses that were not a foreseeable result of its breach at the time the contract was made, which is what the law provides in any event.
6. The Studio provides services with reasonable skill and care but does not warrant that any specific commercial, performance, search-engine-ranking, or revenue outcome will result from the engagement.

9. Termination by the Studio

The Studio may terminate an engagement immediately by written notice if:

1. any invoice remains unpaid more than thirty (30) days after its due date;
2. you commit a material breach of these Terms which is not remedied within seven (7) days of written notice;
3. you, your employees, or your representatives behave abusively, harass the Studio or anyone associated with the Studio, or otherwise make the working relationship untenable in the Studio’s reasonable judgment; or
4. you are acting in the course of a business and initiate a chargeback or third-party payment dispute in bad faith, as described in clause 7 of the Refund Policy. Raising a chargeback is never a ground for termination where you deal as a consumer.

On termination by the Studio for any of the above causes, all unpaid invoices become immediately payable, all deliverables remain the property of the Studio, and no refund is due.

10. Termination by the Client

You may terminate an engagement on written notice. Termination by you does not entitle you to a refund save as expressly provided by clause 2 of the Refund Policy. All work completed up to the date of termination remains payable in full.

Where the signed agreement for your engagement provides for it, and where you terminate for convenience after work has begun, you may also be liable for a proportion of the fees for scheduled work the Studio is unable to re-book — typically 50% — as a genuine pre-estimate of the loss of capacity reserved for you. Any such charge is stated in the agreement you sign before work starts, and never applies where you terminate because the Studio is in breach. This does not apply where you deal as a consumer and cancel within a statutory cancellation period.

Where you deal as a consumer, that 50% is a ceiling and not a fixed charge. The Studio charges only what it has actually lost: the fees for scheduled work it cannot re-book, less what it saves by not doing the work and less any of that time it manages to fill elsewhere. The Studio will show you how the figure was reached, and it will never exceed 50%. You are never asked to pay a fixed percentage regardless of what was really lost.

11. Force majeure

Neither party is liable for any delay or failure in performance caused by events outside its reasonable control, including acts of God, internet or hosting outages, governmental action, industrial action, illness, or any other circumstance reasonably beyond control. The Studio will use reasonable efforts to communicate impact and revised timelines where such events arise.

12. Data and privacy

The Studio processes the personal data you provide solely for the purpose of fulfilling the engagement, communicating with you, and meeting its tax and legal obligations. The Studio does not sell, rent, or share your personal data with third parties except where required to fulfil the engagement (for example, payment processing via Stripe) or by law.

Some of the services the Studio relies on to run this platform are located outside the United Kingdom. Every one of them, the country it processes in, and the safeguard relied on for the transfer, is listed in the Privacy Policy, which governs in the event of any inconsistency with this clause.

13. Variation

The Studio may amend these Terms from time to time. Amendments take effect for engagements commenced after the amendment date. Engagements already in progress continue under the Terms in force at their acceptance.

14. Entire agreement and order of precedence

These Terms, together with the Refund Policy and the contents of the gig in the client portal (brief, milestones, invoices, messages), constitute the entire agreement between you and the Studio in respect of the engagement, and supersede any prior arrangement, representation, or understanding.

Where the Studio and you have signed a separate agreement for an engagement — such as a Services Agreement, Statement of Work, licence, or Data Processing Agreement — the documents rank in this order, highest first, to the extent they conflict:

1. any statutory right you have that cannot be excluded, including your rights as a consumer;
2. the Refund Policy, wherever it gives you a broader right than the signed agreement — save on any point where that policy expressly defers to the agreement made for your particular plan or engagement (as clause 6a does for subscription minimum terms), in which case the signed agreement governs that point;
3. the signed agreement for that engagement, and any Statement of Work or Change Order under it;
4. these Terms; and
5. the contents of the gig in the client portal.

This means a signed agreement governs the specifics of your engagement, while these Terms cover everything it does not address.

15. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in full force and effect.

16. No waiver

The failure of either party to enforce any right under these Terms does not constitute a waiver of that right.

17. Notices

Notices must be in writing and sent via the client portal’s messaging interface or to the email address recorded by either party on the most recent invoice or hire submission.

18. Third-party rights

These Terms are not enforceable by any person who is not a party to them, save as expressly stated.

19. Digital products bought from the shop

This clause governs anything bought from the Studio’s shop (“Field Supply”): templates, kits, presets, code, wallpapers, courses, e-books, and similar downloadable files (each a “Product”). Clauses 2 to 7, 9, 10 and 13 (which are about engagements) do not apply to a Product. Where the Studio has issued you a separate signed Digital Product Licence — normally only for team or organisation purchases — that document governs and this clause fills the gaps.

1. You are buying a licence, not the product. On payment in full the Studio grants you a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, non-transferable licence to use the Product on the terms below. The Studio keeps ownership of the Product and all intellectual property in it.
2. Who may use it. Unless the product listing or a signed licence says otherwise, the licence is for one named individual, who may install and use it on the devices they personally use. It is not shared across a team.
3. Work for your own clients is allowed. You may use the Product in work you produce for your own clients, provided it is materially built into a larger deliverable and is not handed on in a form from which it could be pulled back out and reused on its own.
4. What you may not do. Resell, redistribute, sublicense, lend, or give away the Product, modified or not; put it on a file-sharing service, template marketplace, or public repository; use it to build a competing product for distribution; remove any notice of ownership; or share your download link or account credentials.
5. Third-party components. A Product may contain third-party or open-source components under their own licences, which continue to apply. Fonts, stock imagery, and demo content shown in previews are for illustration and are not licensed with the Product unless the listing says so; you obtain your own licences for those.
6. Delivery, updates, and support. The Product is delivered by download or account access immediately on payment. Updates are at the Studio’s discretion and are not guaranteed; where they are offered, this licence covers them. Support is not included unless the listing says so.
7. Cancelling. Because a Product is supplied immediately, checkout asks you to tick a box confirming you want it right away and understand that this ends your fourteen-day right to cancel. That tick, and what happens if you do not give it, are described in clause 10 of the Refund Policy, which governs refunds on Products.
8. Fitness and testing. Except as clause 19(i) provides, a Product is supplied “as is”. The Studio does not warrant that it is error-free, that it will work in every environment or with every third-party tool, or that it will stay compatible as third-party platforms change. Test it and keep a backup before using it on anything that matters.
9. Your statutory rights. Where you buy as a consumer, Chapter 3 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires digital content to be of satisfactory quality, fit for any purpose you made known, and as described. If it is not, you are entitled to a repair or replacement and, where that fails or is impossible, a price reduction or refund. Nothing in this clause affects that, and the Studio does not ask you to give it up.
10. Liability. Subject to clause 8(a) and to clause 19(k), the Studio’s total liability in connection with a Product is limited to the price you paid for it. The price reflects that allocation: a Product is a low-cost, off-the-shelf item sold without knowledge of your environment or intended use, and you are far better placed to judge whether it suits you.
11. The limit in clause 19(j) does not apply at all to a consumer’s quality rights. Section 47 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 stops the Studio limiting as well as excluding what it owes a consumer for digital content that is not of satisfactory quality, not fit for a purpose you made known, not as described, or that the Studio had no right to supply. There is no cap on that liability, whatever you paid, and the Studio does not attempt one. Clause 19(j) bites only on other kinds of loss.
12. Ending the licence. The licence ends automatically if you materially breach it, and you must then stop using and delete the Product. That does not entitle you to a refund except where the law requires one.
13. Payment method charges. The price shown on a product page is the price you pay by card or by a digital wallet, inclusive of any tax. A small number of alternative payment methods cost the Studio significantly more to accept, and choosing one of those adds a stated amount to your total. That amount is always shown to you before you pay, and you can avoid it entirely by paying by card or wallet. No charge is ever added for paying by card.

20. Subscriptions, hosting, and care plans

This clause governs recurring services. The Hosting & Care Plan Agreement you accepted, together with the subscription offer it was sold on, governs the specifics of your plan; this clause states the position that applies in any event and fills the gaps. Refunds and cancellation are dealt with at clause 6a of the Refund Policy.

1. Billing period. Your subscription runs on a rolling billing period — weekly, monthly, annual, or another regular interval, exactly as shown on the offer you accepted — and renews automatically until cancelled. The period never changes unless you agree to a change.
2. Cancelling is always allowed, and always one step. You may cancel at any time from your account area or by emailing the Studio, giving one billing period’s notice. The Studio will never refuse a cancellation. The service then runs to the end of the period you have already paid for and stops, and no further payment is taken.
3. Rolling is the default. Unless the offer you accepted said otherwise, there is no minimum term and no cancellation fee of any kind.
4. Minimum terms. Some plans are sold for an agreed number of billing periods in exchange for a lower price. Where you accepted one, the offer said so before you agreed to it, and an early exit settlement may be payable if you end it early. What that costs is set by the agreement you accepted for that plan, which governs the point — see clause 6a of the Refund Policy, which explains what the settlement is and when it is not payable at all.
5. Reminders. The Studio sends a reminder before each renewal of an annual plan, before the end of any introductory or discounted period, and before the end of any minimum term, saying what will be charged and when.
6. Price changes need your agreement. No price change takes effect without your express consent, on at least thirty (30) days’ notice. If you decline it, the subscription simply ends at the close of the period you have paid for, and no exit settlement is payable even during a minimum term: you are not leaving early where the Studio has withdrawn the price you agreed to.
7. Failed payments. If a renewal payment fails and stays unpaid after the payment platform’s automatic retries, the Studio may suspend the service on notice until payment resumes, and is not liable for the consequences of a suspension properly made.
8. Your statutory rights. Nothing in this clause affects your rights where the service is not supplied with reasonable care and skill, or, if you are a consumer, your right to cancel a distance contract under clause 2a of the Refund Policy.

21. Complaints and dispute resolution

If something has gone wrong, tell the Studio first: use the client portal’s messaging interface or the contact form, and say what you would like done about it. The Studio acknowledges complaints within five (5) UK working days and aims to resolve them within twenty (20). Most things are settled here.

If that does not resolve it, both parties will consider mediation before starting proceedings. The Studio is not a member of, and is not obliged to use, any alternative dispute resolution scheme, and does not agree in advance to submit to one. Nothing in this clause stops you going to court, and none of it applies before you may exercise a statutory right.

22. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from or in connection with them.

If you are a consumer, that does not take anything away from you. You keep the protection of the mandatory rules of the law of the part of the United Kingdom you live in, and you may bring proceedings in your local courts: if you live in Scotland you may sue in the Scottish courts, and if you live in Northern Ireland you may sue in the Northern Irish courts. The Studio will only bring proceedings against a consumer in the courts of the part of the United Kingdom where that consumer lives.

23. Who you are contracting with

The Studio trades as a sole trader, not a company, so there is no registered company number. Its name, trading address, email address, telephone number and VAT position are set out in the “Who you are contracting with” panel at the foot of this page, and of every other page under /legal. They are kept there rather than written into this clause so that a change of telephone number is a correction rather than a revision of your terms.

Complaints go to the email address in that panel; see clause 21 for what happens next. The Studio is not a member of any professional body that requires it, and is not subject to any authorisation scheme or regulator for this work. Where the Studio holds professional indemnity insurance, it will give you the insurer’s details and the territorial coverage on request.

24. How an order is actually placed

1. The steps. For an engagement: you complete the /hire form, agree to these Terms, and submit a request. That is a request, not a contract. The Studio reviews it and, if it accepts, activates the gig and sends you a Services Agreement to sign. For a shop purchase: you add items to your basket, open checkout, tick the confirmation about immediate supply, and press the pay button, which states the total you will be charged.
2. Correcting a mistake before you commit. Every step of the hire form can be revisited with the Back control before you submit, and the checkout shows a full breakdown of items, discounts, tax and total, with the basket editable, before the pay button is pressed. If you spot an error after ordering, tell the Studio straight away and it will correct it.
3. Language. These Terms and any contract under them are concluded in English, and English is the only language in which they are available.
4. Filing. The Studio does not file a copy of your contract for you to retrieve later, so keep your own copy. Everything you agree to is on this site at the time you agree to it and can be saved or printed from your browser; anything you sign is emailed to you and kept on the documents shelf of your gig in the client portal.
5. Acknowledgement. The Studio acknowledges every order electronically without undue delay. For a shop purchase, delivery of the download is itself that acknowledgement.
6. Codes of conduct. The Studio subscribes to none.