What we agree to.

The free draft

You apply, we build a real working draft of your website, and you owe us nothing for it. You keep the files whether or not you go ahead. We may decline to build one, and we will say so quickly rather than leaving you waiting. Drafts are speculative work: we are not your contractor until you say yes and we agree a price.

The build, and its price

The figures on the pricing section are starting minimums, not quotes. The exact number is agreed with you in writing after you have seen your draft and before any work continues. If we ever cannot do it for the number we agreed, that is our problem, not a reason to change the number.

What you own

You own the design, the copy, the images we made for you, the domain and the files. If you leave, we hand everything over and help you move it. We do not hold your site or your domain to make leaving difficult. We keep the right to describe the work publicly and to show it as an example unless you ask us not to, and asking is enough.

Unlimited edits, and what an edit is

This is the part worth being precise about, because "unlimited" without a scope is a promise neither of us can rely on.

An edit is a change to the content of a page that already exists. New prices, new hours, a new item on the menu, swapped photos, a closed weekend, a new paragraph, fixing something we got wrong. Those are unlimited, they are included, and we aim to make them the same working day.

A new page, a new feature, or a redesign is a new piece of work and we quote it before starting. Adding online ordering, a booking system, a members area, or a second language are examples. We will always tell you which side of that line a request falls on before doing anything, and if it is genuinely borderline we will treat it as an edit.

The monthly plans

Kept online, $40 a month. Hosting, your domain and its renewal, uptime, backups, and content edits as described above.

Kept sharp, $120 a month. Everything in Kept online, plus a monthly check of your site against our published rulebook, the fixes made, and a written record of what was found. The rulebook is at /rulebook and every rule in it is published together with the case where that rule is wrong.

Billing renews automatically each month until you cancel. You will be charged the agreed amount on the same date each month. We will tell you in writing before any price change, and a price change never applies to a month you have already paid for.

The 3-month minimum. If your site takes orders or bookings, it needs Kept sharp, because those are the parts that cost you money when they break. Every plan has a 3-month minimum, counted from the day the plan starts: $120 in total for Kept online, $360 for Kept sharp, billed monthly and never in one go. If we do not keep your site online or do not make the edits described above, tell us and the minimum no longer applies to you. Plans started before 29 September 2026 have no minimum.

Whose name you will see. For now Proof takes payments through the Stripe account of Lark Dating, Inc., another business run by the same founder. So the checkout page, the receipt and your card statement show Lark Dating, Inc. rather than Proof. What you are paying for is the Proof plan you chose, on these terms.

Cancelling

Cancel at any time from Manage billing, linked at the bottom of every page and from the page you land on after paying. No phone call, no form, and clicking cancel is never blocked. In the first 3 months, your cancellation is booked straight away; we keep billing monthly on the usual date until the third month ends, then the plan stops and you are not charged again, and we email you the date of your last charge. After the first 3 months, you are not charged again and you keep the rest of the month you have paid for. If your site is hosted with us, we will keep it online for thirty days after your last paid month so you have time to move it, and we will help you move it.

Refunds: if we have not done the work, we refund it. If you cancel mid-month we do not pro-rate, because you keep the month. If something has gone wrong, tell us and we will make it right rather than pointing at this paragraph.

What the monthly check is and is not

It is a deterministic check against a published list of rules. Every finding names the exact thing it looked at so you can go and verify it, and every rule is published with the condition under which it gives the wrong answer.

It is not a prediction about search results, and we do not make one. Nobody can promise a ranking, a position, an amount of traffic or a number of customers, and any agency that does is telling you something they cannot substantiate. What we promise is the check, the findings, the fixes, and the record.

When a check cannot read enough of a page to judge it, it says so and withholds the result rather than reporting a clean one. You will see that in your record when it happens.

The licence for the team tools

If your plan includes the departments as tools you can use yourself, you receive a licence that works on your own machine and makes no outside requests. It is for your business, and sharing it outside your business ends it. It stops working shortly after the period you have paid for, and paying again issues a new one.

When we would stop working with you

If a payment fails and is not fixed, if the work is for something illegal, or if somebody is abusive to a person on our side. We will tell you which and give you the chance to fix it where fixing it is possible.

The boring necessary part

We are a small independent studio and we do not promise the site will never go down. We promise to fix it when it does, and to be the ones who notice. Our liability is limited to what you have paid us in the previous three months, which is the normal arrangement for work at this size. Nothing here removes a right you have by law.

Changes to these terms

If we change them we will tell you before the change applies to you, and the version you agreed to keeps applying until then. We will not change what you have already paid for.

Reaching a person

Email proofstudio.nyc@gmail.com. A person reads it. Last updated 29 September 2026 (pricing and the 3-month minimum).