Website Grant Terms

1. Overview & Nature of the Initiative

The Webs.ie Monthly Website Grant (the "Grant") is a studio-funded commissioning initiative operated by Webs.ie, Dublin, Ireland (the "Studio", "we", "us"). Each calendar month the Studio selects one recipient (the "Laureate") and commissions the design, build and launch of a custom marketing website at no cost to the Laureate.

The Grant is not a lottery, prize draw, raffle, sweepstake, contest of chance or gaming activity. It is a merit-based commissioning decision made by the Studio at its sole discretion. No purchase, payment, subscription or consideration of any kind is required to apply. Selection is determined by human review of the written application against the criteria and factors set out in Section 4, and no element of chance is involved.

These Grant Terms (the "Terms") are a binding agreement between the applicant and the Studio. By submitting an application you confirm that you have read, understood and accepted these Terms, the Studio's Privacy Policy and its Acceptable Use Policy.

2. Definitions

• Applicant: a natural person submitting the application form on behalf of a business or project.
• Application: the submission made via the form at webs.ie/website-grant.
• Laureate: the applicant selected by the Studio for a given month's Grant. Where the application is made for a company or other legal entity, that entity is the Laureate and the contracting party, and the individual applying or accepting warrants that they are authorised to bind it. The entity's legal name, registered number and registered address are recorded in the scope note before kick-off.
• Deliverables: the website and related assets described in Section 5.
• Scope note: the short written record of the agreed scope, materials, approvals and dates, confirmed by both parties at kick-off.
• Kick-off: the point at which the scope note is agreed and the Studio holds every access credential, asset and approval it has asked for.
• Business Day: any day other than a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday in the Republic of Ireland.
• Launch Materials: the content, brand assets, approvals, permissions and access identified in the scope note as essential to launch. Non-essential extras — additional photography, manuals, certificates, case studies — can follow later without holding up launch.
• Build Window: the indicative period of approximately seven (7) calendar days that runs from kick-off to launch, as described in Section 5.
• Engagement Period: the period from Laureate notification until launch of the Deliverables.

3. Eligibility

To be eligible an applicant must:

• Be eighteen (18) years of age or older and have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract in their jurisdiction.
• Be authorised to apply on behalf of the business, project, organisation or brand named in the application.
• Operate a real, lawful business or meaningful project — operating, launching within ninety (90) days, or demonstrably active as a creator, nonprofit or community initiative. Concept-only or placeholder entries are not eligible.
• Submit only one application per business or project per calendar month. Duplicate or bulk submissions from the same applicant or organisation will be discarded.
• Not be a current or former employee, contractor, agent, officer or immediate family member (spouse, parent, sibling, child) of such a person, of Webs.ie, or of any entity engaged in the delivery of the Grant.
• Not be subject to sanctions or restrictions under Irish, EU, UK, UN or US law that would prevent the Studio from lawfully delivering services to them.
• Operate in a sector permitted by our Acceptable Use Policy. Applications from sectors the Studio considers out of scope (including but not limited to adult content, weapons, gambling operations, content targeting minors in ways prohibited by law, and activities promoting hate or violence) will not be considered.

Applications from outside Ireland are welcome, subject to the Studio's ability to deliver services in the applicant's language and legal framework.

4. Selection — Skill-Based Review

The Grant is awarded by human review against the following criteria, weighted at the Studio's discretion:

1. Clarity — how clearly the project is described, what it does and whom it serves.
2. Timing — why a new or better website matters specifically at this moment.
3. Potential — the degree to which a strong site would materially change outcomes for the applicant.
4. Story — the usefulness, originality, public interest or mission behind the project.
5. Fit — the Studio's ability to deliver excellent work within the defined scope and schedule.

The Studio may take into account factors such as geography, sector balance, previous Laureate history, team capacity, and the overall quality of the applicant pool. Selection decisions are final and not subject to review, appeal or explanation on a per-applicant basis. The Studio is under no obligation to award the Grant in any given month and may decline to award it where, in its judgement, no application meets the standard.

5. The Deliverables (Scope)

Subject to finalisation between the Studio and the Laureate during kick-off, the Grant typically includes:

• A custom-designed marketing website or landing page, hand-crafted by the Studio team (not a template).
• Four to six (4–6) essential launch-ready pages or sections (e.g. home, services, about, contact, and one or two supporting sections).
• A responsive, accessibility-aware front-end build.
• A conversion-oriented information structure, hierarchy and call-to-action design.
• An enquiry or contact form wired to the Laureate's designated inbox, with reasonable anti-spam measures.
• Baseline on-page SEO configuration (title tags, meta descriptions, sitemap, robots file, Open Graph metadata, basic structured data where relevant).
• Launch on Cloudflare edge infrastructure with SSL.
• A guided handover covering how to maintain, update and measure the site.

The final scope of the Deliverables is agreed between the Studio and the Laureate at kick-off and recorded in a short written scope note. In the event of any conflict, the written scope note prevails over this Section.

Timing. The Studio aims to design, build and launch within a Build Window of approximately seven (7) calendar days. That window begins at kick-off — that is, once the scope note is agreed and the Studio holds every access credential, asset and approval it has requested — and not on notification, acceptance or the application deadline. It pauses while the Studio is waiting on the Laureate or on a third party, and it excludes matters outside the Studio's reasonable control such as DNS propagation, registrar processing, domain or certificate issuance and third-party approvals. The Build Window is a good-faith estimate, not a guaranteed delivery date.

Costs. The build itself is free to the Laureate. Any third-party or recurring cost the Laureate would have to carry after launch — domain registration and renewal, paid plug-ins or SaaS subscriptions, and hosting beyond any included period — is identified in writing before kick-off. No recurring charge is payable to the Studio unless it is set out in the scope note and accepted in writing beforehand.

Hosting account and exit. The domain always belongs to the Laureate. Unless the scope note says otherwise, the site is deployed to the Studio's Cloudflare account, at no cost to the Laureate — this is what makes a seven-day launch possible without asking the Laureate to set up infrastructure. This hosting is free of charge and not time-limited — there is no hosting fee for a Grant site, then or later. If the Studio ever stops offering free hosting it will give at least sixty (60) days' notice and migrate the site at no cost. There is no lock-in: on the Laureate's written request, or if the Studio stops supporting the site, the Studio will within ten (10) Business Days and at no charge hand over the deployable site files and configuration and give reasonable help with one standard migration to an account the Laureate nominates. If the Laureate would rather own the hosting account from day one, it can say so at kick-off and the Studio will deploy into the Laureate's own Cloudflare account instead. The Studio may keep screenshots and a portfolio credit, but has no right to keep the live site under its control for portfolio reasons.

The scope note also records what is handed over and in what format, what happens to any previous website, and what post-launch support (if any) is included.

Studio products included for the first year. The Grant may include one or more of the Studio's own subscription products — for example its website assistant or its cookie-consent tool — set up and free for twelve (12) months from launch. These are a genuine part of the gift, and they come with hard limits so they cannot turn into a surprise bill:

• The Studio takes no payment details for them and will not charge automatically. There is no card on file to fall back on.
• Around thirty (30) days before the free year ends, the Studio tells the Laureate in writing what continuing would cost. It continues only if the Laureate actively agrees in writing. Silence means it stops — never that it renews.
• The website works fully without them. Nothing essential — the pages, the content, the enquiry form — is built to depend on a Studio product. Removal is free and does not degrade the site.
• Where a discontinued product was providing a compliance function such as cookie consent, the Studio will on request also disable the tracking that relied on it, so that stopping the subscription does not leave the Laureate non-compliant by default.
• The Laureate may decline these products at kick-off, or drop them at any point during the free year, with no effect on the Grant.

6. Out of Scope

The Grant does not include, and the Studio is under no obligation to provide, the following:

• Unlimited revisions, rebuilds or open-ended creative exploration.
• Custom back-end, server-side, database, SaaS or API development beyond what the Studio's standard tooling provides.
• Native mobile applications.
• Custom photography, illustration, video production, 3D, animation or motion graphics beyond light studio-led art direction.
• Multi-language / internationalised builds.
• Paid advertising, search engine marketing, link-building, influencer outreach or other marketing services.
• Ongoing retainers, monthly care, long-term support or operational services beyond launch.
• Third-party costs, including but not limited to domain registration, premium plug-ins, stock assets, licensed fonts, email marketing services and any SaaS subscriptions the Laureate chooses to use.
• Legal, accounting or tax advice.

Revisions that are included. The Grant includes two consolidated rounds of revisions on the design before launch — the Laureate reviews the draft and sends its changes together, in one go, each time — plus any further changes the Studio judges reasonable to get the site right. After launch there is a thirty (30) day snagging window in which the Studio fixes, free of charge, anything that is broken, wrong or does not match the agreed scope note: bugs, broken links, typos, display faults. The scope note may record a different revision allowance for a particular build; where it does, it prevails.

Changes after launch. Once the snagging window closes, new work is new work. Additional pages, extra products or ranges, new features or integrations, redesigns, seasonal campaigns, content updates and ongoing support are not part of the Grant. The Studio is happy to quote for them as a separate paid engagement at its standard rates, or to offer a monthly care plan. Every such quote is given in writing and in advance, and the Laureate is free to decline it, do the work itself or use another supplier — accepting paid work is never a condition of the Grant, and declining it never affects the site that was already delivered.

Anything outside the scope set out in Section 5 may be proposed by the Studio as a separate paid engagement at standard rates, but is never a condition of the Grant.

7. Acceptance, Timetable & Lapse

The Grant runs on a monthly cadence, so the timetable is short by design. It is built to finish inside the month in which the Laureate is notified.

• Notification. The Studio notifies the selected Laureate by email at the address given in the application.
• Acceptance — three (3) Business Days. The Laureate accepts in writing within three Business Days of the notification email. The Studio sends one reminder after two Business Days. A Laureate who asks before the deadline may have one extension of up to two (2) further Business Days, granted as a matter of course.
• Deemed declined. If no acceptance arrives by the deadline, the Grant is treated as declined. The Studio may then offer it to another applicant, carry it forward, or decline to award that month's Grant.
• Launch Materials — seven (7) Business Days. Within seven Business Days of acceptance the Laureate attends kick-off and provides the Launch Materials. Non-essential extras may follow later.
• Build Window. The approximately seven (7) calendar day Build Window described in Section 5 starts once the scope note is agreed and the complete Launch Materials are in hand — not at notification or acceptance.
• Standard timetable. Roughly seventeen (17) Business Days from notification to launch, assuming each step is met.
• No public announcement is made before written acceptance is received.

If Launch Materials are late or incomplete, the Studio gives a two (2) Business Day notice to put it right. After that it may, at its discretion, either (a) proceed with the materials it holds, using reasonable placeholders or leaving non-essential items out, or (b) where launch is not reasonably possible, defer the build once to its next available production slot. If essential materials are still outstanding ten (10) Business Days after a deferral, the Grant lapses without liability on either side. A deferral is subject to capacity and never displaces a later month's Laureate. Outright withdrawal for other reasons is governed by Section 21.

The month-end launch is a target that depends on the Laureate meeting these deadlines. It is not guaranteed where third-party materials, approvals or access are delayed.

8. Laureate's Responsibilities

The Laureate agrees to:

• Provide accurate information, brand assets, text and images (or approve studio-drafted copy) in a timely manner.
• Nominate a single point of contact with authority to approve decisions.
• Respond to messages within two (2) working days during the Engagement Period.
• Review drafts and provide consolidated feedback within the timeframes agreed at kick-off.
• Own or hold a valid licence for any content, trademarks, logos or images they provide to the Studio.
• Comply with the Acceptable Use Policy in all interactions with the Studio.

Claims and product statements. The Laureate is responsible for the accuracy, substantiation and legal compliance of every claim published about its products or services — including performance, energy-efficiency, cost-saving, environmental, health, safety, certification, warranty, award and grant-eligibility statements — whether the Laureate supplied the wording or approved wording drafted by the Studio. The Studio may ask for documentary evidence and may decline to publish a claim without it. The Studio does not independently verify or endorse such claims. Nothing published may state or imply endorsement, approval or eligibility from a public body, certification scheme or grant authority without current written evidence.

Third-party and supplier materials. Where the Deliverables use materials belonging to a manufacturer, supplier, franchisor or other third party — trademarks, logos, photography, renderings, manuals, datasheets, certificates or test results — the Laureate shall provide, before publication, written evidence reasonably satisfactory to the Studio that it may reproduce, adapt and publish those materials in the Deliverables and in the case study described in Section 12.

Domain, DNS and email. The Grant does not include email hosting, mailbox administration or any responsibility for the Laureate's email service. By default the Studio does not move nameservers: existing nameservers and all email-related records stay exactly where they are, and only the records needed to point web traffic at the new site are added or changed. Nameservers are moved only where it is technically necessary, recorded in the scope note and authorised in writing by the Laureate — and only after the Studio has inventoried and replicated every existing record (MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, autodiscover, verification, CAA, SRV and subdomains), lowered TTLs, agreed a maintenance window and written down a rollback path. The Laureate remains responsible for its email provider and mailbox credentials, and confirms after any change that email is sending and receiving. The Studio takes reasonable care but cannot guarantee uninterrupted third-party email service.

9. Representations & Warranties by the Applicant

By submitting an application the applicant represents and warrants that:

• All information provided is accurate, current and complete to the best of their knowledge.
• They have the authority to apply on behalf of the named business, project or organisation.
• Any content, text, logos, trademarks, images or materials they provide to the Studio are either owned by them or licensed with the right to sublicense for the purposes of building and publishing the Deliverables.
• The project, its content and its activities are lawful in their jurisdiction and do not infringe the rights of any third party.
• Their participation in the Grant does not violate any contract, obligation or policy to which they are bound.

10. Indemnity

The Laureate agrees to indemnify, defend and hold harmless Webs.ie and its owners, employees and contractors from and against any and all claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to:

• Any content, materials or information provided by the Laureate to the Studio.
• Any breach by the Laureate of the representations, warranties or obligations in these Terms.
• Any claim by a third party that the Laureate's content infringes their intellectual property, privacy, publicity or other rights.
• Any use the Laureate makes of the Deliverables after launch.

This indemnity applies on the following terms: the Studio will notify the Laureate promptly of any claim, will not settle it without the Laureate's written consent (not to be unreasonably withheld), will allow the Laureate to assume conduct of the defence with counsel of its choosing where it accepts the indemnity in writing, and will take reasonable steps to mitigate. The indemnity does not extend to loss caused by the Studio's own negligence, wilful misconduct or breach of these Terms.

11. Intellectual Property

• Delivered work: upon launch, the Studio assigns to the Laureate all rights it holds in the bespoke parts of the Deliverables — the page designs, layouts, and the copy and site structure written for the Laureate — so that the Laureate owns the finished website it receives.
• Studio tooling: the Studio retains ownership of its underlying frameworks, design systems, libraries, internal tools and any reusable components used to create the Deliverables. None of these are transferred under the Grant; instead the Laureate receives a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use, host and modify them as part of the Deliverables, for its own business or project. The Laureate may not extract, resell, redistribute or license them separately.
• Third-party assets: any fonts, stock imagery or plug-ins used in the Deliverables remain subject to their own licences, which the Laureate agrees to honour.
• Laureate content: the Laureate retains ownership of the original content they provide and grants the Studio the licences needed to build, launch and showcase the Deliverables as described in Section 12.

12. Publicity, Case Study & Showcase Rights

By accepting the Grant the Laureate grants the Studio a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free licence to:

• Publish a case study, write-up, video or social post about the Grant, the Laureate and the Deliverables.
• Display screenshots, short recordings and the Laureate's logo in the Studio's portfolio, marketing materials, pitch decks, awards entries and social channels.
• Reference the Laureate by name in press releases and announcements about the Grant.
• Retain the right to keep published case studies live indefinitely.

These rights are exercised on the following basis: the case study uses materials and a description of the Laureate's business that the Laureate has approved; the Laureate gets a factual review of the draft before first publication and its corrections of fact are made; and the licence covers only materials the Laureate is itself entitled to license to the Studio.

The Laureate may request that specific confidential information be excluded from publication by giving written notice to [email protected] before launch. The Studio will make reasonable efforts to accommodate such requests. If the Laureate later loses the right to license a third party's logo or imagery, or its business circumstances change materially, it may ask the Studio in writing to remove or amend the affected material, and the Studio will do so within a reasonable period.

13. Data Protection

Where the Deliverables collect personal data from the Laureate's own visitors — an enquiry form, a newsletter sign-up, analytics — the Laureate is the data controller for that data and is responsible for its lawful use after delivery. The scope note records where form submissions are sent, how long they are kept, which analytics or cookies are used, and what privacy notice the site must carry. The Studio acts on the Laureate's instructions in building this and provides data-processing terms where its own tooling processes that data.

Applicant personal data is handled under the Studio's Privacy Policy. Grant application data is retained for up to twelve (12) months after the month in which the decision is made, and then deleted or anonymised, except where retention is required by law. Applicants have the right to request access, correction or deletion of their personal data by writing to [email protected].

14. No Cash Alternative & Non-Transferability

• The Grant consists solely of the services described in Section 5. There is no cash alternative and the Studio will not exchange, refund or substitute any component of the Deliverables for money.
• The Grant is personal to the Laureate and cannot be sold, assigned or transferred to a third party without the Studio's written consent.
• The estimated monetary value of the Deliverables is indicative only and does not create any right of the Laureate to receive equivalent cash.

15. Tax & Regulatory Responsibility

The Laureate is solely responsible for any tax consequences (including income tax, benefit-in-kind, VAT, import duties or similar) arising in their jurisdiction as a result of receiving the Deliverables. The Studio provides no tax advice and makes no representations about the tax treatment of the Grant. The Laureate should consult their own adviser if they have any doubt.

16. No Warranty on Outcomes

The Deliverables are provided "as delivered". To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Studio makes no representations or warranties — express, implied, statutory or otherwise — regarding the performance, results, traffic, rankings, revenue, conversions or commercial outcomes the Laureate may or may not experience as a result of the Deliverables. The Studio is not responsible for the Laureate's business decisions, pricing, operations or marketing after launch.

17. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:

• The Studio is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive loss or damage arising out of or relating to the Grant, including loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill or business opportunity.
• The Studio's total aggregate liability in contract, tort, negligence or otherwise arising out of or relating to the Grant is limited to one thousand euros (€1,000), which the parties agree is a reasonable allocation of risk given that the Grant is provided free of charge.
• Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, wilful misconduct, or any liability that applicable Irish or EU law does not permit to be excluded or restricted.
• The Studio delivers the Deliverables with reasonable skill and care. The exclusions above limit what the Studio is liable for; they do not remove that duty.

18. Force Majeure

The Studio is not liable for any failure or delay in delivery caused by events outside its reasonable control, including acts of God, war, civil unrest, strikes, epidemics or pandemics, cyber attacks, internet or hosting outages, third-party service failures, government action or natural disasters.

19. No Employment or Partnership

Nothing in these Terms creates an employment, agency, partnership, joint venture, franchise or fiduciary relationship between the Studio and the Laureate. The Studio is an independent contractor delivering a gifted engagement.

20. Variation & Cancellation

The Studio may, at its sole discretion and at any time:

• Update, modify or supplement these Terms (the updated version takes effect from the date it is published on this page).
• Change the eligibility criteria, application requirements, selection criteria or scope of future Grants.
• Pause, postpone or discontinue the Grant entirely.
• Decline to award the Grant in any given month where no suitable applicant is identified.

Changes do not affect Grants that have already been accepted under a prior version of these Terms.

21. Withdrawal of an Awarded Grant

The Studio may withdraw an offered or awarded Grant, without liability, if the Laureate:

• Has materially misrepresented their business, project or eligibility in the application.
• Fails to respond within the windows set out in Section 7 or 8.
• Is found to fall within any of the ineligibility categories in Section 3 after selection.
• Breaches these Terms, the Acceptable Use Policy or applicable law.
• Engages in abusive, threatening, harassing or deceptive conduct toward the Studio team.
• Requests work that falls outside the agreed scope and refuses to accept reasonable scope management.

Except where the matter is unlawful, abusive or urgent, the Studio will give written notice and seven (7) calendar days to put the matter right before withdrawing a Grant that has already been accepted.

22. Confidentiality & Non-Disclosure

Both parties agree to keep non-public information shared during the Engagement Period reasonably confidential and to use it only for the purpose of delivering the Grant. This obligation does not apply to information that is already public, independently developed or required to be disclosed by law.

23. Complaints

Complaints about the conduct of the Grant should be directed to [email protected]. We will acknowledge complaints within five (5) working days and respond substantively within twenty (20) working days. Complaints about personal data should be directed to [email protected] and may also be raised with the Irish Data Protection Commission.

24. Notices

Notices from the Studio to the applicant or Laureate may be delivered by email to the address supplied in the application. Notices to the Studio must be sent to [email protected].

25. Entire Agreement & Severability

These Terms, together with any written scope note agreed at kick-off, the Privacy Policy and the Acceptable Use Policy, constitute the entire agreement between the parties in respect of the Grant and supersede any prior discussions, representations or agreements. If any provision is held to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect.

26. Governing Law & Jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Ireland. The parties agree that the courts of Ireland shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms, without prejudice to any mandatory consumer rights the applicant may have in their country of habitual residence under applicable law.

27. Contact

Questions about the Grant or these Terms: [email protected]. General studio contact: [email protected].