We love what we build. Your website and marketing systems are made to be fast, modern and reliable, hosted on trusted infrastructure and looked after by us day to day. These terms are written to be clear and fair, so you always know where you stand and what you can count on from us. Here is how we work together.
1. Agreement
These Terms & Conditions form a legal agreement between you and TMC Media Pty Ltd ABN 26 660 757 415, trading as Scalus App ("Scalus"), for the use of Scalus services. By using our website or services, you accept these terms.
2. Services
(a) Scalus provides website hosting, marketing automation, lead management and related services as outlined in your package agreement.
(b) Our website hosting runs on established cloud infrastructure, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is built for high availability with typical uptime around 99.9%. The 99.9% figure describes the typical performance of the underlying infrastructure, not a promise or warranty by Scalus.
(c) Services are provided "as is" and "as available". We aim for high availability but do not guarantee uninterrupted, error free or uninterruptible service, and we do not provide a guaranteed uptime commitment ourselves.
3. Pricing & Payment
(a) Pricing is quoted in Australian dollars including GST. Fees are billed monthly in advance by automatic payment on your billing date. If a payment fails we will retry it and get in touch with you, and clause 4(f) sets out the 14 day window that applies before services are suspended. If you change packages, pricing adjusts proportionally from the next billing date.
(b) Price lock. While you remain a continuous client on your current plan, the recurring monthly fee for that plan will not increase. If you change plans, add optional services, or your services otherwise change, pricing for the new arrangement applies from that point. This price lock does not apply to third party charges we pass through at cost, or to taxes and government charges, which may change.
(c) Payment authority, failed payments and chargebacks. You authorise Scalus and its payment processor to charge your nominated card or account the monthly fee automatically on each billing date until this agreement ends, and you agree to keep those payment details current. If a payment fails we will automatically retry it, Tim will reach out to you personally, and we may pause work on new changes until it is resolved. Clause 4(f) sets out the 14 day window that applies before your web services are suspended. If you ever think an amount is wrong, contact us first at terms@scalus.app and we will look into it and fix anything that needs fixing. Raising a chargeback or payment dispute for services that were actually provided, without contacting us first, is a breach of this agreement. In that case you agree to pay any chargeback or dispute fees we are charged, together with the reasonable costs of recovering any amount properly owing, including collection agency and legal costs.
4. Term & Cancellation
(a) This is a rolling month to month agreement with no fixed end date. Fees are billed monthly in advance. Either party may cancel by giving the other at least 30 days' written notice. To cancel, send written notice to hello@scalus.app (a notice sent to any of our published business email addresses is also valid). We will acknowledge cancellation requests in writing.
(b) The 30 day notice period is itself a final billing cycle. During the notice period we continue to provide your services and you remain liable for the fees for that period. In practice this means that, because fees are billed monthly in advance, your next scheduled monthly payment after you give notice is charged as normal and is your final payment, and your services continue until the end of that paid period, after which the agreement ends. This is payment for the services we provide during your notice period; it is not a penalty or an additional charge for cancelling.
(c) Fees already paid for services performed or the current and notice billing periods are non refundable; this does not limit any right you have under the Australian Consumer Law (see clause 9). We'll provide you with an export of your site content and your data within 30 days of the agreement ending.
(d) Continuity commitment (at least 24 months). We plan ahead so that your business is never left stranded. We are committed to funding and holding your website hosting well ahead of time, arranged to sit apart from the day to day running of Scalus and intended to outlast Scalus itself, so that even in the unlikely event that something unforeseen prevents Scalus from continuing to operate, your website is set up to stay online for at least 24 months from that point for clients who were active and paid up at the time that event occurred. Because that hosting is paid ahead, this window keeps protecting you even if payment to Scalus can no longer be taken once we have ceased operating, so it never depends on you continuing to pay a business that is no longer running. We give this as a genuine continuity commitment on a best efforts basis. It is our firm plan and intention, not an absolute promise of a result we could not control if a hosting provider, a domain registrar or an event beyond our reasonable control acts against it. After that continuity window, ongoing hosting and services would need to be arranged with a new provider.
(e) Curated handover failsafe. Alongside this, we keep a standing commitment to hand your work back to you if Scalus ever ceases to operate or can no longer provide your service. That is the situation this failsafe is for. It does not apply where you choose to cancel or where your account lapses while Scalus is still running, and it is not a route to obtain the Scalus code base, which stays with Scalus in every other circumstance as set out in clause 7(b). We are still building parts of this into an automatic process, and until that is complete we will prepare and send the pack by hand, so you receive the same handover either way. If it is ever needed, we will email you an organised handover pack and also make it available to download, and we will keep that download available for at least 24 months. Because we email the pack to you, you can save your own copy straight away, so you are never dependent on the download link staying live. The pack includes a clean, organised export of all of your contacts and enquiries; a copy of your website design and front end page code so you can recreate your site with another provider; the core business content and assets supplied by you or produced for your site; and simple notes to help you or a new provider pick things up. This is a standing safeguard, so that whatever happens you always keep your work, your contacts and your site.
(f) Failed payments, the 14 day window, suspension and reactivation. If a scheduled payment fails, we will automatically retry it, and Tim will reach out to you personally to let you know and to help get it sorted. Your website and the connected Platform features stay live while that is happening. If no successful payment is received within 14 days of the original subscription due date, your web services are suspended and your live site and Platform features are taken offline. If you are genuinely having difficulty, get in touch with us before those 14 days are up and we may agree to give you more time. Any extension is at our discretion and needs to be agreed in writing, and 30 days from the original subscription due date is the limit in every case. Suspension is not the end of this agreement and there is no suspension fee. As soon as a payment clears, your site and Platform features are restored. There is no reduced or standby plan to keep a site online for less; a site is either on an active paid plan or it is suspended. If an account stays unpaid while suspended, we may end this agreement on written notice under clause 4(a). If you have cancelled or lapsed and later wish to re engage, you can reactivate by paying a reactivation fee of $225 (equal to one month) and restarting your monthly subscription. The reactivation fee covers bringing your site and systems back online and is in addition to your ongoing monthly fee.
5. Our Plans
(a) Scalus has one plan. It is month to month with no lock in, billed monthly in advance (see clause 3).
(b) Scalus Website, $225 per month. A modern, responsive website of up to 30 pages, built for your business, hosted and kept live for you. It includes the search and AI search work on your site, your enquiry and contact forms, live chat on your site, a Google review system that invites your customers to review you, automatic SMS follow up on new enquiries, lead notifications, and every ongoing update and change you ask for. There is no build fee and no setup cost.
(c) Nothing else is sold. Scalus does not provide advertising or campaign management, social content production or scheduling, filming or photography sessions, or online store and e commerce builds. There are no add ons, no upgrades and no optional extras to buy. The one thing that can be bought separately is the build itself, under the outright purchase option in clause 7(i).
(d) The price is in Australian dollars and includes GST. Any third party costs are separate and are covered by clause 15.
6. Content & Footage
(a) Your content. Anything you supply or film yourself, and anything you or other people add to your site (your text, logos, images, and any video or photos you or your team shoot or source), is and remains yours. Scalus claims no ownership of it at any time. You grant Scalus a licence to use and edit that content only as needed to build and run your site.
(b) Scalus Studio content. Separately, Scalus may film or produce original content for you through Scalus Studio (photography, video, audio and graphics that Scalus itself creates). Finished, delivered Scalus Studio content is co owned by you and Scalus. This means both of us own it together and either of us may use it freely, including after you leave. You are free to use it to market your own business, on your own website, social channels and anywhere else you wish. Scalus is equally free to use it for promotional purposes, including Meta ads, showcasing work on the Scalus website and other marketing. Neither of us needs the other's permission to use this content for these purposes. Scalus retains the raw footage and project files.
(c) Scope. Only content that Scalus itself produces is covered by this clause. It does not apply to anything you supply or shoot, or that anyone other than Scalus adds to your site. It also does not apply to the written copy on the pages of your website, which is dealt with in clause 6(f).
(d) Moral rights. Moral rights belong personally to the individual people who create content and cannot be owned or transferred to a company. For Scalus Studio content, Scalus will obtain the necessary written moral rights consents from its own staff and contractors who create that content, so that the content may be used, reproduced, edited, adapted, cropped, combined and modified without attribution to any individual creator and without any such act being treated as derogatory, by Scalus, by you and by anyone we or you authorise. For any content that you or your own people create, you give the same consent, and you confirm you have obtained the equivalent written consent from any other individual you bring who is a creator of that content.
(e) Our portfolio. Scalus's right to use the co owned Scalus Studio content for its own promotion comes from the Scalus Studio content described above and does not depend on any further licence or consent from you. Separately, because your business name, logo and branding remain yours, you grant Scalus a licence to feature them, together with the results achieved, as advertising, marketing, promotional, portfolio and case study material for Scalus across any media. If you would prefer your business name, logo or branding not be used this way, tell us in writing and we will honour that going forward. This preference does not extend to the co owned Scalus Studio content itself, which Scalus may continue to use as a co owner as set out above.
(f) Website page copy. The written copy that Scalus writes for the pages of your website is part of the build and belongs to Scalus, in the same way as the code it sits in. This is the wording of your headlines, sections, service descriptions and calls to action as they appear on the site we build and run for you. While you are an active, paid up client you may use that copy freely. If you cancel, you keep a continuing licence to use that copy for your own business, including on a website built for you by someone else, at no charge and with no time limit. That licence is granted on one condition, which is that clause 7(f) is not breached. If the build is copied in breach of clause 7(f), Scalus may end the licence to the page copy by written notice, and clause 7(g) applies. None of this affects anything you wrote or supplied yourself, which remains yours under clause 6(a).
(g) What you say about us. Clients often say kind things about the work, in the Scalus app, by email, by SMS, on WhatsApp, in a review or on a call. We are proud of that and we would like to be able to share it, so you agree that Scalus may quote and publish what you write or say to us about Scalus, our work and the results it produces. A message that reads "You did a great job Tim" is an example of something we may turn into a social media post or an advertisement.
(i) What it covers. Anything you write or say to Scalus about Scalus, the work we do for you or the results you get from it, however it reaches us. That includes messages in the Scalus app or your dashboard, email, SMS, WhatsApp and other messaging services, live chat, reviews you leave, forms and surveys you complete, recorded calls and meetings, and messages you send us on social media.
(ii) What we may do with it. Reproduce it in full or as a shorter extract and publish it as a quote, testimonial or case study in any media, including social media posts, stories and reels, paid advertising on Meta, Google and other platforms, the Scalus website, our portfolio, email and printed material. We may present it as a graphic, as a screenshot of the message itself, as a caption or as a spoken quote, and we may edit it lightly for length, spelling, punctuation or clarity, so long as the edit does not change what you meant.
(iii) How you are credited. We may publish the quote alongside your first name, your business name, your logo, your role and your suburb or region. We will not publish your phone number, your email address or your home address, and we will not publish anything about your own customers.
(iv) The licence you give us. You grant Scalus a worldwide, royalty free, perpetual, non exclusive licence to use what you have said in the ways set out above. No fee, royalty or further approval is payable to you for it, and where you are giving this on behalf of your business you confirm you are entitled to do so. This licence continues after this agreement ends, for anything said while it was on foot.
(v) Saying no, and asking us to take something down. If you would rather we did not quote you, tell us in writing at terms@scalus.app and we will stop using your material from that point on. You can also ask us to keep a particular message off limits before we use it, and we will honour that. Where you ask us to remove something we have already published, we will take it down from anything we control within a reasonable time. We cannot always recall material that has already been printed, shared, reposted by other people or logged in a platform's public advertising archive, so a request to stop applies going forward rather than backwards.
(vi) What it does not cover. This clause does not let Scalus publish your confidential business information, your pricing, your customer or lead data, or personal information about the people in your business, all of which stay protected by clause 12 and clause 18(a). It does not allow us to attribute to you words you did not say, and we publish what you actually said rather than a version of it. It does not affect clause 6(a), so your own content remains yours.
7. Your Website & the Scalus Platform
If you leave. Your domain, content, design, Google accounts and customer data are yours to keep. The code base can be purchased for a buyout fee of $5,000 plus GST in Australian dollars, and once it is bought you can reuse the code and build the site elsewhere. Please note what stops when the subscription ends: the chat bot and the other integrations, along with hosting, support, maintenance, security and upgrades. No lock in, no exit fee. What you cannot do is take the code and files without buying them, and clause 7(g) sets out what happens if that occurs. The full detail is set out below.
(a) Your website, and what leaves with you. The design of your website is yours to keep and use anywhere you like, and so is everything of yours that sits inside it. That means your domain, your written content, your logo, your images and video, your business information, and your Google and advertising accounts. How each of those accounts is created and who holds it is set out below. If you ever move away from Scalus you take all of that with you, and you or another provider are free to have a new site built to the same look and feel, provided it is genuinely designed and coded fresh rather than copied, mirrored or adapted from the Scalus build files, as set out in clause 7(f). We will also give you an export of your site content and your data within 30 days of leaving, as set out in clause 4(c).
(i) Your domain. Your domain is registered in your business name and remains your property. Where you would prefer not to deal with it yourself, we can look after the registration on your behalf, and it is transferred to you on request at any time.
(ii) Google Business Profile. Your Google Business Profile is owned by you and stays in your name. Scalus is added as a manager so we can keep it accurate, optimised and up to date for you.
(iii) Google Search Console. Scalus creates and verifies the Search Console property for your website as part of your build, because it needs to be in place from the day your site goes live. If you would like your own Google account added as an owner of it, just ask and we will add you. If you would rather not, we simply create and run it on your behalf and report on what it tells us.
(iv) Analytics and advertising accounts. In the same way, Scalus creates and runs your website analytics and, where they are needed, your advertising accounts. You can be added as an owner or administrator of your own property or account on request. Your data in them is yours, and where an account can be transferred we will transfer it to you if you leave.
(b) The code base stays with Scalus. What does not transfer is the code. Your site is built on the Scalus build system, and the page code, components, forms, templates, configuration and code repository that make up that build remain the property of Scalus. The monthly fee does not buy the code base, and cancelling does not transfer it. There is one way to get it, which is to buy it outright under clause 7(i), and short of that Scalus does not sell, licence, transfer or hand over the code base, in whole or in part, on cancellation or at any other time. The reason is straightforward and we would rather state it plainly than have it come as a surprise. There is no build fee and no setup cost. The work of designing and building your site is paid for by Scalus up front and recovered over the months you remain a client, so the build itself is not something a single monthly payment buys outright. In return you get a custom built site with nothing to pay up front, no lock in contract, and the freedom to leave at any time with everything described in clause 7(a). The only exception is the curated handover failsafe in clause 4(e), which applies solely in the event that Scalus ceases to operate.
(c) The Scalus platform. Alongside the code base, what stays with Scalus is the wider platform: the reusable systems, dashboards, automations, automation configurations, workflows, integrations, chat and review tools, CRM configuration and the underlying templates and technology that Scalus uses to run your site and marketing (the "Platform"). The Platform is proprietary to Scalus and is provided to you on a non exclusive, non transferable, revocable licensed basis for as long as you are an active, paid up client. It is not sold to you and you do not acquire ownership of it. Your licence to the Platform ends if this agreement ends or your account is cancelled or suspended, and you have no right to retain, copy, reproduce or host the Platform elsewhere.
(d) Month to month, and what happens if payment stops. Your monthly fee keeps your website live and hosted and keeps the connected Platform features running. If your account is cancelled, or your fees remain unpaid, the hosting and the connected Platform features stop and your live site is deactivated, subject to the failed payment, 14 day window, suspension and reactivation terms in clause 4(f). We may also suspend or deactivate your site or Platform features for a serious breach of clause 8 that you do not fix within a reasonable time after we tell you, or where required by law or to protect the security of the systems. This is simply the service ending, not a claim over your work: you keep your own content, your accounts and the design of your site to use elsewhere, as described in clause 7(a). The code base your site is built on stays with Scalus in every case, as described in clause 7(b).
(e) Your content and data. You retain ownership of your own underlying content and data that you supply to us (for example your text, logos, images and business information). You grant Scalus a licence to use and modify that content and data to operate the services. This clause is subject to clause 6 (Content & Footage), which governs material Scalus produces for you.
(f) Protecting the build. Because the code base stays with Scalus, you agree that you will not, and will not ask, authorise or engage anyone else to: copy, download, scrape, harvest, extract or reproduce the code, files, components, templates or configuration that make up your site or any other Scalus site, whether by hand or using automated tools; decompile, reverse engineer or attempt to derive the underlying build system; or host, republish, resell or reuse that code anywhere outside the site we run for you. We want to be clear about exactly where that line sits, because this is meant to be fair rather than restrictive. You are completely free to take your domain, your content, your images and your design to another provider and have a new site built that looks the same. What you may not do is take our code and files and use them as the starting point. A breach of this clause causes harm that money alone may not repair, so Scalus may seek urgent injunctive or other equitable relief in addition to any other remedy available to it. This clause continues to apply after this agreement ends.
(g) If the build is copied: your choice, or a licence fee of $5,000 plus GST. We would rather set this out plainly now than argue about it later. If any part of the build is copied, reproduced, mirrored, republished, adapted or hosted outside the site Scalus runs for you, whether by you or by anyone you ask, authorise or engage, then within 7 days of written notice from Scalus you must choose one of two things.
(i) Take it down. Remove the copied material from every site and server it appears on, delete or destroy every copy of it in your possession or control and in the possession or control of anyone acting for you, and confirm to us in writing that you have done so. There is nothing further to pay, and that is the end of it.
(ii) Keep it, and licence it. If you would rather keep using it, tell us in writing and pay Scalus the outright purchase price of $5,000 plus GST for the site it appears on, which is the same price anyone can buy a build for under clause 7(i). On payment you get the licence described in clause 7(i) for that one site, and a separate fee applies to each additional site.
(h) Why that figure, and how it is paid. The $5,000 plus GST is not a fine. It is what the design and build of a Scalus website is worth, and it is a genuine and conservative estimate of what Scalus carries in designing, writing, building, testing and launching a site up front, which is normally recovered only over the months a client stays. Because there is no build fee and no setup cost, a client who copies the build and leaves has taken the build without it ever being paid for, and this clause simply puts a price on that so both sides know where they stand. The fee is payable within 14 days of the date you tell us you are keeping the material, or within 14 days of the end of the 7 day period in clause 7(g) if the material is still up and you have not removed it. If it is not paid when due, Scalus may recover it as a debt together with its reasonable costs of investigating and enforcing this clause. Paying the fee licences the copied material and nothing else. It does not transfer ownership of the code base, the Platform or the Scalus build system, and it does not limit any right Scalus has to seek an injunction or any other remedy while the material is still up and unlicensed. This clause continues to apply after this agreement ends.
(i) Buying the build outright: $5,000 plus GST. You never have to copy anything, because you can simply buy it. At any time, whether you are staying, leaving or have already left, you may purchase the build of your website for a one off $5,000 plus GST. That is what a Scalus website is worth to own, and it is offered as a genuine alternative to the $225 a month plan rather than as a threat. Nobody is pushed towards it. Most people are better off month to month, and we will say so.
(i) What you get. A perpetual, non exclusive, non transferable licence to use the code of that one website, on one domain, as it stands on the day of purchase, together with a handover of the front end files so you or your developer can host it wherever you like. You may change it, extend it and keep it running for as long as you want.
(ii) What you do not get. The purchase covers that one site and nothing else. It does not include hosting, updates, changes, fixes, support, search or AI search work, or any future improvement to the Scalus build system. It does not include the Platform described in clause 7(c), so the connected features stop working on the day your subscription ends and are yours to replace: the enquiry and contact forms, live chat, the Google review system, SMS follow up, lead notifications, dashboards and CRM. It does not give you ownership of the Scalus build system, the Platform or any component library, and it does not let you resell it, licence it on, or reuse it for a second site or for anyone else. Each additional site is a separate purchase.
(iii) How it works. Ask us in writing. The price is $5,000 plus GST per site, payable in full before handover. If you are on the monthly plan and want to stop, clause 4(a) still applies to the notice period. If you buy the build and keep the monthly plan running, nothing about your service changes. If you buy the build and leave, we hand over the files, your site comes off our hosting, and from that point it is yours to run.
(j) Build identification marks, and removing them. Every website Scalus builds carries a small set of identifying marks placed in the code and the page. They are an ordinary part of the build. They do not change how your site looks, loads or performs, they are invisible to your visitors, and they collect nothing about the people who visit you. Their only purpose is to identify the build as a Scalus build and to let Scalus know if a copy of it is published somewhere it does not belong. You agree that you will not, and will not ask, authorise or engage anyone else to, remove, alter, obscure, disable, block or otherwise interfere with those marks, whether the build is running on the site Scalus runs for you or anywhere else. Doing so is a breach of clause 7(f) in its own right, and it is treated as a serious breach under clause 8(e).
(i) What it costs. If the build is published outside the site Scalus runs for you, clause 7(g) applies and the amount payable under clause 7(g)(ii) is the full price of $5,000 plus GST, being $5,500 including GST in Australian dollars, for each site the build appears on. Where the identification marks have been removed, altered or interfered with, that price is payable in full whether or not the copied material is later taken down, because stripping the marks shows the build was taken knowingly rather than by mistake. That amount is the same genuine estimate of the value of the build explained in clause 7(h), and it is payable on the same terms.
(ii) What the marks prove. A record generated by those marks, including the date and time a copy was loaded, the domain it was served from, the network address it was requested from and the token identifying which Scalus build it is, is a business record of Scalus, and you agree it may be relied on as evidence that the build was copied. Scalus may also keep a dated copy of any page that appears to carry them.
(iii) The fair line, unchanged. None of this narrows clause 7(a). You are still completely free to take your domain, your content, your images and your design elsewhere and have a new site designed and coded fresh to the same look and feel. A site built that way carries no Scalus marks, so this clause never touches it. This clause continues to apply after this agreement ends.
8. Client Obligations, Warranties & Indemnity
(a) You agree to:
(i) Provide accurate information and keep it updated.
(ii) Not use Scalus for illegal, fraudulent or harmful purposes.
(iii) Not attempt to gain unauthorised access to systems.
(iv) Comply with applicable laws and regulations.
(v) Respect the code and build protections in clause 7(f), 7(g), 7(h) and 7(j), including the build identification marks.
(b) Your content and permissions. You warrant that you own, or hold all necessary rights, licences and consents to supply, and to allow Scalus to publish and use, everything you give us or ask us to put on your site. That includes text, logos, images, video, testimonials, reviews, trade marks, price lists and any claims made about your business. Where content shows an identifiable person, you warrant you have their permission for it to be published and used as described in clause 6. You remain responsible for the accuracy and legality of what you ask us to publish, including pricing, guarantees, promotional offers, and any licence, insurance or accreditation numbers.
(c) Indemnity. You indemnify Scalus, and its directors, employees and contractors, against any claim, demand, action, loss, damage, penalty, cost or expense (including reasonable legal costs) arising from or connected with the content, information or material you supply or ask us to publish; a breach of your warranties or obligations under this agreement; your own products, services, business conduct or compliance with the laws and regulations that apply to your industry; or any allegation by a third party that your content or branding infringes their rights. This indemnity is reduced to the extent the loss was caused by Scalus's own negligence or breach of this agreement, and it does not apply to any liability that cannot lawfully be passed to you.
(d) Working together. You agree to give us the content, access and approvals we need within a reasonable time. Where a delay in providing those things holds up a build or a change, the time we need is extended by the length of that delay, and your monthly fee continues as normal because your site and services keep running throughout.
(e) Serious breach. If you breach clause 7(f) or clause 7(j), use the services unlawfully, or behave abusively towards our people, we may suspend the services immediately and end this agreement on written notice, without waiting out the notice period in clause 4(a). Fees already paid for that period are not refunded and any amount properly owing remains payable.
9. Liability
(a) Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any consumer guarantee, right or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law or other applicable law. The following limitations apply only to the maximum extent the law permits.
(b) To the maximum extent permitted by law, Scalus is not liable for any loss or damage of any kind arising from or connected with the services, including (without limitation) loss or corruption of data, data breaches, loss of leads, contacts or records, system or website downtime, outages, hosting or third party platform failures, deletion or loss of content, lost profits, lost revenue, lost business, business interruption, or any indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss whether or not Scalus was advised of the possibility of such loss and whether arising in contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise. These limits describe what Scalus is not financially liable to pay if something goes wrong despite reasonable care. They do not withdraw or reduce the continuity commitment or the curated handover failsafe set out in clause 4, which remain in force and are how we make sure you keep your work, your contacts and your site.
(c) Scalus does not warrant that the services will be uninterrupted, error free, secure, or that any data will not be lost. Your responsibility for backups is set out in clause 10 (Backups & Data).
(d) Where our services are not of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use, and to the extent the law permits us to limit (rather than exclude) liability for failure to comply with a consumer guarantee, our liability for that failure is limited, at our option, to re supplying the relevant services or paying the cost of having them re supplied. In any event, and to the maximum extent permitted by law, Scalus's total aggregate liability to you for all claims arising under or in connection with this agreement is limited to the total fees you paid to Scalus in the 12 months immediately before the event giving rise to the claim.
10. Backups & Data Responsibility
(a) You are solely and exclusively responsible for maintaining your own independent, offsite, up to date backups of all of your data, content, leads, contacts, records, files, configurations and any other information you store in, generate through, or supply to the services. You acknowledge and agree that:
(i) You must not rely on Scalus as your only, primary or secondary means of data storage or backup.
(ii) You must maintain backups offline and geographically separate from Scalus's servers.
(iii) You assume all risk of data loss arising from your failure to maintain backups.
(iv) You should test your backups regularly to ensure they are current and restorable.
(v) Scalus backups (if any) are for our own operational continuity only and are not a backup service for you.
(b) Scalus makes no warranty or guarantee that any backup will exist, be complete, be recoverable, or be available to you. Scalus has no obligation to maintain, provide, restore or preserve any backup for any reason. Any backup or redundancy systems Scalus may use internally are at Scalus's sole discretion and subject to change or removal without notice. You must not rely on any statement, representation or implication that Scalus maintains backups for your benefit. Nothing in this clause limits or excludes the continuity commitment or the curated handover failsafe set out in clause 4. Those are standing commitments to keep your website online and to make a prepared handover pack available to you for at least 24 months, and you may rely on them.
(c) To the maximum extent permitted by law, and subject to clause 9, your non excludable rights, and the continuity commitment and curated handover failsafe in clause 4, Scalus is not liable for any loss, corruption, deletion, modification, breach, unavailability or irrecoverability of your data or content where that occurs despite us having taken the reasonable security steps described in clause 11, or where it is caused by an event outside our reasonable control (including data centre outage, hosting or third party service failure, or malicious access by a third party). It remains your responsibility to maintain backups sufficient to restore your business if any data is lost, destroyed or becomes unavailable.
(d) On termination or cancellation of this agreement, Scalus will provide the data export and, where it applies, the curated handover pack described in clause 4, including the handover download that stays available for at least 24 months. After the 30 day export period, Scalus may permanently delete its own live operational copies of your data, logs and files without further notice, and you agree not to rely on those live copies as your means of recovery. Deleting our live operational copies does not reduce or override the continuity commitment or the curated handover failsafe set out in clause 4, which continue in full, so you always keep the route to recover your work, your contacts and your site.
11. Data Security
(a) Keeping your information safe genuinely matters to us. We take reasonable steps, consistent with good industry practice, to protect the data we hold in our systems. These steps may include, where appropriate, encryption in transit, access controls and authentication, the use of reputable, established third party cloud hosting, infrastructure and software providers, and confidentiality expectations on our team. We aim to use strong, current security practices and to choose providers that do the same.
(b) However, you acknowledge and agree that no website, system, software, network or method of electronic storage or transmission is completely secure, and that no provider can guarantee absolute security. Despite the steps we take, we cannot and do not guarantee that our systems, or those of our third party providers, will be free from unauthorised access, hacking, malware, interference, data breach, loss or corruption. Some risks including new or sophisticated cyber attacks, vulnerabilities in third party software, and other events are not reasonably foreseeable or preventable, and are outside our reasonable control.
(c) To the maximum extent permitted by law, Scalus is not liable for any loss, damage, harm or cost arising from any unauthorised access to, or disclosure, loss, corruption or unavailability of, data, where that event occurs despite us having taken the reasonable steps described above, or where it is caused by a third party, by you, or by a system, provider, attack or event outside our reasonable control. Nothing in this clause limits any right you have under the Australian Consumer Law or other law that cannot lawfully be excluded (see clause 9).
12. Privacy & Data Breaches
(a) We aim to handle personal information consistently with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Australian Privacy Principles and our Privacy Policy. Where you supply us with personal information about your own customers, leads or contacts, you confirm you are entitled to do so and have any consents needed for us to handle that information to provide the services.
(b) Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts, modifies or otherwise affects any obligation we have, or any right you or any individual has, under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), including our obligations under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme to assess and notify eligible data breaches. Those obligations continue to apply in full regardless of any limitation of liability in these terms.
13. Warranties
Scalus services are provided "as is" without warranties. We don't guarantee specific results, lead volume or business outcomes. Results depend on your industry, location, business quality and many factors outside our control. This is subject to clause 9 and does not exclude any consumer guarantee under the Australian Consumer Law, including the guarantee that our services are supplied with due care and skill.
14. Support & Maintenance
(a) One to one support, Monday to Friday. We are here to help and want using Scalus to feel easy. Scalus is deliberately a one to one service, so your support comes directly from Tim, the person who designs, builds and looks after your website, rather than from a ticket queue, a call centre or an outsourced help desk. Support and change requests are handled during business hours, 9am to 5pm AEST, Monday to Friday. We are closed Saturday and Sunday. Requests received over the weekend or outside those hours are picked up the following Monday.
(b) How to reach us, and how to send a change. WhatsApp is our channel for site change requests and day to day support, on 0468 085 444, Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm. Send us the change you want and we will make it for you, so you never have to edit the site yourself. If you would rather talk it through, you can book a time with us at scalus.app/call. Email is always available as an alternative at hello@scalus.app. WhatsApp is a third party service and clause 15 applies to it. We may change the support channel we use from time to time, and if we do we will tell you and keep email available.
(c) Scheduled maintenance may occur with advance notice. Emergency maintenance may occur without notice.
(d) How long a change takes. Every change you ask for is included in your monthly fee and there is no limit on how many you can send.
(i) Ordinary changes: within 4 business days, usually 2. This covers the everyday work, such as text edits, price and contact updates, swapping or adding photos, a new section on an existing page, or a single small new page. We aim to have these back to you within 2 business days and we complete them within 4.
(ii) Larger work: 5 to 10 business days. A request is treated as larger work where it changes the site as a whole, creates several new pages at once, rebuilds or redesigns an existing page set, or involves building, connecting or reconfiguring an automated system. Work of that kind is completed within 5 to 10 business days.
(iii) When the clock starts, and what it excludes. These times run from the point we have received everything we need from you to do the work, including the content, access and approvals described in clause 8(d). They are business days, so they exclude weekends, Victorian public holidays and the annual close down in clause 14(e). If a request you have sent is going to fall outside these times for any reason, we will tell you and give you a date, and clause 13 applies in that these are the times we work to rather than a guaranteed outcome.
(e) Our annual close down, 20 December to 6 January. Because your support is one to one and comes directly from Tim, Scalus closes for a short period once a year. From 20 December to 6 January inclusive, change requests are not actioned and the turnaround times in clause 14(d) do not run. Anything you send during that period is held and picked up on the first business day after 6 January, with the turnaround times starting from that day. Your website itself is unaffected and stays live throughout, along with your hosting, enquiry and contact forms, live chat, Google review system, SMS follow up and lead notifications, because those run automatically. We keep watch over the hosting through the close down and will attend to anything that takes your site offline. Your monthly fee is unchanged for the period, as the service you are paying for continues to run.
(f) Any other period of leave. Apart from the annual close down, Scalus operates on every business day of the year and the turnaround times in clause 14(d) apply as normal. Where we are going to be away or less available at any other time, we will tell you in advance and let you know what it means for anything you have with us, so you are never left wondering when your work will be done.
15. Third Party Services
(a) Scalus integrates with third party services such as payment processors, SMS and phone providers, hosting and cloud infrastructure, messaging apps and analytics tools. You agree to comply with their terms of service. Scalus is not liable for issues with third party services, including outages, price changes, feature changes, account suspensions or a provider withdrawing a service, and we may substitute a comparable provider where one is needed to keep your service running.
(b) Third party costs. Third party costs are separate from your monthly fee and are your responsibility unless we have agreed in writing to cover them. These include domain registration and renewal, SMS and phone number charges, advertising spend paid to platforms such as Google or Meta, and any paid software or tool you ask us to add to your site or systems.
16. Changes to Terms
We may update these terms from time to time. We will post any changes here and, where a change is material, give you at least 30 days' notice before it takes effect. If you do not accept a material change, you may cancel the agreement without penalty before the change takes effect, in which case clause 4 applies. Continued use after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance.
17. Dispute Resolution
(a) This agreement is governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia, and both parties submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Victoria and the courts able to hear appeals from them.
(b) If something goes wrong we would much rather talk it through than fight about it. Both parties agree to raise the issue in writing and attempt to resolve it through good faith negotiation before starting legal action.
(c) Nothing in this clause prevents either party from applying immediately to a court for urgent injunctive or other interim relief, in particular to stop a breach of clause 7 (the code base and the build protections) or a breach of confidentiality, where waiting would cause harm that money alone cannot repair.
18. General
(a) Confidentiality. Each party will keep confidential the non public information it learns about the other through this agreement. For Scalus that includes your business information, your customer and lead data and your plans. For you that includes the Scalus build system, our methods, templates, tooling, automations, internal processes and any pricing or arrangement that is not published on our website. Neither party will disclose the other's confidential information except to people who need it to provide or receive the services, or where the law requires it. This obligation continues after this agreement ends. Nothing in this clause stops Scalus quoting and publishing what you have said about Scalus and its work, as clause 6(g) allows.
(b) Survival. The clauses that are meant to keep working after this agreement ends do keep working, including clause 6 (Content & Footage), clause 7 (Your Website & the Scalus Platform, including the code base and the build protections), clause 8(b) and 8(c) (your warranties and indemnity), clause 9 (Liability), clause 10 (Backups & Data Responsibility), clause 17 (Dispute Resolution) and this clause 18, along with any obligation to pay an amount already owing.
(c) Severability. If any part of this agreement is found to be invalid, unlawful or unenforceable, that part is read down to the minimum extent needed to make it valid, or, if it cannot be read down, it is severed. The rest of the agreement continues in full force.
(d) Entire agreement. These terms, together with the plan you signed up to and anything we have agreed with you in writing, make up the whole agreement between us and replace any earlier discussion, quote, proposal, advertisement or representation about the services. This does not limit any right you have under the Australian Consumer Law, including in relation to misleading or deceptive conduct.
(e) No waiver. If we do not enforce a right straight away, or we let something go once, that does not mean we have given up that right or cannot enforce it later.
(f) Assignment. You may not transfer or assign this agreement to anyone else without our written consent, which we will not withhold unreasonably, for example where you sell your business and the buyer takes it on. Scalus may assign or novate this agreement to a related entity or to a buyer of its business, and we will tell you if that happens.
(g) Relationship. Scalus is an independent contractor. Nothing in this agreement makes either party the employee, partner, agent or joint venturer of the other, and neither party may hold itself out as such.
(h) Events outside our control. Neither party is responsible for a failure or delay in performing its obligations caused by an event outside its reasonable control, including a hosting, network, power or telecommunications failure, a third party platform outage or withdrawal, a cyber attack, a natural disaster, a pandemic, industrial action or an act of government. This does not excuse an obligation to pay an amount already owing.
(i) Notices. Notices under this agreement must be in writing and sent by email to terms@scalus.app for Scalus, or to the email address you have given us for you, and are treated as received on the next business day after sending.
19. Contact
Questions about these terms? Contact us at terms@scalus.app.
