Terms of service

1. The basics

These terms apply to work carried out by Bolt Studio Unipessoal Lda ("Bolt Studio", "we") for a client ("you"). They sit underneath whatever proposal or statement of work you signed. Where the two disagree, the signed document wins — we're not going to spring a surprise on you from a webpage.

A project starts when you accept a proposal in writing (email is fine) and the deposit invoice clears. That's the whole ceremony.

2. Scope and changes

Every project has a written scope — usually one page, occasionally two. It lists what we're building and, just as importantly, what we're not. Anything outside that list is a change.

Changes are fine and normal. We'll tell you what a change does to the price and the date before we start it, and we won't begin until you've said yes in writing. What we won't do is quietly absorb scope and hand you a surprise invoice at the end, or accept new work without adjusting the deadline and then miss it.

3. Fees and payment

• Fixed-price projects — 40% to start, 30% at the midpoint milestone, 30% on delivery. The price is the price unless the scope changes under clause 2.
• Monthly retainers — invoiced on the first working day of each month, in advance, for that month.
• Payment terms — 14 days from the invoice date. Bank transfer in euros.
• Late payment — statutory interest applies after 14 days. If an invoice goes 30 days past due we may pause work; we'll always warn you first, and we won't hold your repository or your live product hostage over it.
• Expenses — anything over €200 gets agreed in advance. Travel we suggest, we pay for. Travel you ask for, you do.
• Tax — all prices exclude VAT, which is added where applicable.

4. What we need from you

Our timelines assume you'll be around. Specifically we need one named decision-maker who can say yes without a committee, feedback within two working days on anything we send for review, timely access to systems, accounts and people, and content — copy, images, legal text — by the dates in the plan.

If those slip, dates move by roughly the same amount. We'll flag it as soon as we see it rather than at the end. Nobody enjoys that conversation, but everybody prefers having it early.

5. Who owns what

You own the work. On full payment, all intellectual property in the deliverables — source code, designs, documentation, assets we created for you — transfers to you outright. In practice you have it from day one, because we work in your repository and your Figma from the first commit.

We keep our tools. Bolt Studio retains ownership of general know-how, internal libraries, boilerplate and techniques that existed before your project or that we develop for use across clients. You get a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to use any of that which is embedded in your deliverables. It's never something you'd need to license separately or worry about later.

Open source. Where we use open-source components, they stay under their own licences. We keep a dependency inventory with licences listed and hand it over at the end, so nobody has to reverse-engineer it during a due diligence.

6. Third-party services

Most products need other people's software: payment processors, email providers, hosting, mapping, analytics. Those come with their own terms and their own bills, and they're between you and them. We'll recommend, integrate and configure them, and we'll tell you honestly what they cost at your expected scale — but we can't be responsible for a vendor changing their pricing or deprecating an API.

7. Warranty and support

We warrant that the work will be performed with reasonable skill and care by people who know what they're doing, and that deliverables will materially match the agreed scope.

Every project includes 30 days of bug fixes after launch, free. A bug means the software doesn't do what the agreed scope says it should. New requirements, changes of mind, and problems caused by someone else editing the code aren't bugs — they're new work, and we'll quote them cheerfully.

After 30 days you can take it in-house, put us on a small retainer, or call us when something breaks. We don't require a support contract, and we won't make the handover awkward if you don't want one.

8. Liability

Our total liability under a project is capped at the total fees you've paid us for that project. Neither side is liable to the other for indirect or consequential losses, including lost profits, lost revenue, lost data or lost business opportunity.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that can't legally be limited. We carry professional indemnity insurance and will show you the certificate if your procurement team needs it — most do.

9. Confidentiality

Anything you tell us in confidence stays in the studio, during the project and for three years after it ends. That applies whether or not we ever sign a separate NDA — and we're happy to sign yours if it makes the paperwork easier.

It doesn't cover information that's already public, that we knew before you told us, or that we're legally compelled to disclose. If a court ever compels us, we'll tell you first unless we're forbidden from doing so.

10. No poaching, sort of

For twelve months after a project ends, neither side will actively solicit the other's staff. If one of our team applies to a public job posting of yours entirely under their own steam, that's their life and we won't stand in the way — we'd just like a heads-up before the offer goes out.

11. Stopping early

Either side can end a project with 14 days' written notice. If you cancel, you pay for work completed up to the end of the notice period plus any non-cancellable costs we've already committed to on your behalf. If we cancel — which has happened twice in nine years — we refund anything paid for work not yet delivered and help you find another studio, including a handover call at no charge.

Retainers can be ended with 30 days' notice from either side, effective at the end of a monthly period.

12. Showing the work

We'd like to write about what we built and put it on this website. We'll always ask first, we'll send you the draft before it goes live, and if you say no or "not yet", that's the end of it — no reputational sulking. Under an NDA we'll say nothing at all, including in private conversations with other founders.

13. Law and disputes

These terms are governed by Portuguese law, and the courts of Lisbon have jurisdiction. Before anyone goes near a court, both sides agree to spend at least 30 days genuinely trying to resolve it — a call between the two people actually responsible, not a chain of solicitors' letters. In nine years we've never needed clause 13, and we'd like to keep that record.

14. Using this website

The content on boltstudio.co — text, layout, design and code — belongs to us and is provided for information. Case-study figures are accurate as at the date of publication and are shared with each client's permission; they describe what happened for them, and aren't a promise of what will happen for you.

You're welcome to quote or link to anything here with attribution. Please don't republish whole pages, and please don't pass our case studies off as your own — it has happened, and it's a strange thing to do.

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