Website Care Plan & Maintenance Terms

These Website Care Plan & Maintenance Terms ("Care Terms") constitute an ongoing recurring Statement of Work (SOW) schedule entered into between Sheernox Technology Group ("Sheernox", "we", "us", or "our"), a sole proprietorship registered in the Province of British Columbia, Canada, and the client identified in the applicable service order ("Client").

These Care Terms are incorporated by reference into, and governed by, the Sheernox Web Design & Development Terms and Conditions and the General Terms and Conditions of Service. In the event of an express conflict regarding ongoing maintenance and support retainers, these Care Terms take precedence.

Sheernox provides three standardized tiers of website care retainers. The specific deliverables, monitoring cadences, and developer allocations applicable to each plan are set forth below:

The selected tier and its recurring monthly fee are confirmed upon checkout within the Sheernox Client Portal.

The scope of ongoing website maintenance under this SOW is designed to preserve the operational health, security, and integrity of existing web properties. Specifically included within routine maintenance:

• 2.1 Content Management System (CMS) Updates: Application of minor and major core security releases for supported platforms (WordPress, Drupal, Headless CMS frameworks).
• 2.2 Third-Party Plugin & Extension Patching: Routine updating of verified plugins, extensions, and themes to mitigate known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs).
• 2.3 Database Hygiene & Maintenance: Periodic pruning of post revisions, transient data, spam comment queues, and overhead tables to maintain database responsiveness.
• 2.4 Security Scanning: Daily remote security integrity scans to detect file alterations, injected scripts, phishing kits, and blacklisting status with search engines.
• 2.5 Broken Link & 404 Auditing: Automated monthly scanning of internal hyperlinks to ensure clean navigation and search engine crawling hygiene.

Plans including monthly support hours (Professional and Enterprise Agency) may be utilized for minor content updates and standard technical adjustments:

• 3.1 Eligible Tasks: Text copy additions and revisions, replacing existing imagery, publishing customer-provided blog posts, updating contact information, modifying navigation menu links, updating existing web form fields, and minor CSS aesthetic adjustments.
• 3.2 Task Submission: Support requests must be submitted through our verified client ticketing portal at https://my.sheernox.com or via email to support@sheernox.com from an authorized contact email.
• 3.3 Turnaround Target: Content update requests under 1 hour in scope are completed within twenty-four (24) to forty-eight (48) business hours (Monday through Friday, 09:00–17:00 PST).
• 3.4 Use-It-or-Lose-It (Non-Rollover Policy): Monthly content hours are allocated on a strict monthly retainer basis to reserve dedicated engineering capacity. Unused hours do not accumulate, transfer, or roll over into subsequent billing cycles and cannot be redeemed for cash or credit.

To eliminate the risk of production downtime or broken client-facing functionality caused by incompatible plugin updates, Sheernox enforces a rigorous Staging-First Protocol for all Professional and Enterprise tiers:

• 4.1 Sandbox Cloning: Before updates are applied to the live production website, a complete staging snapshot is deployed on an isolated staging server.
• 4.2 Automated & Visual Regression Testing: Core updates and extension dependencies are tested on staging. Visual regression checks are performed across key templates (homepage, checkout, contact forms).
• 4.3 Safe Deployment: Once verified conflict-free, updates are synchronized to the production environment during low-traffic maintenance windows.
• 4.4 Rollback Guarantee: In the event an unforeseen conflict manifests post-deployment, Sheernox executes an immediate restoration from the pre-update snapshot at no extra charge.

Care Plans are strictly focused on operational maintenance, health, and minor content adjustments. Major design overhauls, software engineering, and architectural refactoring fall outside standard care scopes.

Clients with an active Care Plan benefit from discounted preferred engineering rates for any approved out-of-scope work:

All additional hourly fees are billed in Canadian Dollars (CAD) and are subject to applicable GST (5%) and BC PST (7%).

While Sheernox employs industry-leading security practices, no web application connected to the internet can be guaranteed 100% immune from novel zero-day exploits or credential compromise.

In the event of a confirmed security incident or malware infection on an enrolled website:

• 6.1 Immediate Isolation: The affected application is immediately placed in maintenance mode to prevent malware propagation and protect website visitors.
• 6.2 Remediation Protocol: Our security engineers clean infected core and plugin directories, restore known clean state files from verified offsite backups, audit database tables for injected payloads, and update all administrative credentials and API keys.
• 6.3 Coverage Limitation: Full manual malware scrubbing and hack recovery are included at no additional charge for Professional and Enterprise Care Plan subscribers. For Essential Care subscribers, Sheernox will restore the most recent uninfected backup snapshot free of charge; in-depth forensic code scrubbing is billed at our preferred hourly rate.

To maintain stability, the client agrees to the following operational boundaries:

• Access Credentials: The client must provide Sheernox with full administrative CMS credentials, hosting control panel access, and DNS access necessary to perform maintenance.
• Client & Third-Party Modifications: If the client, client employees, or external third-party agencies access the website backend and install unvetted plugins, edit core system files, or alter database schemas without prior consultation with Sheernox, any subsequent downtime, broken features, or security breaches are excluded from maintenance coverage. Remediation of such conflicts will be billed at our preferred out-of-scope hourly rate.
• Third-Party Software Disclaimers: Sheernox does not author third-party themes, CMS platforms, or commercial plugins. We are not liable for software bugs, deprecation, or licensing costs imposed by independent third-party vendors.

Website Care Plans operate as recurring monthly subscriptions subject to the following commercial conditions:

1. Automatic Recurring Billing: Monthly subscription fees are billed in advance on a recurring 30-day billing cycle to the credit card on file via Stripe.
2. Late Payment & Grace Period: If automatic payment fails, a 5-calendar-day grace period is provided. If payment remains outstanding after 5 days, maintenance services and automated backup synchronizations are suspended until the account balance is cleared.
3. Cancellation Policy: Either party may cancel a Care Plan at any time by providing thirty (30) days' advance written notice via our client support ticket system at https://my.sheernox.com or by emailing support@sheernox.com.
4. No Mid-Cycle Refunds: Care Plan fees are non-refundable for partial months. Service continues through the conclusion of the paid 30-day billing cycle.
5. Offboarding Site Snapshot: Upon completion of the 30-day cancellation period, Sheernox generates and delivers a final, complete offsite backup archive (database SQL dump and compressed media directory) to the client at no extra charge.