Terms of Service

1. Who you are contracting with

These terms govern services provided by Cast & Ship, a company registered in Belgrade, Serbia. Full legal and registration details are published on this page and on every invoice once company registration completes; until then we do not accept payments.

Work is agreed in two documents: a Master Services Agreement (MSA) that sets the legal frame once, and a Statement of Work (SOW) per project that fixes scope, price, timeline and acceptance criteria. Where a signed MSA and these terms disagree, the MSA wins.

2. What we sell

Fixed-price packages, hourly engagements, monthly subscriptions and support plans, as published on our pricing page. Prices are in US dollars and exclude third-party licences, cloud and inference costs, certification fees and paid design assets — these are listed before you sign, never added afterwards.

A fixed price covers the scope written in the SOW. Anything outside it is quoted separately in writing before the work happens; the original price does not change retroactively.

3. Refund policy

Subscriptions (Core, Pro, Care, Care+). Cancel any time, effective at the end of the paid month. We do not refund a month already started, and we do not charge for the following one.

Security & RLS audit. Full refund if you cancel before we start; once the audit has begun it is non-refundable, and the fee is credited in full against fix-up work if you continue.

Fixed-price packages. Paid by milestone. A milestone you have accepted is non-refundable; a milestone we have not delivered is not payable. If we cannot deliver, we refund anything paid for undelivered milestones.

Scoping Sprint. Non-refundable once the week starts, because the deliverables (architecture, breakdown, risk list, fixed quote) are yours to keep and to use with anyone.

4. Timeline guarantee, and its limits

On packages sold with a date commitment, if we miss the agreed number of working days for reasons on our side, we continue working at no additional cost until delivery. That is the whole remedy — it is not a penalty payment or a refund.

The guarantee does not apply when the delay comes from your side: waiting on decisions, content, access or third-party approvals. It also does not survive scope changes: adding scope resets the date, and we will say so in writing when it happens.

Limits that make the guarantee workable: one round of revisions per milestone, a definition of done agreed in the SOW, and our right to stop work if invoices are more than 14 days overdue.

5. Intellectual property

On delivery, all intellectual property in the work product is assigned to you, together with a documented chain of title from every contributor. For fixed-price packages, assignment takes effect on full payment of the relevant milestone.

You get the repository, the infrastructure definitions and the design sources from the first commit — we do not hold your project hostage as leverage. We keep the right to reuse general know-how, internal tooling and non-client-specific components.

6. Subcontractors and where the work happens

We may involve affiliated companies and subcontractors, and we remain fully responsible to you for their work as if it were our own. Every subcontractor is bound by equivalent confidentiality and IP obligations before touching anything.

Our team is distributed. We disclose delivery locations on request and always before you sign — we do not misrepresent geography, and we will not accept an engagement where our actual set-up conflicts with your requirements.

7. AI clause

We use AI tools on the code-writing share of projects. Concretely: no client code or data goes to any AI service without your written approval; we use zero-retention configurations; and every merge is reviewed by a senior engineer who is accountable for it.

We do not claim autonomous delivery, and we do not present AI-generated output as reviewed work until a human has reviewed it. Our published speed-up figures apply to the code-writing share only, measured against our own pre-AI baseline — the method is on our engineering report page.

8. Warranty, liability, data

Warranty. 30 to 90 days on defects depending on package, counted from acceptance. A defect is work that does not match the SOW; a change of mind is a change request.

Liability. Our aggregate liability is capped at the fees paid in the 12 months before the claim, or for fixed packages at the fees under the applicable SOW. Neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss.

Data protection. A data processing agreement is signed before any access. Our default architecture keeps client personal data out of development environments entirely — development runs on synthetic or anonymised data. See the privacy policy.

9. Compliance and sanctions

Both parties confirm they are not subject to sanctions that would make the engagement unlawful, and neither is owned or controlled by a sanctioned person. We will not accept work that requires breaching export controls, and we will tell you early rather than late if a request crosses that line.

We give honest representations only. We do not sign statements we cannot verify about the whole supply chain, and we would rather lose an engagement than warrant something untrue.

10. Governing law, changes, contact

These terms are governed by English law, with disputes referred to arbitration (LCIA or ICC; DIFC for Gulf engagements). Nothing here removes rights you have as a consumer under your local law.

We may update these terms; the version in force for your project is the one referenced in your signed SOW. Material changes are announced by email to active clients at least 30 days in advance.

Questions about these terms: contact us. Payments for subscriptions and audits are processed by Paddle as merchant of record, and Paddle's buyer terms apply to that transaction alongside these terms.