Ownership follows payment. Before full payment, all work is ours and you have review rights only. After full payment, you own the final approved deliverables listed in your SOW or order. That is section 9 of the terms, and it has three parts worth knowing: what transfers, what never transfers, and the portfolio credit.
What transfers to you
The final approved deliverables named in your SOW or order: the finished site, its pages, and the content we produced for you inside that scope. Once the last invoice is paid, they are yours.
What stays excluded
- Stock assets and fonts, which are licensed rather than owned and stay under their own license terms.
- Third-party plugins and themes, which belong to their vendors.
- Server configurations.
- Our proprietary tools.
- Open-source components, which remain under their own licenses.
The portfolio credit, and how to opt out
You grant us a perpetual, royalty-free license to show the work in our portfolio unless you opt out in writing before the project starts. The timing is the part people miss: the opt-out has to be in writing and it has to come before kickoff. If you would rather the project stay off our portfolio, say so in your first email and it is settled.
Why the excluded list exists
The exclusions are not fine print for its own sake. Licensed assets carry their vendors' terms, and our internal tools serve every client, so neither can pass to one project. What you actually need to run the site, the approved deliverables themselves, is exactly what transfers.
Ownership and handover are related but separate moments: payment transfers the deliverables, and the credentials handover shifts operational responsibility. Read Taking over your credentials next, or the full clause in section 9 of the Terms of Use.
Was this helpful?