What a web design contract should deal with

There is no measurable search volume for “web design contract australia” in Australia. The broader phrase “website legal requirements australia” measures two AI-assistant prompts a month at a difficulty of 40. That is the whole of the demand for a document that decides the outcome of every website project that goes wrong.

This page is general information about what a services contract for a website build should address. It is not legal advice, it is not a template, and it does not tell you whether your agreement is enforceable. Have anything you are about to sign reviewed by a lawyer.

The part of the agreement that is not in the agreement

The Australian Consumer Law, which is Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth), attaches guarantees to the supply of services. Among them: that services are rendered with due care and skill, that they are reasonably fit for any purpose made known to the supplier, and that they are supplied within a reasonable time where no time is fixed.

Section 64 provides that these guarantees cannot be excluded by contract. A clause purporting to exclude them does not achieve it, and a term telling you that you have no rights under the ACL is simply wrong.

There is a second half to this that most pages on the subject leave out, and it matters more to a business buyer than the first half does.

Section 64A separately permits a supplier to limit its liability for a breach of the services guarantees — commonly to re-supplying the services, or paying the cost of having them re-supplied — where the services are not of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use or consumption, and where relying on the limitation is fair and reasonable in the circumstances.

A commissioned website build purchased by a business is squarely in that category. So the accurate position is: a supplier cannot contract out of the guarantees, but a supplier can, in many business-to-business web projects, lawfully cap what you recover if the guarantee is breached — often to redoing the work rather than refunding it or covering your consequential loss.

That distinction is the difference between an exclusion clause you can safely ignore and a limitation clause that will bind you. Read any liability clause with it in mind, and note that whether a particular limitation is fair and reasonable in your circumstances is a question a court decides, not the contract.

None of that is legal advice, and how ss 64 and 64A apply to a specific agreement is exactly the sort of question to take to a lawyer before signing.

Whether a particular acquisition counts as a consumer acquisition depends on the definition in the Act, which turns partly on a monetary threshold and partly on the nature of what is acquired. That threshold has changed over time, and this page does not state it, because a stale figure is worse than none. Check the current threshold with the ACCC or with a lawyer before you rely on being inside or outside it.

Separately, the unfair contract terms regime applies to standard form contracts, including many small business contracts, and the consequences of including an unfair term were strengthened by amendments commencing in November 2023. If you are the one issuing the contract, that is now your problem as much as the client’s.

What a web design services agreement should actually address

Scope. What is being built, in enough detail that both parties would describe it the same way. Page count or template count, functionality, integrations, and what is explicitly excluded. The exclusions do more work than the inclusions.

Content and materials. Who writes the copy, who supplies photography, and what the timetable does when the client’s material is late. Late material is the most common cause of a stalled project.

Milestones and payment. A deposit, staged payments tied to defined milestones, and a final payment. Each milestone needs an objective description of what has to exist for it to be reached.

Revisions. How many rounds are included at each stage, what constitutes a round, and what happens after they are used. An undefined revision allowance is where fixed-price projects go to die.

Delivery and acceptance. How the work is presented for acceptance, and how long the client has to review it. What happens if they do not respond, and what counts as acceptance. Silence should not quietly equal approval without saying so.

Ownership and intellectual property. Assignment of copyright in the design, code and content on final payment, and a consent dealing with moral rights. Also, a list of any third-party or supplier-retained components that are licensed rather than assigned. The detail is in who owns your website.

Hosting and domain. In whose name the domain licence and the hosting account are held, and who pays for them. What happens to them at the end of the relationship.

Ongoing obligations after launch. What is covered by any warranty period, what counts as a defect as distinct from a change, and where maintenance begins. The cost side of that is on maintenance as a recurring line.

Termination. How either party ends the agreement, what is payable for work done, and, the clause people forget, what happens to your material. Your content, your images, your data, your database, and the code as it stands at that moment.

Dispute process. A stated first step other than a letter of demand.

The non-delivery question: legal documents and client agreement clauses

Nine Australian cost pages checked on 31 July 2026 and recorded in research/pricing-bands.json say nothing at all about what happens when a build is not delivered. It is the least pleasant thing to write on a sales page and the most useful thing to have agreed.

A contract cannot make non-delivery impossible. What it can do is make the position unambiguous when it happens: what has been paid for, what stage the work reached, what the client receives from that stage, and on what basis money moves in either direction. The consumer guarantee about supply within a reasonable time exists in the background of all of this, but relying on a statutory guarantee to resolve a project is slower and more expensive than a clause you both read before starting.

Why a fixed price over an undefined scope in a design contract is a risk to both sides

A fixed price is attractive because it is certain, and it is only certain if the scope is. Where the scope is loose, the supplier prices in a margin for the unknown, and the client pays for risk that may never materialise. Every request becomes a negotiation about whether it was always included. Both parties end up worse off than they would have been with a defined scope and an honest variation process.

If a supplier cannot state the scope precisely enough to price it, the usable answer is a paid discovery stage with its own defined output. A fixed price for the build follows from that. That is a better outcome than a number produced by guessing.

If a build stalls: communications and intellectual property to keep

• Put the position in writing, plainly: what was agreed, what has been paid, and what has been delivered. State what you are asking for by when.
• Keep the record. Emails, dated screenshots of the work in its current state, invoices and receipts.
• Ask for a copy of the current work product and your own materials, whatever the state of the dispute.
• Confirm you can still get into the domain registrar account and the hosting account. Do this first, not last.
• If it does not resolve, the ACCC and your state or territory consumer protection agency publish guidance on the options available, and small claims processes exist in each state and territory. Which one fits your matter is a question for advice.

What to do next with your web designer or graphic design services

Read the contract you were sent, and mark every point above that it does not cover. Ask about those gaps in one email. How that email is answered is the most reliable information you will get about a supplier before you engage them.