General terms and conditions (T&Cs)

§ 1 Scope, definitions

(1) René Braun | Blitzmoon, Andresenstraße 12, 24113 Kiel, Germany (hereinafter: the agency or Blitzmoon) operates an online shop for services on the website https://blitzmoon.com. The following terms and conditions apply to all services between the agency and its customers (hereinafter: the customer) in the version valid at the time of the order.

(2) These terms and conditions are addressed both to consumers (§ 13 of the German Civil Code, BGB) and to businesses (§ 14 BGB).

§ 2 Conclusion of contract and storage

(1) Offers made by the agency are non-binding. A contract is concluded by a written order confirmation, by the acceptance of an online order on https://blitzmoon.com, or when performance of the service begins.

(2) The customer submits a binding offer to conclude a contract by completing the online ordering process in full and clicking the button to place an order subject to payment.

§ 3 Services and acceptance

(1) Scope of services: the specific services are set out in the respective service description.
(2) SEO services: the agency owes professional advice and execution, but no success in the sense of a guaranteed ranking position, as this depends on third parties (search engine algorithms).
(3) Acceptance: maintenance services are deemed accepted if the customer does not reject the work in writing, stating material defects, within 7 working days of handover.
(4) Duty to cooperate: the customer must provide all necessary login details (WordPress, FTP, hosting) and content in good time.
(5) Adjustment of legal texts and analytics: when setting up the agency's in-house analytics tool, Blitzmoon is entitled and obliged to adapt the privacy policy and the legal notice on the customer's website to the new technical circumstances. This adjustment is made to the best of the agency's knowledge in order to implement technical conformity, but expressly does not constitute legal advice. The final review of, and ultimate legal responsibility for, the correctness of these texts lies with the customer as operator of the site, in accordance with the statutory provisions.
(6) Technically necessary adjustments: the agency is entitled to make technical adjustments to the website that go beyond the service description, provided these are strictly necessary for the proper performance of the maintenance work or to ensure system security. This includes in particular the installation of necessary technical tools (e.g. helper plugins for optimisation or monitoring) and minor adjustments to the source code (e.g. header or footer scripts). Such measures serve operational safety and functionality and do not give rise to any claims for a reduction by the customer, provided the visual design of the website is not materially impaired as a result.
(7) Limits of troubleshooting: the obligation to fix errors manually and immediately and to restore availability relates exclusively to errors that arise within the WordPress installation (e.g. through plugin conflicts, core updates or theme errors). Faults within the hosting provider's area of responsibility (e.g. server failures, hardware defects, overload of the server infrastructure or DNS problems) are outside the agency's sphere of influence.
(8) Legacy systems & compatibility: the agency reserves the right to refuse to maintain websites whose technical condition (e.g. extremely outdated PHP versions, themes/plugins that are no longer supported) makes secure maintenance impossible. In such cases the agency will make the customer an offer for a basic overhaul beforehand.
(9) Extra work in the event of hacker attacks: the troubleshooting included in the package covers restoring the system from the last available backup. Any time-consuming manual clean-up of already infected systems beyond that, or forensic analysis, is not part of the flat rate and is charged at the current hourly rate, unless otherwise agreed.
(10) Performance optimisation (Google PageSpeed): where an improvement in website performance has been agreed, the agency owes the performance of professional technical measures to improve loading times. The assessment is made using the official Google PageSpeed Insights tool. However, as the measurement results depend to a large extent on factors outside the agency's sphere of influence (in particular the response time of the customer's server/hosting, the tester's internet connection and the integration of external third-party scripts such as tracking pixels or advertising banners), the agency gives no guarantee that particular scores or specific loading times in seconds will be reached. What is owed is a demonstrable improvement in the technical parameters compared with the state before the optimisation measures began.
(11) Handling plugin conflicts: if, while carrying out maintenance work, the agency finds that existing plugins cause conflicts, critical incompatibilities or serious errors in the system, the agency is entitled to deactivate these plugins without prior consultation in order to preserve system stability and security. The customer will be informed of this measure and its cause promptly.
(12) Data maintenance and overwriting of content: where the agency makes content adjustments or enters data as part of the agreed services (e.g. meta titles, meta descriptions, image attributes such as alt texts), the agency expressly points out that data already existing in the system may be overwritten in the process. It is up to the customer to back up metadata that is essential to them beforehand. Restoration of the original metadata by the agency is excluded unless it is covered by a backup.
(13) WordPress editing time: where the chosen package includes a monthly time allowance for work on the website at the customer's request (WordPress editing time), it is available only in the calendar month concerned. Time not used expires at the end of the month; it is neither carried over to the following month nor refunded or remunerated. Work beyond the allowance is carried out and charged only by separate agreement.

§ 4 Hosting and website relocation (migration)

(1) Scope of the migration: if the customer commissions the agency to move (migrate) their website and/or email mailboxes to the agency's servers, this move is carried out exactly and exclusively according to the customer's express specifications. The customer alone is responsible for the completeness and correctness of the data provided (e.g. lists of the domains and mailboxes to be migrated) and of the login details.
(2) Obligation to back up data before the move: before the migration begins, the customer is obliged to make a complete backup of all their data, website content and emails themselves and to keep it locally. The agency accepts no liability for data loss arising in the course of the relocation process.
(3) Managed hosting and access rights: the agency operates the websites as “managed hosting”. To ensure system security, error prevention and stability for all projects, the customer receives no direct access to the server or hosting environment (e.g. no access to hosting panels, FTP or SSH). The customer's access is limited to the WordPress back end.
(4) Availability (uptime): the agency guarantees network and server availability of 99% on average over the year. This excludes times when the server cannot be reached because of technical or other problems outside the agency's sphere of influence (e.g. force majeure, infrastructure failures at network providers, DNS faults or DDoS attacks), as well as planned maintenance windows announced in advance.
(5) Responsibility for content (supplement): the customer remains solely responsible for all content stored and published on the server. The storage or distribution of content that is unlawful, extremist or infringes copyright is prohibited and entitles the agency to block the website immediately.
(6) Use of resources (fair use) (supplement): the hosting offer is subject to a fair-use policy. Should a website consume a disproportionate amount of server resources through excessive traffic or faulty scripts and thereby endanger the operation of other projects, the agency is entitled to restrict the service temporarily or, after prior consultation, to require an upgrade to a dedicated service package.
(7) Domain registration and fees: the costs of registering, transferring or continuously renewing domains are not included in the managed hosting service packages. An additional annual fee is charged for each domain. The amount of this fee depends on the respective domain ending (top-level domain, e.g. .de, .com) and is invoiced separately in accordance with the agency's current price list or the individual offer.

§ 5 Maintenance contracts, term and termination

(1) Term: unless otherwise agreed in the package, maintenance contracts have a minimum term of 12 months.
(2) Renewal and termination: the contract is renewed automatically for a further 12 months unless it is terminated with one month's notice to the end of the respective term (e.g. via the user area or by email).
(3) The right to terminate without notice for good cause remains unaffected (e.g. in the event of default in payment of more than two months).
(4) Licences at the end of the contract: where Blitzmoon provides the customer with licences for third-party software (e.g. premium plugins or themes), the right to use these licences expires when the maintenance contract ends. The corresponding licence keys are removed by the agency. From that point on the customer is obliged to acquire and set up the required licences at their own expense. The agency no longer provides assistance or setup after the end of the contract.
(5) Consequences of the end of the contract: when the termination takes effect, all support, maintenance, hosting and protection services of the agency end. This includes in particular the discontinuation of security monitoring (firewall/malware scans), the lifting of any country blocks that were set up (geo-blocking), performance optimisations, data backups and the provision of reports and statistics. In addition, all GDPR measures provided or licensed by the agency (such as cookie consent tools or specific data-protection-compliant configurations) are deactivated and removed. If the website is hosted on the agency's servers, this hosting is discontinued at the time of termination; the website goes offline unless the customer has carried out a move (migration) to a server of their own in good time before the end of the contract. All backups of the customer stored by the agency are deleted immediately and irrevocably after the end of the contract. Furthermore, technical SEO measures and linking structures that are controlled through the agency's tools may be removed or discarded. The agency is entitled to remove from the customer's system all technical tools and configurations installed for maintenance and operation. From the time the contract ends, the customer is themselves responsible for the security, functionality, GDPR compliance, hosting and data backup of their website. The agency accepts no liability for errors, security gaps, data loss, data protection breaches or downtime of the website occurring after the end of the contract.

§ 6 Prices and terms of payment

(1) All prices are in euros and include the statutory value added tax applicable at the time.
(2) Invoices are due for payment immediately upon receipt without deduction. Maintenance packages are billed in advance.
(3) Default in payment & reactivation: if the customer is in default of payment, the agency is entitled to exercise its right of retention and to suspend the contractually agreed services (in particular maintenance, backups and security updates) until the claims have been settled in full. For reactivating the services after payment has been made, a flat fee of €39.00 is due because of the additional administrative effort.
(4) Cancellation of the subscription and damages: if payments are not made for two consecutive months, the agency is entitled to cancel the automatic PayPal subscription and to switch billing to a manual invoicing procedure. Should no agreement then be reached on settling the arrears, the agency reserves the right to terminate the contract extraordinarily for good cause. In that case the customer must compensate the agency for the damage caused by the early termination. These damages are measured by the agreed remuneration for the remaining term of the contract, although the agency must offset expenses saved and income from other use of its labour. The claim for damages is due for payment immediately when notice of termination is given.
(5) Price adjustment: the agency is entitled to adjust the remuneration for existing maintenance contracts with six weeks' notice to the end of the respective contract term. In the event of a price increase of more than 10%, the customer has a special right of termination at the time the increase takes effect.

§ 7 Limitation of liability

(1) The agency is liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence and for injury to life, body or health. In the case of slight negligence, the agency is liable only for breach of material contractual obligations (cardinal obligations).
(2) Third-party software and updates: we accept no liability for errors, incompatibilities or malfunctions caused by third parties (e.g. WordPress core, plugins, themes). Our service comprises professional execution, not a warranty that the software itself is free of errors.
(3) Data backup: we create regular backups as part of the packages. The primary backup is encrypted on servers within the EU (e.g. pCloud EU servers). To ensure maximum resilience (disaster recovery), an encrypted second copy (fallback) is stored automatically on dedicated servers in non-EU countries. Every backup created is kept for a period of 6 months. Ultimate responsibility for data backup lies with the customer. Liability for data loss going beyond the restoration of our most recent backup is excluded.
(4) Security and cyber attacks: despite the greatest care, 100% security against cyber attacks or malware is technically impossible. We are liable for the professional implementation of the agreed protective measures, but do not guarantee successful protection against criminal attacks by third parties.
(5) Exclusion of indirect damage (particularly relevant for B2B): liability for indirect damage, consequential damage or lost profit (e.g. when the website is briefly unreachable) is expressly excluded.
(6) Exclusion of liability for infrastructure faults: the agency accepts no liability for the website being unreachable where this is due to faults in the technical infrastructure of the host or of the internet. As the provision of server resources is a third-party service, the agency cannot be held liable for its failure or poor performance.
(7) Security gaps in plugins (third-party & in-house developments): to provide and extend website functionality, the agency uses both third-party plugins and software solutions (plugins) it has developed itself. Despite careful selection, development and regular maintenance, it cannot be guaranteed that these software components are absolutely free of errors or completely secure. The agency therefore accepts no liability for damage, data loss or security incidents (such as hacker attacks, malware infections or unauthorised access) attributable to unforeseeable security gaps in the third-party or self-developed plugins used. Liability for intent and gross negligence under § 7 para. 1 remains unaffected.

§ 8 Copyright and rights of use for content

(1) Stock media (images/graphics): where the agency uses images or graphics from third-party providers (e.g. Depositphotos, Freepik), this is done in accordance with the licence terms of the respective provider. The customer's right of use is limited to use within the specific project on the customer's website. The copyrights and extended exploitation rights remain with the respective provider or the agency. Isolated use or passing on of the image files by the customer is prohibited. The customer indemnifies the agency against all third-party claims based on an infringement of rights by content provided or approved by the customer (e.g. texts, keywords, metadata).
(2) Rights of use for software and in-house developments: all software installed by the agency on the customer's website, in particular plugins developed in-house and third-party extensions provided, remains the intellectual property of the agency or of the respective rights holder. The customer is granted only a simple right of use, strictly limited to the term of the contract, for operating the website in accordance with the contract. The customer is expressly prohibited from copying, modifying or reselling these plugins, making them available to third parties or using them on other websites.
(3) Operation of and access to plugins: the technical configuration, administration and operation of the plugins installed by the agency in the back end of the website is exclusively the responsibility of the agency. The customer is not granted administrative access for this purpose. Unauthorised changes to these system components by the customer are prohibited. When the end of the contract takes effect, the agency is entitled and obliged to remove all plugins and software solutions it has provided and installed from the customer's website completely and without residue. There is expressly no entitlement to have the software handed over or to continue using it after the end of the contract.

§ 9 Unauthorised changes by the customer

(1) Liability for the stability and security of the system lapses entirely if the customer, or third parties commissioned by the customer, make far-reaching technical changes to the system core, the plugins or the server configuration without prior consultation.
(2) Additional work to fix errors caused by such fault of the customer's own is charged separately at the current hourly rate.
(3) The customer is obliged to inform the agency without delay if they or third parties make changes to the system, so that the monitoring tools can be adjusted accordingly.

§ 10 Naming as a reference and self-promotion

(1) After the successful conclusion of the contract or in the course of ongoing support, Blitzmoon is entitled to name the customer as a reference customer on its own website, in portfolios and on social media channels and to present the project appropriately. This also includes use of the customer's logo.
(2) In addition, the agency reserves the right to place a discreet notice with a link to the agency in the footer of the website operated by the customer (e.g. “Technical support by Blitzmoon”).
(3) The customer may object to this use (naming as a reference and/or footer link) in whole or in part at any time in writing (e.g. by email) with effect for the future. In that case the agency will remove the corresponding mentions and links within a reasonable period.

§ 11 Right of withdrawal

Consumers have a statutory right of withdrawal in accordance with the separate information on the right of withdrawal. Businesses (§ 14 BGB) are not granted a voluntary right of withdrawal. The right expires early if the service has been provided in full at the customer's request before the period ends. If a consumer requests that the service begin during the withdrawal period, they must pay compensation for the services provided up to that point in the event of withdrawal.

§ 12 Choice of law and place of jurisdiction

(1) The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies exclusively, to the exclusion of the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.
(2) The place of jurisdiction for all disputes is Kiel, provided the customer is a merchant, a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law.