Contracts.. too many?

phiredesign

Junior Member
When I was freelancing, I used one general contract for all clients.

But now that I am working for an agency, a small one, I feel as though our contracts are too many and too long. As of right now we have the following contracts for web clients:

Web Design/Development Contract

Website Maintenance Contract

Website Hosting Contract - We require clients to host websites through our provider to avoid problems that we have had in the past with third party host and permissions provisions etc....


I feel that this is too many for our clients and can tend to scare new ones away. At least the hosting contract, as the terms of the hosting is provided by our provider and not ourselves.

Any opinions would be great! Thanks!
 
I don't see any issue with having multiples - especially since the scope and terms would be (common sense anyway) different between the three. If you had one contract to cover all of that I would imagine it would need to be so long that the length in itself would scare clients away.
 
I guess one of the major problems with having three is that the owner of the small firm I work for, which is not knowledgeable in anything web, reads all three contracts to clients because she "wants to make sure they understand". Which i feel is ignorant and somewhat insulting to clients as it implies that they surely cannot comprehend these contracts.
 
Plus it just takes forever. In my experience freelancing, just giving the potential client the contracts and telling them they can call or email at anytime if they have questions, was always the best thing to do. Clients are busy and have other things to do. Leave them with the contracts and call back in another day to see if they have any questions and if you can come pick them up or schedule a meeting.
 
Those contracts sound fine and necessary, we have the same, although we don't really deal with web maintenance contracts. If something needs doing, it tends to be quoted as a job.

Maybe suggest that they don't read it out to them and just give it to them to read and sign - that is common practice.
 
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