A website project ends with delivery, not with completion. There’s a difference between a site being finished and a site being released, and that gap is where most of the awkward conversations happen. This page sets out how that final stage works, so there’s no confusion, and nothing feels personal when your project reaches it.
Once a website is complete, staged, and approved, the remaining balance is due before the site is made live or handed over.
This applies no matter how the initial payment was structured. Whether you started with a 40% deposit, a 50% deposit, or a split across project stages, whatever portion of the total fee is still outstanding at completion becomes payable in full at that point, before release.
Release covers anything that moves the project from staging into your hands or into public view, including:
Until the balance clears, the finished site stays exactly where it’s been throughout development: fully built, visible to you for review, but not yet public.
This isn’t unique to how things work here. Holding final delivery until final payment is standard procedure across web design and development studios generally, for the same reason a printer doesn’t hand over finished materials before an invoice clears, or a tailor doesn’t release a suit before the last fitting is paid for.
It protects the work already completed, the time already committed to your project ahead of others, and the plain fact that “finished” and “delivered” are two different moments in any project. The payment structure exists to hold that gap steady for both of us.
If payment isn’t settled right away, nothing dramatic happens. The site simply stays where it already is, fully built and staged, until the balance is received.
There’s no penalty in the first stretch of time. For up to two months after completion, no late fee applies, just an outstanding invoice and an open line to sort things out. If more than two months pass without payment, a modest late fee (in line with common industry practice, typically around 1 to 1.5% of the outstanding balance per month) begins to apply, reflecting the extended hold on a completed project.
It protects the work already completed, the time already committed to your project ahead of others, and the plain fact that “finished” and “delivered” are two different moments in any project. The payment structure exists to hold that gap steady for both of us.
Any work requested after a site has gone live that falls outside the original agreed scope, whether that’s new pages, new features, or structural changes, is treated as a new piece of work. It gets its own estimate and its own cost, separate from the original project fee.
None of this comes from a place of distrust. It’s here so that when a project reaches its final stage, both sides already know exactly what happens next, and nobody has to guess, argue, or take it personally when the time comes to settle up.
