Terms of Service

1. Agreement to These Terms

By accessing or using this website, you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service and by our Privacy Policy. If you are using this website on behalf of an organisation, you confirm that you have the authority to bind that organisation to these Terms.

These Terms apply to every visitor. Additional or different terms apply once we enter into a client engagement — see Relationship to Client Contracts below.

2. Who We Are

This website is operated by C9 Group. Our identification and contact details are:

3. Relationship to Client Contracts

These Terms govern your use of this website and the pre-contractual stage of any enquiry. They do not, by themselves, create a contract for services.

Every client engagement is governed by a separate written agreement — a Master Services Agreement, Statement of Work, or equivalent — signed by both parties. Where anything in that signed agreement conflicts with these Terms, the signed agreement prevails in respect of that engagement.

4. Our Services

We provide software engineering and technology consulting services, which currently include:

• Backend systems, APIs, and platform architecture
• Cloud infrastructure, DevOps, and AWS cost optimisation
• Legacy system maintenance and modernisation
• Web accessibility audit and remediation
• EU market entry and digital compliance engineering
• Staff augmentation and dedicated development teams

Service descriptions on this website are for information only. The exact scope, deliverables, acceptance criteria, timelines, and fees for any engagement are defined in the applicable Statement of Work.

5. Enquiries, Proposals, and Formation of a Contract

Nothing on this website constitutes a binding offer. Content describing services, capabilities, indicative timelines, or outcomes is an invitation to discuss, not a commitment.

A contract is formed only when both parties sign a written agreement. Unless a proposal states otherwise, our written proposals remain open for acceptance for 30 days from the date of issue, after which pricing and availability may be revised.

Estimates of effort, duration, or savings shared during the proposal stage are good-faith projections based on the information available to us at the time. They are not guarantees of outcome unless expressly stated as such in a signed agreement.

6. Fees, Invoicing, and Payment

Fees, currency, billing cycle, and payment terms are set out in the applicable Statement of Work. In the absence of agreed terms:

• Invoicing: Invoices are issued monthly in arrears for time-and-materials work, or against agreed milestones for fixed-price work.
• Payment period: Invoices fall due 30 days from the invoice date.
• Late payment: Overdue amounts may accrue statutory default interest, and we may suspend work on written notice after an invoice is 30 days overdue.
• Taxes: Fees are exclusive of VAT and any other applicable taxes or duties, which are added where legally required.
• Expenses: Pre-approved third-party costs — cloud spend, licences, travel — are passed through at cost.

7. Intellectual Property in Website Content

All content on this website — text, articles, graphics, logos, layout, and code — is owned by C9 Group or its licensors and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws.

You may view, download, and print pages for your own internal reference. You may quote short extracts from our articles provided you attribute them to C9 Group and link to the source page. You may not republish, resell, systematically copy, or use our content to train machine learning models without our prior written permission.

Third-party names and logos shown on this website remain the property of their respective owners and are used to describe work we have delivered. Their appearance does not imply endorsement by those owners.

8. Intellectual Property in Client Deliverables

Unless the applicable Statement of Work says otherwise, the following applies to work we produce for clients:

• Deliverables: Ownership of the custom code and materials we create specifically for you transfers to you upon full payment of the fees for the relevant work.
• Background IP: Tools, libraries, frameworks, and know-how we owned or developed before, or independently of, the engagement remain ours. Where a deliverable incorporates such material, you receive a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive licence to use it as part of that deliverable.
• Open-source components: Deliverables may include third-party open-source software, which remains subject to its own licence. We identify material open-source dependencies and their licences on request, and we will not knowingly introduce a licence incompatible with your stated intended use.
• Residual knowledge: We remain free to use the general skills, techniques, and experience gained during an engagement, provided we disclose no confidential information.

9. Confidentiality

We treat non-public information you share with us — during an engagement or while scoping one — as confidential. We use it only to evaluate or perform the work, disclose it only to personnel and subcontractors who need it and are under equivalent obligations, and protect it with the measures described in our Security and Data Handling statement.

We sign mutual non-disclosure agreements on request, including before a first scoping conversation. Confidentiality obligations do not extend to information that is public through no fault of ours, that you already held or independently developed, or that we are legally compelled to disclose — in which case we notify you where the law permits.

10. Subcontractors and Named Personnel

We may use subcontractors and contract personnel to deliver an engagement. Where we do, we remain fully responsible to you for the work, and those personnel are bound by confidentiality and security obligations no less protective than the ones in these Terms.

Where a Statement of Work names specific individuals, we will not substitute them without giving you notice and offering a replacement of comparable experience.

11. Acceptable Use of This Website

You agree not to:

• Use this website in a way that breaches any applicable law or regulation
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to the website, its servers, or any connected system
• Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of our systems other than through our responsible disclosure process
• Introduce malware or any other harmful code
• Impose an unreasonable load on our infrastructure, including through automated scraping
• Submit false, misleading, or third-party personal information through our contact forms
• Use our contact channels to send unsolicited commercial communications

We may restrict or withdraw access to the website from anyone who breaches this section.

12. Third-Party Links and Services

This website links to third-party websites and embeds third-party services, including a scheduling widget and messaging links. We provide these for convenience. We do not control them, we are not responsible for their content or practices, and their inclusion does not imply endorsement. Your use of a third-party service is governed by that provider's own terms and privacy policy. The providers we rely on are listed in our Privacy Policy and Security and Data Handling statement.

13. Website Availability

We aim to keep this website available and accurate, but we provide it on an "as available" basis. We may suspend, withdraw, or change any part of it without notice, and we do not guarantee uninterrupted access. Service levels for systems we build and operate for clients are defined in the applicable engagement agreement, not here.

14. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we exclude all warranties, conditions, and representations relating to this website and its content that are not expressly stated in these Terms, including any implied warranty of accuracy, completeness, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose. Warranties relating to client deliverables are set out in the applicable engagement agreement.

15. Limitation of Liability

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.

Subject to that, and in relation to your use of this website:

• We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill, data, or anticipated savings.
• Our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with your use of this website is limited to EUR 100.

Liability arising from a client engagement is governed exclusively by the limitation of liability provisions in the applicable signed agreement, which supersede this section for that engagement.

If you are a consumer, this section applies only to the extent permitted by the consumer protection law of your country of residence, and your statutory rights are unaffected.

16. Indemnity

If you use this website in breach of the Acceptable Use section, you agree to indemnify us against any loss, liability, cost, or expense — including reasonable legal fees — that we incur as a result of that breach.

17. Consumers and Business Customers

Our services are offered to businesses and organisations. We do not target consumers, and our engagements are business-to-business.

If you nonetheless contract with us as a consumer within the meaning of applicable EU or national consumer law, you may have a statutory right to withdraw from a distance contract within 14 days without giving a reason. Where you ask us to begin work during that period and we complete the service before it expires, that right is lost. Nothing in these Terms limits mandatory consumer rights available to you under the law of your country of residence.

18. Data Protection and Security

Our handling of personal data is described in our Privacy Policy. Our technical and organisational security measures, subprocessors, and incident response process are described in our Security and Data Handling statement.

Where we process personal data on your behalf during an engagement, we do so as a processor under a written Data Processing Agreement that meets the requirements of Article 28 GDPR. We provide our standard DPA on request.

19. Accessibility

We are working towards WCAG 2.2 Level AA conformance for this website. Our current conformance status, known limitations, and the channel for reporting an accessibility barrier are set out in our Accessibility Statement.

20. Suspension and Termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to this website at any time, without notice, if you breach these Terms. Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including intellectual property, confidentiality, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, and governing law — continue to apply.

21. Changes to These Terms

We may revise these Terms from time to time to reflect changes in our services, our practices, or the law. The version published on this page is the version in force, and the "Last Updated" date above shows when it last changed. Your continued use of the website after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms. Changes do not apply retroactively to a signed engagement agreement.

22. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or in connection with them, including non-contractual disputes, are governed by the laws of the Republic of Serbia. The courts of Novi Sad, Republic of Serbia, have exclusive jurisdiction, except that we may bring proceedings in any jurisdiction where you are established to enforce our intellectual property rights.

If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of that country.

Governing law and jurisdiction for a client engagement are set out in the applicable signed agreement and may differ from this section.

23. Resolving a Dispute

If you have a complaint, please raise it with us first at office@c9group.dev. We take complaints seriously and would far rather resolve one directly than escalate it.

Where a dispute cannot be resolved between us, the parties will attempt good-faith negotiation between senior representatives before commencing proceedings. This does not prevent either party from seeking urgent injunctive relief.

24. General

• Severability: If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in full force, and the unenforceable provision is modified to the minimum extent needed to make it enforceable.
• No waiver: Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• Entire agreement: These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between us in relation to your use of this website.
• Assignment: You may not assign your rights under these Terms without our written consent. We may assign ours to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Third parties: No person other than you and C9 Group has any right to enforce these Terms.
• Force majeure: Neither party is liable for a failure to perform caused by an event beyond its reasonable control, provided it notifies the other party promptly and works to mitigate the effect.

25. Language

26. Contact Us

Questions about these Terms are welcome — please get in touch.