Terms & Conditions

1. About these terms

These Terms & Conditions govern your use of the Whitehat Agency website at whitehatagency.com.au (the “Site”), the Whitehat client portal at portal.whitehatagency.com.au (the “Portal”), and the digital marketing services we provide (the “Services” — including SEO, Google Ads, Meta Ads, web design and development, AI services, reporting and consulting). Together these are the “Platform”.

“Whitehat”, “we”, “us” and “our” refer to Whitehat Agency, operated by 484 Digital Pty Ltd (ABN 81 651 974 006). “You”, “your” and the “Client” refer to the business or individual using the Platform.

By accessing or using any part of the Platform you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Platform. If you are using the Platform on behalf of a business, you warrant that you have authority to bind that business to these terms.

2. Order of precedence

Engaged clients receive a separate written proposal or Statement of Work (“SOW”) describing the specific Services we will deliver, the deliverables, the fees and the term. Where there is any conflict between these terms and your SOW, the SOW takes precedence for the matter it covers. These terms otherwise apply.

3. Using the Site

We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, revocable licence to access and use the Site for lawful purposes and for your own information. You agree not to:

• use the Site or Portal in any way that breaches any applicable law or regulation, or is fraudulent or harmful;
• copy, scrape, harvest or systematically extract content or data from the Site or Portal except as expressly permitted by us in writing;
• introduce malware, attempt to gain unauthorised access to, interfere with, or disrupt the Platform or its underlying systems (including by exceeding any rate limits we apply);
• attempt to reverse-engineer, decompile or otherwise derive the source code of any part of the Platform;
• use the Platform to transmit unsolicited commercial communications (spam), defamatory or unlawful content, or to infringe the rights of others;
• circumvent our security measures, including but not limited to our country-based access controls on public forms.

4. Public forms (enquiries, audits, careers)

When you submit information through the Site (for example, an enquiry, free-audit request, newsletter signup or job application), you agree that the information you provide is accurate and that you are entitled to provide it. We capture the page you submitted from, your IP address, your country and the time of submission for fraud prevention, lead-source analytics and to comply with our Australian-only contact policy.

Submitting a form is not a binding agreement for Services; it is a request for us to contact you. We may use the details you provide to respond and follow up, in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

5. Client Portal access and security

We may suspend or terminate any portal account that breaches these terms or that is implicated in suspected abuse, with notice where reasonably practicable.

• keeping the email account used to sign in secure (we will only ever send magic-link emails from a verified Whitehat address);
• the actions of every person you add to your portal account (you control who has owner, admin and member roles);
• telling us promptly at security@whitehatagency.com.au if you believe an account has been compromised, so we can revoke sessions and investigate;
• the accuracy of the contact details, billing email, account-manager nomination and goals you set in the Portal.

6. Fees, billing and GST

Where Services are provided to you under a SOW, fees, payment frequency and term are set out in that SOW. Unless stated otherwise:

• all prices are in Australian Dollars (AUD) and inclusive of GST;
• payment is processed by our payment provider, Stripe, which is PCI-DSS Level 1 compliant. We do not see or store your full card number. By providing card or direct-debit details you authorise Stripe to charge your nominated payment method in accordance with the SOW;
• subscriptions auto-renew on the cadence set out in your SOW (typically monthly) unless either party gives written notice of cancellation per the SOW terms;
• invoices and receipts are issued by email and made available in your Portal under Billing;
• late payments: we may suspend Services if an invoice is more than 14 days overdue, and we may charge interest at the rate published from time to time by the Reserve Bank of Australia (Cash Rate) plus 2% per annum on outstanding amounts;
• referral discounts earned under our referral programme are applied automatically as a percentage off your next invoice, subject to the 50% per-invoice cap described in the Portal.

7. Cancellation and termination

Either party may terminate the engagement by written notice as set out in your SOW (typically 30 days’ notice for monthly retainers). You remain liable for fees incurred up to the effective termination date and for any specific commitments (such as third-party media buys or contracted deliverables) made on your behalf.

We may terminate immediately and without liability if you materially breach these terms or your SOW and do not cure the breach within 14 days of written notice, if you become insolvent, or if continuing the engagement would breach our legal or regulatory obligations.

On termination: your portal access will be revoked within a reasonable period, your data will be retained per our Privacy Policy, you can request an export of your account data, and any unused referral credits expire at termination (no cash equivalent).

8. Intellectual property

Whitehat material. Unless otherwise stated, all content on the Site and Portal — including text, graphics, logos, the Whitehat brand, case studies, blog articles, designs, images and code — is owned by or licensed to Whitehat and is protected by Australian and international intellectual property laws.

Your material. You retain ownership of all data, content and material you provide to us or that we collect from your accounts on your behalf (“Your Material”). You grant us a non-exclusive licence to use Your Material as reasonably necessary to deliver the Services to you, including to read it, store it, process it through our AI tools and present it back to you in the Portal.

Deliverables. Once you have paid in full for a specific deliverable produced under a SOW (such as a website, ad creative or report), ownership of that deliverable transfers to you, subject to any third-party rights and to our retained right to use anonymised case-study material for our marketing (see “Case studies” below).

Platform. The Whitehat Platform itself (the Site, Portal, Halo and the underlying systems) remains our property. Nothing in these terms transfers any IP in the Platform to you.

You may view and print Site content for your own personal, non-commercial use. You must not reproduce, republish, distribute, adapt or commercially exploit any Whitehat content without our prior written permission.

9. Case studies and testimonials

We may, after consulting you, publish your business name, logo, project metrics and a written or video case study summarising the work we did together. We will not publish confidential business information or numbers you mark as private. You can withdraw permission for future use at any time by emailing us — we will remove the case study from new placements within a reasonable period, though prior publications may continue to exist.

10. AI services (Halo) — what they are and how to use them

Our AI agent, Halo, is built on Anthropic’s Claude API and is used to generate performance reports, answer questions inside the Portal, score incoming referrals, draft outreach emails and tag survey feedback. Halo’s context is limited to your own data; it does not share your numbers, goals or notes with any other Whitehat client.

You agree and acknowledge that:

• AI outputs are advisory. A person at Whitehat reviews and is responsible for material decisions that reach you (proposals, contracts, outreach sent to referred prospects, scope or strategy changes).
• Halo is not infallible. AI-generated content may contain errors, omissions or misinterpretations of your data. Significant decisions should not be made on AI output alone — use the report as a starting point and raise any concerns with your account manager.
• No training on your data. Anthropic’s commercial terms confirm your data is not used to train their models.
• Opt-out. You can ask us to disable AI-generated content for your account at any time by emailing your account manager or hello@whitehatagency.com.au.
• AI usage is metered. We rate-limit AI features to keep costs predictable and prevent abuse; reasonable use is included in your subscription.

11. Referrals programme

If you submit a referral via the Portal, you confirm that you have a genuine connection to the referred business, that the referral is not your own business or an existing Whitehat client, and that you have either told the referred business that you are referring them or are happy for our team to mention you when reaching out. Discounts are earned only when the referred business becomes a paying Whitehat client; the rates, stacking caps and process are described inside the Portal. We may decline or disqualify referrals that breach these rules, are duplicates, or are otherwise not in good faith.

12. Results, case studies and general information

Content on the Site — including blog articles, case studies, statistics and performance figures — is provided for general information only. It reflects specific engagements and conditions at a point in time.

Past results are not a guarantee of future performance. Digital marketing outcomes depend on many factors outside our control (including search-engine and platform algorithms, competition, market conditions, your own brand and product, and your own resources). Nothing on the Site is professional, financial or legal advice, and you should not rely on it as such.

13. Third-party platforms and content

Our Services use third-party platforms including Google, Meta, Microsoft, Anthropic, Stripe, Resend, Clerk, Supabase, Vercel, Ahrefs and others (see our Privacy Policy for the full list). These platforms have their own terms, fees, availability and behaviour, which can change without notice. We are not responsible for changes a third party makes to its platform, its pricing, its policies or its algorithms, or for outages or errors on a third-party platform that affect your results. We will use reasonable efforts to adapt our work to platform changes and to keep you informed.

Some platforms (notably advertising platforms such as Google Ads and Meta Ads) charge media costs separately and directly to your billing relationship with them. Those costs are not part of our fees and you are responsible for them.

14. Availability and disclaimers

We aim to keep the Site and Portal available and accurate, but we provide them on an “as is” and “as available” basis. To the extent permitted by law, we do not warrant that the Site or Portal will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or free of viruses or other harmful components, or that any information on them is complete, current or accurate.

We may carry out maintenance and updates from time to time, including with short or no notice for security fixes, and may temporarily restrict access to parts of the Platform during these windows.

15. Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law

Our Services and the Platform come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL). Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any right or remedy, or any guarantee, warranty or other term implied or imposed by the ACL or other law that cannot lawfully be excluded.

For our Services, the consumer guarantees include that the Services will be provided with due care and skill, will be reasonably fit for any purpose you have made known to us, and will be supplied within a reasonable time. If we fail to meet a consumer guarantee, you have rights under the ACL that we cannot exclude.

16. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, and subject to your rights under the Australian Consumer Law:

• we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or any loss of profits, revenue, data or goodwill, arising from your use of (or inability to use) the Platform or our Services;
• our total aggregate liability to you in connection with the Platform or the Services in any 12-month period is limited to the fees you paid us under your SOW in that same 12-month period;
• where our liability cannot be excluded but can be limited, our liability is limited, at our option, to: re-supplying the relevant Service, repairing or re-supplying the relevant deliverable, or paying the cost of having it re-supplied, repaired or re-supplied.

17. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify Whitehat against any claims, losses, liabilities and reasonable expenses arising from: (a) Your Material infringing a third party’s rights; (b) your breach of these terms or your SOW; (c) your misuse of the Platform; or (d) any unlawful conduct by you in connection with the Services. This indemnity is to the extent caused or contributed to by you and is subject to the Australian Consumer Law.

18. Confidentiality

Each party agrees to keep the other’s Confidential Information secret and to use it only for the purpose of the engagement. “Confidential Information” means any non-public information disclosed by one party to the other, including business plans, customer lists, financial information, methodologies, source code, and your account performance data. This obligation continues for 3 years after the engagement ends, except for trade-secret information, which remains confidential indefinitely. It does not apply to information that is or becomes public through no fault of the receiving party, was already known, or is required to be disclosed by law.

19. Force majeure

Neither party is liable for failure to perform any obligation (other than payment) where that failure is caused by an event beyond its reasonable control, including natural disasters, war, pandemic, government action, internet or third-party platform outages, or strikes. The affected party must notify the other promptly and resume performance as soon as reasonably practicable.

20. Privacy and security

Our handling of personal information is described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms. Our security posture (encryption, authentication, isolation, geo-fencing on public forms, audit logging and vulnerability disclosure) is summarised there too. Security researchers can disclose vulnerabilities to us at security@whitehatagency.com.au or via /.well-known/security.txt.

21. Dispute resolution

Before commencing any court proceeding, both parties agree to first attempt to resolve any dispute in good faith by direct discussion. If that does not resolve the dispute within 21 days of written notice, either party may submit the dispute to mediation administered by the Resolution Institute (or another mediator agreed in writing). This clause does not prevent either party from seeking urgent injunctive or equitable relief from a court.

22. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. The current version will always be available on this page, with the “last updated” date shown above. Where changes are material, we will notify engaged clients by email and/or by an in-portal message. Your continued use of the Platform after a change means you accept the updated terms.

23. General

Assignment. You may not assign or transfer any rights or obligations under these terms without our prior written consent. We may assign these terms to a successor in connection with a sale or restructure of our business.

Entire agreement. These terms, together with your SOW and our Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us in relation to the subject matter and supersede any prior agreement or representation on the same subject.

Severability. If any provision of these terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in full force.

No waiver. A failure or delay by us in exercising a right is not a waiver of that right.

Notices. Any notice you give us under these terms must be sent to the email address in “Contact us” below or to our registered business address. Notices we give you may be sent to your nominated account email or shown in the Portal.

24. Governing law and jurisdiction

These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia. You and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New South Wales and the Commonwealth of Australia.

25. Contact us

Questions about these terms or your engagement? Contact us:

Whitehat Agency (484 Digital Pty Ltd, ABN 81 651 974 006)
136 Epsom Rd, Zetland NSW 2017, Australia
Email: hello@whitehatagency.com.au
Security disclosures: security@whitehatagency.com.au
Phone: 1800 465 300