Website proposals → decision brief

You are preparing an audit-friendly vendor comparison for a small service-business owner.

Use only the Buyer Brief and Proposal A and Proposal B below. Do not use outside knowledge.

Rules:
1. Never invent, estimate, or silently fill in a price, feature, deadline, obligation, ownership right, service level, revision allowance, cancellation term, or other missing term.
2. If a proposal does not state something, write "Not stated." Absence does not mean no, zero, included, excluded, free, unlimited, or equivalent.
3. Preserve every condition attached to a price or timeline. Do not compare durations without retaining their different starting triggers.
4. Keep one-time fees, mandatory recurring fees, optional fees, and hourly rates separate.
5. You may perform arithmetic only from stated figures. Label calculated values "Calculated," show the formula, and state what is excluded.
6. Do not treat an embedded Jobber form as custom integration or data synchronization.
7. Do not treat a support response target as a resolution guarantee or uptime commitment.
8. Distinguish ownership of copy and images from ownership or portability of the full website, template, configuration, and source files.
9. Do not create a weighted score or overall winner because the buyer has not supplied preference weights.
10. Separate sourced facts, calculations, judgment, and clarification questions.

Return these sections:

A. REQUIREMENTS CHECK
A table with:
- Buyer requirement or preference
- Proposal A evidence
- Proposal B evidence
- Status for each vendor: Meets, Does not meet, or Unclear
- Short supporting source phrase

B. NORMALIZED COMMERCIAL TERMS
Show:
- Setup fee
- Mandatory recurring charges
- Calculated first-12-month cost
- Renewal cost after month 12
- Optional or out-of-scope rates
- Payment schedule
- Cancellation terms
- Any commercial term that remains unknown

C. MATERIAL SCOPE AND SERVICE DIFFERENCES
List only decision-relevant differences. Do not label a difference better or worse without explaining the buyer preference that would make it so.

D. RISKS AND UNKNOWNS
Separate vendor-specific unknowns from risks directly supported by stated terms.

E. CONDITIONAL DECISION GUIDE
Give no more than three "Choose A if..." or "Choose B if..." statements. If the evidence does not support an overall winner, say so directly.

F. CLARIFICATION QUESTIONS
Give the five highest-value questions, addressed to the appropriate vendor.

G. CONFIDENCE AND REVIEW
State what the comparison can establish, what it cannot establish, and what a human should verify before signing.

Keep the answer under 1,000 words.

--- BUYER BRIEF ---

Lakeview Home Organizing is a synthetic eight-person service business replacing its public website.

Must-haves:
- Home, Services, About, Gallery, and Contact pages
- Embed the company’s existing Jobber request form
- Staff can update text and photos
- Setup plus mandatory charges for the first 12 months after launch must stay at or below $7,000 before tax, excluding the existing Jobber subscription and domain registration

Preferences:
- Go live within six weeks of vendor selection
- Own and be able to move the final website and content
- Keep ongoing costs predictable

The owner has not assigned weights to the preferences.

--- PROPOSAL A ---

Northline Web Co. — Custom Website Project

Project fee: $6,400 fixed

Scope:
- Discovery call and sitemap
- Custom visual design
- Five pages: Home, Services, About, Gallery, and Contact
- Migration of client-supplied final copy and images for those five pages
- Embed the client’s existing Jobber request form
- Responsive implementation
- Google Analytics 4 installation
- Page titles, meta descriptions, and XML sitemap
- Content-management-system editor access
- One 60-minute staff training session
- Two consolidated design revision rounds
- One pre-launch quality-assurance round

Schedule:
Delivery is estimated at six weeks from kickoff. Scheduling begins after Northline receives the signed agreement and kickoff payment. The estimate assumes consolidated client feedback within two business days of each review request.

Payment:
- 40% at signing
- 40% at design approval
- 20% before launch

Hosting and support:
Managed hosting is included for the first 12 months after launch. It renews month-to-month at $30 per month after that. Northline will correct implementation defects reported within 30 calendar days after launch. Later content-update assistance is available at $140 per hour.

Ownership:
After final payment, Northline transfers the final custom design, site files, and approved site content to the client. Third-party software licenses, if any are later requested and approved, are not included in the project fee and may not be transferable.

Exclusions:
Copywriting, photography, logo work, domain registration, the Jobber subscription, custom Jobber or API integration, legal-policy drafting, ongoing SEO, and a formal accessibility audit.

--- PROPOSAL B ---

Spruce Digital — Website Launch + Care Plan

Setup fee: $4,200

Required care plan: $195 per month for 12 months beginning on the launch date. The first charge is made at launch, followed by 11 monthly charges.

Scope:
- Adaptation of a Spruce website template
- Seven pages: Home, Services, About, Process, Gallery, FAQ, and Contact
- Up to 1,500 words of draft website copy based on a client questionnaire
- Client-supplied photos
- Embed the client’s existing Jobber request form; no custom data synchronization
- Responsive implementation
- Basic page metadata and XML sitemap
- An analytics dashboard
- Editor access
- One recorded 45-minute handoff session

Schedule:
Delivery is estimated at four to five weeks after Spruce receives the completed questionnaire, brand assets, client photos, and cleared first setup installment.

Payment:
- 50% of the setup fee at signing
- 50% of the setup fee at launch
- Care-plan payments billed monthly beginning at launch

Care plan:
The care plan includes hosting, security updates, daily backups, and up to 60 minutes of content changes per month. Unused time does not roll over. Other work is billed at $125 per hour. Spruce targets a response within two business days for support requests submitted Monday through Friday.

The care plan may be cancelled during its initial 12-month term by paying 50% of the remaining monthly payments. After the initial term, it continues month-to-month at $195 per month. Spruce may change that rate with 30 days’ notice.

Ownership:
The client owns final approved copy and client-supplied photos. Spruce retains its template, design system, software configuration, and source repository. At termination, Spruce will provide an export of the current page copy and uploaded images on request. The template license and source repository are not transferred.

Exclusions:
Domain registration, the Jobber subscription, custom Jobber integration, photography, logo work, legal-policy drafting, and a formal accessibility audit.