What are Argota Marketing’s contract terms? Argota operates on a month-to-month basis with no termination penalties. The firm owns all digital assets from day one; the website code, all content, ad accounts, analytics data, and lead records. Data portability is contractually guaranteed with a 30-day export window after termination. The agency is designated as a Data Processor and the firm as the Data Controller, aligning with CCPA and GDPR standards. Upon exit, Argota provides a structured offboarding that includes credential transfers, domain unlocking, and introduction to the incoming provider.
Most of the pages on this site talk about what to watch for in agency contracts and what hidden costs look like and how to decide between contract models. This page is different. This is about how we structured our own contract and why each clause exists.
I wrote it for managing partners and firm staff who are past the research phase and want to see the actual terms before getting on a call. Not the thinking behind the terms; I’ve covered that in the posts linked above. This is the nuts and bolts of what working with us looks like on paper, and what happens when the paper ends.
The short version is that your firm owns everything we build, controls all the data we touch, and can leave with thirty days notice and zero penalty. But the details matter more than the summary, so here’s how it works.
What Your Firm Owns From Day One
Every digital asset we create or manage is firm property the moment the invoice clears. This isn’t a talking point; it’s in the contract. The agreement says all work is done on a work-for-hire basis, which means the firm holds the copyright the moment we deliver it.
What most agencies say: “You own your content.” What we put in writing: “All deliverables are work-for-hire. The firm owns the code, the design, the content, the database, and every account credential. No license. No lease. Title transfer on payment.”
In practical terms that means:
The WordPress installation, the theme customizations, the custom code, and the database all live on a hosting account registered in the firm’s name. We have admin access to do the work. You have super admin access because it’s yours. If we part ways tomorrow, you change one password and the site keeps running exactly as it was.
Every blog post, practice area page, attorney bio, landing page, and ad creative belongs to the firm. Not licensed to the firm. Owned by the firm. You can repurpose that content for a printed brochure, hand it to a new agency, or publish it in a book without asking us for permission, because you don’t need permission to use something you already own.
The Google Ads account, the Google Analytics property, Google Business Profile, and every other third-party platform are created in the firm’s name with the firm as the account owner. We hold manager-level access that the firm can revoke at any time. This is different from the model where the agency creates a master account and gives individual firms viewer access to a filtered dashboard; in that setup the agency controls the historical data and the audience definitions and you lose both when you leave.
Why this matters beyond the obvious: A firm’s digital presence is a capital asset that accrues value over time. Three years of SEO content, conversion data, and audience intelligence has compounding business value. If that asset exists on rented infrastructure, the firm’s balance sheet doesn’t reflect the real equity it has built. Ownership means the marketing investment produces a durable asset, not a recurring expense that vanishes when the vendor relationship ends.
Data Portability as a Contractual Right
You’ve probably heard the phrase “you own your data” from agencies that make it very difficult to actually get your data when you ask for it. We wrote the portability clause to close that gap between the promise and the process.
MYTH: “Of course you can have your data when you leave.”
REALITY: They hand you a PDF summary of last quarter’s traffic. The raw lead records, call logs, keyword attribution, and audience segments stay locked in their systems.
The contract names the firm as the Data Controller and Argota as the Data Processor. Those aren’t just labels; they’re legal terms under the CCPA that spell out who has final say over how client data is stored, used, and moved. The firm decides. We follow.
Here’s what portability means in practice:
If the engagement ends for any reason, the firm has a 30-day window to request a full data export. Not a summary report. Not a PDF of last month’s dashboard. The complete dataset; every lead record with source attribution, every call recording with timestamp and landing page, every conversion event with the keyword that triggered it, and every audience segment built in the ad accounts.
The export comes in usable formats; CSV for structured data, standard backup files for the WordPress database, and direct account access for everything on third-party platforms. A new agency or an in-house team should be able to pick up where we left off without reconstructing anything from scratch.
This lines up with where privacy law is heading. The CCPA already gives California consumers the right to take their data from one service to another, and the proposed American Privacy Rights Act would bring similar rules to every state. By naming the firm as Data Controller from day one, we’re making sure your firm stays ahead of these changes instead of having to fix things later.
The distinction that matters: Some agencies will say “of course you can have your data” and then hand you a PDF summary of aggregate metrics. That’s not data portability. Portability means the raw records, the historical trends, the audience definitions, and the conversion attribution chains; the actual intelligence that took months or years to build. If you can’t hand it to a new provider and have them continue the work seamlessly, it’s not portable.
What Happens When You Leave
The offboarding process is written into the contract because I’ve seen what happens when nobody plans the handoff. The exits that cause damage aren’t the ones where the firm fires the agency. They’re the ones where nobody wrote down how the switch is supposed to work, so the firm loses weeks of momentum while two teams point at each other.
Our termination clause requires thirty days written notice. During that window, we do the following:
We unlock the domain registrar and confirm the firm has the login credentials. We transfer the hosting billing to the firm’s payment method if it isn’t there already. We export and deliver the full data package described above. We revoke our own admin access from all platforms once the firm confirms the new provider has been granted access. And if the firm wants us to, we’ll get on a call with the incoming agency to walk them through the account structure, the campaign logic, and anything else that would take them weeks to reverse-engineer on their own.
That last part is the offboarding obligation, and it’s the piece most agencies skip because there’s no reason to make it easy for your replacement to succeed. We include it because the other option is the firm eating a performance gap during the switch, which punishes the client for a choice the agency should have made unnecessary.
The exit should be boring. That’s the whole point.
There are no early termination fees. No “recoupment charges” for setup work. No penalty clauses buried in the fine print. No asset release fees. You pay for the services rendered through the notice period and you leave with everything.
The survival clause: Privacy and ownership rights don’t end when the contract does. We can’t use your firm’s data, content, or strategy after the work stops. This seems basic but not every agency contract includes it, and without it there’s nothing stopping your old agency from sharing what they learned about your market with a future client who competes with you.
Why This Model Works Economically
The question I get from other agency owners is how this doesn’t kill the business, because if every client can leave whenever they want the revenue is hard to predict. And that’s true. But the business works for a different reason.
When clients can leave at any time, the only thing keeping them is results. That means the whole operation has to be built around producing real outcomes every month, not around keeping a contract alive. The way we hire, the way we set goals, the way we talk to clients; it all changes when the next invoice has to earn its way.
The keep rate on this model tends to be high not because clients are stuck but because the work pays for itself. When someone stays for eighteen months on a rolling deal, that’s eighteen separate choices to keep paying, which tells you more about how the work is going than one signature on a year-long agreement ever could.
~~12-month contract at $10K/month = $120,000 committed liability~~ → Month-to-month at $10K/month = $10,000 operating expense, adjustable any time
That one line is the whole argument for managing partners and CFOs who think about vendor risk. A locked deal is a debt on the books. A rolling deal is a cost that flexes when the firm needs it to; if cash gets tight, if a partner leaves, if a merger changes the plan.
[Real-talk aside] And for firms thinking about a sale or merger down the road, this matters more than people realize. Long-term vendor contracts are problems during due diligence; the buyer has to eat the remaining cost or negotiate a buyout. Month-to-month agreements just get continued or cut on day one of the new ownership. Cleaner books, simpler valuation.
Three Questions Before You Sign With Anyone
This applies to us and to every other agency you’re evaluating. I wrote about the full 15-point vetting process separately, but if you only have time for three questions, these are the ones that reveal the most:
“If I fire you tomorrow, what do I keep?” The answer should be “everything; the domain, the site, the code, the content, the data, and the analytics history.” If there’s hesitation, or if the answer involves phrases like “you keep the content but the platform is ours,” that tells you the business model depends on making departure expensive.
“Who is the legal owner of the ad accounts and analytics properties?” Not who manages them. Who owns them. If the agency created a master Google Analytics account and your firm’s data lives inside their property, you’re a tenant. When you leave, the historical data stays with the landlord.
“What does termination look like, step by step?” If there’s no documented offboarding process, the exit will be improvised. Improvised exits are where firms lose rankings, lose data, and lose months of momentum while the new provider tries to reconstruct what the old one built.
Want to read the actual contract before we talk?
I’ll send you our standard agreement with nothing redacted. Read it with your attorney. If the terms don’t match what this page describes, don’t hire us.
Related: What’s included and what you’ll pay → | How to evaluate any agency’s proposal →
