Introduction
This document sets
forth the principles, guidelines and requirements of the Terms of
Service ("Agreement") of HostConcept.com ("HostConcept") governing the
use by the Customer ("Customer") of HostConcept's services
("Services"). This agreement been created to promote the integrity,
security, reliability and privacy of HostConcept's facilities,
network, and Customer data contained within. HostConcept believes it
provides the best services in the industry, and provides the
following policies in the best interests of HostConcept and
HostConcept's Customers. HostConcept retains the right to modify these
terms at any time and any such modification shall be automatically
effective as to all Customers when adopted by HostConcept.
HostConcept
shall be the sole and final arbiter as the the interpretation of the
following. By utilizing HostConcept's services and products, the
Customer agrees to be bound by the terms herein outlined.
Note: If you
accept this agreement without reading it in its entirety, you are
still bound by this agreement in its entirety.
1. Account
Setup and E-mail On File
HostConcept will setup Customer's account after it verifies the
Customer's order and/or payment in case of fraud. It is the
Customer's responsibility to provide HostConcept with a valid POP or
IMAP email address which does not contain and/or utilize the domain
of a free email service provider (example: 'hotmail.com' of
Microsoft's Hotmail/MSN mail service, 'gmail.com' of Google mail
service, 'yahoo.com' of Yahoo's mail service and etc.) or the domain
that the Customer is signing up under.
Customer must sign up HostConcept's hosting services using a
registered and valid domain that is owned by the Customer. If there
is ever an abuse issue or HostConcept needs to contact the Customer,
the primary email address on file will be used for this purpose. It
is the Customer's responsibility to ensure the email address on file
is current or up to date at all times. Providing false contact
information of any kind may result in the termination of the
Customer's account. In high risk transactions, it will be necessary
for the Customer to provide a government issued identification
and/or a bank statement of the credit card used for the purchase. If
the Customer fail to meet these requirements, the order may be
considered fraudulent in nature and be denied. What constitutes a
"high risk transaction" shall be determined by the
HostConcept in its
sole and absolute discretion.
2. Content
All services provided by HostConcept may only be used for lawful
purposes that, in the sole judgment of the Company, are not in
violation of any local, state, federal or non-United States law or
regulation.
The Customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless HostConcept from
any claims resulting from the use of HostConcept's services.
Use of HostConcept's services to infringe upon any copyright or
trademark is prohibited. This includes but is not limited to
unauthorized copying of music, books, photographs, or any other
copyrighted work. The offer of sale of any counterfeit merchandise
of a trademark holder will result in the immediate termination of
the Customer's account. If the Customer believes that the Customer's
copyright or trademark is being infringed upon, please email abuse(at)hostconcept.com. If the request is of a licensing issue,
HostConcept may require further documentation.
Examples of unacceptable material include:
IRC Bots, Proxy Scripts / Anonymizers, Pirated Software / Warez,
".img" / image hosting only sites that do not host an actual domain
name, Escrow, High-Yield Interest Programs(HYIP), Bank Debentures,
Bank Debenture Trading Programs, and Prime Banks Programs, lottery
sites, muds / rpg's, hate sites, hacker focused
sites/archives/programs, sites promoting illegal activities and/or
sites that are directly or indirectly linked to any of the above.
HostConcept reserves the right to refuse service to Customer. Any
material that, in HostConcept's sole judgement, is obscene or
threatening is prohibited and will be removed from HostConcept's
servers with or without notice.
Failure to respond to email from HostConcept's Abuse department within
48 hours may result in the suspension or termination of Customer's
services.
If in doubt regarding the acceptability of the Customer's site or
service, please contact HostConcept and HostConcept will be happy to
assist the Customer.
Potential harm to minors is strictly forbidden, including but not
limited to child pornography or content perceived to be child
pornography (Lolita):
Any site found to host child pornography or linking to child
pornography will be suspended immediately without notice.
Resellers: HostConcept will suspend the site in question and notify
the Customer so the Customer may terminate the account. HostConcept
will further monitor the Customer's activity; more than one
infraction of this type may result in the immediate termination of
the Customer's account.
Direct Customers: Customer's services will be terminated with or
without notice.
Violations will be reported to the appropriate law enforcement
agency.
It is the Customer's responsibility to ensure that scripts/programs
installed under the Customer's account are secure and permissions of
directories are set properly, regardless of installation method.
When at all possible, set permissions on most directories to 755 or
as restrictive as possible.
3. Zero
Tolerance Spam Policy
HostConcept take a zero tolerance stance against sending of
unsolicited e-mail, bulk emailing, and spam. "Safe lists" and
"double opt-in" will be treated as spam. Customer's account will be
immediately terminated with or without notice if found sending out
spam.
Sites advertised via SPAM (Spamvertised) may not be hosted on
HostConcept's servers. This provision includes, but is not limited to
SPAM sent via fax, email, instant messaging, or usenet/newsgroups.
No organization or entity listed in the ROKSO may be hosted on
HostConcept's servers. Any account which results in HostConcept's IP
address being blacklisted will be immediately suspended and/or
terminated.
HostConcept reserves the right to require changes or disable as
necessary any web site, account, database, or other component that
does not comply with its established policies, or to make any such
modifications in an emergency at its sole discretion.
HostConcept reserves the right to charge the Customer that owns the
account used to send any unsolicited e-mail a clean up fee. This
cost of the clean up fee is entirely at the discretion of the
HostConcept.
4. Mail Policy
Customer is not allowed to send over 100 email messages to one or
more individuals in one clock hour per hosting account. If the
Customer exceeds this limit, all of its outgoing mails will bounce
back to the Customer with an undeliverable error.
HostConcept's servers employ a POP flood control that limits each
Customer's account to 60 POP checks per hour. If the Customer
exceeds this limit, the Customer's POP account will be locked until
the next hour. To prevent this from happening, Customer must disable
auto-checking in its email client or at least set it to an interval
of 10 minutes or more.
Mailing List Rules:
• Customer must not have more than 1,000 mailing list
subscribers in total on a Customer's account. This is the total of
subscribers from all the mailing lists in the Customer's account.
• Customer is not allowed to send an email message larger than 500
KB (kilobytes) to its mailing list group.
• Customer must throttle its mailing list software to send out at
the very least 1 email every 6 seconds. If the Customer's mailing
list software does not have the throttle feature, the Customer must
immediately switch to a mailing list software that supports this
feature. HostConcept recommends PHPList, which can be installed
through the Customer's Website Manager (control panel).
• Any mailing list with over 500 subscribers is only allowed to be
sent to during off-peak periods to prevent high server loads. Off
peak periods qualify as all day Saturday and Sunday, and 1am - 8am
Eastern time from Monday to Friday.
• Customer is not allowed to send unsolicited e-mail, including the
sending of "junk mail" or other advertising material to individuals
who did not specifically request such material, who were not
previous customers of Customer or with whom Customer does not have
an existing business relationship.
• Any unsolicited e-mail being sent will result in termination of
the Customer's offending account. We take a zero tolerance stance
against sending of unsolicited e-mail.
• The Customer's mailing list must comply with all guidelines set
forth by the United States.
These can be found at: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm
5. Payment
Information
Customer agrees that all monthly or yearly hosting fees are
recurring. The Customer agrees to authorize all recurring charges to
the account and any other balances incurred due to overages of
limits, additions of extras to the account, service charges and/or
any other fees. Customer agrees to supply appropriate payment for
the services received from HostConcept, in advance of the time period
during which such services are provided. Customer agrees that until
and unless the Customer notifies HostConcept with a valid cancellation
request for any or all services received, those services will
continue to be billed on a recurring basis. A valid cancellation
request must be one that is submitted with all the necessary
information through the Service Cancellation Form.
All payments must be in U.S. Dollars. Payment for any charges is due
upon the date of the invoice. Accounts which have balances
outstanding shall be deemed to be in default and subject to
termination of service. Any charge that is due and not paid from the
date of the invoice shall be subjected to a late fee of $10 per
month. Customer shall pay an additional $10 reactivation fee per
suspended account to reactivate the account. Customer shall be
responsible for all costs of collection, including reasonable
attorney's fees and court costs, in event of a default for
nonpayment of any amounts due HostConcept. HostConcept reserves the
right to change the monthly payment amount and any other charges at
any given time.
6. Backups and
Data Loss
Customer is solely responsible for backing up the data (residing on
Customer's account) on the Customer's personal computer. HostConcept
shall not be held liable and does not provide any sort of
compensation in the event that the data stored on the Customer's
account is corrupted or deleted (even if the cause was due to
negligence on HostConcept's part).
7.
Cancellations and Refunds
HostConcept reserves the right to cancel Customer's account at any
time with or without notice.
Any abuse of HostConcept's staff by Customer in any medium or format
will result in the suspension or termination of the Customer's
services. What constitutes an "abuse" shall be determined by
HostConcept in its sole and absolute discretion. In the event the
Customer's service is terminated for staff abuse, the Customer will
be given ten (10) days notice to find a new host.
Customer agrees that cancellation of service is not valid or
accepted unless submitted via the Service Cancellation Form, and
until customer is in receipt of confirmation from HostConcept that
cancellation is accepted. Customer agrees that default, non-payment
or reversal of payment does not constitute cancellation of service,
nor reduce the balance due on any amounts outstanding.
Money-Back Guarantee
The 15-day "unconditional" money-back guarantee only applies to
"non-reseller" Customer hosting accounts with a prepayment of at
least 1 year and above. Customer has 15 days from order date to be
eligible for a refund. Cancellation of Customer's account thereafter
will not be refunded with any unused time of the charged periods.
All eligible refunds will receive a refund of the charged periods
which includes a deduction of $10.00 or 6.0% transaction fee
(whichever is higher).
RES and PRI accounts or accounts purchased
at reseller price are not entitled to HostConcept's 15-day money-back
guarantee.
Only first-time accounts are eligible for a refund. For example, if
the Customer had an account with HostConcept during the last six (6)
calendar months, cancelled and signed up again, the Customer will
not be eligible for a refund or if the Customer have opened a second
account with us. Cancellation requests made after the first 15-days
will not qualify for
Customer will not receive a refund for any setup fees or any fees
other than the yearly recurring hosting fees. Fees resulting from
extra services or "add-ons" are not classified as yearly recurring
fees and thus are not refundable.
Customer accounts which HostConcept must suspend or cancel due to
violation of the Terms Of Service will waive the refund policy and
subject to charges for bandwidth and usage of resources.
Acceptance of this agreement, and/or use of Company's services,
constitutes an acceptance of any fines, penalties or service charges
which might arise out of violation of the terms in this agreement.
Company reserves the right to terminate accounts of Customers which,
in the Company's sole judgment, violate the terms of this agreement.
8. System
Resource Usage
If HostConcept's system administration team determines that a
customer's account is utilizing an unacceptable amount of system
resources, HostConcept may temporarily deactivate the account in
question. If HostConcept's staff deems necessary, an eviction notice
may be sent to the customer of an offending account providing them
with three (3) calendar days in which to either pay a high resource
usage fee or locate a new provider. This only occurs in extreme
cases.
Customers are not allowed to:
• Use 25% or more of system resources for longer then 90
seconds. There are numerous activities that could cause such
problems; these include: CGI scripts, FTP, PHP, HTTP, etc.
• Run any type of interactive real-time chat applications that
require server resources. Remotely-hosted services are fully
allowed.
• Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in
time on the server. This includes any and all daemons, such as IRCD.
• Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
network.
• Run any bit torrent application, tracker, or client.
• Run any type of audio/video streaming or downloading activities.
• Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities
• Run any gaming servers such as counter-strike, half-life,
battlefield1492, etc.
• Run cron entries with intervals of less than 30 minutes
When using PHP include functions for including a local file, include
the local file rather than the URL. Instead of include("http://yourdomain.com/include.php"),
use include("include.php")
Any attempts to undermine or cause harm to a HostConcept server or
customer of HostConcept is strictly prohibited. HostConcept will be the
sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.
Customers found in violation of this provision will be subject to
account deactivation without refund. HostConcept will turn all
available information about abuse incidents, including customer
contact data, over to the proper authorities and press charges.
9. Bandwidth
Usage
Every Customer's account is allocated a monthly bandwidth allowance.
This allowance varies depending on the hosting package the Customer
purchases. Should the Customer's account exceed the allocated
amount, HostConcept reserves the right to suspend the account (1)
until the start of the next allocation, or (2) until more bandwidth
is purchased by Customer at an additional fee, or (3) until the
Customer upgrades to a superior hosting package, or (4) terminate
the account and/or charge the Customer an additional fee for the
overages. Unused bandwidth in one month cannot be carried over to
the subsequent month.
10. Reseller:
Customer Responsibility
Customer with a RES or PRI account ("Reseller") is solely
responsible for supporting Reseller's Customers. HostConcept does not
provide support to Reseller's Customers. If a Reseller's Customer
contacts HostConcept, HostConcept reserve the right to place the
Reseller's account on hold until the Reseller can resume its
responsibility for its Customers. All support requests must be made
by the Reseller on their Customer's behalf for anonymity and
security reasons. The Reseller is also responsible for all content
stored or transmitted under its reseller account and the actions of
its Customers. HostConcept will hold the Reseller responsible for any
of its Customers actions that violate the the terms in this
agreement.
11. Shared
(non-reseller accounts)
Unless a HostConcept's Reseller, Customers may not sublease, sub host,
or give away control of any portion of space and/or resources of
Customer's account (this includes but is not limited to e-mail
accounts, storage space, ftp accounts, etc.), unless otherwise
stated on our website.
12. Price and
Feature Change
HostConcept reserves the right to change the prices and features of
its services at any given time.
13. Disclosure
to Law Enforcement
HostConcept may disclose any Customer information to law enforcement
agencies without prior and/or further consent or notification to the
Customer upon lawful request from such agencies. HostConcept will
cooperate fully with law enforcement agencies.
14.
Indemnification
Customer agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold
HostConcept harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses,
costs and claims, including reasonable attorney's fees asserted
against the HostConcept, its agents, its Customers, officers and
employees, that may arise or result from any service provided or
performed or agreed to be performed or any product sold by Customer,
its agents, employees or assigns. Customer agrees to defend,
indemnify and hold harmless the HostConcept against liabilities
arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any
products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with the
HostConcept; (2) any material supplied by Customer infringing or
allegedly infringing on the proprietary rights of a third party; (3)
copyright infringement and (4) any defective products sold to
Customers from the HostConcept's server.
15. Disclaimer
HostConcept shall not be responsible for any damages the Customer's
business may suffer. HostConcept makes no warranties of any kind,
expressed or implied for services HostConcept provide. HostConcept
disclaims any warranty or merchantability or fitness for a
particular purpose. This includes loss of data resulting from
delays, no deliveries, wrong delivery, and any and all service
interruptions caused directly and/or indirectly by HostConcept and its
employees. |
