Acceptable Usage Policy

In order to protect the stability of our service (“Services”), we require clients (“you”) to adhere to our Acceptable Usage Policy (“AUP” or “Policy”).  This Policy is designed to ensure that we can provide all customers with a reliable service through efficient management of resources and to make sure that our Services are used as intended.  Please read it thoroughly before using our Services.  We reserve the right to update and modify this Policy at any time.

Last updated on: [30/10/2024]

1. Your General Obligations on Acceptable Usage

   1. It should be legal.  You must not use your website or any of our Services to promote or distribute any material or content that is illegal (under any current or future legislation) in either the country where you reside (“Your Country”), where the content is hosted (the server location for your account), or under Australian, New Zealand, UK, US or EU law.  You should be aware that the internet is a global communications network and what may be legal in Your Country may be illegal elsewhere and leave you, or us, liable to prosecution in another country.

   2. It should not violate third party intellectual property rights.  It is your sole responsibility to ensure that the content and materials on any website owned or operated by you only contains material that you have created or have permission to use.  You are responsible for the content they publish and must ensure it does not violate copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights (“IP Rights”).  You must have the right to store, use, and publish files from the copyright holder.  Any copyrighted material may be deleted without warning.

   3. You are responsible for IP disputes.  It is your sole responsibility to resolve any dispute involving IP Rights associated with your website or web service.  You agree to indemnify us against all costs, including legal costs, of defending any claim against us from any third party regarding your use of IP rights in relation to any claims made against you or us worldwide. 

   4. Our investigation.  We reserve the right to undertake investigation of financial transaction data, identification documents and content stored on our servers if potential abuse is brought to our attention and to remove or block public access to any content on our servers at any time and for any reason.  Any accounts found to be abusive, contain illegal content or otherwise break our terms of service, in our sole discretion, will be liable for immediate suspension or termination.

   5. Prohibited Activities.  You are prohibited from the following activities:

      1. Any form of illegal or malicious activity, including but not limited to hacking, phishing, spamming, botnets, port scanning or distribution of malware;

      2. Any activity that violates the privacy or security of others, including unauthorized access to data or systems; 

      3. Operating VPN or proxy services on any of our Services; 

      4. Any of the activities elaborated in this Policy under each category hereafter as not permissible and/or prohibited. 

2. Acceptable Resource Usage

   • 2.1. Resource allocation.  Users are allocated a certain amount of resources based on their chosen hosting plan.  Resources include but are not limited to bandwidth, disk space, CPU, and memory.  Resource allocations are intended for normal website operation and usage.  You may use allocated resources for hosting websites, emails, and related services within the scope of their hosting plan and this Policy.

   • 2.2. No excessive consumption allowed.  You are not allowed to excessively consume the resources and adversely affect server performance or otherwise disrupt the quality of service for other users.   We reserve the right to monitor resource usage and take appropriate action against you if you use excessive resources.  Actions may include limited resources, suspension or termination of service, with or without notice, at the discretion of us.

   • 2.3. We reserve the right to impose limits on the number of email accounts, inbox size, database size, account disk usage, bandwidth/data transfer, and any other resource usage for accounts that violate this Policy.

3. Acceptable Shared Hosting Usage

   1. Fair use limit.  Fair use limits enable us to maintain the speed, reliability and integrity of our services for all users.  You are bound to the following limits: 

      • (a) Multimedia, including, but not limited to, video and images should not exceed 10GB in total per hosting account;

      • (b) Email account disk usage should not exceed 20GB per mailbox;  

      • (c) In a shared hosting account, a database using more than 10GB disk usage shall be considered excessive;

      • (d) Local generated backups must be kept to a minimum.  We reserve the right to permanently delete backups in order to maintain effective operation of our shared services;

      • (e) Software downloads created by the account holder should not exceed 1GB total.  We may require the use of a CDN service for download distribution.

      • (f) Reseller accounts with ‘unlimited’ disk usage, but using more than 400GB disk usage in total, will be required to ensure sub-account overall disk usage does not exceed 50GB per account.

      • (g) Using our Services as an offsite backup facility is prohibited;

      • (h) File storage, including self-hosted file sync services (e.g., NextCloud, OwnCloud, Pydio, Sparkleshare) is prohibited;

      • (i) File/Software download sites or repositories are not allowed;

   2. Adult content.  If you intend to upload adult content of any type onto your website or web service, you must contact us prior to placing any order.  The determination of whether the contents are legally defined “adult content” or not will be made pursuant to any and all applicable law, considering Your Country, server location and any other circumstance in relation to your account at our sole discretion.  

   3. Regulated industries.  We reserve the right to conduct an additional verification process for websites that we deem as regulated such as financial services, pharmaceutical, or lottery, to name a few.  We may ask for an explicit proof that you are legally authorized to operate such business in Your Country or any other jurisdiction that your business reaches through the website, as required by any and all applicable law.  In case we fail to verify that you are operating in line with the legal requirements, we reserve the right to terminate our Services immediately.

   4. Mailbox usage.  We may provide the ability to send e-mail using SMTP.  This is designed for day-to-day communication needs.  All outbound mail is scanned by a cloud-based spam filtering system.  In relation to mailboxes, you should be aware of the below: 

      • (a) Mailboxes are intended for direct use by you as the hosting plan owner and should not be resold or offered for use by third parties.

      • (b) You are responsible for managing your mailbox size to ensure compliance with the fair use limit.  

      • (c) In an effort to safeguard overall server performance, we apply reasonable email sending limits inline with normal email usage in order to protect the integrity of our email Services.  

      • (d) We reserve the right to limit the volume of email messages you may deliver through our Services.  We may, at our sole discretion, limit email volume by queuing users’ email messages internally, or by temporarily rejecting requests to send email through our Services.  We may block any message users attempt to submit using our Services, for any reason whatsoever, with or without notifying the users of such blocking.  Under no circumstances will we be liable to you or any other party for any direct, indirect, special, economic or consequential damages, including without limitation any lost profits, arising out of email blocking or queuing.

   5. Visibility of files.  All files uploaded to a domain on our servers must be visible and accessible by visiting that domain, except for hidden files needed to operate the website.  We reserve the right to delete files not meeting these criteria without notice.  You are responsible for ensuring your uploaded files are accessible and compliant with this Policy.

4. Acceptable Email Usage

   1. Zero-tolerance policy against spam.  We have a zero-tolerance policy against spam and sending bulk, unsolicited e-mail is prohibited.  Customers who abuse the email service will be notified that their behavior is unacceptable and may have their accounts suspended, terminated or blocked. 

   2. By purchasing the Services, you agree to the following: 

      • (a) not to send emails that might cause annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety to a recipient;

      • (b) not to send any emails likely to cause distress or any material which is offensive, indecent, obscene, menacing or in any way unlawful;

      • (c) to have a clear opt out policy in all non-transactional communications;

      • (d) not to use our mail services or network to send email to any user who does not wish to receive it;

      • (e) not to use our mail services or network to send unsolicited email, in bulk (commonly known as 'spam') or individually;

      • (f) not to use our mail services or network with intent to deprive others of service ('mail bomb');

      • (g) not to use false mail headers or alter the headers of mail messages in such a way as to conceal the identity of the sender;

      • (h) not to use any email address that you are not authorized to use;

      • (i) to ensure that any email servers connected to our network and operated by you are not configured to allow 'open relay';

      • (j) to take full responsibility for your own email reputation;

      • (k) not to take any action that would put you or us in breach of obligations under the laws and regulations of Australia and New Zealand, US federal or state laws, including CAN-SPAM and relevant data protection laws or the EU General Data Protection Regulation or any other legal requirement applicable to the jurisdiction where your email service is hosted.

5. Reseller Accounts

   1. For resellers who suspend a resold web hosting account, please note that we reserve the right to terminate the suspended account after 60 days.  We do not keep any backups. 

   2. Resellers are encouraged to communicate promptly with their clients regarding account suspensions to avoid any unintended data loss.

6. Notification and Resolution

   1. In case you violate this Policy.  In the event of resource abuse or violation of this Policy, we reserve the right to take immediate measures, including, but not limited to, suspension or termination of the service, and notify you.  We may provide you with an opportunity to remedy the situation.  Timely resolution is expected, and failure to comply may result in limitations being placed on the Service, suspension or termination of Services.

   2. Grace period.  In case of fair use limit violations, you may be provided with a grace period to rectify it.  Where possible we aim to provide 24 to 72 hours to resolve fair use violations before suspending services.  However, we reserve the right to, at our sole discretion, immediately suspend service where not doing so would negatively impact other users.  Failure to comply with the fair use limits specified in this Policy within the grace period may result in further action, imposing limits on inbox size, which may prevent new emails from being received while the inbox size is over the fair use limit. 

7. Indemnification

   1. You for yourself and all of your representatives, successors and assignees, hereby fully release, remise, and forever discharge us and all of our affiliates, and all officers, agents, employees, and representatives, and all of their personal representatives, predecessors, successors and assigns, for, from and against any and all claims, liens, demands, causes of action, controversies, offsets, obligations, losses, damages and liabilities of every kinds and character whatsoever, including, but not limited to, any action omission, misrepresentation or other basis of liability founded either in tort or contract and the duties arising thereunder, whether known or unknown, relating to or arising out of, or in any way connected with or resulting from, the Services and use thereof, including, but not limited to, the provision of the our Services and its agents and employees. 

   2. You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless us and any of our contractors, agents, employees, officers, directors, shareholders, affiliates and assigns from any loss, liability, damages or expense, including reasonable attorney’s fees, arising out of (i) any breach of any representation or warranty provided by this AUP or any other agreement that has been incorporated by reference herein; (ii) the Services or your use of the Services, including without limitation infringement or dilution by you or by anything using the Services from your computer; (iii) any IP Rights of any person or entity; (iv) any information or data you supplied to us, including, without limitation, any misrepresentation in your registration, if applicable; (v) the inclusion of metatags or other elements in any website created for you or by you via the Services; (vi) any information, material, or services available on your website hosted by us; or (vii) any negligence or willful misconduct by you, or any allegation that your account infringes a third person’s IP Rights, or misappropriates a third person’s trade secrets. 

   3. This indemnification is in addition to any indemnification required of you elsewhere.  Should we be notified of a pending lawsuit, or receive notice of the filing of a lawsuit, we may seek a written confirmation from you concerning your obligation to defend, indemnify us.  Such written confirmation may include the posting of performance bonds or other guarantees.  Your failure to provide such a confirmation may be considered a breach of this Policy.  You still agree that we shall have the right to participate in the defense of any such claim through counsel of its own choosing.  You agree to notify us of any such claim promptly in writing and allow us to control the proceedings.  You agree to cooperate fully with us during such proceedings.  

   4. The terms of this section survive any termination or cancellation of your contract with us.   

8. Revision of Acceptable Use Policy:

   1. Please note that we reserve the right to update and modify this Policy at any time.  While we will make reasonable efforts to notify customers of significant changes, it is ultimately the responsibility of customers to regularly review this Policy for compliance.  We encourage all customers to stay informed about any updates or modifications to ensure ongoing adherence to our policies.

   2. If you have any questions or concerns regarding these updates, please feel free to reach out to our support team through our customer support portal.