Hostroute

Terms and Conditions

These terms and conditions form the basis of your contract with Hostroute so please read them carefully.

Who this affects

If you order services from Hostroute or any of its brands you are bound by these terms and conditions. If you are reselling our services then these terms and conditions also apply to your customers so you should make them aware of them.

How to agree to these terms and conditons by the customer

During the ordering process you were asked to read and agree to these terms and conditions. By submitting your order to Hostroute or its associated brands, you signify your agreement to them. If you do not agree to these Terms and Conditions please don't submit your order.

Why we need terms and conditions

Hostroute provides services to many customers. We have a responsibility to protect our services from the adverse effects of other peoples activities. We also have a responsibility to ensure that our customers web sites and email services are available for them to use. This means that we need to limit customers activities to those which are compatible with running a reliable and safe service. The following terms and conditions were designed to ensure these obligations are met.

Arbitration

Hostroute will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of the provisions described in this document.

Length of contract

If you pay your web hosting account monthly then your contract runs for one month and is renewed for another month when you make your next months payments. If you pay annually then your contract runs for 12 month from the date you first ordered. Th year or month runs and ends from the time you ordered (e.g. if you order annual hosting at 2PM on the 1st of January it will expire at 2PM on 1st of January the following year). Details of how to cancel the contract can be found below.

Server abuse

Any attempt to undermine or cause harm to a server, or customer, of Hostroute is strictly prohibited. Offenders will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The content of your web site

All services provided by Hostroute may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any United Kingdom, or any International laws is prohibited.

The following list is not exhaustive, but it will indicate the sort of material you are not permitted to host:

• copyright material.
• MP3 files containing copyright music, unless you created the music yourself and own the copyright.
• material we judge to be threatening or obscene.
• material protected by trade secret and other statute.
• pornography, including sites that links to such content.
• sex-related merchandising, including sex toys and sites that links to such content.
• escort services or anything related to prostitution.
• pirated software, also known as warez.
• hacker programs or archives, including sites that links to such content.
• hate propaganda.
• products designed to defraud others, e.g. satellite hacking equipment.
• promotion of illegal activities.
• content that may be damaging to our servers or any other server on the internet.
• Web sites promoted by spam or involved in spamming or selling spam related software or bulk email lists.
• IRC or IRC bots.

If you are unsure whether or not your site falls into these categories feel free to contact us with a description before you sign up for an account or publish material as an existing customer.

The content of your emails

Spam is "unsolicited junk e-mail sent to large numbers of people to promote products or services".

We have a zero tolerance policy towards spam and we monitor our mail servers to ensure they are not being used for spamming. If we allowed customers to spam then our mail servers would be blacklisted and none of our customers would be able to send and receive mail reliably. It is in all customers interests that we stop spam.

We do not permit:

• The sending of spam through our servers.
• Sending out spam through another providers mail server which includes links to web pages or email addresses hosted on our servers.
• Web sites promoted by spam or involved in spamming or selling spam related software or bulk email lists.

As delegated by our upstream providers, any sites using spam or selling of spam related software or bulk email content will be closed.

If you spam, we will see you doing it, your account will be terminated and you will not get a refund.

If you run a mailing list all the people you mail must have opted into the list. The list must not have been obtained from a third party. Your list server must use a system where an email is sent to the user when they sign up and they have to reply or click on a link to confirm their email address. This is known as "double opt in". The mailman program we provide with some hosting packages matches these requirements, as do many other mailing list systems. You must honour all unsubscribe requests within 24 hours.

If we receive a spam complaint about your account we will:

• Suspend your account to prevent any further violations.
• Contact you to inform you of our reinstatement policy (see below).
• Either reactivate the account or terminate it depending on your response.

Bulk email

We understand that bulk email is an important mechanism for keeping people informed. However, spamming (unsolicited advertising), from the Hostroute network, or spamvertising (unsolicited advertising of) sites hosted on the Hostroute network is STRICTLY prohibited.

Legitimate bulk email meets the following criteria:

• The recipient has confirmed his willingness to be added to the distribution list of the mailing, by responding to a verification email, or, otherwise, verifiably confirming permission. (Evidence of such must be retained and available by request.)
• Messages include: Valid headers, removal instructions, and information on the method by which the subscribed address was obtained.

All bulk email senders must post privacy policies, in association with the sending domains. Co-registration or list sharing is prohibited. If Hostroute approaches a client for evidence of confirmation, this request must be honoured within 48 hours.

Please read the Spamhaus mailing list guidelines which give more detal on verification.

Failure to meet the acceptable criteria for bulk mail may lead to immediate termination. Additionally, if such actions have caused mail servers or IP address ranges on the Hostroute network to be blacklisted, Hostroute reserves the right to assess a £100 charge to the customer account. This fee is set to cover administrative costs associated with removal from such lists.

Please make an effort to limit outgoing mail on your account to no more than 1000 pieces per hour. Large mailings are preferred to be sent from the hours of 12AM - 8AM.

Email SPAM / abuse reinstatement policy

If an account has been suspended for spam or abuse it will only be reinstated if the customer sends a "reinstatement request" to us by helpdesk ticket or email.

The reinstatement request must, in the customers own words, explain:

• Why the SPAM incident or other abuse incident occurred.
• If applicable, display understanding of why mass mailing is forbidden.
• Commit to the incident not occurring again.

Hostroute will be the sole arbiter in making a decision as to whether or not the account should be reinstated. In making a decision we shall take into consideration:

• The authenticity of the reinstatement request (is it really from the owner of the account which it purports to be).
• The nature of the response and the understanding and commitment exhibited therein.
• The history of abuse on that domain.
• To the extent known, the history of abuse by that customer across different domains.

Communication of the decision will be sent to the email from which the customers reinstatement request was sent.

Protecting server resources

Each server has a limited amount of processing power and memory. We have found most our customers to stay within "reasonable limits", but sometimes people do cause problems for other users by using too many resources.

If you are a shared hosting customer you may not:

• Provide hosting for third parties, unless you have a proper reseller account.
• Link to CGI scripts running on your account from other domains (e.g. banner exchanges).
• Use more than 10% of system resources on the server.
• Send more than 1000 emails in any hour.

We do not allow clients to install their own CGI or PHP chat rooms. These tend to be a large drain on system resources and we cannot allow it as an account option. However, we provide chat systems with some hosting accounts which you may use free of charge.

Bulletin boards are permitted, provided they stay within the 10% server usage limit explained above.

We allow you (subject to a suitable hosting plan) to run programs to run continually in the background (cron jobs). However, these must not overload the server or affect other users sites. We will remove cron jobs that are affecting server performance.

10% server resources rule

If your account regularly uses more than 10% of the servers processing resources we will suspend the domain account involved and send an email to the billing email address we have on file. This protects you because it means we will be removing other accounts which could jeopardize the operation of your web site.

The most common reasons we find that site start to use abnormal amounts of resources are:

• Poorly coded bulletin boards using flat file databases or bulletin boards which have been exploited by link spammers.
• Abnormally large amounts of incoming email, typically false bounce notifications when a customers email address has been spoofed by a spammer.
• Abnormal amounts of incoming spam.

We may offer dedicated server hosting for an additional charge or you may agree to remove the aspect of your account which is causing the problem. If no agreement is possible or your account is simply not hostable on a shared server we will send a backup of all the site data including databases on an IBM compatible PC format CD by postal delivery. We may, at our discretion, make available a downloadable copy of the account data for a period of 24 hours.

In the case of a suspension for processor usage there will be no refund of any prepaid hosting fees because, in our experience, if one customer has been crashing the server many other customers will already have cancelled their hosting accounts, demanded refunds and prevented us receiving future renewal payments or other business from them.

Specific programs/scripts not permitted

We do not permit the use of :

• The webmail part of PHP nuke or any of its derivatives as this allows anyone to send out email and will be abused by spammers.
• Formmail.pl from Matts Script archive. We have a secure version already installed on our servers, use it instead.
• Formmail.php. Use the secure formmail.cgi which we have already installed on the server

Telnet / SSH / shell access

Hostroute provides SSH (secure telnet) access on some accounts on request. SSH access is provided for the purpose of testing scripts and carrying out site maintenace. It is not provided for any other purpose and there is no warranty of any kind should SSH fail to function for off server connections or activities. We reserve the right to withdraw SSH access at any time without notification. Customers are not permitted to run CGI or PHP shell emulation programs.

Bandwidth usage

Each hosting plan we provide has a set amount of bandwidth available per month. We monitor this usage and if your site goes over the limit it will be suspended until the second day of the next month. If you do not wish to wait until the next month you can upgrade your hosting plan to one with more bandwidth. If you are concerned about going over your limit you should check your bandwidth usage in the control panel in the middle of the month and contact us if you think you will go over.

1. 30 day money back guarantee

Some of our hosting plans are supplied with a 30 day money back guarantee. This includes all the plans sold under the Hostroute, Hostroute.co.uk and Hostroute.ca brand names. MyQTH hosting and the free hosting provided by Nameroute does not have a money back guarantee. The full wording of the guarantee (where applicable) is given below:

2. 99.9% uptime guarantee

If your web site down time exceeds this level in any calendar month, we will offer a 5% credit to your account for every hour the site is down. In order to receive credit for your down time, you must submit a request on this form within 30 days of the occurrence.

Conditions:

1. Hostroute will issue a refund to the customers account in the event of a Service Outage due to the failure of one of the following pieces of equipment owned and operated by Hostroute or one of its suppliers; the ATM Network, the LAN or a web hosting server. For purposes of this guarantee, Service Outages shall be defined as 10 consecutive minutes of web site (HTTP) inaccessibility as measured by our independent monitoring services.
2. Hostroute will not be held responsible for Service Outages resulting from equipment not owned or operated by Hostroute or its suppliers. This includes, but is not limited to, Internet NAP failures or congestion (Problems with one specific dial up ISP etc.) and non Hostroute backbone failures. Additionally, Hostroute will not be held responsible for delays in the registration or transfer of a domain due to registry related issues, for outages resulting from malfunctioning customer scripts or applications that are installed by the customer, nor for unusual traffic spikes or "denial of service" attacks on customer web sites.
3. Refunds will be issued upon request by the customer and upon determination that a Service Outage, as defined by this guarantee, has occurred. Refund requests must be made within thirty (30) days of the time period during which the Service Outage took place. Regardless of the number of outages, all refunds are limited to a maximum of one month's hosting service fees and do not include excess usage fees, setup fees or other non-standard recurring charges. Additionally, Service Outages will not include downtime due to Acts of God, nor for outside security breaches. Finally, Hostroute will not be held liable for Service Outage damages resulting in the loss of prospective profits or anticipated sales or as a result of expenditures, investments, or commitments in connection with the business.

Please note that this is not an insurance scheme. We do not cover problems relating to the company that provides your internet connection and we do not cover you for attacks by hackers,denial of service attacks or other criminal activities. It is in your own interests to consider business continuity insurance if you rely on your web site for commercial purposes.

IP Addresses and DNS delegation

We provide IP address information in your welcome email. This is provided to allow access to the web site and control panel until the domain name has been transferred to our DNS servers. Customers are not permitted to link to their site or address via an IP address based link once the transfer is complete. This is for your own safety as it prevents links becoming out dated if we change your IP address.

All customers must change their domain names' DNS servers to those specified on their welcome email. We do not permit customers to use external DNS management tools because of the likelihood of failure if we change an IP address. If you decide to use an external DNS service then you agree to absolve Hostroute of all liability should your site fail due to DNS errors or the IP address changing at a later date.

All IP addresses remain the property of Hostroute or its upstream providers and are provided according to ARIN and RIPE rules and only when required for technical reasons.

DNS modifications

We do not provide DNS management services. If you require changes to DNS records (A, MX etc) we will do our best to carry them out but we cannot provide a warranty that the changes will continue to work in the future.

Billing

Monthly Billing:

We DO NOT send out invoices. All credit cards are billed automatically on the anniversary of the date the account was ordered. So if a customer orders hosting on the 15th of the month they would be billed on the 15th every month. We believe this is sufficient advance notification of payment due. It is the clients responsibility to ensure that they have sufficient credit to cover this transaction. In the event that a card is declined for any reason we will send an e-mail with instructions for submitting a new credit card. If new card details are not supplied within 24 hours we will suspend the account. If new card details are still not received within 7 days we will delete the account.

If your web site is important, you are strongly recommended to pay annually (for which you will receive a discount).

Annual Billing:

If you pay annually we will not bill your card automatically. We will send a renewal notice to the email address you provided us with when you signed up approximately one month before the renewal date. However, because 40% of our customers do not tell us when they change email addresses and because many ISP's spam filters remove emails which mention web hosting services we cannot guarantee delivery of these emails. We recommend that you make a note in your diary one year from the date you ordered the hosting originally. If we do not receive the renewal payment by the due date then we will suspend the account. If payment is still not received within 7 days we will assume the accout is no longer required and delete it.

Refunds

Regular Hosting Clients:

Should you become unsatisfied with our services within the first 30 days of your account activation, Hostroute will refund your hosting fee subject to the money back guarantee terms listed above.

Dedicated servers:

The 30 day money back guarantee does not apply to dedicated servers because of the time and cost involved in setting up the servers.

Cancellation Refunds:

We DO NOT refund partial monthly or annual hosting fees for accounts cancelled after 30 days from the date of activation. For example, if you cancel an annual account after 6 months you will not get a refund of 6 months hosting fees.

Account Cancellations

By ordering services from us you agree to abide by these cancellation procedures. Before we cancel an account we need to make sure it really is the site owner requesting the cancellation.

To cancel an account please fill out this form: http://www.hostroute.com/legacy/accountcentral/cancelaccount.html

Accounts will be closed the same day, we do not schedule closures for the end of the current months hosting. Accounts are only be considered cancelled once we have conformed by e-mail that we have cancelled it for you. If you have not received conformation from us it means your account is still open and you will be billed for all services provided until we have given such confirmation.

Hostroute will not be held liable for the non arrival of your request to cancel an account. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have received confirmation of the account closure from us.

When an account is cancelled, all of its files are deleted and are not recoverable.

Extent of service

The service provided under this contract is the one listed on our web site on the day you ordered the service. For description purposes terms like PHP, Perl and Mysql refer to the versions of PHP, Perl and Mysql installed at the time you ordered. Although we regularly update these with securoty patches no commitment to upgrading to newer versions is intended or implied. The reasons for this are that some customers sites would not work with newer versions therefore upgrading to suit another customer's requirements could stop their site from working, and it may cause problems with some of our preinstalled scripts and software.

Limitations of support

We want your web site to be a success, because that way you will want to renew your account and continue using our service. We will do our best to help you so please contact technical support if you have any difficulties. However, customers sometimes get confused about what constitutes a realistic level of technical support so we need to explain this in detail.

Our technical support is limited to the service as originally provided (web hosting and email).

We will not provide support with:

• Any adaptations you have made to our service to take it away from its original specification.
• Scripts you have installed or written (CGI, Perl, PHP etc).
• Web design issues or the content of your web site.
• Problems with software not provided by us (e.g. FTP programs, web design programs or email software).
• Modifications you have made to scripts installed using our control panel (e.g. the "CGI center").

Support is provided via an online support manuals and our technical support department (via our Helpdesk).

We provide support in the English language only and we strongly recommend you have good conversational English before you sign up for any services with us.

Hostroute will not be held liable for any loss or damage caused by your inability to use the services (just as a car manufacturer could not be held liable for you being unable to drive).

Data integrity and backups

We will endeavour to keep backups of your data in order to restore the server if we have a disk failure. However, we provide no guarantee that we will be able to do so. It is in your own interests to keep a copy of your web site backed up on your own computer. You can do this by simply uploading changes from a copy you hold or by using the backup tool provided with most of our web hosting accounts.

If you have an accident with your site we will do our best to help, but we may not be able to restore your files for you.

It is impossible to have too many backups. Keeping a local copy at your location is the best way to protect your data.

If you are a dedicated server customer then we do not keep any backups of your files. If you have paid us for a backup drive then you have the hardware and software necessary for making backups, but it is your responsibility to make sure you have it turned on. Again, we can make no guarantees about he integrity of backups.

Virus Scanning

Some of our hosting plans include virus scanning. If you have ordered a service that includes this feature we will scan your incoming mail for viruses and reject any email which appears to contain one. We will update our virus definitions on a daily basis.

However, we cannot guarantee to remove all viruses all of the time. For example, viruses hidden within certain types of attachment may not be detected. Viruses in emails forwarded from other domains may not trigger the virus scan as it goes through our mail transport agent. You should still have an anti virus program running on your own computer because it can check your whole system, not just your emails.

Hostroute will not be held liable for any damage caused by viruses received through emails received via our servers.

Controlling Incoming Spam

We provide tools to help you control spam on some of our accounts. These include Spam Assassin and Box Trapper. Customers using Box Trapper should be aware that it will stop them receiving renewal notices from us so they should add automailer@hostroute.com to their whitelist.

Hostroute can not be held liable for spam received in your account but there are a number of things you can do to prevent it being received.

The main reasons for people receiving spam are:

• They have published their email address on a web site or signed a guest book where it has been harvested (if this happens to you then try and remove the email address from the web to prevent it being harvested again).
• They are using the default (catch all) email account and spammers are sending to things like webmaster@ and postmaster@ (if this is happening then set up a separate email account and set the default account to forward to :fail: which will reduce your level of incoming spam.

If you are receiving a lot of spam using spam assassin (where provided) will help reduce the level. Instructions for this can be found in our support manuals (accessible from our support page).

In some cases the level of incoming spam for one domain can be so high that we have to take special steps to protect our network. This is normally done by blocking incoming mail from servers listed in blacklists which track known commercial spam operations (e.g. Spamhaus). However, we do not use blanket or known inaccurate blacklists as that could cause you to lose real mail. In some cases we will also block known sources of viruses. In extreme cases we may block all mail for a given domain or suggest other alternatives for mail delivery to protect our networks.

Passwords

We will provide you with a username and password for accessing your account. This will be sent to the email address you entered into our order form. If you lose your password we can resend it to the same email address. If your email address has changed you will need to supply proof of your identity before we will provide the password. The reason for this is that a large percentage of password requests we receive are from people trying to gain unauthorized access to customers accounts. It is in your interests that we verify your identity before issuing a password.

Correspondence

In the event of written notification of account termination being sent by Hostroute to a customer, any such communication sent by normal post shall be considered received by the customer seven days after it was posted.

Threats & Blackmail

In the past some customers have attempted to leverage free services by making threats against Hostroute, its staff or networks.

For example: we do not provide support with building of web sites but we have been threatened by customers that if we don't build their web site for them they will seek to harm our business.

We deplore this activity because of the negative effect it has on our staff and other customers who pay for the services the require.

We take these sort of threats very seriously. Making threats will result in your account being cancelled without notice.

Domain name registration

Where a domain name has been registered as part of the service provided by Hostroute the customer is bound by additional terms and conditions which were displayed during the registration process. Some of these are enforced by the different domain name registries and you should be aware that you may have a contract with them as well as with us. We register all domains with he customer as registrant. Hostroute may be listed as technical, admin (and sometimes billing) contact for some domain names but normally we enter the customers details into all of these fields as well. These contact details can be changed for most domains by going to http://www.nameroute.com/change but some registries may restrict what fields can be changed.

Domain name registration fees are not refundable because the registries will not refund us. It is the customers responsibility to ensure that all names are spelled correctly prior to ordering domain names.

Change of domain names

Domain names cannot be changed once they are registered. This is because the domain registries will not refund us once a domain name is registered.

We can change the domain name associated with your hosting account but you will need to register the new domain name first. Changing the domain name may require your account to be deleted and it may cause disruption to your web site. The old domain name will stop working. We reserve the right not to allow domain changes.

Limits of support

Hostroute provides support with server side problems only. These include, non functioning of facilities provided with your hosting account and any faults which exist on the server your site is hosted on.

Customers are responsible for designing and maintaining their own web sites. We can not provide advice or support for any programming or web design issues like FrontPage, CGI, PHP or ASP

Support for your web design software should be provided by the company which supplied the software.

Refusal of Service

Hostroute reserves the right to refuse, cancel, or suspend services at our sole discretion.

Sub domains

If you have a web site without a domain name of your own which has a subdomain based on a domain name we own, you have no rights to transfer that domain name to another provider. Hostroute reserves the right to transfer any sub domain in domains of its possession to an alternative domain.

Indemnification

By ordering services from us you agree to indemnify and hold harmless Hostroute from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Limitation of liability

Your use of Hostroute's services are at your sole risk. All Hostroute services are provided on an "AS IS" basis WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, CONSTRUCTIVE, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, NON INFRINGEMENT OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so this exclusion may not apply to you in full.

Hostroute makes no guarantee of availability of service and reserves the right to change, withdraw, suspend, or discontinue any functionality or feature of the Hostroute service.

The formation, construction and interpretation of this agreement shall be controlled by the laws of Scotland. The U.N. Convention of Contracts for the International Sale of Goods is expressly excluded from any interpretation of this Agreement.

Legal jurisdiction

These terms and conditions are exclusively governed by Scottish law and by ordering services from Hostroute you submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Scottish courts.

Legal disputes

If you intimate that you are entering into legal action against us we will suspend your account until the legal dispute has been resolved.

Explanation of the above

We will do our best to keep the service running reliably but we will not be held responsible for any losses you incur through your use of it. If you are in business you should ensure you have adequate business insurance and we recommend you contact an insurance broker.

Changes to these terms and conditions

Hostroute reserves the right to change or amend these Terms of Service at any time without prior notice.

Enforcement

Violations of these Terms of Service should be referred by email to abuse@hostroute.com. All complaints will be investigated promptly. Violations of these terms and conditions can be ground for immediate account deactivation without refund.

Data protection

Some files held by Hostroute are covered by the UK Data Protection Act. You can find out more about your rights in relation to these files here www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk.