HostWP PTY LTD strives to provide the best possible service to all our customers, but we will not tolerate any unlawful activity or abuse on our servers. We respect freedom of speech and expression unless it is harmful to others. These Terms and Conditions are strictly enforced to protect you, other HostWP clients and HostWP PTY LTD against such harm.**

Privacy Policy

Our Privacy Policy forms part of our Terms and Conditions of service, and all clients agree to be bound by its provisions and requirements.

Data Processing Agreement

Our Client Data Processing Agreement forms part of our Terms and Conditions of service, and all clients agree to be bound by its provisions and requirements.

Payment Policies, Fees, and Refunds

Full payment is due on the first day of the month, for that month. You will receive an invoice no later than the 25th of the previous month. Billing will continue until you cancel your hosting account. Payment is only possible by EFT (internet banking), debit order, PayPal, or by credit card (Payfast).
If paying by PayPal, the amount you are charged will be in United States Dollars, and could be more than the Rand amount stated on the invoice. If you choose to pay via PayPal, then you agree that this difference in Rand amount is unavoidable, acceptable, and non-refundable.
Cash payments and cheque deposits attract a bank charge of R50 which will be passed on to any client making payment by cash or cheque deposit.
Domain registration fees, VPS and Dedicated Server rental and setup fees, backup fees, software installation fees, and deposits for website design work are not refundable under any circumstances, for any reason whatsoever. Domain renewal fees are subject to change without notice. All hosting fees are subject to change with one month’s notice.
If you have received a free domain through a HostWP promotion, then the registration fees for that domain are payable in full if you cancel your hosting account before 12 months have passed.
Our 90-day refund excludes any bank charges incurred by HostWP PTY LTD for receiving or refunding your payment. Our 90-day refund applies to new clients only. Our 90-day refund does not apply to VPS hosting fees or Dedicated Server rental fees.
Payments for Reseller Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, and High Availability Hosting are due by the first of the month. If payment for these hosting services is not in our bank account by the first of the month, we reserve the right to suspend or terminate the hosting package without notice, and to charge an unsuspension fee of up to R250 for suspended hosting accounts or a restoration fee of up to R2500 to restore terminated hosting accounts from backup.
Reseller account fees for sub-accounts are charged for the previous month’s usage, not in advance. Terminating accounts after your monthly invoice is generated will not affect that invoice.

Late Payment

Late payment will result in the suspension of your hosting account, and an unsuspension fee of R100 may be levied. Clients who regularly make late payments may be required to sign a debit order mandate allowing HostWP to debit their bank account or credit card.
Shared hosting accounts will be suspended if they are still unpaid 3 days after the due date and terminated after 7 days of non-payment. If an account needs to be restored from backup after termination, a data recovery fee of up to R250 will be levied.
“Unpaid” means that the funds do not reflect in our bank account.
Servers will be terminated on the first day of the month if payment is not received by the last day of the preceding month. It is not possible to restore a server which has been terminated.

Account Cancellation

You may cancel your hosting services at any time in your client area. No refunds or pro-rata refunds will be given, under any circumstances, except for new clients within the first 90 days of first signing up with HostWP.
If you are cancelling within the first 90 days of signing up, and wish to take advantage of our three-month money-back guarantee, then you will need to send a cancellation email with the reasons for your cancellation to billing@hostwp.co
The 90-day money-back guarantee does NOT apply to VPS hosting fees, Dedicated Server rental fees, Reseller Accounts, domain registration fees, backup fees, software installation fees, and deposits for website design work. The 90-day money-back guarantee may be declined at our sole discretion.

Account Termination

When necessary, usually in cases of spam and server abuse, HostWP PTY LTD reserves the right to terminate a hosting account at any time, for any reason (which reason may or may not be provided at our sole discretion).
If an account is terminated, the balance of any hosting fees will not be refunded under any circumstances. If an account is terminated, it will not be possible to access any files or emails which were stored on the server at the time of termination. For this reason, it is important that you make use of the tools provided in your control panel to make regular backups of your hosting account(s).

Indemnification Policy

You agree to use all HostWP PTY LTD services and facilities at your own risk. HostWP PTY LTD specifically disclaims all warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.
In no event shall HostWP PTY LTD be liable for any loss, or loss of data either stored on our servers or stored as backups or accessed via remote support on your local hardware or devices, or other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential or other damages.
You agree that you shall defend, indemnify, save and hold HostWP PTY LTD harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs, and claims, including reasonable attorney’s fees asserted against HostWP PTY LTD, 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 you, your agents, employees or assigns.
You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless HostWP PTY LTD against liabilities arising out of:

Any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with HostWP PTY LTD’s server;
Any material supplied by you infringing or allegedly infringing on the proprietary rights of a third party;
Copyright infringement;
Any defective products sold to customers from HostWP PTY LTD’s server.
HostWP PTY LTD shall be the sole judge of what violates this policy.

Server Abuse Policy

If we determine that any site on our servers is using too much of the server’s resources and therefore abusing the server, we have the right to suspend that domain without any notice. It is then up to you to contact us and formulate a plan to get that domain activated again.
We are quick to suspend any domain that abuses the server’s resources due to the shared nature of the server and the negative impact an abusing domain has on other domains on the same server.

No Mass Email Marketing Allowed!

We do not allow mass email marketing sites on our servers and no mass emailing of any kind whatsoever, including email newsletters, is allowed on our network. It doesn’t matter if it’s “opt-in email marketing,” we simply do not allow sites of that nature to be hosted on our network. Sites such as “safe lists” and “free email” are also strictly prohibited. We reserve the right to shutdown such sites without prior notice.

Email Services and Email Security

HostWP PTY LTD uses software tools (such as, but not limited to, SpamAssassin and Imunify360) to filter all incoming and outgoing emails for SPAM, viruses, malware, phishing, and other malicious use. Any email which triggers these software tools will be quarantined and not delivered to the recipient. We provide tools such as MailScanner and MailControl to our users to see which emails addressed to them have been blocked, and to release those emails which are not SPAM. The TRACK DELIVERY tool can be used to find SENT emails which have been blocked. All HostWP PTY LTD clients agree that HostWP PTY LTD is not liable for any losses incurred as a result of such automated SPAM filtering.
Clients agree that HostWP PTY LTD is not liable if their email account’s password is compromised, that they are solely responsible for their own email password security, and that they will choose strong, secure email passwords when creating email accounts. Clients further agree that they will ensure that the devices used to connect to the email accounts they create on any HostWP PTY LTD server will be kept free of malware and viruses through regular scanning with appropriate antivirus/anti-malware software.

SPAM Policy

HostWP PTY LTD has a zero-tolerance, anti-Spamming policy. Under this policy, we prohibit Spam, or any unsolicited commercial email, from being sent either:
– over the HostWP PTY LTD network, by customers or any other users of the HostWP PTY LTD network;
– and/or over any network if the message sent advertises or mentions a site hosted on a HostWP PTY LTD server.

We react quickly and seriously to violations, and we further reserve the right to suspend or terminate the services, without prior notice, of any customer disregarding this policy.
If spam sent through your account results in a mail server being blacklisted, we reserve the right to charge you for any blacklist removal fees that may be incurred.
Sending unsolicited commercial email (a.k.a. “spam”), cross-posting messages to a large number of Usenet groups, posting obscene or threatening messages while using or referring to a HostWP PTY LTD email address or website URL is prohibited.
The use of HostWP PTY LTD servers as a mail drop for responses to activities described above is also prohibited.
If your hosting account is involved in spamming activities, and your account is subsequently terminated, then you do not have the right to a refund, even if this is within the first 90 days of signing up with HostWP PTY LTD. This also includes refunds for additional services or products, such as installations of software, SSL certificates, and dedicated IP addresses purchased for that hosting account.
If you have any complaints or comments regarding Spam on our network, please direct them via email to abuse@hostwp.co

All services provided by HostWP PTY LTD may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data, or material in violation of the laws of South Africa, Germany, the United Kingdom, or United States Federal, State, Provincial, or City law is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, trademark, intellectual property, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret and other statutes without proper authorization.
The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless HostWP PTY LTD from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party. Sites that promote any illegal activity or present content that may be damaging to HostWP PTY LTD servers or any other server on the internet are prohibited. Links to such materials are also prohibited.

Examples of unacceptable content or links:

• Pirated software
• Hacker programs or archives
• Warez sites
• Online gambling
• Illegal pornography

HostWP PTY LTD does not allow the hosting of web pages, links, or content of any nature whatsoever which promotes or links to the websites of its competitors. Any illegal activity, online gambling, spamming, or hacking will result in your site being shut down. HostWP PTY LTD will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of the Content Policy provision.

Disk Space Usage

The disk space allocated to a hosting account may only be used to store the files required to display and manage your website and its content, and emails for up to 30 days. HostWP PTY LTD reserves the right to delete any files (such as backups, ISOs, software files, etc.) stored in your hosting account and not required for the operation of your website, and all emails older than 30 days, without notice.

Scripts and Software Policy

You are free to install and use any scripts you wish (as long as they are not on our banned scripts list, see below), however, we reserve the right to disable any script or software in your hosting account that affects normal server operation or service to other HostWP PTY LTD customers. HostWP PTY LTD is not responsible for any scripts or software that you use in your hosting. It is not our responsibility to ensure your scripts or software functions correctly. Please don’t expect our support techs to troubleshoot aspects of the scripts or software that you use on your sites hosted on our servers. HostWP PTY LTD provides technical support for the server and server-related software. Any scripts included in your Control Panel for use or installation are 3rd Party scripts and are not supported by HostWP PTY LTD, however, you may ask for assistance (which we are usually willing and able to give) by submitting a support ticket.

The following scripts are banned due to the potential harm they can cause to other sites on the same server:

• Torrentflux (and similar scripts)
• Rapidleech (and similar scripts)
• AlienForm (all versions)
• formmail.pl
• Greymatter (all versions)
• Open Webmail
• Ikonboard (all versions)
• IRC Egg Drops & IRC related programs
• Chat software
• lstmrge.cgi
• Proxy Servers & Scripts (EX: nph-proxy)
• Telnet Scripts, Telnet Alternatives (cgitelnet.pl)
• The Anonymizer
• UltimateBBS (all versions)
• YABB + YABB se (all versions)

Any script that uses/processes a massive number of flat files or large flat file databases.
If we find banned scripts active in your account, we will suspend your account and disable or remove the offending script and send you an email notifying you of our actions.
The following scripts are not allowed on our shared hosting servers: WordPress MultiSite (network) and similar scripts, if used to provide a free (or paid) blogging service.

Any script that uses/processes a massive number of flat files or large flat file databases.
If we find banned scripts active in your account, we will suspend your account and disable or remove the offending script and send you an email notifying you of our actions.
The following scripts are not allowed on our shared hosting servers: WordPress MultiSite (network) and similar scripts, if used to provide a free (or paid) blogging service.

Refusal of Service

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason not prohibited by law. We reserve the right to terminate service to any customer for any reason not prohibited by law.
Any deliberate attempt to cause damage to HostWP PTY LTD’s servers, the HostWP PTY LTD network, or any other internet servers will result in immediate account deactivation without prior notice. No refund is given in this case.

Free Domain Promotions

When using a promotional code for a free domain bundled with a new hosting account, the domain is free if the hosting is kept active for a minimum of 12 months. If the hosting account is canceled before then, the domain registration fee becomes payable for the domain.

Backups

Full server backups are made weekly, excluding emails which are never backed up. No guarantees are made of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the integrity of these backups. Backups are made for server restoration purposes only. It is the client’s responsibility to maintain local copies of their website’s files, databases, and other content or to make use of our Automated Backup service.

Uptime Guarantee

We guarantee that our network of servers will be available 99.9% of the time in any given month, excluding scheduled maintenance. This means that you should not experience network downtime of more than 43 minutes in any month counted from the first day of every month.
Network uptime includes functioning of all network infrastructure, including routers, switches, firewall, and cabling, but excludes services or software running on your server or hardware for self-managed hosting services.
If network uptime is less than 99.9% (in other words, downtime exceeds 43 minutes in a given month), we will credit you 5% of your base monthly fee for every 30 minutes of downtime (up to 100% of your monthly fee for the affected hosting service).
You will not receive any credit, should the problem be attributable to:

• A degradation of the Service outside our control;
• Scheduled maintenance;
• A force majeure event;
• A DDoS attack against your server or hosting infrastructure;
• Negligent customer acts or omissions;
• Failure of access circuits to our network;
• Domain name server issues outside our direct control;
• DNS propagation; and
• Outages elsewhere on the Internet that hinder access to your hosting services.

We are not responsible for browser or DNS caching that may make your website appear inaccessible when others can still access it.

Support Policy

It is the client’s responsibility to have a good working knowledge of all aspects of their site’s operation and the control panels provided. Please do not expect the HostWP PTY LTD support staff to teach you how to use aspects of the tools at your disposal, and especially not the software (such as email and FTP clients) which you have installed and run on your own PC.