1) Account Setup
We will setup your account after we have received payment and we have screened the order(s) for signs of fraud. All orders are reviewed manually by a real person after it passes through our fraud detection service. Any order that still looks suspicious will require further verification from the client such as a scan of drivers license or the credit card used for the order. It is your responsibility to provide us with an email address which is not @ the domain(s) you are signing up under. Setup time will generally range from within 1 hour to 24 hours after payment is received. Your setup information will be delivered via email only to the address you enter when signing up.
2) Content
All services provided by us may only be used for lawful purposes. This includes but is not limited to copyrighted material, material that we judge to be threatening or obscene, pornography, nudity, adult or other such content. We reserve the right to refuse hosting to any site we deem not in line with the values of Ethical Host.
Examples of unacceptable material:
IRC Bots
Warez Sites
Pirated Software
Hate sites
Hack programs and archives
Illegal or content deemed to be illegal
information relating to an illegal substance
3) Zero Tolerance Spam Policy
We take a zero tolerance stance against sending of unsolicited e-mail, bulk emailing, and spam. Any user who sends out spam will have their account terminated without notice.
We reserve the right to require changes or disable as necessary any web site, account, database, or other component that does not comply with this policy, at its sole discretion. We also reserve the right to make any such modifications in an emergency at our sole discretion.
We reserve the right to charge the holder of the account used to send any unsolicited e-mail a cleanup fee. This cost of the cleanup fee is left entirely to the discretion of Ethical Host. All rights reserved.
4) Mailing Lists Rules
There is a 300 hourly email limit per domain this limit is also applied towards mailman. If you send over this amount in any hour, most of the e-mails will bounce back with a undeliverable error.
Any mailing list larger than 800 will not be allowed to operate. Please note that dividing one large list into smaller lists to get below this limit is not allowed.
We generally recommend you get setup with MailChimp which is a professional level mailing list manager and is free for lists of up to 2000 contacts. It will save you time, headaches and provide some good reporting stats. Check out their pricing plans.
a) Anytime you’re sending a message, no matter how large your mailing list is you must throttle it. We recommend you throttle it to at the very least sending 1 email every 10 seconds. If the mailing list software you’re using does not allow you to throttle, you must switch to something else. We recommend phpList, which can be found in your control panel under Softaculous. If you do not throttle and you try sending, for example, 500 emails, the server will try sending all 500 in 1 second, which is not possible. This will cause the server load to increase and your emails will not get delivered beyond the first 300 messages. Anyone who causes the server’s load to go high will be suspended and the process will be terminated. If you choose not to throttle, you will most likely be suspended or given a warning.
b) Any mailing list over 500 emails is only allowed to be sent to during off-peak times to prevent high server loads. Off peak times qualify as all day Saturday and Sunday, and 1 AM – 8 AM Eastern Time on Monday – Friday.
c) You are not allowed to send emails to a mailing list you were given or purchased. This is spamming because the subscribers never agreed to you personally sending them email. We do not care how you justify it, this is spam and will result in termination of the offending account.
d) Any unsolicited e-mail being sent will result in termination of the offending account. We have a zero tolerance policy regarding the sending of unsolicited e-mail.
5) Payment Information
a) You agree to supply appropriate payment for the services received from us, in advance of the time period during which such services are provided. You agree that until and unless you notify Ethical Host of your desire to cancel any or all services received, those services will be billed and renewed automatically on a recurring basis.
b) Late Payment – Account Termination
Any account that is past due will be sent past due payment reminders to the email address on contact in the Account Manager at 5,12 and 27 days past their invoice due date. Any account over 30 days past due will be Suspended. After 45 days past due, the account will be terminated and all files removed from the server including any and all backups. Any customer wishing to retrieve lost files after the account has been terminated will be require to pay a $50 admin fee (if the files still exist on our backup server).
c) Renewals
If you have a credit card on file and billing method is set to Credit card, renewals will be processed automatically 2 days before the due date. This is to help ensure continuity of your services so your site does not go offline. If you do not wish to renewal your domain you MUST mark it as do not auto renew in the account manager AND/OR inform us by email 30 days prior to the expiry date. If the renewal invoice has been created already you MUST email is to say you want to cancel it. (simply marking the domain do not auto renew after an invoice has been generated will NOT stop that invoice from being processed). There are no options for refunds to domains that have been renewed since the domain has already been processed and payment made to the registry.
6) Backups and Data Loss
a) Your use of the service is at your sole risk. We are not responsible for files and data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on our servers. Any restore request made of Ethical Host will be billed at a rate of $40 per request.
b) Ethical Host now uses a backup server to log restore points several times per day. These restore points allow users to manually restore files themselves from within the cPanel. There are 2 payment options for this service, a one-time lifetime fee, or a monthly fee based on your hosting package term. These backups are performed regardless if you pay for the service or not. If you have not paid for it, a restore fee will apply to any restore requests.
7) Cancellation and Refunds
Customers may cancel at any time. We give you an unconditional 60-day money back guarantee on our hosting services. Refund requests received after 60 days from the date of signup will be refunded on a prorated basis of any unused time less any pre-payment discounts. No refunds can be given for domain registrations.
Ethical Host reserves the right to cancel a customers account at any time with 24 hours notice sent to the email contact on file in the account management area. If we take this action, pro-rated refunds will be sent out except in cases where the site was terminated due to illegal activity, abuse, abusiveness towards our staff or any activity that violates these terms of service.
8) Resource Usage
Users may not initiate the following:
a) Use 20% 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.
b) Run any type of interactive real-time chat applications that require server resources. Remotely-hosted services are fully allowed.
c) Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in time on the server. This includes any and all daemons, such as IRCD.
d) Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.
e) Run any gaming servers such as counter-strike, half-life, etc.
9) Add-On Domains
In the interests of keeping an ethical and quality service, add-on domains related to each hosting account are limited in scope to sites that each customer owns/runs or is related to in some way (e.g. being on the board of a non-profit group or a site for your immediate family) and no money is exchanged in return for the hosting, design or management of said add-on site. Absolutely no reselling of add-on domains is allowed.
10) Bandwidth Usage
You are allocated a monthly bandwidth allowance. This allowance varies depending on the hosting package you purchase. Should your account pass the allocated amount we reserve the right to suspend the account until the start of the next allocation, suspend the account until more bandwidth is purchased at an additional fee, suspend the account until you upgrade to a higher level of package, terminate the account and/or charge you an additional fee for the overages. Unused transfer in one month cannot be carried over to the next month.
11) Money Back Guarantee
We give you an unconditional 60-day money back guarantee on our hosting services. This must be requested in writing within 60 days from the date of signup.
Ethical Host prides itself on having a fantastic uptime record. We also want to take the confusion and vagueness out of our guarantee as compared to other web hosts. You may find most other hosts are not very clear what their guarantee means, what you will get and how you will get it or sometimes it really doesn’t mean anything all (such as only covering the internet connection to the server).
a) What Is Guaranteed?
– We guarantee the server will be operational 99.9% during any given MONTH (most other hosts do it based on the entire year). Please note that this guarantee applies only to unscheduled outages.
– The guarantee applies to the entire server being offline, not individual accounts or websites or email accounts.
b) What is NOT Covered by the Guarantee?
– Scheduled outages and small downtime due to server reboots for regular upgrades and updates do not count toward this guarantee (these reboots may or may not be announced ahead of time).
– Any individual account that is offline due to user error, unsecure scripts, insecure passwords, invalid account use, violation of our terms of service, and other site related hacks will not count toward this guarantee.
– Ethical Host is not responsible for any downtime caused by a client’s error.
c) how is the downtime calculated?
– We have 2 outside uptime monitoring services running and checking the server at 5 minute intervals or less. Should these services report downtime, we will use those downtime lengths Plus 5 minutes in calculating the total downtime incurred for the month.
d) What will my refund be?
– Should the server be down for more than 0.1% of time (approx 43 minutes) in any given month, We will credit to your account ONE HALF MONTH of hosting fees upon request. If downtime exceeds 0.25% (approximately 107 minutes) a refund of ONE FULL MONTH will be given.
e) How do I get the refund?
– you can create a support ticket within the account manager letting us know that you think the server was down for an extended period of time during the month and specify the times of the outages. We will review the downtime reports from our service providers to determine the validity of the request.
-We do not penalize you by counting the downtime from the time you open a ticket like some other hosts do (that’s just not ethical).
13) Price Changes
Domain name costs from the registry increase from time to time and we reserve the right to adjust renewal prices periodically when this happens. We try to limit the increases and usually absorb the extra cost most of the time. The amount you pay for hosting may from time to time increase in association with rising costs to provide the service but you will be notified of such changes. We reserve the right to change prices listed on our site, and the right to increase the amount of resources given to plans at any time.
14) Indemnification
Customer agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold Ethical Host and its affiliates, directors, officers, employees and agents harmless from and against any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs or damages, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, 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 any liabilities arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with us; (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 Ethical Host’s server. Ethical Host will not be held responsible for damages claimed by any reseller customer.
15) Limitation of Liability
IN NO EVENT SHALL ETHICAL HOST BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, OR OTHER CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, LOST PROFITS, AND DAMAGES RELATED TO CORRUPTION OR DELETION OF WEBSITE CONTENTS, EMAIL DATA AND OR DATABASE CONTENTS) ARISING OUT OF OR IN RELATION TO THIS AGREEMENT OR YOUR USE OR INABILITY TO USE OUR SERVICES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, INOPERABILITY OF ETHICAL HOST’S SERVERS), REGARDLESS OF THE FORM OF ACTION, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE) OR OTHERWISE, EVEN IF ETHICAL HOST HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. IN NO EVENT SHALL ETHICAL HOST’S MAXIMUM LIABILITY EXCEED THE TOTAL AMOUNT PAID BY YOU FOR THE SERVICES DURING THE PRIOR TWELVE (12) MONTHS. TO THE EXTENT APPLICABLE LOCAL LAW DOES NOT ALLOW THE LIMITATION OF LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, ETHICAL HOST’S LIABILITY IS LIMITED TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW.
16) Disclaimer
We will not be responsible for any damages your business may suffer. We make no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide. We disclaim 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 by us or our employees or contractors.
17) Changes to the TOS
We reserve the right to revise these policies at any time without notice.