You Agree
The use of services from HOSTkabob, an Acumen Consulting company, constitutes agreement to these terms. Please note our Privacy Policy as well, as it outlines our use of your information. The right hand column includes the legal language of our Terms of Use, with the left hand column representing our plain English explanation.
| Account Setup and Contact Information | |
| Pay us, and we set up the account. You have to provide us with your contact information. Lie to us and we kick you off the service. | We will setup your account after we have received payment and we and/or our payment partner(s) have screened the order(s) for fraud. Configuring your account may require 2 – 3 days, during which time we will be in contact with you via email. It is your responsibility to provide us with an email address which is not @ the domain(s) you are signing up under. If there is ever an abuse issue or we need to contact you, the primary email address on file will be used for this purpose. It is your 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 your account or the rejection of your order. In dedicated server purchases or high risk transactions, it will be necessary to provide government issued identification and possibly a scan of the credit card used for the purchase. If you fail to meet these requirements, the order may be considered fraudulent in nature and be denied. |
| Transferring Your Site | |
| We make a “best effort” to transfer your site. | We will make every effort to transfer your site to our servers; however, we can not make guarantees of the transfer process. In some cases, proprietary software on your existing host may make it impossible to transfer your site easily. Transfers are a courtesy service, but cannot be guaranteed. |
| Limitations on Your Content | We only allow family friendly, non-controversial content that is legal in the United States. | All services provided by HOSTkabob can only be used for lawful purposes. The laws of the State of California and the United States of America apply. In addition, HOSTKabob has high standards regarding content to maintain the reputation of our shared IP addresses. As many of our customers promote to other businesses, we do not allow content that might be filtered by corporate firewalls including debate sites, gun sales, social issues, etc. For this type of content our Managed VPS services should be used. If in doubt, please ask.
The customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless HOSTkabob from any claims resulting from the use of our services. Use of our 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 your account. Prohibited materials include:
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Any material that, in our judgment, is obscene or threatening is prohibited and will be removed from our servers with or without notice. Note: HOSTkabob allows much wider discretion on our Premium VPS Hosting accounts, and may be able to accommodate your specific needs. |
| Account Security | We do not allow server-side access; you are permitted to access your WordPress admin section, but do not have FTP or SSH access to the server. | We take the security of your site seriously. Customers are not granted access to server-side services such as cPanel, WHM, FTP, and SSH on our shared hosting servers. Our Premium VPS Hosting service does include SSH, FTPES, sFTP (secure FTP) and the DirectAdmin control panel access if requested.
We keep your site up to date, including scripts, plugins, and themes, to ensure it is secured against unauthorized intrusion or hacking. You are expected to use strong passwords and keep your access credentials secure. Only authorized plugins and themes may be used on HOSTkabob servers and we reserve the right to prohibit plugins and themes that impact server performance or expose the server to unnecessary risks. |
| Prohibited WordPress Plugins | We must approve all WordPress themes and plugins used on our servers | WordPress has tens of thousands of plugins, including many that have not been updated in over a year and pose performance or security risks. Because we include daily backups of your site, we also do not allow the use of backup plugins that attempt to store account backups in your account, as these plugins are inefficient and consume server resources (you are free to use the built-in Tools > Export functions in WordPress to save copies of your site to your computer as often as you wish). A partial list of plugins we do not allow include:
adminer Note that the plugins in these categories are not bad in and of themselves, but they do duplicate functions done by our server, degrade performance and can interfere with the fast response time our customers enjoy. |
| Zero Tolerance for Spam | We hate spam. If you spam from your account, it will be terminated immediately. You may be assessed up to a $125 charge if our IP address is blacklisted due to your actions. |
We take a zero tolerance stance against sending of unsolicited e-mail, bulk emailing, spam, phishing schemes, etc. Any account found to be sending spam will be suspended and/or terminated with or without notice at our discretion. All purchased lists even if offered as a “safe list” or “double opt-in” will be treated as spam. Any user who sends out spam may have their account suspended and/or terminated with or without notice.
Sites advertised via SPAM (Spamvertised) may not be hosted on our 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 our servers. Any account which results in our IP space being blacklisted will be immediately suspended and/or terminated. A charge of up to $125 may be assessed against any customer who causes our server IP address to be blacklisted due to violation of this policy. HOSTkabob 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. |
| Zero Tolerance for Phishing Sites | We hate phishing more than spam. We terminate your account, and charge a “clean up” fee of $125 if you install a phishing site. | Any account hosting phishing pages will be suspended and/or terminated immediately, at our discretion. Phishing is any site that masquerades as another trustworthy site in attempts to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, credit card information, banking information, pin numbers, or any other personal information. Any account suspended or terminated due to a phishing policy violation will be ineligible for refund. We may invoice you for up to $125 to clean the server of the offending material and prove to the blacklisting and “safe site” services that your site has been completely banished and erased from our server. We will cooperate with law enforcement fully. |
| Payment | |
| You pay us, we host your site. You don’t pay us, we don’t host your site. | You agree to pay for the services received in advance of the time period during which such services are provided. You agree that if you set up recurring billing in the payment gateway that the services will be billed on a recurring basis. You can stop paying for services at any time, however, there is no refund for unused portions of your billing period. If you switch from recurring billing, and don’t pay the next month’s invoice manually, we will consider the non-payment proof that you wish to discontinue service. You agree that non-payment severs any responsibility we have for hosting your site, backing up your data, or providing any other service.
You can also cancel by submitting a support ticket. Once the cancellation is submitted via our support system you will receive a cancellation confirmation. At this time, your account with us has been canceled. If you do not hear back from us or receive an e-mail confirming this cancellation, please contact us immediately. It is your responsibility to ensure that your payment information is up to date, and that all invoices are paid on time. We provide a 3 day grace period from the time the invoice is due and when it must be paid. Any invoice that is overdue for 3 days and is not paid in full will result in account suspension until the account balance has been paid in full. Your website will not be available when the account is suspended. Email, if routed through our server, will not flow. Invoices are assessed a late fee of 10% or $5, whichever is greater, when they become 3 days past due. Any account that is overdue for 30 days and has not paid will be automatically terminated and the data backups removed from our backup servers. Invoices that have been paid more than once are automatically added as credit towards the account and will not be refunded. If you require assistance with this provision, please contact us. We reserve the right to change the monthly payment amount and any other charges at anytime, with 30 days notice. |
| Backups and Data Security | We backup your site frequently, but do not guarantee that all your data will be available. Keep your own copy of your data just to be safe. | HOSTkabob makes backups of your account daily. Archival copies of the data is kept for each day for a week, then each week (on the 1st, 7th, 14th and 21st of the month). A monthly backup based on the first day of that month is kept for 12 months on a rotating basis. While we provide multiple copies of your data, HOSTkabob is not responsible for safekeeping of your files and/or data residing on your account. Important posts, documents, or other material you create should be backed up by you by using the built-in WordPress Tools > Export function. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on your HOSTkabob account. We accept no responsibility should backups be unavailable for any reason including but not limited to data corruption, hardware failure, or negligence. |
| Cancellation and Refunds | You can cancel at any time. | You can cancel your account by entering a support ticket, or cancelling payment through our payment gateway. There are no refunds for unused periods when you cancel. Please contact us if you have paid for a term longer than 1 month and wish to cancel, as a pro-rata refund may be possible. There is no refund available on design services, premium support, domain name registration or any service other than hosting. Violations of these Terms of Service will waive the refund policy and no refund will be granted. |
| Resource Usage | We take care of your account, but there are some size and bandwidth limits | HOSTkabob is proud to provide “no worries” hosting services without the usual jargon concerning disk space, bandwidth, inodes or other confusing jargon. However, there are limits to the hosting plans based on physical limitations of our servers. However, some customers try to use their hosting account for storage of personal images, financial records, unrelated documents, etc. Your account may not store any file or document that is not displayed or used to display web pages. While our payment gateway is secure, our hosting server is not rated for storage of personal files, and cannot be used for such purposes. When we manage your account and have Admin access to your WordPress website, we take care of all the details, and these limitations will not be an issue. However, for self-managed accounts, specific per-account limitations are:
Accounts that exceed these limits will be asked to move to a Premium Managed VPS Hosting plan. |
| No Uptime or Service Level Agreement Guarantees | We do not have an “uptime” guarantee, nor do we have a Service Level Agreement. | HOSTkabob prides itself on providing consistent, reliable hosting services. We do not publish an uptime guarantee, or Service Level Agreement, and do not pay refunds or extend service time for outages. |
| Indemnification | We are not responsible for any damages resulting from your use of our services | You agree that you shall defend, indemnify, save and hold HOSTkabob harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including reasonable attorney’s fees asserted against HOSTkabob, 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 HOSTkabob against liabilities arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with our services; (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 HOSTkabob’s server. Limited Liability Under no circumstances, including negligence, shall HOSTkabob, its officers, agents or any one else involved in creating, producing or distributing services be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages that result from the use of or inability to use the services; or that results from mistakes, omissions, interruptions, deletion of files, errors, defects, delays in operation, or transmission or any failure of performance, whether or not limited to acts of God, communication failure, theft, destruction or unauthorized access to HOSTkabob’s records, programs or services. Customer hereby acknowledges that this paragraph shall apply to all content on HOSTkabob’s servers. Arbitration By using any HOSTkabob services, you agree to binding arbitration. If any disputes or claims arise against HOSTkabob or its subsidiaries, such disputes will be handled by an arbitrator of our choice. All decisions rendered by that arbitrator will be binding and final. You are also responsible for any and all costs related to such arbitration. |
| Disclaimer | We are not responsible for business loss. | HOSTkabob shall not be responsible for any damages your business may suffer. HOSTkabob makes no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide. HOSTkabob 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 by HOSTkabob and its employees. |