Smughost

Terms of Service

Here are our terms of service, this is the agreements made between you and us when using our website and services. Please keep up to date with these at all times.

This is the terms of service that you the “customer”, “buyer”, “client” agree to when using our “SmugHost”, “https://SmugHost.com, “Us”, “We” services. Please read through these as it contains important information regarding your rights and information about your account and the services we offer.

A. Indemnification and Relationship of Parties

1. User agrees to indemnify and hold Provider harmless from any lawsuit, claim, charge, or expense, including reasonable attorney fees and costs of defense, for any matter arising from or relating to User’s website provided hereunder.

2. Nothing contained herein shall be deemed to create a relationship between the Provider and User in the nature of a partnership, joint venture, editor/publisher or otherwise. Both parties acknowledge and agree that Provider has no interaction with the data or substance of User’s website, except as necessary to maintain the website.

3. User agrees to indemnify and hold Provider harmless from any lawsuit, claim, charge, or expense, including reasonable attorney fees and costs of defense, for any matter arising from or relating to Provider’s use of any domain name.

B. PAYMENT FOR SERVICE and PRICE CHANGES

1. User agrees to pay the charges agreed to during the initial signup request on or before the first day of the anniversary of account setup each month or year following execution of this agreement.

2. User agrees payment not received within 3 days of said renewal date shall be considered late and service may be suspended automatically.

3. User agrees payment not received within 30 days of said renewal date shall be considered in default and service shall be terminated automatically. If you wish to restore an cancelled account or receive a backup of a suspended account, there will be a £25.00 fee if there is a backup available.

4. User agrees that any and all unpaid balance due hereunder may result in a late fee of 5% of the total balance or £1.00 (which ever is greater), and the costs of collection, including court costs and reasonable attorney fees shall be added as principal amounts to such balance.

5.) SmugHost reserves the right to change prices listed on SmugHost.com, and the right to increase or reduce the amount of resources given to plans at any time without prior notice to you.

6.) The amount you pay for hosting will never increase from the date of purchase without prior notice (usually 30 days before your next billing period.

C. TERM OF CONTRACT AND TERMINATION/CANCELLATION

1. This agreement shall have an initial term of one month from the date of execution hereof, unless otherwise specified by sign up request. Upon expiration of such term, this agreement shall automatically renew for successive equivalent periods, unless notice is given by either party of its intent to terminate the agreement, at least one week prior to the scheduled termination date. All terms and conditions of this agreement shall be in full force and effect during all original and renewal periods hereunder. If User does not notify Provider of cancellation request at least 7 days in advance of date of execution, the User will be responsible for the payment due for the next equivalent period.

2. Business Website Solutions.

Any business website solutions purchased must be maintained for a minimum of 6 months from the date of the first invoice. Cancelling or leaving early will result in your services being suspended without the possibility of backups being provided. You do not officially own the website we design until the 6 month’s is up.

D. REFUND POLICY 

1. User understands that in order to receive a 100% refund on web hosting services provided by SmugHost. User must cancel their web hosting account within 7 Days for Virtual Private Servers and 30 days for shared and reseller web hosting accounts being opened. No refunds will be issued on web hosting services after the 7 and 30 day money back guarantee period (no pro-rated refunds, no exceptions). User must also be in good standing and in violation of our terms of service. If SmugHost registered a domain name on your behalf, all transactions are final (the same applies for Rapid SSL Certificates issued by SmugHost on your behalf), however the domain name and SSL are yours to keep for the duration they were registered for. Payments for Dedicated IP Addresses are non-refundable, along with payments for any licences (Softaculous, cPanel..ect).

2. User understands there are no refunds for domain name registrations or set-up fees. However domain names will be registered in your name and are yours to keep for the duration they were registered.

3. The user understands that buying a domain along with a web hosting plan does not combine the two, if a web hosting plan is cancelled the domain will remain in the user’s account and can continue to be renewed or transferred.

4. The user understands any web hosting plan requires a valid domain name in order to work, if the user no longer owns the domain on their web hosting account they must inform SmugHost to either change the account to another domain or cancel the account.

E. REFUSAL OF SERVICE

SmugHost reserves the right to refuse or cancel service at its sole discretion. Failure to follow any terms or conditions established by SmugHost may result in immediate termination and forfeiture of any refund agreements. This includes, but is not limited to abuse of SmugHost staff (foul or derogitory comments) and or our network.

F. CONTENT

1. The Provider believes in freedom of speech. As long as the User’s content does not break any Federal, State, or local laws (within the United Kingdom) or causes harm to any specific race, creed or gender, it will be allowed to exist on the User’s website.

2. User is responsible for any content they place on their web site, or transfer by any other means using hardware and or bandwidth belonging to the Provider.

3. The Provider reserves the right to remove any page(s) at any time without notice.

4. User agrees not to host any unauthorized copyrighted material such as music, movies, photographs (anything that would be in violation of United Kingdom Copyright Laws).

5. User agrees not to use their account as a backup/storage device. The only exception is the one cPanel backup of the same account you are hosting with us (please do not take back-ups of your back-ups). See section F of this document for more details.

6. Examples of unacceptable material on users shared and reseller hosting account (not limited to the following), if you have any questions about acceptable content, contact us before signing up.

– Pornographic Material (of any kind)

– Sites that stream copyrighted material, either directly or via 3rd party websites (TV Shows, Movies..ect)

– File Dump/Mirror Scripts (similar to rapidshare)

– Sites promoting illegal activities

– Commercial Audio Streaming (more than one or two streams)

– Mail Bombers/Spam Scripts

– Forums and/or websites that distribute or link to warez/pirated/illegal content

– IRC Scripts/Bots

– Proxy Scripts/Anonymizers

– Pirated Software/Warez

– AutoSurf/PTC/PTS/PPC sites

– IP Scanners

– Bruteforce Programs/Scripts/Applications

– Banner-Ad services (commercial banner ad rotation)

– Escrow/Bank Debentures

– High-Yield Interest Programs (HYIP) or Related Sites

– Investment Sites (FOREX, E-Gold Exchange, Second Life/Linden Exchange, Ponzi, MLM/Pyramid Scheme)

– Sale of any controlled substance without prior proof of appropriate permit(s)

– Prime Banks Programs

– MUDs/RPGs/PBBGs

– Hateful/Racist/Harassment oriented sites

– Hacker focused sites/archives/programs

– Bank Debentures/Bank Debenture Trading Programs

– Fraudulent Sites (Including, but not limited to sites listed at aa419.org & escrow-fraud.com)

– Mailer Pro

Broadcast or Streaming of Live Sporting Events (UFC, NASCAR, FIFA, NFL, MLB, NBA, WWE, WWF, etc)

G. USE OF SERVICE

1. User agrees to maintain its site in a manner consistent with any and all applicable laws, regulations (within the United Kingdom), acceptable uses and standards in effect, or which become in effect, during the term hereof.

2. User agrees to practice common courtesy in its use of the site, and refrain from using any distribution lists for electronic mail or other techniques for unsolicited mass mailing.

3. User agrees to keep their contact email address with Provider current at all times, and agrees Provider has no liability for lost or undelivered email messages concerning the status or payment due for User’s account.

4. User agrees to comply with the wishes of the Provider in regards to practices that may hinder the ability of other SmugHost customers to use the Provider’s services.

5. User agrees no notices for account status or invoices will be sent via postal mail or telephone, unless initiated by Provider as required by law to collect payment.

6.  Resource Usage, User may not:

– Use 25% or more of system resources for longer then 90 seconds. Activities that could cause such problems include, but are not limited to: CGI scripts, FTP, PHP, HTTP, etc.

– Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in time on the server. This includes any and all daemons, such as IRCD.

– Run any type of web spider or indexer (including Google Cash / AdSpy) on shared hosting account.

– Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.

– Run any bit torrent application, tracker, or client.

– Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities

– Run cron entries with intervals of less than 15 mi7.1nutes.

– Run any MySQL queries longer than 15 seconds. MySQL tables should be indexed appropriately.

7. Suspended / Inactive Accounts:

7.1. Shared Accounts – If your shared hosting account is suspended or inactive for 14 days or more Smughost reserves the right to terminate your service without warning. Smughost will aim to inform you of any suspension through email when your account is suspended as long as you have provided a working email address. If for any reason that email cannot be delivered Smughost is not responsible. 

7.2. Reseller / Master / Alpha / Super Alpha Accounts – If your or any of your customers are suspended or inactive for 14 days or more Smughost reserves the right to terminate the account without warning. Smughost will aim to inform you of any suspension through email when your account is suspended as long as you have provided a working email address. If for any reason that email cannot be delivered Smughost is not responsible. 

It is your responsiblity to inform your customers if their account has been suspended. To ensure our servers are kept optimised it is important you maintain your account. Smughost will give notice if we plan to terminate an account under your WHM. Smughost will make contact by opening a ticket or an entry in the resolution center, if no answer is received within 72 hours Smughost has the right to terminate the account without anymore warning. 

8. Account Limitations You may use your account for personal use but not as a backup facility for automated backups or things of that nature. If you’re unsure if your intended use violates this TOS please contact us so we can clarify it for you.

For VPS (Unmanaged Services) you agree that any activities considered prohibited usage (at SmugHosts discretion) will result in immediate account suspension or cancellation without a refund and the possibility that SmugHost will impose fees; and/or pursue civil remedies without providing advance notice.

Misuse of System Resources: Intentional misuse of system resources, including but not limited to employing programs that consume excessive network capacity, CPU cycles, or disk IO.

9. Inode Limits All shared hosting plans are limited to 500,000 inodes. Each cPanel account owned by a reseller hosting plan is limited to 500,000 inodes. VPS plans do not have an inode limit.

10. Disk Space Usage (Unlimited Plans) Your account may not be used as a storage and/or backup space for files/archives. Regular backups of databases, websites, etc, are permitted within reason. Any account found to be using an excessive and/or unreasonable amount of disk space may be asked to reduce their usage or face suspension/termination. SmugHost reserves the right to suspend/terminate any service for resource abuse at their discretion.

11. Free Hosting for Charities & Fundraisers : This service is for not-for-profit business and organisations only. If you get accepted on this plan and it is found you aren’t hosting a charity or fundraiser website you will be moved to a standard shared hosting account and an invoice will be generated. Smughost offer this service as a courtesy and can refuse the service with no reason. Smughost has no influence to what is hosted on these accounts and takes no responsibility over the website or the contents on the website.

H. BACKUPS AND DATA LOSS:

1. SmugHost will run a back-up service once daily (stored offsite), overwriting any previous back-up made. The back-up process is provided as a courtesy, therefore it is recommended users always keep their own back-ups accordingly. SmugHost is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. User agrees to take full responsibility regarding the maintenance of all appropriate backups and data stored on SmugHost servers. While SmugHost does maintain backups of your files and data, we accept no responsibility should backups be unavailable for any reason including but not limited to data corruption, hardware failure, or negligence. Any account/user larger than 5 gigabytes, will be excluded from our backup systems with or without notice, however all data will continue to be mirrored to a secondary drive (helping to protect your data incase of drive failures). All cPanel backup files, backup-*.tar.gz and cpmove-*.tar.gz, older than 120 hours (5 days) will be removed from the server automatically.

2. User Initiated Cpanel Back-Ups: Since the backup process which packages and compresses your account can be very resource intensive (all full cPanel backups should be performed during off-peak times as indicated below). Any backup process found to be running during peak hours will be disabled and possibly suspended.

3. Reseller’s are responsible for ensuring clients websites are backed up, we provide the tools (Jetbackup & cPanel Backup tools) to make it easy to backup each website, we cannot always set Jetbackup to backup every 24 hours on your clients account because the terms of service need to be agreed to by the client. You understand we are not responsible for your clients backups. 

Acceptable Time periods to run full cPanel back-ups (off-peak hours): Monday through Sunday 10pm-6am

* If your account is bigger than 5GB in size you can still back-up your account by downloading MYSQL via PHPMyAdmin and downloading your core files via FTP.

I. SECURITY

User agrees not to attempt to undermine or cause harm to any server or customer of Provider. Failure to comply with this rule will result in immediate termination of the user’s account.

J. Unsolicited Electronic Mail (SPAM)

User is expressly prohibited from sending unsolicited bulk mail messages (“junk mail” or “spam”). This includes, but is not limited to, bulk-mailing of commercial advertising, information announcements, and political tracts. Such material may only be sent to those who have specifically requested it. Malicious or threatening email is also prohibited. We reserve the right to immediately deactivate your use of our service if we discover such activity. Further, you agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from any claim resulting from your use or distribution of electronic mail services through the service provided through this Agreement. Anyone using our services for spamming or anyone who is found to be advertising their site by spamming will be immediately subject to a £500 cleanup/network abuse fee.

K. SETTING UP YOUR ACCOUNT

User understands that it may take up to 24 hours for any shared web hosting account to be activated or domain name to be registered. SmugHost will set-up your account or register your domain name once payment has been received/processed and once your account has been verified. If you do not receive your account information within 24 hours and have not received an email or phone call from SmugHost, please contact us immediately.

L. TRANSFERING YOUR WEBSITE

User understand that the transfer of websites from the users old web hosting provider to SmugHost is provided as a courtesy. There is no guarantee SmugHost will be able to transfer all of your website files from your old web hosting account to your new web hosting account. Keep in mind, every web hosting company is different and sometimes web hosts configure they’re servers in a manner that makes it impossible for SmugHost to seamlessly transfer all data from your old web hosting account to your new web hosting account.

M. 99.9% Uptime Guarantee

If user encounters physical downtime to their shared web hosting account that is not within the 99.9% uptime guarantee (for any given month), you may receive up to one month free credit to your shared web hosting account. Approval of any credit is credited at the discretion of SmugHost depending upon justification provided by the user. Reports from 3rd party monitoring services may not be used for justification due to a variety of factors including the monitor’s network capacity/transit availability. The uptime of the server is defined by the reported uptime from the operating system of the server (which may differ from the uptime reported by individual services). To request a credit, please contact support@smughost.com with justification. All requests must be made in writing (via email or snail mail).

N. Acceptable IP Usage and Distribution (IPV4)

SmugHost does not condone the use of Dedicated IP addresses for any purpose other than SSL as required by the SSL Protocol. Any site located on a Dedicated IP without an active SSL certificate can be moved to a shared IP address of our choosing (without warning).

O. Privacy

1. SmugHost takes all reasonable precautions to insure any information user submits is protected and not distributed to any 3rd parties. At no point in time, will SmugHost use any information provided to SmugHost for any purpose other than to keep in contact with user, provide services purchased by user or to verify users identity. SmugHost will not disclose any personal information about user to third parties (without prior written consent).

2. SmugHost may disclose users information to law enforcement agencies without prior consent or notification to the user upon lawful request from law enforcement agencies (SmugHost will cooperate fully with law enforcement agencies).

P. Free Domain Offer’s

From time to time, SmugHost will provide Free Domain name offers for new/transferred .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us registrations. Should the user receive such offers, user understands Free domain name is only free if domain name registered/transferred is the primary domain name hosted with SmugHost Example, if you registered example.com as your free domain name, example.com must be the primary domain name listed on your SmugHost shared cPanel account. Unless otherwise stated, Free Domain name offers are only valid and included when user is paying yearly, at our standard rates. Promotional rates (50% off, 65% off..ect are not eligible for the free domain name offer).

To transfer the free domain name away from SmugHost (anytime during the first year), user understands there will be a £15.00 non-refundable charge to complete the transfer-out process (this fee is not applicable after the first year). User also understands that in order to transfer-out free domain name, any and all web hosting balances owed to SmugHost must be paid.

Q. Free WordPress Install’s

From time to time, SmugHost will include a free wordpress install (meaning we will install and set-up wordpress for you). Should user receive such offer, user understands after initial install, SmugHost is not responsible for any breaks/malfunctions to wordpress install (any further work on wordpress install after malfunction SmugHost does so at it’s discretion).

R. Free WordPress Security Install’s

From time to time, SmugHost will include the initial hardening (securing) of the users wordpress install. Should the user receive such offer, user understand that SmugHost (unless stated in writing) is not responsible for further security updates beyond the initial hardening of the wordpress install.

S. Free Website Hosting

1. As of 26/9/2018 SmugHost offers a free website hosting package, SmugHost reserves the right to remove this package from the website at anytime.

2. SmugHost reserves the right to refuse a free hosting account at anytime without any reason.

3. Any website using the free hosting account should be active at all times, a domain name needs to be connected to the account at all times and have a functional website, if you are found not to have an active website your account will be suspended.

4. Only one free hosting account can be provided per user unless SmugHost staff decide otherwise.

5. Free website hosting accounts can be upgraded or cancelled at anytime by going to your client area.

UPDATE: Smughost no longer offers free website hosting.

T. Affiliate Commissions and Program

User will be paid referral fees for every client referred to SmugHost. The referral fees will vary depending on the product/service purchased and does not include certain products and services. Here is the current commission structure (which is based on percentages of the first month paid by the referral to SmugHost).

*Web Hosting: 50% of first payment made

Affiliate commissions will be paid via PayPal with a minimum required commission value of £1.00 before payment can be disbursed. There is a 30 day hold on all affiliate commissions to catch and prevent fraud. If the referred product was refunded, the membership cancelled, or money was reimbursed, SmugHost reserves the right to deduct the appropriate commissions from the affiliate’s account. SmugHost does not give a commission when an affiliate makes a SmugHost purchase and generates a commission for themselves. Affiliate accounts which have been suspended or terminated may, at our discretion, have some or all referrals invalidated and the account balanced adjusted accordingly. Please note the Commission Rate is subject to change from time to time (for which you will receive an email 30 days prior to the changes taking effect.

**Your affiliate application and status in the affiliate program may be suspended or terminated for any of the following reasons: Inappropriate advertisements (False claims, misleading hyperlinks), Spamming (mass email, mass newsgroup posting, etc…), Advertising on sites containing/promoting illegal activities, or for no reason at all at our discretion.

U. Website/ Business Tools

1. Website Uptime Monitor: The website uptime monitor is offered to help you monitor your website/ servers, we don’t monitor the websites/ servers you add and do not share any information provided elsewhere. Smughost reserves the right to stop offering this tool/ service at anytime without prior notice.

2. Website/ Server IP Lookup & What’s My IP: This tool will always be free to everyone and is offered to be helpful. You agree you understand these tools are not monitored and search terms are not logged. Smughost reserves the right to stop offering this tool/ service at anytime without prior notice.

SCOPE OF AGREEMENT

1. This agreement must be honoured by all sub domains and dedicated servers of the Provider.

2. The provider reserves the right to add to and change this agreement at any time without notice.  Although we will always do our best to notify you of any major changes to our terms of service, you acknowledge and agree that it is your responsibility to review this privacy policy periodically and become aware of modifications.

By simply using our website and purchasing our services you are agreeing to these terms, it is your responsibility to keep up to date with these terms and ensure you agree to them.

Last Updated: 19/03/2022