The important stuff Hosting Terms and Conditions.

We value transparency, simplicity and flexibility. So in that spirit, here are our hosting terms and conditions.

They’re in an easy to read form so that we both understand our respective rights, responsibilities and freedoms.

 

Your rights and responsibilities

 

You can cancel at any time
We handle billing for our hosting accounts on a monthly basis (unless you’ve specifically requested a longer billing cycle).

If you request a cancellation then:

  • We will not issue any new hosting invoices from that moment onwards
  • We will suspend your hosting account at the end of the billing cycle (eg. end of month)
  • We will terminate (permanently erase) your account 7 days after it was suspended

Please see our notes below on credits/refunds.

You can change plan at any time
We understand you may need to move up or down hosting plans as your circumstances change. Please contact us so we can discuss any differences in cost or services before we implement the change.

When your requirements increase we will issue a once-off invoice to cover any extra resources above what you’ve already paid for. Your billing will be adjusted from the next billing cycle onwards (eg. start of next month).

When your requirements decrease you will keep the resources you’ve already paid for until the end of the billing cycle. We will then adjust your resources and invoices down at the start of the next billing cycle. You will not receive a refund for any unused resources.

You can contact us
We prefer that you contact us via phone or our website. You can also contact us via any other service that we advertise (eg. Facebook or Twitter) but our response may not be as fast.

Our team is available to handle your general enquiries and requests during business hours (published on the “Contact” page of our website).

If you have an urgent issue outside of business hours, please contact us via the after hours details that we provide you.

Please note, we will only speak with authorised contacts (see below).

You can ask for support
If you’re having trouble with your email, domain names, DNS or other aspects of your hosting service, then please contact us. We’re here to help.

If you’re having trouble with your website, then please contact your web developer (which might be us too).

We can provide limited support for your computer/phone, as long as it directly relates to your hosting service (eg. getting emails setup in Outlook).

Sorry, we don’t provide support for your computer applications or hardware. Please contact an IT support company (we can provide referrals if you need them).

We also don’t provide support for your home/office/mobile internet connection. Please contact your internet service provider (ISP).

You must pay your invoices on time
You must pay the hosting invoices we send you by their due date. The due date, payment instructions and other details are listed on the invoice we send you.

If your invoice is overdue, then we may suspend (and eventually terminate) your account.

For monthly billing cycles, we send the invoices at the start of each month, and they cover the services for that month.

If you’re on a direct debit plan then rest easy! Your invoices will always be paid on time. If we have trouble debiting the payment using the details you gave us (eg. expired credit card) then we’ll be in touch to get them fixed up.

You must be a good digital citizen
This includes:

  • Keeping any login details safe (so they don’t fall into the wrong hands)
  • Using strong passwords (more details here)
  • Not sending unsolicited emails (eg. SPAM)
  • Not using our services to impersonate someone else or trick other people (eg. phishing)
  • Not sending/receiving/storing/processing content that:
    • Is illegal
    • Infringes intellectual property rights (without permission)
    • May cause harm (eg. viruses, posting defamatory statements, sending extortionate emails)
  • Keeping your website patched and up-to-date (eg. installing the latest Wordpress updates)

If any of these rules are not followed then we will ask you to fix it as soon as possible. As your web host we may be able to assist you in some limited scenarios, however in other cases you may need to take action yourself or contact your web developer.

Please be mindful that you’re still responsible for your hosting account even if someone else misuses your account. Some examples include:

  • One of your email accounts has been hacked and is sending spam
  • Someone who sends spam to others through your website contact form
  • Someone who posts defamatory comments on your website

You must treat our team with respect
When communicating with our team please do so in a respectful manner.

We understand that respect goes both ways, so it’s part of our commitment to you also.

You must notify us of any changes
Some examples include:

  • Adding/removing an authorised contact person
  • Change of billing contact details (eg. different person, email or phone number)
  • Our services are no longer required (eg. you’ve moved to another hosting provider)
  • Your company is no longer trading or is insolvent

Please let us know of the change as soon as practical.

You must keep backups of any content you can’t afford to lose
While we take our own backups and offer them for your convenience, this is ultimately your responsibility.

You must adhere to these terms and conditions
If you don’t agree with these terms and conditions, you can cancel your hosting service at any time.

If you don’t adhere to these terms and conditions, we’ll notify you and reserve the right to suspend or terminate your hosting account.

 

Pivotal Agency’s rights and responsibilities

 

We will notify you if any rights and responsibilities change
This includes changes that affect you or us. We’ll notify you via email before they change. Please ensure we have your current email address on file so we can contact you.

We will respond to your requests in a timely manner
This is within 1 business day (typically less) if you contact us on our main phone number or through the contact form on our website.

We cannot promise response times if you contact any of our team members directly. Sometimes they’re away on unforeseen leave etc.

Please note, we observe Gold Coast / Queensland public holidays and operate on Queensland time (UTC+10).

We aim to keep downtime/interruptions to a minimum
We understand that it’s important your hosting account is available as much as possible, so we’ve implemented a bunch of things to make this happen (eg. powerful servers, enterprise-grade data centers, software to limit resource abuse, zero downtime patching).

That said, sometimes downtime/interruptions is unforeseen or required as part of our maintenance. We’ll do our best to keep it to a minimum.

We don’t offer Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) or credit/refunds for down time.

You can review our recent uptime here.

We can vary the services we provide
If we deem the change is to your benefit or is unlikely to have any significant impact/risk then we may make the changes without notifying you. Examples include price reductions, increased limits (at no extra cost) or offering new services/capabilities.

In all other circumstances we will notify you before they change.

Please note, we consider price increases or reduced limits as things that are NOT to your benefit, so we will give you notice before they happen.

We will only provide a credit/refund under certain circumstances
We can only provide a credit or refund if you’ve overpaid an invoice or for services that we haven’t yet provided. If that’s you, please contact us.

We will not provide a credit or refund for services that we’ve provided you, but you’ve not used (eg. unused disk space or bandwidth).

Example 1
It’s the 31st of May and you’ve previously paid for the month of June, but have just decided to downgrade or cancel your hosting. In this instance we’d be happy to provide a credit or refund, please contact us.

As a courtesy, we will also accept downgrades or cancellations on the 1st calendar day of the month, and you will still be eligible for a credit or refund.

Example 2
It’s the 2nd of June and you’ve already paid for the month of June, but have now decided to downgrade or cancel your hosting. You aren’t eligible for a refund as we’ve already provided your hosting service for part of a month.

We will only speak with authorised contacts
Authorised contacts include:

  • The person that originally requested the hosting service
  • The billing contact for the hosting service
  • A director or CEO of the company paying for the hosting service
  • Anyone else appointed by the above people
  • If we have no authorised contacts on file, or those contacts are no longer reachable, then we’ll also accept an email from your company’s domain name (eg. anyone@example.com)

If someone else contacts us (ie. your IT support company) and they’re not authorised, then we will ask an authorised contact if they can be added to the authorised contact list.

We will keep backups of your account
Backups are taken once a day (usually between 12am - 6pm) and are kept for 7 calendar days. They include:

  • Email inboxes
  • Website files
  • Databases

Please contact us if you would like anything fetched/restored from the backups.

We will treat you with respect
When communicating with you, our team will do so in a respectful manner.

We understand that respect goes both ways, so we ask that you do the same for us.

We will suspend your account if…

  • Your hosting invoices are overdue (after several attempts to contact you)
  • You are not being a good digital citizen (see above)
  • Your account is using an unreasonable amount of server resources and/or is causing a negative impact on our other clients.

We will notify you if any of these things happen, and where possible we’ll work with you to resolve them.

Suspensions are temporary and will be lifted when the above issue has been resolved.

Please note, when your account is suspended incoming email will continue to flow into your inboxes and our DNS servers will continue to resolve requests, however you will not be able to send email and no one will be able to view the website.

We will only terminate your account…

  • The month after you cancelled your hosting service
  • Immediately, upon your specific request
  • If your account has been suspended for more than 3 months
  • If you have not adhered to these terms and conditions

In any case, termination shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. Either you have specifically requested it, or we would have notified you about it (or made several solid attempts at notifying you).

Terminating your account involves completely erasing all email accounts, website files, databases, DNS records and other related data off our servers. If you have not already migrated your website or emails to another server then your content will become unavailable.

Our backups will be erased 7 days after the termination date, at which point your content will be permanently unretrievable.

It is your responsibility to download backups of any content you need before we terminate your account.