Terms & Conditions - Web Hosting

IntroductionStratum Now has created this Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) to protect our resources, our suppliers’ resources, and the resources of our customers and peering networks in order to provide a high speed network, high availability services and to ensure that Stratum Now and our hosting suppliers comply with all relevant UK laws. This AUP must be read in conjunction with our General Terms & Conditions of Business.

It is the responsibility of all customers of the Stratum Now network and services to ensure that they comply with the latest edition of the AUP at any given time.

This AUP may be revised, without notice, at any time, at the sole discretion of Stratum Now. Completion of the relevant application form, or connection to the service for the first time, is deemed to be an agreement to our general Terms and Conditions of Business and the web hosting specific Terms & Conditions, of which this Acceptable Use Policy forms part.

In the event of a breach of this policy, Stratum Now reserve the right to terminate all or part of any service with immediate effect, without recompense, and delete any files held on our servers.

Compliance with UK Law

It is an offence under UK law to transmit, receive or store certain types of files.

Customers may not use our services to engage in activities, or store, transfer or receive material of an indecent, offensive or otherwise illegal nature. Any such activities may result in prosecution by the UK authorities under the relevant statutory provisions including but not limited to the Computer Misuse Act 1990, the Protection of Children Act 1978, the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Prevention of Harassment Act 1997. This includes but is not limited to;

• Abusive scripts are scripts which interfere with our systems and/or the accounts of other customers, cause harm to any other computer system or user, or engage in any type of fraudulent activity.
• All content uploaded to your your hosting service, including dedicated and VDS servers, must conform to UK law. It is the Customer’s sole responsibility to ensure this. Storage, distribution of or transmission of illegal materials may lead to investigation and possible prosecution by the relevant authorities.
• You must not gain or attempt to gain unauthorised access to any computer systems for any purpose. Such action may lead to criminal prosecution under the Computer Misuse Act. You must not send data to the internet using forged addresses or data which is deliberately designed to adversely affect remote machines (including but not limited to denial of service (DDoS), worms and viruses, trojans and ping storms).
• You must ensure that local PCs and network connected servers are not configured to allow open relay and must not participate in the sending of unsolicited bulk email (commonly referred to as ‘spam’ ,’UBE’,’UCE’ ).
• You are prohibited from running ‘port scanning’ or other software intended to probe, scan, test the vulnerability of or access remote systems or networks except in circumstances where the remote user has given express permission for this to be done. We may ask for evidence of such permission.
• You must take all reasonable steps to ensure that your password and login credentials remain confidential.
• Open proxy servers are not permitted under any circumstances and will result in immediate termination of service.
• Sites must not contain ‘hateful’ material or content which seeks to incite hate.
• Sites must not contain images, videos, depictions or descriptions of pornography which is unlawful in the UK or which is deemed to be distasteful at our sole discretion.
• Sites must not contain ‘warez’, copyrighted music/videos or links to such content. It is the sole responsibility of the user to ensure that they have the rights to distribute any content displayed on their website.
• Sites must conform to UK copyright law.
• It is also unlawful in the UK law to knowingly infringe intellectual property rights, such as copyright, patents, database rights and registered trademarks. Customers are reminded that sharing copyright material through the use of peer to peer software may consequently constitute a criminal offence if done without permission of the right owner in question. Stratum Now will co-operate with any law enforcement body, agency or rights holder wishing to assert their rights in these matters and Stratum Now reserve the right to withdraw service under such circumstances.
• The Data Protection Act 1998 imposes numerous duties on any organisation that processes personal data relating to third parties. Failure to comply with many of these duties constitutes a criminal offence. Customers who are not merely processing personal data for domestic (including recreational) reasons are reminded of their likely duty to register with the Information Commissioner.
• Under the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, Stratum Now is in general not liable to any criminal or pecuniary penalty for any unlawful acts carried out using our service unless we have actual knowledge of those unlawful acts. Accordingly, if we become aware of credible evidence that a customer has carried out any unlawful acts we will take preventative measures to bring those acts to an end.

Acceptable Email Usage

Customers may not use Stratum Now services to send unsolicited commercial email (UCE, also known as ‘Spam’). Stratum Now will suspend, terminate or blocked accounts seen to be sending ’spam’.

• You agree not to send emails that might cause annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety to a recipient.
• You agree not to send any emails likely to cause distress or any material which is offensive, indecent, obscene, menacing or in any way unlawful.
• You agree to have a clear opt out policy in all newsletter communications.
• You must not use our mail services or network to send email to any user who does not wish to receive it.
• You must not use our mail services or network to send unsolicited email, in bulk (commonly known as ‘spam’) or individually.
• You must not use our mail services or network with intent to deprive others of service (‘mail bomb’).
• You must not use false mail headers or alter the headers of mail messages in such a way as to conceal the identity of the sender.
• You must not use any email address that you are not authorised to use.
• You must ensure that any email servers connected to our network and operated by you are not configured to allow ‘open relay’.
• You must take full responsibility for your own email reputation, Stratum Now can not guarantee a positive reputation.

Some hosting services we provide, for instance Gridhost shared hosting, limit the number of messages that can be sent in order to prevent blacklisting and to manage server load. The nature of this limit may vary from time to time. You agree to abide by these limitations.

Security and Privacy

Login names and passwords must be kept secret and not be communicated to any third party. If a customer forgets or loses their password, they can request a new password using the ‘forgot password’ link or by raising a support ticket.

Customers are responsible for all traffic that is sent from their server. It is therefore the customer’s responsibility to ensure that all software is virus-free and up-to-date with all relevant security patches. In particular, server software running on public-facing ports, such as mail servers, CRM systems and blogging software must not be remotely exploitable.

If Stratum Now find malicious traffic emanating from a customer’s server, Stratum Now have an obligation to our other customers and peering networks to take urgent measures to block that traffic. In many cases, this can be achieved by selective port blocking, but in other cases, this will involve disconnecting and suspending the account until the issue has been resolved. Stratum Now understand that in many cases a customer may not be responsible for or aware of the problem, and therefore Stratum Now will work with the customer to resolve the issue as efficiently as possible to restore normal service. A customers service will remain offline until a solution is found.

Proxy servers and services are not permitted on Stratum Now’s network under any circumstances.

Compliance with foreign law

The Internet is global in reach. Consequently it is possible for anyone using the internet to break the laws of foreign countries. Customers are therefore advised to take all reasonable steps to avoid breaching relevant foreign laws.

Web Usage

Web usage includes the use of web space provided with client accounts, web hosting on our servers and the use of web services and space on customer colocated servers. We cannot and do not proactively monitor content on any web space maintained by customers (whether customer space, web hosted or colocated services) and cannot and do not guarantee that such sites are free of illegal content or other materials that may be considered unacceptable.

You accept sole responsibility for the content of web pages owned and/or operated by you – whether on client pages, web hosted space or colocated servers – within our domain or other domains hosted within our network.

You accept sole responsibility to ensure that all materials on any website owned or operated by you contains material that you have created or have permission to use.

You accept sole responsibility for any dispute involving Copyright or Intellectual Property Rights associated with your site or service.

You must not use your website or web service to promote or distribute any material or content that is illegal (under any current or future legislation). You should be aware that the internet is a global communications network and what may be legal in the UK may be illegal elsewhere and leave you liable to prosecution in another country.

Some hosting products may offer ‘unlimited’ or ‘unmetered’ resources. However, these resources may only be used to serve a standard website and may not be used for bulk storage, archival or any other purpose intended to consume excessive storage.

If your usage exceeds the limitation of your hosting package we reserve the right to charge for this overusage at the prevailing rate displayed on our website, or to upgrade you to a larger hosting package at our discretion.

Legal adult content as defined by UK law is allowed on our servers however you must inform us as we will host your site on a separate IP to prevent any SEO implications for other clients.

We may undertake investigation of content services if potential abuse is brought to our attention and we reserve the right to remove any web page on our servers at any time and for any reason. Any accounts found to be abusive, contain illegal content or otherwise break our terms of service will be liable for immediate termination with no refund.

VPS and Dedicated Server Terms & Conditions

These VPS and Dedicated Server Terms and Conditions apply to the purchase of VPS and Dedicated Server Services from Stratum Now and are supplemental to Stratum Now’s General Terms and Conditions and Stratum Now’s Acceptable Use Policy, found on this page. Stratum Now’s General Terms apply to the provision of VPS and Dedicated Server services in addition to these VPS and Dedicated Server Terms and Conditions.

To the fullest extent permitted by law and save as provided elsewhere in the Agreement, the Services are provided by Stratum Now to the Client on an “as is” and “as available” basis and no warranty or representation (express or implied) of any kind are given in connection with the Agreement, including as to satisfactory quality and fitness for a particular purpose. In particular, Stratum Now gives no warranty or representation that:

• the Services will meet the Client’s requirements;
• the Services will be provided on an uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free basis;
• any results obtained from use of the Services will be accurate, complete or current; or the Services provided will be compatible with any files or software You install or upload to the Virtual Server.

Service Provisioning

Stratum Now aim to provision newly ordered services within 48 hours. However, due to hardware shortage, workload or other factors provisioning may sometimes be delayed and no guarantee is offered that services will be provisioned in any particular timeframe. The next due date of the service will be adjusted at the point of provisioning to account for this.

Migration to VPS or Dedicated hosting

You may ask our support team to migrate your website(s) from another service to your VPS or Dedicated Server. This will be done according to our Migration Service Terms and Conditions. Unless requested, there will be no automatic migration.

You acknowledge and agree that, in the normal course of business, it may be necessary for us to migrate our servers. As a result, even if you have a dedicated IP, you may be assigned a different IP number(s). We do not warrant that you will be able to consistently maintain your given IP number(s).

Upgrades and Downgrades

Service upgrades and downgrades must be requested by support ticket. We will endeavour to carry out the upgrade or downgrade within 48 hours. Upgrades/Downgrades will always cause a degree of service interruption which is exempted from our SLA. We will endeavour to perform the upgrade/downgrade a time of day to suit you but this cannot always be guaranteed.

If a service is downgraded, no refund or service credit will be provided and the new fee will be charged from the next renewal.

Self-Managed Services

Stratum Now may at the Customer’s request and at our sole discretion provide a Self-Managed service. A Self-Managed service means that Stratum Now has no ability to manage the server on behalf of the Customer and accordingly the Customer is solely responsible for this. Further, the Customer is solely responsible for taking backups, software management and application of any security or software updates. If the service is Self-Managed, this invalidates any SLA expressed or implied.

Service Level Agreement

Our standard service level agreement applies to managed VPS and dedicated hosting. Self-Managed servers are exempted. We will not provide an SLA credit if any downtime that occurs is due to server overload, scheduled maintenance or the upgrade/downgrade of a service.

Hardware failure

From time to time hardware may fail. We will endeavour to replace any failed hardware within 4 hours, however, this is not guaranteed. In the event of a storage failure, data loss or corruption might occur and restoration from the Customer’s backup may be required.

Backups

It is solely and entirely the Customer’s responsibility to ensure that they have sufficient backups in place for their data. Stratum Now is not responsible, under any circumstances, for any data loss from a Customer’s server or for the provision of any backups.

Stratum Now may provide backups with your VPS or dedicated hosting service. However these are taken on a “best effort” basis and we accept no liability for any loss arising from any failure in the backup process or any data loss whatsoever. We advise all customers make their own off-site backups. Self-Managed services are not covered by Stratum Now’s backup processes and Customers are solely responsible for the taking of any backups on a Self-Managed service.

Managed Hosting

Unless opted out, our VPS and dedicated servers include management as standard. Customers will not be provided with root or administrator access. Customers will have user level access to upload a website and, where applicable, access to a control panel. Stratum Now will configure the server to the Customer’s requirements, to host a standard website or group of websites.

Stratum Now will operate the server as part of its network, utilising configuration management utilities and server monitoring to ensure uptime. Stratum Now will endeavor to respond to any service affecting events 24x7x365.

Where a payable upgrade is required due to server load, Stratum Now contact the Customer to inform them of this. Should the Customer choose not to proceed with the upgrade, the standard SLA will not apply following that refusal to upgrade.

Stratum Now will normally not support your application itself, however, from time to time, Stratum Now’s support team may offer application assistance. If such assistance is offered it is on a “best effort” basis and you agree to indemnify Stratum Now against any loss or damage arising from this assistance, whether direct, indirect or consequential.

Expiry and Cancellations

Customers may terminate virtual and dedicated servers by submitting a support ticket (subject to standard notice periods as defined in our standard Terms & Conditions of Business).

Customers acknowledge and understand that upon cancellation their data is automatically removed on the date of cancellation and it is their responsibility to ensure that a full backup has been made by them prior to cancelling.

In the event that Customers cancel their Stratum Now services mid-way through their billing term, they will not be entitled to any refunds for the remaining amounts or any other related amounts.

Fees and Billing

The Services shall be charged in accordance with the fees set by Stratum Now as set out in the Order Confirmation. These may be varied from time to time and published on the Stratum Now website and in the Stratum Now client area.

Services will renew at the fee displayed in the Stratum Now client area. An invoice will be raised 30 days in advance of the service expiry date. If that invoice is not paid, the hosting Services will be suspended and later cancelled with the removal of all data.

If Customers upgrade the specifications of their Services during the term of the Agreement, the price difference will be charged immediately at a pro-rata rate relative to the remainder of the current billing period and the unit price of each element of their upgrade.

If Customers downgrade the specifications of their Services during the term of the Agreement, the price difference in relation to the remainder of the current billing period will not be refunded. The full price of the downgrade will then be charged at the start of the following billing period.