1. BILLING AND CHARGES
All of our Shared hosting packages carry a 60-day money-back guarantee! If you are dissatisfied for any reason at all then just let us know why and if we can’t help, we’ll issue a full hosting refund. Please note that VDS orders, dedicated server orders, and domain costs are not refundable.
2. PAYMENTS
Renewal invoices are generated 10 days in advance and sent to your registered e-mail address. It is your responsibility to ensure this e-mail address is kept up to date and can receive emails from us.
It is important that we receive payment on time. All services must be paid for by the due date shown on the invoice unless a written adjustment has been agreed. Failure to complete payment within this time will result in an automatic reminder when the invoice is overdue, and automatic account suspension should the invoice remain unpaid for more than 7 days. If your services are suspended then an administration fee of £9.99 will be added to your account. This applies to all hosting accounts, VDS and Dedicated servers. Domain names expire on the day immediately after their renewal date. As such we strongly recommend renewing a minimum of 48 hours before the expiration date.
If an invoice is unpaid, the related service will be suspended until such time that payment is received and you inform us by email that you have paid. At this point, we will use all reasonable endeavours to restore service within 24 hours.
Unless otherwise stated, all payments must be received in UK Pounds sterling. If you pay by foreign bank transfer, then you must be responsible for all foreign currency charges.
We reserve the right to alter our prices at any time and will notify you of any alteration by providing you with a written notice. Notice of any price alteration will be sent via email to the email address that we hold for you in our account. If you have already purchased a particular service then the price alteration will only become effective when the service reaches the end of its current term.
You warrant that you are lawfully authorised to make payment using the payment card or facility you disclose to us. In the event where you are not the named cardholder, you acknowledge that you and the named card-holder both accept these terms and conditions and are jointly and severally liable for any payment(s) due. You hereby indemnify us in the event that the cardholder or issuer declines any transaction for payment, including our costs in recovering the outstanding amount due.
If you attempt a chargeback or dispute a transaction with your bank, we reserve the right to suspend all services provided to you with immediate effect. Services will remain suspended and until such time as the charge-back has been fully reversed in our favour.
3. OVERUSAGE
Account usage is checked frequently. All accounts will receive notification when bandwidth usage is nearing the account’s limit. Overusage will result in automatic account suspension unless a prior agreement has been reached. Usually the cheapest option is to upgrade to the next package where available, otherwise, our standard charges are £1.00 per GB per month for additional bandwidth usage and £2 per month per 250MB disk usage. Upon suspension please contact us to arrange upgrade pricing.
If not specifically stated to the contrary, our services are intended to be used for the purposes of hosting websites and e-mail. Batch processing, video encoding/transcoding, web crawling/spidering, archiving and online backup systems and any system designed to consume CPU or disk resources for purposes other than hosting a website are not permitted on our shared hosting servers. However, you may use such tools on a VDS or dedicated server. We reserve the right to enact defensive movements to maintain the stability of our systems for all clients.
If you believe your website may be susceptible to high or otherwise abnormal usage you must contact us to discuss the suitability of your hosting environment.
4. CANCELLATION, REFUNDS, TERMINATION AND DISPUTES
Cancellation notices for all services must be given at a minimum of 48 hours in advance of the next billing date, with the exception of VDS and Dedicated / Private servers for which we require a cancellation notice a minimum 30 days before the next billing date. Please note that all VDS, Dedicated / Private Servers carry a minimum 12-month service contract. For shared hosting, an account credit will be granted for each whole unused month. No cash refunds will be granted unless a payment has been taken in error. Refunds for prepaid dedicated servers and VPS will only be granted where there is a genuine irreconcilable problem with the service and at management’s discretion.
A breach of any of our terms and conditions will result in immediate termination with no refund.
Setup fees are non-refundable. Any disputes should be expressed in writing via a valid written contact method as listed on our contact page.
5. CLIENT CONDUCT
Under no circumstances will we tolerate threatening or abusive behaviour towards our staff. Should this occur, we reserve the right to terminate the hosting agreement with immediate effect.
Should the client, during the course of a telephone conversation, email or support ticket, make reference to “legal action” or say anything we might reasonably understand to imply or infer that the client may intend to pursue a legal claim against us, we reserve the right to refuse telephone support going forward. Any further correspondence must then be sent by email or support ticket.
Should we feel that your needs would be better served by another provider, we reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to terminate the hosting agreement. Where it is reasonable to do so, we will provide 30 days notice of termination and provide a backup of all website content and email.
6. RIGHTS ON TERMINATION
Termination of this agreement does not affect your pre-existing liability, if any or affect our right to recover damages or pursue any other remedy in respect of any breach of this agreement by you.
In the event of us terminating this agreement due to a breach of these conditions by you, we shall be entitled to the balance of all payments which would but for such termination have accrued up to the earliest date on which this agreement could have been terminated by you.
Setup fees are non-refundable. Any disputes should be expressed in writing via a valid written contact method.
7. A CHANGE OF DETAILS
We have the right to change any username or password allocated to you for the purpose of essential network maintenance, enhancement modernisation or other work deemed necessary to the operation of the Internet.
Similarly, we have the right to alter the hosting environment your site runs into one with like-for-like features, as long as reasonable notice is given and there is no disruption to service. The only reason we would do this is if it represented an ‘upgraded’ environment for you, the end user.
8. DOMAIN REGISTRATION, RENEWAL, TRANSFER AND RESTORATION
Some hosting packages include a free domain registration or transfer for a .be / .biz / .co.uk / .com / .de / .eu / .info / .ltd.uk / .me / .me.uk / .net / .org / .org.uk domain name. All other extensions are excluded from this offer due to their additional cost but please contact us for a reduced price if you wish to order with a different extension. The registration period is one year.
9. HOSTING PACKAGE RENEWALS DO NOT INCLUDE A FURTHER FREE DOMAIN RENEWAL, TRANSFER OR REGISTRATION.
We will always register, transfer and renew domain names in our client’s name – never in our own. You are always in control of every aspect of your domain name(s) and can manage your domain’s WHOIS data through your domain name provider. It is your responsibility to keep this data correct.
10. ACCOUNT SUPPORT / EMERGENCY CONTACT
We provide support via e-mail and phone as part of a Chargable Maintenance Package which is available for you to access for an agreed monthly charge. There is a minimum period of 3 months for any package. To provide efficient service and comply with data protection laws, any requests for changes to your account (including billing changes, password changes or any other technical changes) must be submitted by ticket or e-mail from your registered address.
11. ZERO TOLERANCE TOWARDS ABUSE
Customers are responsible for all scripts, data and other objects on their accounts. 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. Any account found to be the source of abusive scripts will be immediately suspended and investigated, and subject to action as detailed under Illegal Content below. We will always notify customers and, where necessary, fully co-operate with the authorities.
You must not use the service for the transmission of illegal material. You agree to refrain from sending or receiving any materials which may be deemed to be offensive, abusive, indecent, defamatory, obscene, menacing or otherwise as prohibited by current and future statutes in force. You agree to refrain from sending or receiving any material which may be in breach of copyright (including Intellectual Property Rights), confidence, privacy or other rights. If you are in any doubt as to the legality of what you are doing or propose to do, you should take independent legal advice.
12. IN BRIEF
All content uploaded to your hosting service, including dedicated and VDS servers must conform to UK law. It is the user’s sole responsibility to ensure this. Storage, distribution of or transmission of illegal materials may lead to an 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.
We undertake to take action required under the provisions of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and will fully cooperate with the appropriate UK authorities.
13. ACCEPTABLE EMAIL USAGE
We have a zero-tolerance policy against spam and the sending of bulk, unsolicited e-mail is prohibited at all times. Customers who abuse the email service will be notified that their behaviour is unacceptable and may have their accounts suspended, terminated or blocked at our sole discretion.
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 email services or network to send email to any user who does not wish to receive it.
You must not use our email services or network to send unsolicited email, in bulk (commonly known as ‘spam’) or individually.
You must not use our email services or network with intent to deprive others of service (‘mail bomb’).
You must not use false email headers or alter the headers of email 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, Heron Marketing Services Ltd cannot guarantee a positive reputation.
14. 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 collocated servers. We cannot and do not pro-actively monitor content on any web space maintained by customers (whether customer space, web hosted or collocated services) and cannot and do not guarantee that such sites are free of illegal content or other materials that may be considered unacceptable.
You undertake sole responsibility for the content of web pages owned and/or operated by you – whether, on client pages, web hosted space or collocated servers – within our domain or other domains hosted within our network.
Unless you have in place an agreed Chargeable Maintenance Package, Heron Marketing Services Ltd. have no responsibility whatsoever for the updating of the content of your website, security updates, malware and virus monitoring and protection.
In order to protect the integrity of our server we reserve the right to suspend your website with immediate affect and without notice if we suspect or believe that your website has been compromised by any external factors such as a malware or viral attack or DOS (Denial of Service) attack for example.
We reserve the right to permanently remove your website from our server without prior notice if we believe that the continued hosting of your website will have a imminent and/or detrimental affect to our server.
You undertake the sole responsibility to ensure that all materials on any website owned or operated by you contain material that you have created or have permission to use.
You undertake 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.
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 an 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.