Terms of Services

3.) Zero Tolerance Spam Policy

We take a zero tolerance stance against sending of unsolicited e-mail, bulk emailing, and spam. "Safe lists" and "double opt-in" will be treated as spam. Any user who sends out spam will have their account terminated with or without notice. Please read this article for our generalized mail policy.

Commercial Advertising - Email

• Spamming, i.e. the sending of unsolicited email, from any GWS-Host.com Web server or any server located on the Datacenter network is STRICTLY prohibited. GWS-Host.com will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. This also includes Opt-in Opt-out mail programs and mail that either directly or indirectly references a domain contained within an account at GWS-Host.
• Running Unconfirmed Mailing Lists. Subscribing email addresses to any mailing list without the express and verifiable permission of the email address owner is prohibited. All mailing lists run by GWS-Host customers must be Closed-loop ("Confirmed Opt-in"). The subscription confirmation message received from each address owner must be kept on file for the duration of the existence of the mailing list. Purchasing, selling, or utilizing lists of email addresses from 3rd parties for mailing to or from any GWS-Host-hosted domain, or referencing any GWS or Datacenter account, is prohibited.
• Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet Service Provider, which includes, but is not limited to, the facilitation of the means to send Unsolicited Bulk Email, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail-bombing, text-bombing, unsolicited bulk text messaging or denial of service attacks is prohibited.
• Email address cultivating, or any unauthorized collecting of email addresses without prior notification of the email address owner is strictly prohibited.
• Operating an account on behalf of, or in connection with, or reselling any service to, persons or firms listed in the Spamhaus Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database at www.spamhaus.org is prohibited.
• All commercial email marketing companies must adhere to the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003. In addition such companies are prohibited the sending of bulk mail from "disposable domain names" with whois privacy protection.
• 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.

GWS-Host reserves the right to require changes or terminate as necessary server, 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. In case the Abuse Department of our Datacenter (where our servers are located) informs us of Abuse forthcoming from any service from your account with us your service will immediately be terminated. Please see article 6 regarding refunds.

You agree to supply appropriate payment for the services received from GWS-Host, in advance of the time period during which such services are provided. You agree that until and unless you notify GWS-Host of your desire to cancel any or all services received, those services will be billed on a recurring basis. If we have not received a cancellation notification on date of expiration of the actual contract  of your contract you are obliged to pay the full amount for the next term of your assumed services which term is set in the packages you purchase online on our site.. You are liable for ignoring cancellation and all costs forthcoming from this ignorance are on your account.

Cancellations must be done in writing via the form provided in the Client Portal. Once we receive your cancellation and have confirmed all necessary information with you via e-mail, we will inform you that your account has been canceled. At this time, your account with us has been suspended/canceled. If you do not hear back from us or receive an e-mail confirming this cancellation, please contact us immediately. If you do not cancel though you desire to do so you are liable as stated above and charges occur as stipulated in these terms.

As a (shared-hosting) client of GWS-Host, it is your responsibility to ensure that your payment information is up to date, and that all invoices are paid on time. Your first renewal invoice is send 7 days prior to expiration and is due 7 days latest. When an invoice is overdue the account will be suspended and late charges of US$/GBP/EURO/ 25 will apply. Re-activation fee of any kind of suspension is US$/GBP/Euro 75 (excluding taxes) for reactivation during first 2 calendar weeks after day of suspension. Re-activation fee beyond 2 calendar weeks is US$/GBP/EURO 150 plus 75 (currency of invoice administration costs for setting up your client account on our portal (all fees excluding 6% taxes). Reactivation will be done after full hosting fee and reactivation fee have been paid in full. If a client has multiple accounts and is in default of payment of any of the accounts the suspension, and/or cancellation will be valid for all accounts a client has with GWS-Host.com. GWS-Host is not responsible for receipt of your emails depending on your spam and/or internet traffic/settings. Our log files are sufficient prove in case of legal proceedings to which you agree. Shared Hosting Accounts(s) will be terminated one week (7 days) after suspension of the site(s).

Clients with dedicated servers, VPS-servers or bare metal servers who fail to pay their bill per due date will face a server shut-down and account suspension (all services) for 2 x 24 hours after which the servers will be teared down and services terminated. These clients will have to request a re-instate of their account within the mentioned period of 2 x 24 hours and the fee for this is US$ 350. If a client has multiple servers and or accounts and is in default of payment of any of the accounts the suspension, and/or cancellation will be valid for all accounts/servers a client has with GWS-Host.com.

4a.) The Terms are based on UTCTC/GMT timezone

GWS-Host reserves the right to change the monthly payment amount and any other charges at anytime. Due date is the last day that the payment must be credited to our bank account. The last day is valid based on due date GMT midday 12.00 noon.

5.) Backups and Data Loss
Your use of the service is at your sole risk. GWS-Host is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on GWS-Host servers. This is valid for all hosting types and includes shared hosting, reseller hosting and managed hosting. Where possible we provide a restore service but we cannot guarantee integrity of the data to be restored. You as a customer are always responsible for proper backup and maintenance of your site(s)

5a.) Software, versions and updates
You are obliged to keep all software installed on your account updated at all times to avoid security related breaches to the server. This is valid for all software on your account including subsystems. Failure to keep your software updated and safe will lead to suspension and/or termination of your account. When we notice a breach in security due to outdated versions or known vulnerable extensions we will inform you in writing and you will have 24-hours after we have send the message to upgrade or remove the respective software. If you fail to do so we will suspend your account followed by termination.

It is your responsibility to ensure that scripts/programs installed under your account are secure and permissions of directories are set properly, regardless of installation method. When at all possible, set permissions on most directories to 755 or as restrictive as possible. Users are ultimately responsible for all actions taken under their account. This includes the compromise of credentials such as user name and password. It is required that you use a secure password. If a weak password is used (defined as less than 12 digits and below 80% strength as per cPanel validation) , your account may be suspended until you agree to use a more secure password. Audits may be done to prevent weak passwords from being used. If an audit is performed, and your password is found to be weak, we will notify you and allow time for you to change/update your password.

6.) Cancellations and Refunds
GWS-Host reserves the right to cancel, suspend, or otherwise restrict access to the account at any time with or without notice. We will indefinitely terminate any account if you breach our Terms, article 3.

Customers may cancel a hosting account at any time via a contact us form provided. GWS-Host gives you an unconditional 30 day money back guarantee on shared hosting, and reseller solution's. There are no refunds on managed hosting accounts and dedicated servers, administrative fees, install fees for custom software, OSAM-packages or domain name purchases. No refunds apply after initial first 30 days nor pro-rated refunds apply. Cancellation of VPS/Dedicated server agreements must be filed 7 working days before expiration otherwise one calendar month of fees will be charged to your account. Once an invoice has been submitted for such services no cancellation will be accepted for that specific invoice period. The cancellation will be effective upon renewal dat of the next expiration. You are obliged to pay if you do not cancel in time.

Only first-time accounts are eligible for a refund. For example, if you've had an account with us before, cancelled and signed up again, you will not be eligible for a refund or if you have opened a second account with us.

Violations of the Terms of Service will waive the refund policy.

7.) Your Conduct.
You agree that all information or data of any kind, whether text, software, code, music or sound, photographs or graphics, video or other materials ("Content"), publicly or privately provided, shall be the sole responsibility of the person providing the Content or the person whose user account is used. You agree that our web site(s) may expose you to Content that may be objectionable or offensive. We shall not be responsible to you in any way for the Content that appears on this web site nor for any error or omission.

You explicitly agree, in using our web site(s) or any services provided, that you shall not:
(a) provide wrongful or falsified information which will cause additional work or losses to our company as a result of extra work/services which you are not willing to pay for or we are not willing to provide;
(b) provide any Content or perform any conduct that may be unlawful, illegal, threatening, harmful, abusive, harassing, stalking, tortuous, defamatory, libelous, vulgar, obscene, offensive, objectionable, pornographic, designed to or does interfere or interrupt this web site or any service provided, infected with a virus or other destructive or deleterious programming routine, give rise to civil or criminal liability, or which may violate an applicable local, national or international law;
(c) impersonate or misrepresent your association with any person or entity, or forge or otherwise seek to conceal or misrepresent the origin of any Content provided by you;
(d) collect or harvest any data about other users;
(e) provide or use this web site and any Content or service in any commercial manner or in any manner that would involve junk mail, spam, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or any other form of unauthorized advertising without our prior written consent;
(f) provide any Content that may give rise to our civil or criminal liability or which may constitute or be considered a violation of any local, national or international law, including but not limited to laws relating to copyright, trademark, patent, or trade secrets.
(g) insult any staff or allied staff of our company in any form nor abuse them in any form. If you are not satisfied with any service of our company you can complain but abusive behavior will not be tolerated and might/will lead to cancellation of your account.

8.) Resource Usage
User may not:
a) Use 25% or more of system resources for longer then 90 seconds. There are numerous activities that could cause such problems; these include: CGI scripts, FTP, PHP, HTTP, etc.
b) Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in time on the server. This includes any and all daemons, such as IRCD.
c) Run any type of web spider or indexer (including Google Cash / AdSpy) on shared servers.
d) Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.
e) Run any bit torrent application, tracker, or client. Please note that you may link to torrents off server, but may not host or store them.
f) Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities
g) Run any gaming servers such as counter-strike, half-life, battlefield1942, etc
h) Run cron entries with intervals of less than 15 minutes

When using PHP include functions for including a local file, include the local file rather than the URL. Instead of include("http://yourdomain.com/include.php") use include("include.php")

9) INODES
The use of more than 50,000 inodes on any shared account may potentially result in suspension. Accounts found to be exceeding the 50,000 inode limit will automatically be removed from our backup system to avoid over usage. Every file on your account uses up 1 inode.

Simply exceeding the limit does not constitute grounds for suspension however accounts that constantly create and delete large numbers of files on a regular basis or causing file system damage may cause your account to be flagged for review.

10) Bandwidth Usage
You are allocated a monthly bandwidth allowance. This allowance varies depending on the hosting package you purchase. Should your account pass the allocated amount we reserve the right to suspend the account until the start of the next allocation, suspend the account until more bandwidth is purchased at an additional fee, suspend the account until you upgrade to a higher level of package, terminate the account and/or charge you an additional fee for the overages. We charge US$1.00 per gig for bandwidth overages. Unused transfer in one month cannot be carried over to the next month.

11a.) Money back Guarantee
On VPS and Dedicated servers as well as on hosting accounts where we have provided 3rd party licenses such as but not limited to WHMCS, Mijoshop, Hikashop etc the 30 day money back guarantee, nor any refund apply under any circumstances.

Each of GWS-Host's shared and reseller hosting services carry a 30 day conditional money back guarantee on them. If you are not completely satisfied with our services for legitimate reasons such as servers down, servers not accessible, Joomla core not functioning on our serves and similar cases (legitimacy solidly to be determined by GWS-Group/GWS-Host) within the first 30 days of your service, you will be given a full refund of the contract amount. Remember, this is only for monthly shared or reseller packages and does not apply to dedicated servers, administrative fees, install fees for custom software, or domain name purchase. The money back guarantee is not valid for hosting packages with pre-installed Joomla nor in case of non legitimate reasons solidly to be defined by GWS-Host.com.

11b.) Uptime Guarantee
If your shared / reseller server has a physical downtime that is not within the 99.9% uptime you may receive one month of credit on your account. Approval of the credit is at the discretion of GWS-Host depending upon justification provided. Third party monitoring service reports 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 as the reported uptime from the operating system and the Apache Web Server which may differ from the uptime reported by other individual services. To request a credit, please contact contact us with justification. All requests must be made in writing via email. Uptime guarantees only apply to shared / reseller solutions. Dedicated servers are covered by a network guarantee in which the credit is prorated for the amount of time the server is down which is not related to our uptime guarantee.

11c.) Scheduled Maintenance and Downtime
GWS-Host will use its commercially reasonable efforts to provide services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Subscriber acknowledges that from time to time the services may be inaccessible or inoperable for various reasons, including periodic maintenance procedures or upgrades ("Scheduled Downtime"); or service malfunctions, and causes beyond GWS-Host's control or which are not reasonably foreseeable by GWS-Host, including the interruption or failure of telecommunications or digital transmission links, hostile network attacks, or network congestion or other failures. GWS-Host will provide at least 48 hours advance notice to the subscriber for Scheduled Downtimes, and will use commercially reasonable efforts to minimize any other disruption, inaccessibility and/or inoperability of its web servers. GWS-Host has no responsibility for downtime resulting from a user's actions. Also, the 100% network uptime guarantee does not apply for shared accounts.

12.a) Shared (non-reseller accounts)
Shared accounts may not resell web hosting to other people, if you wish to resell hosting you must use a reseller account. You must maintain your own backups. (see article 5!)

12.b) Reseller hosting
You may resell as many accounts you desire within the imitations of your package. You must maintain your own backups. (see article 5!) Resellers are responsible for supporting their clients. GWS-Host does not provide support to our Reseller's Clients. If a reseller's client contacts us, we reserve the right to place the client account on hold until the reseller can assume their responsibility for their client. All support requests must be made by the reseller on their clients' behalf for security purposes. Resellers are also responsible for all content stored or transmitted under their reseller account and the actions of their clients'. GWS-Host will hold any reseller responsible for any of their clients actions that violate the law or the terms of service.

13.) Price Change
The amount you pay for hosting will never increase from the date of purchase. We reserve the right to change prices listed on GWS-Host, and the right to increase the amount of resources given to plans at any time.

14a.) Indemnification
Customer agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold GWS-Host harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including reasonable attorney's fees asserted against GWS-Host, 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 GWS-Host against liabilities arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with GWS-Host; (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 GWS-Host's server(s).

14b.) Arbitration
By using any GWS-Host services, you agree to binding arbitration. If any disputes or claims arise against GWS-Host or its subsidiaries, such disputes will be handled by an arbitrator of GWS-Host's 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.

15.) Disclaimer
GWS-Host shall not be responsible for any damages your business may suffer. GWS-Host makes no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide. GWS-Host 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 GWS-Host and its employees.

16.) Disclosure to law enforcement
GWS-Host may disclose any subscriber information to law enforcement agencies without further consent or notification to the subscriber upon lawful request from such agencies. We will cooperate fully with law enforcement agencies.

17.) Changes to the TOS
GWS-Host reserves the right to revise its policies at any time without notice.