WebAware (Pty) Ltd

Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy

WebAware (Pty) Ltd is a world-wide leader in Web Hosting and Internet Solutions.

These Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policies apply to all individuals, businesses, organizations, resellers, and end-clients (collectively, "users") employing any WebAware (Pty) Ltd services, hardware, property or other products.

Use of WebAware (Pty) Ltd resources constitutes acceptance of all policies in effect at the time of use. Modification to this policy may be made at any time and will be immediately effective upon posted changes.

WebAware (Pty) Ltd reserves the right to protect its resources, users, and reputation from any activity deemed damaging, offensive or abusive. To this measure, WebAware (Pty) Ltd will act as sole arbiter in determining violations of this policy.

1. Provisions:

Use of WebAware (Pty) Ltd services indicates the acknowledgment that:

2. Abusive Clientele:

WebAware (Pty) Ltd may, at its discretion, suspend or terminate the service of any client/reseller who is financially delinquent, abusive/harassing to WebAware (Pty) Ltd personnel, or causes general disruption to the operation of the company and service of its users.

2.1. Examples of such activity include, but are not limited to:

3. Abuse of WebAware (Pty) Ltd Systems and Resources:

Any damaging or abusive activity, whether unlawful or considered to be detrimental to the operations of WebAware (Pty) Ltd resources, is a violation of this policy. Any attempt to harm equipment owned by WebAware (Pty) Ltd, or hosted in its facilities, is strictly prohibited. Violations will result in legal action, to the fullest allowable extent.

4. Illegal Usage Restrictions:

Resources provided by WebAware (Pty) Ltd may be used only for lawful purposes.

4.1. Examples of unlawful content include, but are not limited to:

5. Prohibited Usage Restrictions:

In addition to activities governed by law, WebAware (Pty) Ltd strictly prohibits:

*** Links to unacceptable content are also prohibited.

6. Bulk Email & Blacklisting:

WebAware (Pty) Ltd understands that bulk email is an important mechanism for keeping people informed. However, spamming from the WebAware (Pty) Ltd network, and spamvertising (unsolicited advertising of) sites hosted on the WebAware (Pty) Ltd network, is prohibited.

6.1. Legitimate bulk email meets the following criteria:

6.2. The usage of partially confirmed recipient lists is not allowed.

6.3. All bulk email senders must post privacy policies and must be clearly identified to recipients during the subscription and confirmation process. The usage of third-party distribution lists is prohibited.

6.4. If WebAware (Pty) Ltd approaches a client for evidence of confirmation, the request must be honored within 48 hours of the initial notification. Deactivation of an account or service may occur until proof of confirmation is provided and approved.

6.5. WebAware (Pty) Ltd reserves the right to require termination of any services involved in the transmission of unsolicited email.

6.6. If any activities lead to blacklisting, the involved client/reseller may be charged an abuse fee of R2 500.00 (Incl VAT).

7. Policy Violations:

7.1. Storage, presentation, or transmission of any material in violation of any laws, or otherwise prohibited by WebAware (Pty) Ltd, is cause for temporary account deactivation, server/service termination, or complete cancellation of all account services. The WebAware (Pty) Ltd Abuse Dept will make an attempt to contact the involved client via email when the first sign of a possible violation is noted. This notification may occur before or after a service is deactivated/suspended or terminated.

7.2. Alerts are provided as a courtesy. Prompt responses to alerts are required. When an alert is sent, the designated abuse contact is responsible for acknowledging his/her understanding of the offense and providing an adequate response, to the satisfaction of WebAware (Pty) Ltd, within 24 hours of the notice. Failure to sufficiently respond to an abuse alert will lead to deactivation/suspension or termination of any services involved in abusive activity and will result in a R2 500.00 (Incl VAT) fee. If reactivation is warranted, all abuse fees and any outstanding service fees must be paid prior to service being reactivated.

7.3. Repeated abuse and/or failure to respond to abuse alerts will result in service termination.

7.4. Note: It is extremely important to ensure that the abuse email address on record is valid and monitored at all times. This is the address used for abuse notifications and warnings. The address may be set within the client management interface.

7.5. Direct clients/resellers are fully responsible for any activity found to originate from products and/or services under their care. In any case involving unauthorized parties utilizing a WebAware (Pty) Ltd service for abuse, the direct client/reseller is responsible for locating and stopping all affected applications, until the source of the problem is found and removed. WebAware (Pty) Ltd may opt to deactivate/suspend all services until the client can perform such an investigation or the system can be secured or reinstalled. If the support of WebAware (Pty) Ltd is required for the investigation, the client agrees to compensate WebAware (Pty) Ltd at a rate of R1000(Incl VAT) per hour for such service. Reinstallations are performed at a flat-rate of R400 (Incl VAT) (which does not include any operating system changes or licensing costs).

Direct clients/resellers are responsible for maintaining secure systems. This includes, but is not limited to:

7.6. WebAware (Pty) Ltd will not be responsible for securing dedicated servers, virtual private servers, user accounts/web sites, or third-party applications. Direct clients/resellers with fully managed support services covered by SLA, may be entitled to a higher level of support than clientele with basic management.

8. Resource Usage:

8.1. Resource usage should be maintained within levels outlined in product descriptions and/or service contracts. Abuse caused by users or unauthorized parties may increase resource usage and lead to overage fees or service deactivation/suspension.

8.2. Overage fees apply to any service utilizing more than its assigned bandwidth allocation, except for services advertised/sold as "UNMETERED". Overages will be calculated based on overall amount of GigaBytes (GB) transferred in a monthly period, unless a service is sold based on Megabits per Second (MBPS). Services sold by MBPS, will be calculated via the industry standard 95% percentile method, unless otherwise specified in the service agreement contract. MRTG or other bandwidth reports are available upon request.

8.3. Bandwidth is supplied from a shared pool and is not supplied as guaranteed/dedicated bandwidth, unless advertised as such specifically. Burstable usage of the UNMETERED service/port is permitted. However, a service that has heavy sustained usage may have its port capped and the client/reseller associated with the service may be required to upgrade to a dedicated service plan.

8.4. UNMETERED service is supplied on a "best-effort" basis, which may result in some slowdowns during peak traffic periods.

8.5. Should a client/reseller utilize or require large amounts of bandwidth, beyond the standard bandwidth allocation, WebAware (Pty) Ltd may require a deposit.

8.6. The following provisional email limits are in place:

*** These limits may be adjusted on a per account, domain or user basis if sufficient motivation is received to warrant this.

8.7. The following provisional hosting limits are in place per vhost:

8.8. WebAware (Pty) Ltd reserves the right to priortize resource usage to prevent impact on other clients.

9. Port Usage:

Basic Dedicated & Co-Located servers are installed on 100MBPS unthrottled ports, unless service is sold with a specified port size (ie. 10MBPS UNMETERED) or specified/requested as a "capped" port. WebAware (Pty) Ltd reserves the right to monitor network usage and throttle the available speed (if a service significantly exceeds average usage) to conserve network resources and to prevent any large billing anomalies. This will generally not include short spikes in usage, but will include, and not be limited to, sustained transfers of significantly larger than average amounts of bandwidth. If, at any time, a client's or reseller's data transfer rate affects other WebAware (Pty) Ltd clientele, WebAware (Pty) Ltd reserves the right to throttle and/or disconnect/deactivate/suspend the service at the source of the problem.

10. Filtering:

WebAware (Pty) Ltd reserves the right to block, filter, or throttle ports and/or IP address ranges. For example, this may include blocking Port 6667 (IRC), denying access from a known spammer's IP address range, or limiting the speed of point-to-point file-sharing programs (Kazaa, Limewire, eDonkey, etc...). This may also include prioritization of certain traffic types, such as Voice-over-IP (VOIP) phone call transmissions.

11. Website Hosting:

Each website hosting package is limited to the disk space and bandwidth allocation included with its associated package.

11.1. To maintain the integrity of our service, the following usage may be limited or disallowed on website hosting packages:

11.2. To reduce the load on a server, WebAware (Pty) Ltd reserves the right to relocate any site to a different server and/or IP address.

11.3. Inode usage There is a hard inode usage limit of 75,000 inodes on all accounts. The use of more than 50,000 inodes on any shared account will result in an inode warning message. Accounts found to be exceeding 50,000 inodes will be automatically removed from our disaster recovery system to avoid the negative performance impact. Every file and directory placed in the home directory counts towards the inode usage. There are two primary causes of large inode counts: 1) it is possible the catchall email address is set to active, 2) it is possible the hosting account is making use of a caching system which does not clean up cache files

12. Email Hosting:

12.1. To maintain quick system response times and cut down on system clutter the following email removal policies are in place:

13. Virtual Private Servers (VPS):

To maintain the integrity of WebAware (Pty) Ltd services, any VPS (virtual private server) utilizing heavy amounts of system resources may be temporarily disabled. When necessary, clients/resellers may be required to upgrade the service package to accommodate actual usage. Additionally, to reduce the load on servers, WebAware (Pty) Ltd may relocate virtual private server containers to different nodes and/or IP addresses.

14. Backup Service:

To maintain the integrity of backup services, WebAware (Pty) Ltd may relocate any backup service to a different server and/or IP address in an effort to reduce the load on the current platform. Download/FTP sites, web-serving (httpd), and/or any usage that results in heavy upstream/outgoing bandwidth consumption (beyond that of normal backup operations) is not permitted. This service is meant for the backup/restore/sharing/storing of data and not for usage normally performed by web/database servers.

15. Idle Timeouts:

WebAware (Pty) Ltd may disconnect any idle connection to the network. Average timeouts are:

16. Support:

16.1. WebAware (Pty) Ltd provides clients with support primarily using our helpdesk system (http://helpdesk.iitsp.com), links to site-specific helpdesk systems are found on most of our websites. Ticket response times depend primarily on staff workload and averages between 5 and 30 minutes, but may during certain events extend up to 24hr, albeit rarely. The status of tickets can be viewed when logged into the helpdesk system.

16.2. Email support is provided using the email addresses on our various websites, when an email is sent to these addresses a ticket will be logged on our helpdesk system. If you do not receive a response within 5 minutes, please log into the helpdesk interface to log your support ticket. Failing this, please contact our support team via telephone.

16.3. Live chat support is provided on a best effort basis, time and workload permitting, no expectation should be made for instant responses. Please log a ticket using email or the helpdesk system if you don't get a response in live chat.

16.4. All support is provided on a first come first serve basis. Every effort is made to publish and update outages as soon as possible.

17. Special Terms and Conditions - 100TB Service:

17.1. Service Limitation. This service is a special limited time offer by WebAware (Pty) Ltd, and may be cancelled, modified, or withdrawn at any time, following 14 days notice emailed to the Client.

17.2. Fair Usage Policy. The service is provided to the Client for normal, fair, and reasonable usage. Bandwidth usage is to be reasonably consistent throughout every month, without irregular bandwidth usage patterns/spikes. In the event WebAware (Pty) Ltd, in its sole discretion, determines that the Client is not using the service according to this Fair Use Policy, WebAware (Pty) Ltd will be entitled to: (a) impose limits on the speed of the data the Client may transmit and/or receive with this service; (b) adjust pricing of service to regular/standard bandwidth rates; and/or (c) suspend or terminate the service provided to the Client, at WebAware (Pty) Ltd's sole discretion.

17.3. CDN or Media Streaming. Client shall not be entitled to use the service for the purpose of operating a Content Distribution Network (CDN) and/or Streaming Media service, except with WebAware (Pty) Ltd's prior written consent, which consent may be approved or denied at WebAware (Pty) Ltd's sole discretion. Special requests to use the service to run such, may be approved on a case-by-case basis, and we do recommend you contact us to discuss.

17.4. Notice of Breach. Whenever reasonably possible, in the event of a Client breach of any Special Terms and Conditions for this service, WebAware (Pty) Ltd will email the Client allowing 24 hours to cure the breach, before WebAware (Pty) Ltd takes any action. If the breach re-occurs within the 30 days following, WebAware (Pty) Ltd may take any action permitted in the Fair Usage Policy, without further notice to the Client. Failure to comply with this policy may result in termination of service, and a refund not granted.

18. Special Terms and Conditions - Website Transfer:

Some packages may include FREE website transfer. This service is designed to assist new clients with the migration of their websites from their current hosting provider to their new hosting account. While we provide this service free of charge we cannot guarantee successful transfer of websites. This service is provided on a best effort basis and under the assumption that suffcient means exist to easily acquire all website content and setup information in a format which is supported by the new hosting account's import/restore facility.

18.1. For cPanel/WHM we require:

18.2. NOTE: For all transfers client/reseller is responsible for handling changes with their registrar and ensuring minimal impact due to DNS propogation. If the domain(s) fall under an WebAware (Pty) Ltd reseller registrar account, we can assist in making these changes for you.

19. Service Cancellations

19.1  There is a general 30 day notice period for any service cancellations.

19.2  No refund will be offered to the customer for any service cancelled, be it a monthly or yearly service.

193.  Cancellations can be requested from our MyAccount control panel found on our website www.webaware.co.za.

20. Refunds

20.1  No refund will be offered to the customer for any service cancelled, be it a monthly or yearly service.