Terms and Conditions
The terms of service for Nublue Ltd
Web Hosting
1. Introduction
- These Terms and Conditions constitute our policies regarding use of our Services.
- When purchasing or applying for the use of our Services, you agree that these Terms shall apply to those Services. These Terms will be valid if and when we email you to confirm that your account has been activated, or from payment of the first invoice on the account.
- These Terms take the place of any previous correspondence, understanding, and negotiation or representation of our services.
- It is your responsibility to comply with these Terms at any given time.
- It is our responsibility to abide by and enforce these Terms at all times.
- If there are any inconsistencies or conflicts between these Terms and Specific Terms, the Specific Terms take precedence.
2. Definitions
- For clarity, the following words and phrases are defined below.
- Terms - the Terms and Conditions.
- Specific - Specific Terms that apply to particular Services.
- Us, Our, We - Nublue Limited. Registered office - Nublue Limited, 1st Floor, Express Networks 2, 3 George Leigh Street, Manchester, M4 5DL. Company Number - 05523340.
- You, Your - The customer.
- Both Parties - Nublue Limited, and You, the customer.
- Server - any server that we allow you access to or any server on which we allocate you resources.
- Services - the services that we provide to you under these Terms.
- Software - any software used on our Services.
- Articles - every numbered section of these Terms are an Article.
- Subsection - specific, individually bulleted points within Articles.
- Contract period - the length of the contract you have chosen for your Hosting services.
- Billing cycle - the regularity with which you pay and receive for your services during your contract period.
- Commercial agreement - hosting contract for an agreed length of time.
3. Compliance with Law
- These Terms are governed by English law.
4. Agreement and Responsibility
- We may vary these Terms at any point. You may not vary these Terms at any point.
- If we fail to do something that we should do according to these Terms, and this causes you to fail to do something according to these Terms, then we will not treat your failure as a breach of these Terms. You agree that you will treat us in the same manner.
- You agree that you shall comply with UK law.
- You agree that you will comply with our reasonable guidelines, directions and instructions regarding the use of our Services.
- You agree that you will not sell, transfer, barter, deal, trade, or otherwise make available the Services, Software or any parts thereof to any third party, for any purposes that breach these Terms.
- You agree that by using our Services, and therefore agreeing to these Terms, that you have full authority to apply for and use our Services, and abide by these Terms.
- You agree that it is your responsibility to keep your contact details up to date, and that we will always be able to contact you using these contact details.
- You agree that it is your responsibility to ensure that you are able to pay any invoices for your Service on time, and that a valid payment method is assigned to your account at all times.
- You agree that the uptime and functionality of your website is your responsibility, and that any claims against our SLA that are determined to be caused by factors beyond the services we provide you with are not cause for a claim via the SLA.
- You agree that you will not claim against our SLA if we are performing maintenance on your service, or if downtime occurs as a result of work we have performed on your service at your request.
- You agree that it is your responsibility to ensure that you have a current backup of your service at all times.
- You agree that if you require us to restore a backup of all or part of your service, that we may charge a fee for this service.
5. Service Entitlement
- You agree that you are not entitled to the use of any Services, access to a Server or Software, or internet connectivity from any of our Services, until we inform you (by email or telephone) that they are ready for use, and that you are authorised to use them.
6. Intellectual Property Rights
- All Intellectual Property Rights are owned either by us or by the licensors of the Services and the Software. You acquire no rights in the Services or Software.
7. Indemnities
- You agree that we are fully indemnified, and will remain fully indemnified, from and against all actions, demands, costs, losses, penalties, damages, liability, claims, expenses, and legal fees whatsoever, incurred by us, and/or arising from:
- Your breach of this Agreement.
- Your negligence or other act or omission.
- Any claim brought against us by any third party alleging that Intellectual Property Rights have been infringed, where such infringement arises from your modification or use of the Software and/or Services, and/or any materials or information provided to you by us, or available to you from us.
- The operation or break down of any equipment or software owned or used by you.
- Your use or misuse of our Services and/or the Server.
- You agreements with other parties.
8. Liability
- We shall not be liable for any of the following types of loss, regardless of whether they are direct, indirect or consequential, or whether we have notified you that you would incur any of these losses:
- Financial loss of any kind, including but not limited to loss of profits, earnings, business, goodwill, reputation, business interruption, clients or sales.
- Loss, corruption or amendment of any data or content stored on our Servers.
9. Disputes
- Both parties agree that disputes regarding these Terms shall be dealt with in the following manner.
- The dispute should be raised by you, in the name of the Primary Account Contact, and will be referred to us, in our case to the Manager that we assign the dispute to. You should raise the dispute, via email, to support @ nublue.co.uk.
- If the dispute is not resolved then it will be escalated to our Directors.
- If the dispute cannot be resolved at this stage, both parties will attempt to agree a mediator for the dispute. If we cannot agree a mediator then we will contact the Law Society of England and Wales to appoint a mediator.
- If the dispute is still not resolved, then both parties agree that the English courts can settle the dispute.
- We shall bear our own costs for the dispute procedure, up to any involvement of the English courts. You shall do the same.
10. Miscellaneous Terms
- Both parties will not be liable to the other for any delay or failure in performance of their obligations according to these Terms, where these have been caused by events outside their reasonable control. However to invoke this clause we must notify you; the suffering party must notify the other of this event. Furthermore this does not apply to your obligation to pay any fees for the Services.
- Any IP addresses assigned to you are owned by us. We may reclaim, redistribute, or amend IP addresses associated with your Service or Server. We will notify you via email should we carry out any of these changes.
- Unless we specifically inform you otherwise, any attempt to contact you will be via email to the primary contact email address on your account. Any request for contact from you will be from the primary contact email address on your account.
- You agree that, if we are unable to contact you, we may have to take actions for which we would normally require your approval. We will only proceed this way if we can demonstrate that we have attempted to contact you on several occasions and/or there is a justifiable need on our part to take action.
- You agree that Nublue Ltd is entitled to modify your website files (with or without notification) to help maintain the performance or your web hosting and to protect our network, website (https://www.nublue.co.uk) and company from potentially negative financial implications.
- You agree that any successful claim against our SLA will result in an appropriate credit (determined by us) against any affected hosting products. This will be provided as an equivalent (where appropriate) monthly credit, of a given value not including VAT. This only relates to Shared, VPS, Dedicated and AWS (Web Server and Database Server) hosting products and their add-ons.
- You agree that situations could arise where we may be forced to migrate your hosting package and sites across to an alternative hosting solution and that such a move may incur a increase in price.
- In the event that we did have to move your account to a new platform, we would make reasonable efforts to contact you and advise you regarding the move and how it will affect your service.
- Where possible we would give you as much notice as possible of such a move, but you agree that there may be urgent situations in which you would receive very short notice or no advance notice of the move.
- You agree that we reserve the right to suspend, cancel, migrate, upgrade, downgrade or otherwise alter your hosting solution with us if there is a justifiable reason for doing so. As per previous terms, we will endeavour to contact you as much as is reasonably possible if such an alteration of your package does become necessary.
- You agree that you are responsible for the performance and stability of your server, including but not limited to disk space usage, bandwidth usage, RAM usage, CPU loads, and the services such as Apache, MySQL and Plesk.
11. Billing Specific
- All charges payable by you for Services shall be due and payable in advance of the provision of such Services.
- All prices on our website and in all correspondence, unless specifically stated otherwise, are given without VAT.
- You agree that unless you are able to provide proof of your exemption from the requirement to pay tax and/or supply a valid EU VAT number, you will be charged VAT at the current UK rate. It is the customer's responsibility to supply the above information at the time of service purchase or when they become exempt from paying VAT. No VAT already paid for hosting services will be refunded following any proof of exemption from VAT or an EU VAT number that has been supplied after the invoice payment date.
- We may change the prices we charge for any of our Services at any given time. Should pricing change for a Service, we will honour the old price for any period that you have already paid for.
- By applying for and using our Services you agree that you will ensure that a valid payment method is available for use at all times, and that you are able to pay for the Service on relevant due dates.
- Unless specifically stated elsewhere, all services will be purchased on a monthly (30 day), quarterly (90 day), annual (365 day) or biennial (730 day) contractual cycle. A contractual cycle comprises the time point between the initial payment and sign-up date to our services (as denoted above) and the date whereby another invoice will be due for payment to continue using the Service.
- You agree to pay all relevant fees for the duration of the period of your fixed-term hosting contract.
- Any invoices for renewal of Services will be sent to you via email, and will be due for payment 30 days hence. Initial invoices, and invoices for Services that do not renew, are due for payment immediately, and will be sent to you via email, either prior to payment or directly after payment has been processed.
- We will not send bills, invoices, statements or any other form of correspondence via regular mail. All invoices are accessible through your billing control panel and are emailed to you automatically when they are generated. You agree that, should you insist that we send you any correspondence via regular mail, that we will charge you a fee to do so. We will communicate this fee to you prior to doing so, and we will only send you this correspondence if you agree to this fee.
- No cash refunds or credits will be offered for amendments to quarterly, annual and biennial paid billing cycles. Any requests to change your contractual billing cycle should be sent to us via email from the primary account holder in advance of your next contractual/billing renewal. We reserve the right to refuse to amend your billing cycle if you request that it should be changed. We will always inform you of our reasons for this refusal at the time.
- All Services are billed on a pre-pay billing cycle. You agree that you will therefore be charged automatically at the end of every billing cycle for the next cycle which will automatically renew for the same term; unless confirmation of service cancellation or amendment has been received by us prior to automatic renewal, as per the Terms in subsections of articles 11 and 13. Your billing cycle runs throughout your contract period and has no relevance to the length of your contract.
- You understand that upon purchasing services, you will be selecting both a contractual period and a billing cycle.
- Your contractual period begins from the date you pay your first bill for services rendered.
- You agree that, at the end of your initial contract period, we may move you to a rolling monthly contract, which may cost more than your monthly fees whilst in the initial contract period. You will be liable for paying any costs associated with the monthly contract going forward.
- You agree that we may renew your current contract at the end of the initial contract period. You will be liable for paying any costs associated with the new contract going forwards, for the duration of the new contract.
- We may use your name, email, phone number and IP address to perform fraud checks with FraudRecord (https://www.fraudrecord.com/) to view your previous history with other hosting companies. All orders are subject to a fraud check using Maxmind Inc minFraud (https://www.maxmind.com/). Orders are assessed based on IP address reputation, email address risk rating, the device the order was placed on, and whether an anonymising proxy has been used for signup. We reserve the right to refuse service based on the above information.
- Where we find that your billing is in error, we will correct it back to the original date where the error occurred – regardless of whether this will involve an increased charge or a credit to your account. You agree that you will abide by these amendments.
12. Overdue Payments Specific
- If an invoice is overdue, a warning of suspension notice will be sent to you via email on the 1st and 7th day after the due date. This email will be sent to the Primary Account Email Address on your Billing Account.
- If an invoice remains unpaid for 14 days after the due date, then the account will be suspended, and the functionality of your Services will be impaired. This suspension will be removed upon payment in full of any outstanding invoices. Clients are advised to contact us immediately following payment to ensure the prompt reactivation of their service.
- If, after a further 30 days, the amount is still outstanding, we will consider that you have breached our Terms. We will consider that you have served the initial 30 day cancellation period, as per 13.8 below, and remove your data from any relevant platforms as per our cancellation terms. If you require your service to resume after this period, you are bound by 13.10, below. We will not be liable for any loss, recovery and reinstallation of stored data and services.
- We reserve the right to vary these time frames if we are able to contact you, or if you contact us regarding payment of the outstanding amounts.
- You agree that we are not responsible for any loss of business or data should your Service be suspended or deleted for non-payment of invoices.
- Failure to pay overdue invoices may lead to the debt being referred to a debt reclamation agency to reclaim the outstanding fees if we are unable to process payment with you.
13. Cancellation Specific
- To cancel all or part of your Service, we require written confirmation via email from the Primary Account Contact or a letter from the account address, requesting that all or part of the Service be cancelled. Any Service that you do not specifically request for cancellation will continue and auto-renew until we receive an official request from you in this manner.
- All Web Hosting service cancellation requests will be actioned from the date of receipt of an email cancellation request, with services terminating/cancelling at the end of your current contractual cycle (regardless of if you pay hosting fees on a monthly, quarterly, annual or biannual basis).
- In the event of cancellation of any agreed-length contract before the end of the contracted period, you agree to pay any remaining costs for the agreed length of the contract.
- We will endeavour to cancel any invoices that have already been generated for Services that would no longer be due for payment following your cancellation request, as long as these invoices are not due for payment according to the Terms above.
- Please note no cash refund or credit of paid invoices will be given for hosting service/s cancellation as the service will terminate at the end of your current contractual billing cycle, with the service provided to you by us until this date.
- Cancellation requests should only be made when you are ready to terminate your account as all data and services will terminate at the end of your contractual period, as per clauses 8, 9 and 10 below. Nublue accepts no liability for the recovery, security and/or reinstallation of this data following termination of services.
- All outstanding invoices on the account must be paid before a cancellation request is actioned. Failure to pay these invoices before a cancellation may lead to the debt being referred to a debt reclamation agency to reclaim the outstanding fees if we are unable to process payment with you.
- If your service is suspended or cancelled, we will retain your data on the server (or another server on the same platform) for 30 days after the suspension or cancellation date, whichever is appropriate. After this initial 30 day period, the data will be removed.
- If the data has not been removed and you need your service restored, you will have to pay any outstanding invoices on the account before we will reactivate your service.
- We operate our own disaster recovery policies which means we may have a copy of your data within our own data backup systems for up to 60 days after the data has been removed (for a total of 90 days from the date of the original suspension or cancellation). If we are able to restore the data it will be a chargeable service for which we will provide a quote. This is in addition to any invoices that you will need to pay to reactivate your service, as per the clauses noted above and below.
- If you have an account that has previously been suspended for non-payment, we may levy a charge to re-open this account, or to open a separate account to the one that was previously cancelled. This is in addition to any possible data restoration charges, as per the clauses above and below.
- If you have a hosting package on your account that has been suspended for non-payment and requires reactivating, in the event that our pricing has changed, we may charge you at the new rates following the reactivation of your services
14. Service Upgrade Specific
- Any Upgrade request for your services must be submitted to us in writing via an email from the Primary Account Contact.
- You agree that there may be a period of downtime or a migration of your Services involved in an Upgrade. Although we will inform you to the best of our ability of any potential disruption prior to the event, you agree that this does not in any way affect the indemnity or liability Terms.
- Any overdue invoices for hosting services must be paid before an upgrade request will be actioned. Failure to pay these invoices will result in a delay to your upgrade and possible disruption to service.
- An invoice will be generated on the day of your upgrade and the billing will be calculated on a pro-rata basis from that day. Your contractual billing cycle will remain the same.
- Payment for your upgraded services is required immediately following the upgrade. We reserve the right to reverse or refuse an upgrade if payment for the upgrade is not processed.
- If you upgrade your package within the initial period of your fixed-term hosting contract, this will result either in you entering into a new contract or your current contract being amended for the new package. If your existing contract is amended, you would be liable to pay any subsequent charges
15. Service Downgrade Specific
- Any Downgrade request for your Services must be submitted to us in writing via an email from the Primary Account Contact.
- You agree that there may be a period of downtime or a migration of your Services involved in a Downgrade. Although we will inform you to the best of our ability of any potential disruption prior to the event, you agree that this does not in any way affect the indemnity or liability Terms.
- All downgrade requests required 30 day notice terms. All downgrade requests will therefore be actioned 30 days from the date of written confirmation of the downgrade.
- Any overdue invoices for hosting services must be paid before a downgrade request will be actioned. Failure to pay these invoices will result in a delay to your downgrade and possible disruption to service.
- A downgrade credit will be generated on the day of your downgrade and the billing will be calculated on a pro-rata basis from that day. Your contractual billing cycle will remain the same.
- We will endeavour to cancel any invoices that have already been generated for Services that would no longer be due for payment following your downgrade request, as long as these invoices are not due for payment according to the Terms above.
- We will not offer a cash refund for any downgrade of monthly, quarterly and/or annual paid hosting services, and you will not expect a cash refund, for any downgraded Services or parts thereof, regardless of the downgrade date; rather a credit will be applied to your hosting account for future use.
- If you downgrade your package within the initial period of your fixed-term hosting contract, this will result either in you entering into a new contract or your current contract being amended for the new package. If your existing contract is amended, you would be liable to pay any subsequent charges
16. Domain Specific
- The registration, renewal and use of your domain name are subject to the Terms of use applied by the relevant naming authority (such as ICANN for .com domain names, and Nominet for .uk domain names). You should ensure that you are aware of and in compliance with those terms. For .uk domains, you are specifically agreeing with Nominet’s terms; see here for full details. You accept that we use eNom, Nominet and EuroDNS to register, renew and administer domain names, and that you agree to their Terms of use.
- You agree that we have no liability in respect of the use of any domain name by you. You further agree that you have no right to bring any claim against us in respect to the refusal to register any domain name.
- For the avoidance of all doubt it shall remain Your sole responsibility to check if the Domain has been successfully registered by contacting the appropriate authority.
- We are not under any circumstances liable or responsible for any errors, omissions or other actions by the naming authority arising out of or relating to your application, receipt of, or failure to receive a domain name registration.
- You agree that you will make entirely sure that the information submitted with a domain registration is correct, and that any errors are your responsibility. You agree that any domain names that you register in error will not entitle you to a refund of fees paid for these domain names.
- You agree that any administration charge paid by you to us is non-refundable, notwithstanding a refusal by the naming authority to register the desired name.
- Should you and a third party raise a dispute over a domain name, that dispute should be resolved between you and the third party. We may be obliged to make representations to the relevant naming authority. Should you wish to raise a dispute regarding a domain name that you have registered or attempted to register through us, you should refer to the procedure under article 9 (Disputes) in these Terms.
- Your domain name will be renewed upon payment of your renewal invoice. If no payment is received the domain will expire. It is the customer’s responsibility to make sure payment is received for their domain renewal and the domain does not expire. Domains are invoiced 60 days prior to due date. If you have failed to request a cancellation of the domain name in accordance with the specific cancellation Terms detailed in article 13 of these Terms, prior to this date, and you have automated billing on your account then payment will be taken for the domain renewal. This is a non refundable charge. You accept that failure to pay your renewal invoice for your domain name will mean your domain may be lost and accept full liability of failure to pay before the renewal date.
- We will not release any domain name registered through us to any other provider, unless full payment for the registration or renewal of that domain name has been received by us.
- You accept that should you fail to pay renewal invoices for any domain name by the due date of the invoice, that we are entitled to withhold, suspend or cancel the provision of this domain name to you. Should a domain expire or enter a redemption period following non-payment of an invoice, you accept that this is a result of your inaction and that any fees required to reclaim the domain, or that the loss of the domain itself, is your responsibility.
- You agree that we reserve the right to refuse to register a domain name, if we have not received payment in full for that domain name.
- You accept that the minimum renewal period for a .uk domain is 2 years.
- Nublue Ltd accepts no liability for the loss of registration of any Domain that has failed to be renewed due to an invalid email address or other details provided to us, late payments received or technical faults which are beyond our control.
- In the event that a Domain name registered forms part of a hosting package and the package is cancelled, it is Your sole responsibility to ensure that the domain renewal is not cancelled should you wish to keep the domain.
- Where a gtld domain name is determined as 'Premium' by our registrar we will contact you before registering the domain with a revised price for your approval before registering the domain name. If you do not wish to proceed we will provide a full refund.
- We query third party 'whois servers' to check domain name availability. We are not under any circumstances liable or responsible for the accuracy of the results returned to us with regard to the availability of a domain name.
- You accept that all information supplied for domain registrations must be accurate, and should any of these details change you will contact us to have the details updated accordingly. We will from time to time be required to confirm, or ask you to confirm, that these details are correct. Failure to do so, or provision of inaccurate and/or false information, may lead to suspension or cancellation of any relevant domains until the issues have been resolved.
- If you are registering a domain on behalf of another party, please note that our relationship is with you as our client, not with the party you are registering the domain for. Therefore we will hold you responsible for the accuracy and usage of the domain, and for all terms relating to the domain name.
- For .uk domains, we need to verify that the registrant data for new registrations, and/or domains transferring to our IPS TAG, is correct. The general aims and standards we will apply correspond to Nominet’s own standards which can be found here. If we cannot verify your registrant data, we reserve the right to refuse to register or accept the transfer of the domain. We will attempt to contact you to resolve the issues with the data. If we can resolve the issues then the registration or transfer of the domain will be accepted.
- If Nominet contact us to request that we obtain further verification for a domain that we already administer on your behalf, and we are unable to validate this data with you within 30 days of our receipt of this notification, we reserve the right to lock that domain until it has been validated.
- A .uk domain that is locked will be unusable until such point as the reason for the lock has been resolved, or the domain expires and is deleted.
- Nublue Ltd are an authorised registrar for handling .gov.uk domains, and are in compliance with Nominet's policies for these TLDs, which can be found here https://registrars.nominet.uk/registry/dot-gov-uk/policies/
17. Domain Transfer Specific
- In transferring a .uk domain name, if the domain is transferred onto the ENOM IPS TAG rather than the NUBLUE IPS TAG, additional terms apply. If the domain is within 3 months of its expiration date when the transfer completes, we will renew the domain for a further 2 years. You agree that this will take place and by transferring the domain to us you agree that you will pay this renewal fee. This does not apply to domains using the NUBLUE IPS TAG.
- In transferring any other domain names (where the tld is not a .uk), once the transfer has completed, we will renew the domain for the minimum allowed renewal term. You agree that this will take place and by transferring the domain to us you agree that you will pay this renewal fee.
- If a domain name has been renewed within 45 days of the finished transfer, then we will not renew the domain once the transfer has completed. For example, a domain that expires on 01/01/11, is renewed with another registrar on 05/01/11, and transferred to us successfully on 15/01/11, will not be renewed for another year. The renewal date will remain 05/01/12. This is a registry restriction that applies to all registrars, except .uk domains transferred to the NUBLUE IPS TAG, as above.
- Any domain that has been registered with us as part of a special offer is subject to a £10 + VAT transfer out fee if you decide to transfer the domain away from us, unless the domain has been renewed for at least one term, or was registered as part of our Free .uk domain offer and adheres to all the terms of that offer, under the Free .uk Domain Specific section of these terms.
18. Domain Renewal Specific
- The following domain types go into redemption if they are not renewed before the expiry date of the domain. As a result, we auto-renew these domains before their expiry date to prevent your domain being deleted by the registrar or going into redemption (which may result in a redemption registrar fee to you to then re-activate the domain, on top of the normal renewal fee).
- The affected domain names include, but are not limited to the following: .ac, .at, .be, .ch, .com.au, .com.pe, .com.pl, .com.sg, .de, .eu, .es, .fr, .ie, .io, .info.pl, .it, .jobs, .jp, .li, .net.au, .net.pe, .net.pl, .nl, .nom.pe, .org.au, .org.pl, .pl, .se, .sg, .sh, .tk, .tm.
- You agree that if you own one of these domain names with us, and you do not wish to renew this domain, that you will inform us of this more than 30 days before the expiry date of the domain. If you fail to notify us of domain cancellation before this date, you accept liability for the renewal invoice for the domain. We will of course ensure the domain does not renew following the end of this period in these cases.
19. SSL Specific
- You agree that once an SSL Certificate has been renewed, the invoice for the SSL is due for immediate payment. Failure to submit a Cancellation request, as detailed in Article 13 of these Terms, will result in renewal of the SSL Certificate and the outstanding amount requiring payment.
- You agree that should you not pay for an SSL Certificate, we may remove your ability to use the SSL until such time as the renewal has been paid for. If the unpaid amount refers to a new SSL Certificate, we will not process the order for the SSL until you process payment for the invoice.
- No Refunds will be given for unused or cancelled SSLs within their contractual billing period.
- You agree that we are not liable in any way for the expiration of an SSL Certificate, regardless of the cause or responsibility for this expiration, and in addition to the Liability and Indemnity policies detailed under Articles 7 and 8 of these Terms.
- You agree that it is your responsibility to provide us with all the details required to process a renewal or order of an SSL Certificate.
- You agree that it is your responsibility to provide any documentation and proofs required by the SSL Certificate provider to complete your SSL order, and to ensure that the documentation and proofs are correct, valid, and meet the standards requested by the SSL Certificate provider.
20. Shared Web Hosting Specific
- Every package has a soft bandwidth limit. This includes incoming and outgoing bandwidth usage. You agree that in using our Shared Hosting, you will abide by this limit. Should your account exceed this limit, we will charge you for your overuse at a rate of 18p per GB (plus VAT)
- Every package has a specific disk space limit. These limits are not hard limits, so it is possible to exceed them. If you exceed your account limit we will charge you for overuse. This will be at a rate of £1.75 per GB (plus VAT).
- You agree that, regardless of the above charges, we may determine that your usage is such that we will take further action upon your account. This may include, but is not limited to: suspension or forced upgrades to alternative solutions.
- We monitor our servers very closely to ensure that all users on the server are not affecting the service for other clients. Therefore you agree that should we determine that your service is affecting the service of others, that we may upgrade, suspend, migrate, block or otherwise stop any part of or the entirety of your account. You further agree that this may be for an indefinite period of time while the issue is investigated and that you will act upon our recommendations. Such usage includes but is not limited to causing high CPU loads, excessive use of Apache or MySQL services, deployment of banned scripts, flooding the mail server with excessive numbers of emails, causing the mail server to be blacklisted, uploading banned or compromised content, high node usage and scheduling of tasks during busy periods.
- Remote MySQL access is not permitted on Shared Hosting, and you agree that you will not make any attempts to access the Shared Hosting service in this manner.
- We operate a policy of blocking IPs from FTP access if they fail to authenticate after 3 attempts. We are able to remove this block with ease, however you in turn agree that you must contact us to have this block removed, and that responsibility for being blocked and any repercussions this may have is yours alone.
- We operate a policy of removing backups made via the Plesk Control Panel from the server when they are 6 months old (or more). We will email you a week prior to this removal to let you know that we will be removing the backup and to give you the opportunity to download a copy of the backup locally. Once we have removed this backup, there will be no data available to recover it. It is your responsibility to hold copies of this data if you require it.
21. VPS Specific
- You agree that we may move your VPS from one hardware node to another. We perform these migrations for maintenance and load balancing purposes and they are in the best interests of both parties.
- You accept that we monitor the hardware node on a 24:7 basis, but unless you are paying for the Advanced managed service, we do not monitor your VPS.
- If your VPS is utilising resources in a manner that affects the performance or stability of the node, you accept that we are allowed to suspend, migrate, upgrade, downgrade or reduce resource availability of your Service without warning, and that we may keep these measures in place until such time as we deem that the problem has been rectified.
22. Advanced Managed Service Specific
- All clients, as users of our Advanced Managed Service, have their hosting services monitored 24:7. You accept that this involves monitoring and responding to issues with your service, and does not change our relationship with you regarding the content of your Service.
- You accept that we may take steps to restore as much as your service as possible, which may in turn require that parts of your service do not function to achieve this.
- There is a minimum term of 3 months for the Advanced managed service. All downgrades to a standard managed service are subject to this.
- Under the circumstances that the Advanced managed service is cancelled and later required again, we will charge a re-activation fee.
- You accept that, should you be on a Management level that provides you with access to the Emergency Support number for support outside of office hours, this number should only be used for services that you have purchased the Service for. Furthermore, you agree that you will only use this number in an emergency, and that you will not pass this number on to anyone who would use the number for matters relating to a Service which is not managed to this degree. Use of this number that contravenes any of these statements will be subject to a minimum £75 penalty charge for improper use. We reserve the right to refuse to handle a support request made through this channel if we do not deem it an emergency. It is at our sole discretion if your request is an emergency or not.
- We will inform you of any downtime or issues that our monitoring systems are reporting to us, as well as suggested fixes for these issues.
- You agree that if we suggest a resolution, upgrade, improvement or modification to the Service, that these are in our best intentions with regards to the performance of your Service. If you should refuse then you agree that we may reduce the levels of monitoring of your Service to compensate, and that we are not responsible for any delays or difficulties in resolving issues that we are not notified of as a result of this.
- You agree that the management service covers the monitoring and management of your hosting. It does not in any way confer responsibility for the content of your hosting, sites, applications or software that are not specifically provided by us as part of your service.
- Nublue will charge a discounted rate for Professional Services undertaken for Advanced managed hosting clients.
23. Dedicated Server Specific
- You agree that should you require an upgrade, that there will be a lead time in sourcing the relevant hardware and that downtime will be required to perform this.
- You agree that, although we keep redundant systems wherever possible, that there are occasions where hardware fails. We will endeavour to resume your service as soon as we possibly can, and we will advise you of any issues, progress and time frames involved in whatever process we deem suitable for the speediest recovery of your service.
24. Professional Services Specific
- Professional services are any Services that are performed by us, for you, for an agreed sum of money, over and above the Services that you are already using with us.
- For these Services we will quote you for any work that we feel we can complete and send you this quote via email, with a summary of what we will undertake for you.
- We reserve the right to refuse to undertake Professional Services at any point.
- You agree that charges for this Service are not refundable once the work has been completed. You agree that we have the right to decide to cancel the Professional Services and refuse the work for any reason. Should we do so, if you have paid for the Service, at this point we will refund the corresponding invoice.
- If payment for Services rendered has not been made for any reason in any circumstance, we reserve the right to remove any Professional Service or suspend, alter and otherwise make unavailable the results of the Services we have undertaken, until such point as the invoice corresponding to the Service has been paid.
- Acceptance of the quote constitutes your agreement of the work outlined in the quote, and only that work. Further work will be quoted and charged separately.
- You agree that undertaking these Professional Services in no way affects the Liability or Indemnity policies of these Terms, as detailed under Articles 7 and 8 of these Terms.
- We will charge a reduced rate for Professional Services undertaken if you have purchased the Advanced Managed service.
25. Banned Content and Usages Specific
- Particular types of content and usage are explicitly banned from any utilisation or interaction with our Services. We reserve the right to remove, suspend or cancel all or part of your Services if we discover that you are in breach of these Specific Terms.
- Banned content and usage includes, but is not limited to the following list:
- Indecent or offensive content.
- Content that breaks specific English law.
- Content relating to illegal drug usage, accessories, or sale of so-called "legal highs".
- Content that encourages criminal acts, or is in itself a criminal act.
- Any content of any form that has been "pirated".
- Any content that incites or promotes discrimination or prejudice of any kind.
- Use of peer to peer software to transfer or download content that you do not have permission to acquire or make available.
- PHP shell scripts of any form.
- Chat, IRC, and Web Proxy scripts.
- Mailing lists or Newsletter scripts on the Shared or Free Hosting platforms.
- Content used for the purposes of sending UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email).
- Content used to breach or attempt to breach security of any Service or Software.
- Malware, spyware, or content that contains or aims to spread any form of virus.
- Use of Magmi’s Importer, without taking steps to ensure that you are the only party able to access this system.
- Content that links, redirects to or displays any of the items listed above.
- You agree to inform us at least 24hrs in advance of performing any Penetration testing against your hosting solution so we can ensure the activity is not blocked as a potentially malicious activity.
26. Service Level Agreement (SLA) Specific
- All claims against our 100% uptime SLA must be submitted by email with 60 days of the incident to support @ nublue.co.uk. Claims must be submitted from a verified primary contact address on the relevant hosting account.
- Claims that are submitted via another channel, to another email address or submitted after the 60 days following the incident will not be processed, regardless of any prior communication we have received during those 60 days. Claims that are not submitted from a verified primary contact will also not be processed but we will inform you if the claim against the SLA has not been made from an appropriate contact address.
- Nublue will then consider any claims and inform you whether compensation will be rewarded and the reasons why (or why not).
- Any successful claims will be compensated with credit applied against your account.
- The credit amount will be up to 10% of your monthly hosting fees for every full 30 minutes of downtime, up to a maximum amount of your equivalent monthly hosting fee. This fee refers explicitly to your hosting package and does not include any other services purchased with us (which may include but is not limited to CDN packages, SSL certificates, domain names, professional services and any fees relating to your retainer package).
27. Customer Service Availability
- Our office hours are displayed on the support page on our website, www.nublue.co.uk/hosting-support. Within those hours we will aim to respond to all email queries within 1 hour of receipt of your email, and to receive all calls and live chats as soon as they arrive. We will endeavour to contact any callers that we miss or chats that have been lost.
28. Abuse and Complaints Procedure
- Nublue takes customer service very seriously and accordingly we would like to hear from you if you have a complaint.
- Any complaints should be emailed to support @ nublue.co.uk or submitted through our contact form – www.nublue.co.uk/contact. We do request that any complaints should be made formally in this manner, so that we can track them during our resolution process. Any complaints made through another medium (via letter, telephone, live chat, or in person) will require an email to confirm the details of the complaint so that we can process this further. You agree therefore that we may email you with a summary of the complaint as we understand it if you cannot or will not email the complaint to us.
- We will investigate complaints fully at our end, and will contact you at stages to discuss the complaint. We will reach our own decision regarding the resolution of this complaint, and inform you of this via email. This decision will only be made within the remit of the terms and conditions of your services, and will not amend or supercede any of these terms, or entitle you to any rights beyond these terms.
- If you are unhappy with the resolution, you should inform us (again, via email) that you are unhappy, and your reasons for this. We will escalate this matter internally, and contact you with a final decision. Once it has been escalated we will not pursue the matter further and any decision made by Nublue at this point is final.
- If you are aware of any abuse within part of the Nublue network – including but not limited to 'phishing' sites, compromised sites, banned content, content to which rights have not been obtained to display, unsolicited emails, false registrant information for domains – please contact us via an email to support @ nublue.co.uk or submitted through our contact form at www.nublue.co.uk/contact
- Please note that this is not the same as our dispute process, which is covered under section 9, Disputes, earlier in these terms.
29. Compromises and UCE
- We have some additional directives regarding UCE, emails, and opportunities for external users to abuse your own mail systems, as follows:
- You agree that you will not cause any IP addresses that we own, and/or provide as part of your hosting, to be added to any spam mail blacklists. If you do cause this to happen, you will take the appropriate actions required to delist the IPs.
- You agree that if there are any spam complaints against you, you will action them promptly, for instance by unsubscribing the reported account from your mailing lists.
- You agree that all emails you send are solicited; the recipients have opted into receiving your emails, and all mail recipients should be able to opt out very simply using a provided unsubscribe link.
- You agree that you will implement CAPTCHA security on any forms on your website, that are to be used for submitting emails. You agree that any forms that we discover that do not have CAPTCHAs, or forms that are being abused that do not have CAPTCHAs, can and will be disabled by us until the CAPTCHA has been implemented. This may impact other services for your site, and may involve suspension.
- We do not accept responsibility for the security, content, or maintenance of your website.
- If you host content that is repeatedly compromised, or repeatedly reported for sending spam, then we reserve the right to suspend, alter or otherwise limit your services to protect our network. Continued issues may result in cancellation of your account.
- If your services are targeted by any form of online attack – such as a DDoS or Syn Flood attack – we will prioritise protection of our network over the running of your services.
30. Sucuri Specific
- There is a minimum term of 3 months for any instance of the Sucuri Firewall & Detection Platform service. You agree that if you cancel this service within the initial 3 month period, then you will be liable to pay for the service for the remainder of the 3 month period.
- There is an associated one-off charge for the Sucuri Malware Cleanup Service of £165.00 + VAT.
- We can move the Sucuri Firewall & Detection Platform service from one of your sites to another, but you agree that there is an associated fee for this work.
- If you have previously purchased the Sucuri package through Nublue and cancelled it, we reserve the right to charge a one-off set-up fee should you wish to use this service with Nublue again.
- You agree that your use of either the Sucuri Firewall & Detection Platform or the Sucuri Malware Cleanup services means that you are bound by the terms of Sucuri, as set out here.
- If you purchase a Sucuri product with an inclusive paid SSL, you agree that your SSL certificate is registered for a minimum of 24 months and that you commit to payment of the certificate for the entirety of that period. If you cancel your Sucuri package before 24 monthly payments have occurred, an invoice will be generated for the remaining cost of the SSL. The SSL will still be valid and available for use independently of an active Sucuri package for the duration of your 2 year billing period. Similarly, you agree that if you wish to downgrade your Sucuri package to one without the cost of the SSL, you will be required to make a one-off payment for the remaining cost of the SSL for the 24 month period.
31. Bandwidth Usage on AWS Platforms
- As part of your service, when running solutions on AWS Platforms, you agree to pay for a specific commitment of data transfer, i.e. 250G per month.
- If you exceed this limit, at our discretion we will investigate, and see if there are usage patterns that we feel can be mitigated (i.e. excessive bot usage and crawling, on-site hosted videos and downloads, large images). We will suggest solutions to these issues to reduce your overall usage.
- If usage is exceeded, you agree that we may apply retroactive overage charges for your usage above your agreed limit. This will be charged at a rate of 25p per GB. Alternatively you may wish to agree to increase your monthly limit instead, which will be charged at a lower rate compared to the overage costs noted above.
32. Annual Pricing Review
- Every November we will review our product pricing, based initially on the Consumer Price Index, and any increases in costs from suppliers of any services we provide to you.
- Any changes that are then made will apply to any products and services we provide, and will be communicated to you in advance of when they will come into force.
- Price increases will be applied from the 9th of January the following year.
- Any customers who are not on a Hosting Plan will have their costs updated on the 9th of January, and this will then be in place on your next invoice after that date.
- Customers who are on a Hosting Plan will continue on their agreed rate until either the plan is due for renewal, or the services within the Plan are changed; in which case, the new Plan price will be based on the latest costs of our services.
DATA PROCESSING
Under this Agreement Nublue Ltd (the “Data Processor”) has agreed to provide the customer, (the “Data Controller”); with product(s) and/or services.
Background
- (A) The Data Controller uses the services of the Data Processor to provide web hosting services.
- (B) The Parties have agreed to enter into this Agreement to ensure compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation in relation to all such processing.
- (C) The terms of this Agreement are to apply to all data processing carried out for the Data Controller by the Data Processor and to all personal data held by the Data Processor in relation to all such processing whether such personal data is held at the date of this Agreement or received afterwards.
1. Interpretation
- The terms and expressions set out in this agreement shall have the following meanings:
- “GDPR” means the General Data Protection Regulation 2018;
- "The client" means “Data Controller” the recipient of Nublue Ltd data processing services.
- “Nublue Ltd” means "Data processor" where Nublue Ltd is providing data processing services;
- “ICO” means the Information Commissioner’s Office;
- “personal data” shall include all data relating to individuals which is processed by the Data Processor on behalf of the Data Controller in accordance with this Agreement.
It is agreed as follows:
- 2. The terms of this Agreement are to apply to all data processing carried out for the client by Nublue Ltd and to all personal data held by Nublue Ltd in relation to all such processing whether such personal data is held at the date of this Agreement or received afterwards. The terms of this Agreement shall supersede any previous arrangement, understanding or agreement between the parties relating to data protection.
- 3. Nublue Ltd is to, process personal data received from the client only on the express instructions of designated contacts at the client organisation (which may be specific instructions or instructions of a general nature or as otherwise notified by the client to Nublue Ltd for the duration of the service).
- 4. All personal data provided to Nublue Ltd by the client or obtained by Nublue Ltd in the course of its work with the client is strictly confidential and may not be copied, disclosed or processed in any way without the express authority of the client.
- 5. Nublue agrees to comply with any reasonable measures required by the client to ensure that its obligations under this Agreement are satisfactorily performed in accordance with all applicable legislation from time to time in force and any best practice guidance issued by the ICO.
- 6. Where Nublue Ltd processes personal data on behalf of the client it shall:
- 6.1 process the personal data only to the extent, and in such manner, as is necessary in order to comply with its obligations to the client or as is required by law or any regulatory body including but not limited to the ICO;
- 6.2 implement appropriate technical and organisational measures and take all steps necessary to protect the personal data against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction, damage, alteration or disclosure.
- 6.3 in furtherance of its obligations under 7.2 above implement and maintain the security measures set out in Schedule 1 to this agreement;
- 6.4 if so requested by the client supply details of the technical and organisational systems in place to safeguard the security of the personal data held and to prevent unauthorised access;
- 6.5 Notify the client if it receives:
- 6.5.1 a request from a data subject to have access to that person’s personal data; or
- 6.5.2 a complaint or request relating to the client’s obligations under GDPR;
- 6.6 Provide the Client with full co-operation and assistance in relation to any complaint or request made, including by:
- 6.6.1 providing the client with full details of the complaint or request;
- 6.6.2 complying with a data access request within the relevant timescale set out under GDPR and in accordance with the client’s instructions;
- 6.6.3 providing the client with any personal data it holds in relation to a data subject.
- 6.6.4 providing the client with any information requested by the client;
- 6.7 not process personal data outside the European Economic Area without the prior written consent of the client and, where the client consents to a transfer, to comply with the obligations of the client under the Eighth Data Protection Principle set out in Schedule 1 of GDPR by providing an adequate level of protection to any personal data that is transferred;
- 6.8 not transfer any personal data provided to it by the client to any third party without the written consent of the client and ensure that any third party to which it sub-contracts any processing has entered into a written contract with the Nublue Ltd which permits both Nublue Ltd and the client to enforce data protection obligations.
- 7. Nublue Ltd shall transfer all personal data to the client on the client’s request in accessible formats, in compliance with the requirements notified in writing by the client to Nublue.
- 8. Nublue Ltd agrees that in the event that it is notified by the client that it is not required to provide any further services to the client under this Agreement, Nublue Ltd shall transfer a copy of all information (including personal data) held by it in relation to this Agreement to the client in an accessible format and/or, at the client’s request, destroy all such information using a secure method which ensures that it cannot be accessed by any third party.
- 9. All copyright, database right and other intellectual property rights in any personal data processed under this Agreement (including but not limited to any updates, amendments or adaptations to the personal data by either the client or Nublue Ltd) shall belong to the client. Nublue Ltd is licensed to use such data only for the term of and in accordance with this Agreement.
- 10. Nublue Ltd accepts the obligations in this Agreement in consideration of the client continuing to use its services.
- 11. This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of England and Wales.