General Terms & Conditions

Actions Taken by Us

Failing to meet or follow this policy could be grounds for account deactivation. We will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this policy. We reserve the right to remove any account without prior notice and to refuse service to anyone at any time.

When we become aware of an alleged violation, we will initiate an investigation. During the investigation, we may restrict account access in order to prevent further activity. Depending on the severity of the violation we may, at our sole discretion, restrict, suspend, or terminate a web hosting account and/or pursue other civil remedies. If such violation is a criminal offence, we will notify the appropriate law enforcement authorities. An unlisted activity may also be a violation of this policy if it is illegal, irresponsible, or constitutes disruptive use of the Internet. We do not issue credits for outages incurred through service disablement resulting from violations of this policy. Violators of the policy are responsible, without limitations, for the cost of labour to rectify any damage done to the operation of the network and business operations supported by the network and to maintain an open dialogue with us.

Indemnification

As a customer, you agree to protect, defend, hold harmless, and indemnify us, any third party entity related to us (including without limitation, third party vendors), and our executives, directors, officers, attorneys, managers, employees, consultants, contractors, agents, parent companies, subsidiaries, and co-subsidiaries with the same parent company as us, from and against any and all liabilities, losses, costs, judgements, damages, claims, or causes of actions, including, without limitation, any and all legal fees and expenses, arising out of or resulting from use of our services.

Modifications to Services

We may discontinue, upgrade, replace, modify, or change, without limitation, any software, application, program, data, hardware, equipment, or components used to provide customers with our services. Certain changes to our services may affect the operation of your personalised applications and content. You are solely responsible, and we are not liable, for any and all such personalised applications and content, except as expressly agreed in writing by us.

Waiver and Amendment

Any waiver, modification, or amendment of any provision of the policy or other agreement for our services, initiated by you, will be effective only if accepted in writing and signed by an authorised representative of SmartHost.

Child Pornography

The use of any of our services to store, post, display, transmit, advertise, or otherwise make available child pornography is prohibited. We are required by law and will immediately, notify law enforcement agencies when we become aware of the presence of child pornography on or being transmitted through our services.

Adult Content

Some types of adult content is allowed. For example, we permit adult shopping sites. However, pornographic images, pornographic videos, and pornographic websites are not allowed to be hosted on any of our services.

Illegal Use

Our servers may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or distribution of any information, data, or material in violation of any applicable law or regulation, or that may directly facilitate the violation of any particular law or regulation is strictly prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material; trademarks; trade secrets or other intellectual property rights used without proper authorisation; material that is obscene, defamatory, constitutes an illegal threat or violates export control laws. Additionally, in purchasing our services, you certify that you and/or the organisation you represent in procuring services from us are not, nor have been designated, a suspected terrorist; is not owned or controlled by a ‘suspected terrorist’, and are not on, are not a member of, related to, associated with, or controlled by any organisations on the list contained in the Annex to Executive Order 13224 and all updates thereto.

We also do not permit any service that can be used to facilitate illegal use or activity, such as torrent, Warez, or other file sharing services.

System and Network Abuse, Viruses and Destructive Activities

Violations of system or network security are prohibited and may result in criminal and civil liability.

Use of our services or equipment for creating or sending viruses, worms, or Trojan horses, or for pinging, flooding or mail bombing, or engaging in denial of service attacks is prohibited. It is also prohibited for any customer to engage in other activity that is intended to disrupt or interfere with, or that results in the disruption of or interference with, the ability of others to effectively use our services and equipment (or any connected network, system, service or equipment) or conduct their business over the Internet.

Examples of system or network security violations include, without limitation the following: unauthorised access to or use of data, systems, or networks, including any attempt to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of a system or network or to breach security or authentication measures without express authorisation of the owner of the system or network; interference with service to any user, host or network including, without limitation, deliberate attempts to overload a system and broadcast attacks; forging of any TCP-IP packet header or any part of the header information in an email or a newsgroup posting

If your web site is found to be the cause of a problem that brings all, or part of our network down, you may be charged a fine up to €500 and may be reported to An Garda if it is found or deemed to be of malicious intent.

Intellectual Property

You will not, without our express written consent, copy, reproduce, republish, or otherwise use any material, in whole or in part, that is located on our web site, and customers will not use any of our trademarks, service marks, copyrighted materials, or other intellectual property without our express written consent. Customers will not, in any way, misrepresent their relationship with us or attempt to pass themselves off as SmartHost.

Governing Law and Sever-ability

This policy and any other agreement for SmartHost services will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Ireland without reference to its conflicts of law principles. Any litigation or arbitration between you and us will take place in the Republic of Ireland, and you will consent to personal jurisdiction and venue in that jurisdiction. If any provision or portion of this policy or other agreement is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be unenforceable for any reason, the remainder of this policy or the agreement will continue in full force and effect.

Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event, and under no theory of law or equity, will we (including without limitation, our executives, directors, officers, attorneys, managers, employees, consultants, contractors, agents, parent companies, subsidiaries, co-subsidiaries with the same parent company as us, affiliates, third-party providers, merchants, licensor’s, or the like) or anyone else involved in creating, producing or distributing our services, be liable for the loss of a domain name, or any business or personal loss, revenues decrease, expense increase, cost of substitute products and/or our services, and any other loss or damage whatsoever, or for any consequential, special, incidental, punitive or indirect damages of any kind arising out of any use of, or any inability to use, any of our services even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages, our total cumulative liability, if any, to customer, or any third party, for any and all damages related to this polity or our services, including, without limitation, those from any negligence, and act or omission by us or our representatives, or under any other theory of law or equity, will be limited to, and will not exceed, the actual pound amount paid by the customer or the services which gave rise to such damages, losses and causes of actions during the 3 month period prior to the date the damage or loss occurred or the cause of action arose.

Independent Contractors

Nothing in this policy will be construed as creating a partnership or relationship of employer and employee, principal and agent, partnership or joint venture between us and you. Each individual relationship will be deemed an independent contractor at all times and will have no right or authority to assume or create any obligation on behalf of the other, except as may be expressly provided herein.

Affiliate Program

All Affiliate payments are made soon as you reach €100. You can not claim commission on your own sign-ups and orders.

Assignment

Customers may not assign or delegate their rights or obligations under this policy or other agreement for our services, either in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of SmartHost.

Termination for Bankruptcy or Insolvency

If you become insolvent or any bankruptcy petition is filed by the customer or any third party against the customer, we may immediately terminate the provision of our services to you without prior notice or penalty. Such customer consent to the grant of relief from any automatic stay of proceedings against us in such an event.

Free Domain Names

If your hosting plan came with a free domain name, then the domain names are fully registered to you the same way as it would be if the domain name was purchased by you. The domain name can not be transferred away from us for the first 12 months.

.IE domain name registration

By accepting our terms & conditions you are also accepting the terms & conditions specified by IEDR which can be found at https://www.weare.ie/registrant-terms-conditions-policy/

Customer Billing Policy

The following constitutes our Billing Policy and applies to all SmartHost customers.

Payments

All charges are shown in EUR. We accept Credit cards (VISA, MasterCard) and PayPal.

All payments are due on the Account Statement Date, which is defined by your chosen billing cycle and is usually the anniversary of the date to the account was activated.

If you provide us with your credit card information, you authorise us to automatically charge your credit or debit card for charges that apply to your account. Recurring charges will be posted to your credit card until such time that you cancel your account or change your payment method.

You are responsible for directly updating, or notifying us, of any changes to your credit card (including, but not limited to card number, expiration date, billing address, or card status).

Customers not paying by credit card agree to make payment of their balance due within ten (10) days of the Account Statement Date. Accounts that are seven (7) days past due will be automatically suspended.

All past due and unpaid balances may be subject to collection. In the event of collection, you will be liable for costs of collection including attorney’s fees, court costs, and collection agency fees, invoices will be passed to a debt collection agency once they are 30 days overdue.

Billing Cycles (Terms)

The Billing Cycle begins on the Service Activation Date. You may elect to change your Billing Cycle at any time. The new Billing Cycle will only take effect at the time of the next renewal. Additional items are non-refundable.

Account Renewals

In order to ensure uninterrupted service to your website, all services will automatically renew at the end of their Billing Cycle. Renewal charges are based on the prevailing rate on the date of renewal according to the service selected. Services are renewed for the same billing cycle as originally purchased. If you wish to cancel a service before its renewal, please refer to the Cancellations section below.

Money-Back Guarantee

Our thirty (30) day money-back guarantee is from your initial sign-up date on our Website Hosting and Reseller Hosting services. All other products such as Cloud Server VPS, Dedicated Servers, SSL Certificates, and Domain names are excluded and do not have a money-back guarantee.

All refunds are pro-rata. If a free domain name was included with your hosting service, then €20 will be withheld from the refund to cover our costs.

Cancellations

All Services will automatically renew until they are cancelled. In order to cancel a service, you must contact our Support Desk Team and our customer service representatives will assist you with the cancellation process. Cancellations must be submitted at least 7 days before the invoice due date, cancellations after this period will still be required to pay the invoice that is due.

Refunds

Refunds are given if your product has a 30 day money-back guarantee and you have given notice at least 48 hours prior to the end of the money-back period. Renewals can not be refunded, you must cancel your account to void your invoice at least 3 days before your renewal date.

PayPal subscriptions

It is the client’s responsibility to cancel any PayPal subscriptions if you no longer wish to make subscription payments to us. Overpayments or duplicate payments will not be refunded however they will be automatically added as credit to your account to use on all future invoices so the payment is not lost.

Statements

We do not post paper invoices or statements. Invoices are automatically emailed to your account email address and can be viewed along with any statements using our online portal system.

Hosting Plan Changes

Customers electing to change to a lower-priced hosting plan on the same platform will not be charged a downgrade fee. There is also no upgrade fee for upgrading to a higher-priced plan, however, you will be charged any difference between the set-up fee applicable to your new and former plans.

Billing/Price Changes

Our policies and prices are subject to change with full notice. Any price changes become effective in the next billing cycle, we will notify you via email of this price change prior to the cost being edited.

Credit Card Disputes/Chargebacks

We have a zero-tolerance policy for chargebacks. Any customer who disputes a credit card payment is subject to a fine, suspension, and account termination at our discretion. A €25.00 chargeback fee will be assessed for each credit card chargeback received by us.

Acceptable Use Policy: For All Customers)

This policy applies to all SmartHost Web Services Ltd customers and is not product-specific. When you sign up for any of our services, you agree to the following:

Your Responsibility

You are required to use our network responsibly and with respect for our other clients. We reserve the right to suspend and/or cancel your service if you use our network in such a way that adversely affects other customers.

While we may monitor services electronically to determine that systems are operating correctly, as a general practice, we do not monitor your communications or activities to determine if they are in compliance with the policy.

However, when we are notified of a violation of this policy, we will take action to stop or correct the violation, including, but not limited to, denying access to our services and equipment. In addition, we may take action against you or one of your clients depending on the type of violation.

If you resell and offer Internet services, you will cooperate with us in any corrective or preventive action deemed necessary. Failure to cooperate is a violation of this policy and we reserve the right to take action which may also affect your other customers or web sites.

Non-SmartHost Products

Any mention of non-SmartHost products by us, our employees, or any third party entity related to us is for information purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation. SmartHost disclaims any and all liabilities for any representation or warranty made by the vendors of such non-SmartHost products or services.

Third-Party Licenses

We make a reasonable effort to provide you with technologies, developments, and innovations (collectively ‘Technologies’), part of which may be licensed, or co-branded, from or by third-party entities. However, SmartHost make NO warranty of any kind, either express or implied, regarding the quality, accuracy, reliability, validity, or continued existence of any or all aspects of such Technologies. Moreover, we specifically disclaim all warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose for such Technologies. Furthermore, no customer will hold us liable in any way for the revocation of any license, which has been licensed to SmartHost. The use of the Technologies obtained from or through us, or any other referred third party, whether directly or indirectly, is at the sole risk of you the customer.

Acceptable Use Policy: Website Hosting/Reseller Hosting

All Website Hosting and Reseller Hosting is in a shared hosting environment, meaning multiple customers shared servers and services. This is standard for all Website Hosting and Reseller Hosting providers.

Fair Usage

Website Hosting plans that come with unlimited bandwidth may be asked to upgrade to an alternative solution or plan if your website is deemed to have too much traffic which impacts other users.

Accepting Payments on your Website

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is an information security standard for organisations that handle cardholder information for debit, credit, or other payment cards. Our Website Hosting and Reseller Hosting service does not comply with PCI DSS due to the nature of a shared hosting environment (many users and websites sharing resources).

You are not permitted to store and manage card details on Website Hosting and Reseller Hosting. Any website found storing card details will be suspended.

Please note that we recommend using third-party payment processing gateways (for example PayPal, Worldpay, or google checkout) as payments are handled and stored by each third-party merchant respectively.

Cost of Hosting

All Reseller Hosting customers are not permitted to sell free hosting plans to their customers. We do not allow free hosting to be hosted on our servers. Anyone found doing this will be asked to remove the facility or be suspended from our Website Reseller services.

You are permitted to provide hosting without charge as part of a different paid or managed service, such as web design. This is not deemed as providing a free account.

Server Resources

Any website that is deemed to be using a high amount of server resources (such as, but not limited to, CPU time, memory usage, and network resources) will be given the option to either pay for additional resources (depending on which resource is required), reduce the resources used to an acceptable level or upgrade to a Virtual Private Server. We will be the sole arbiter of what is considered to be a high server usage level. Any Website Hosting, Reseller Hosting (and individual clients) account deemed to be adversely affecting server performance or network integrity will be suspended without prior notice.

CGI Scripts

Any scripts that pose a potential security risk or are deemed to be adversely affecting server performance or network integrity will be shut down or will be automatically removed without prior notice. We also do not permit CGI script sharing with websites not hosted by us.

Chat Rooms

We do not allow Chat Rooms to the installed on Website Hosting and Reseller Hosting platforms as they tend to require significant system resources which could have an adverse effect other customers.

IRC

We do not allow IRC or IRC bots to be operated on Web Hosting and Reseller Hosting accounts.

Background Running Jobs and Cron Jobs

We may allow ad-hoc programs to run in the background. These programs will be considered on an individual basis and acceptance is not guaranteed. However, most of our control panels allow scheduled tasks or cron jobs to be created.

Server Time zone

All our servers time zones are set to Irish time.

Databases

We reserve the the right to suspend or remove any databases that cause issues and downtime on any of our servers. Large and busy databases that require a lot of user connections should be hosted on a dedicated or VPS machine. Any database over 2GB in size would be considered as over usage, and not designed for shared hosting.

If your web site is not closing database connections and your web site causes sleeping connections eventually causing high usage to our database server, then your database will be suspended. A €40.00 administration fee may apply to unsuspend any database from our server, however, this is only charged if your database caused a service outage to other clients.

Disk Usage

Disk usage included with Website Hosting and Reseller Hosting plans includes disk space for databases and email.

Shared hosting accounts including reseller hosting that go over disk space usage will be billed at the end of each month at €5.00 per 1GB disk space used.

Virus’s Uploaded to Websites

If your website contains a virus or a virus has been uploaded by the website owner or if the website is hacked in any way, our system will automatically attempt to clean the virus, if this does not happen our system will then attempt to delete the virus. If the virus can not be deleted and several viruses are uploaded your domain name will be suspended from our hosting. You may be charged an administration fee of €10.00 to have the domain name re-enabled.

Backup of Data

We provide 100% backups of all Website Hosting and Reseller Hosting websites, databases & email, and provide access to these backups purely as a courtesy to our customers. We always recommend you regularly make your own backups and always make a backup before you upgrade or change your website, meaning you can then recover to a specific point in time from your own backups. Restores from our nightly backups can be made either directly through your control panel or via a support request. Please note that backups from our vault are stored for up to 7 days only. We offer no guarantees or warranties that any or all backup will be available or working.

Acceptable Use Policy: Email Services

As part of Website Hosting and Reseller Hosting, we offer all clients a mail server and related mail services. The mail server is shared with other Websites and Reseller Hosting customers.

Mail Limits

The maximum number of emails that can be sent out in any given hour is limited depending on the hosting package you have selected. Each email sent must have 50 or fewer recipients (cc or bcc).

For Website hosting and Reseller Hosting customers, an email folder auto-clean system is set-up for all emails managed through IMAP or webmail (email stored on our servers).

• Inbox will clean any emails over 1 year old
• Deleted Items will clean any emails over 1 year old
• Sent Items will clean any emails over 1 year old
• Junk Mail will clean any emails over 30 days old.

The above default settings can be changed or disabled via webmail on the auto-clean settings.

Spamming

Sending unsolicited bulk and/or commercial messages over the Internet (known as “spamming”) is prohibited, regardless of whether or not it overloads a server or disrupts service to our customers.

The term “spamming” also includes, but is not limited to, maintaining an open SMTP policy, engaging in spamming using the service of another ISP or IPP and referencing in the spam a web site hosted by us, and selling or distributing software (on a web site residing on one of our servers) that facilitates spamming.

Violators may be fined at the rate of €5 per deliberate spam email sent and will face immediate suspension. We reserve the right to determine, at our sole and absolute discretion, what constitutes a violation of this provision.

Mass Mailing

Mass mailing/mailing lists are not allowed on our Website Hosting and Reseller Hosting mail service.

Anyone who sends mass mail and is found to cause issues to our mail service or IP reputation will be given a fine (details below) and have the domain name suspended.

Those who are found to be sending masses of spam emails will be given a flat fine to cover administration time for SmartHost to physically remove the emails from our spool.

Any email spam / bulk user that causes IP blacklistings will be given a fine of €100.00.

Any user that causes complaints from other companies, for example, Spamcop, AOL, Yahoo, etc. will be issued an invoice amounting to €50.00 + VAT to cover administration fee’s for us to advise the companies the reasons why the spam was sent, and request delisting.

Disk Space

On our shared hosting, email domains can not exceed 2GB in size, this is due to the cost of the SSD & SAS disks used for mail are very expensive and the cost to us to host the domain would exceed the subscription payment we receive from the user each month.

Acceptable Use Policy: Dedicated Servers and VPS

Server Management

All Virtual Private Servers should be professionally managed by the end-user unless a management pack has been purchased and must be kept free from viruses.

Bandwidth Over Usage

Each month your bandwidth will reset on your billing date, if you go over your bandwidth allowance, an invoice will be generated. Bandwidth invoices will be charged anytime within 3-10 days after the invoice was generated.

IP Addresses

Each Server is initially assigned a range of IP addresses. Additional IP addresses s can be purchased are charged per IP address. A maximum of 5 IP addresses are allowed.

You are only permitted to add IP addresses that have been approved by SmartHost. Adding an IP address to your server that we have not allocated will result in your server being shut-down and an immediate fine of €100 being applied to your account. Your server will not be re-enabled until you have provided a reason why the unauthorised IP has been added to your server. If you have several servers, you must contact us before moving IPs between servers

Dedicated Server Operating System Reload

Dedicated server customers requiring an OS Reload on a dedicated server can request one by submitting a ticket.

Complaints Procedure

If you ever need to raise a complaint with SmartHost, please login to the client area at http://portal.smarthost.ie/index.php/login and submit a ticket to our team who will escalate the complaint for you. Alternatively, you can write to us. Our address can be found on our company page at https://smarthost.ie/contacts/

All complaints are responded to within 2 business days hours if submitted on-line, and 14 business days for postal complaints.

Domain Names and Renewals

Domain name pricing, including any discounts for new registrations, is available on our domain name registration page at https://smarthost.ie/domains/. We may offer limited discounted pricing for new registrations. To prevent abuse, discounted offers may be restricted to a reasonable number of domains per customer.

Customers are not permitted to re-register an expired domain that was previously purchased at a discounted rate and then obtain a similar discount on the re-registration. We reserve the right to invoice for the difference in price. Should there be any price increases or decreases, we will notify all customers via email at least 30 days in advance.

When your domain name is due to be renewed we will send you multiple reminders from 60 days before its expiry date. 30 days before the domain expires we will invoice you for the domain renewal, once this is paid the domain name will instantly be renewed. Invoices that are not paid after 14 days will automatically be cancelled and the domain name will expire. You will need to contact our billing team within 28 days of the invoice due date by submitting a ticket at http://portal.smarthost.ie/index.php/login if you wish to renew your domain name. Note some domain name extension/TLDs may occur an €80 fee for expired domains, we would notify you of this before billing you.

If you decide to transfer to another domain registrar, you can do so anytime at no extra cost from us. However, you will need to transfer out your domain name at least 35-40 days before its expiry date to avoid us invoicing you for its renewal. Your new domain registrar may charge you additional costs to transfer the domain to them depending on the domain name TLD. SmartHost is not liable for such costs.

Creating multiple accounts to obtain discounted pricing on domain name registrations is prohibited. Any customer found setting up multiple accounts for this purpose may have the discounts removed and will be invoiced for the difference in price. We reserve the right to remove any discounts at our sole discretion.