Terms & Conditions

Terms of Use ...

Earthweb,strives to provide the best possible service to all our customers, but we will not tolerate any unlawful activity or abuse on our servers. We respect freedom of speech and expression unless it is harmful to others. These brief guidelines are imposed to protect you, other customers and us against such harm. Earthweb reserves the right to update this policy at any time, so please check back periodically.

Payment Policies

Full payment is required before any hosting service is rendered, which includes renewals. All payment-due notices will be sent by electronic mail. Payment is due on the first day of the month, for that month. New orders are pro-rata to the first day of the month. All customers will receive invoices 15 days before the due date. Billing will continue until you cancel your hosting account. We accept the following forms of payment: Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), Credit Card (MasterCard and Visa), PayPal, PayFast and Debit Order.

Debit orders that return as unpaid will attract a R50 administration fee. The account should then be settled by EFT or Credit Card, no further debit orders will run on the account until the overdue amount has been settled.
Late Payment

It is your responsibility to ensure that your payment information is up to date, and that all invoices are paid on time. You agree that until and unless you notify Earthweb of your desire to cancel any or all services received (by the proper means listed in the appropriate section of the Terms & Conditions), those services will be billed on a recurring basis, unless otherwise stated in writing by Earthweb. Earthweb reserves the right to allocate payments to the oldest outstanding invoice on your account. Earthweb reserves the right to bill your credit card or billing information on file with us.

Earthweb provides a 10 day grace period from the time the invoice is due and when it must be paid. Any invoice that is overdue for 10 days will result in account and service suspension until account balance has been paid in full. Access to the account will not be restored until all outstanding payments have been received. We do not charge a reactivation fee.
Cancellation

Cancellations must be done in writing by emailing support@Earthweb.co.za or via Earthweb.co.za. You have the option of cancelling your account immediately or at the end of the billing period. If you choose to cancel the account immediately then your account will be terminated from our servers on receipt of the cancellation. Cancellation of a subscription does not cancel any outstanding invoices. All outstanding invoices are still due.
Domain Cost Refund Policy

Please note that fees payable for domain registration and renewal costs are non-refundable. Earthweb accepts no responsibility for any typing errors (spelling mistakes) you make when ordering a domain name with us. Once a domain name has passed its expiry date there is no guarantee that we are able to renew the domain, additional charges might apply in these cases.

Unlimited Traffic/Storage Policy

We have a fair use policy which goes as follows.

Bandwidth and disk storage are unlimited as long as:

- they used as an integral part of your website,
- you are not intentionally abusing the service by using excessive bandwidth or disk storage,
- you are not violating our terms and conditions, and
- you are not impeding our capability to provide other service to other customers.

In other words, if you are adding content (images, files, text etc) to your site and using the service in the way it is intended to be used, then we will not limit the amount of bandwidth  your site is consuming.

Our intention is that, as long as both parties are being fair, you should not have to worry about bandwidth  limits. We'll take care of these sorts of issues so you can concentrate on growing your site.

If, however, you are attempting to take advantage of the service by distributing large files or streaming excessive video or hosting music or something similar, then we will request that you cease doing so.

SPAM Policy

Earthweb takes a zero tolerance approach to the sending of Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) or SPAM over our network. Very simply this means that customers of Earthweb may not use or permit others to use our network to transact in UCE. Customers of Earthweb may not host, or permit hosting of, sites or information that is advertised by UCE from other networks. Violations of this policy carry severe penalties, including termination of service.

If your actions have caused Earthweb's mail servers or Earthweb's IP address ranges to be placed on blacklists and other mail filtering software systems used by companies on the Internet, you will be assessed a R500 charge to your account for administrative charges incurred to remove and protect mail servers and IP ranges.
Content Policy

All services provided by Earthweb are to be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any South African, United Kingdom or United States Federal, State, Provincial or City law is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, trademark, intellectual property, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret and other statute without proper authorization. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Earthweb from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Also prohibited are sites that promote any illegal activity or present content that may be damaging to Earthweb's servers or any other server on the internet. Links to such materials are also prohibited.

Examples of unacceptable content or links:

- Pirated software
- Hacker programs or archives
- Fraudulent activies
- Adult sites
- Warez sites

Any illegal activity, online gambling, spamming or hacking will result in your site being shut down. The customer is solely responsible for the content stored on and served on their hosting space.

Earthweb will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.
Scripts and Software Policy

You are free to install and use any scripts you wish, (as long as they are not on our banned scripts list, see below) however we reserve the right to disable any script or software in your hosting account that affects normal server operation or service to other Earthweb customers.

Earthweb is not responsible for scripts that you use in your hosting. It is not our responsibility to ensure your scripts function correctly. Please don’t expect our support techs to troubleshoot aspects of your scripts or third party scripts that you use on your sites hosted on our servers.

Earthweb provides technical support for the server & server related softwares. Any scripts included in the Softaculous are 3rd party scripts and support is not provided by our techs.

The following scripts are banned due to the potential harm they can cause to other sites on the same server:

- Torrentflux (and similar scripts)
- AlienForm (all versions)
- formmail.pl
- Greymatter (all versions)
- Open Webmail
- Ikonboard (all versions)
- IRC Egg Drops & IRC related programs.
- Chat software
- lstmrge.cgi
- Proxy Servers & Scripts (EX: nph-proxy)
- Shell, SSH, Telnet Scripts and Shell, SSH, Telnet Alternatives (cgitelnet.pl)
- The Anonymizer
- UltimateBBS (all versions)
- YABB + YABB se (all versions)
- Any script that uses / processes a massive number of flatfiles or large flatfile databases.
Resource Usage

Earthweb hosting accounts operate on shared resources. Excessive use or abuse of these shared network resources by one customer may have a negative impact on all other customers. Misuse of network resources in a manner which impairs server/network performance is prohibited by this policy and may result in suspension of your account without notice. You are prohibited from excessive consumption of resources, including processing time, memory and session time. You may not use resource-intensive programs which negatively impact other customers or the performance of Earthweb's systems or Hosting. Earthweb reserves the right to terminate or limit such activities.

System and Network Security

Users are prohibited from violating or attempting to violate the security of the Earthweb Network. Violations of system or network security may result in civil or criminal liability. Earthweb will investigate occurrences, which may involve such violations and may involve, and cooperate with, law enforcement authorities in prosecuting Users who are involved in such violations. These violations include, without limitation:

Accessing data not intended for such User or logging into a server or account, which such User is not authorized to access. Attempting to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of a system or network or to breach security or authentication measures without proper authorization.

Attempting to interfere with service to any user, host or network, including, without limitation, via means of overloading, "flooding", "mail bombing" or "crashing". Forging any TCP/IP packet header or any part of the header information in any e-mail or newsgroup posting. Taking any action in order to obtain services to which such user is not entitled.
Backups

Full backups are made nightly. No guarantees are made of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the integrity of these backups. Backups are made for server restoration purposes only. It is the client’s responsibility to maintain local copies of their web content and information.
Intellectual Property

We are the owner and/or authorised user of all trade marks, service marks, design marks, patents, copyrights, database rights and all other intellectual property appearing on or contained within the Site, unless otherwise indicaded. Except as provided in these Terms & Conditions, use of the Site does not grant you any right, title, interest or license to any such intellectual property you may access on the Site. Except as provided in these Terms & Conditions, any use or reproduction of the intellectual property is prohibited.

You may view this Site and you are welcome to print hard copies of material on it solely for your lawful, personal, non-commercial use. All other copying, whether in electronic, hard copy or other format, is prohibited and may breach intellectual property laws and other laws world-wide. Furthermore, you are not entitled to reproduce, transmit, publicly perform, distribute, adapt, translate, modify, bundle, merge, share or make available to any person, or create derivative works of such material, or use it for commercial purposes, without our prior written consent. All other rights are reserved.
Refusal of Service

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason not prohibited by law. We reserve the right to terminate service to any customer for any reason not prohibited by law.

Any deliberate attempt to cause damage to Earthweb’s servers, the Earthweb network or any other internet servers will result in immediate account deactivation without prior notice.