 |
Terms of Service
Web hosting t&cs don't normally give you the really important information you need, but we will try to give you the information we think you need, here goes...
We are not a traditional web hosting company nor a traditional web design company, we are are company which provides a managed sitebuilder service which includes web hosting.
Since we are not a web hosting company, we host our dedicated servers in the London Docklands through a web hosting company called www.openhosting.co.uk - this is a UK based company whose servers are UK-based. We, and our clients in turn, are bound by the web hosting t&cs of openhosting, which can be found at:
www.openhosting.co.uk/terms/
These are pretty much standard web hosting terms and include such things as you're not allowed to host material which you don't own either the copyright, I.P., permission or license to (e.g. illegal music downloads), nor pornographic material, etc. Aside from the obvious material that is not allowed on websites, we also like to consider ourselves as an ethical company, and as such we also do not allow sites offering material that might be borderline legal, depending on interpretaion, but still unethical.
The important facts about our service are:
1. The awebapart.com sitebuilder service is an application rental service, you are renting the service from us, this is typical of the new breed of hosted managed services and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. As such we license that you can use the service - in fact this is very similar to when you purchase software from Microsoft, in that you only purchase the license to use the software, not the software/system itself. This does not involve any transfer of IP, copyright or ownership of software or designs provided by us, unless we explicitly state so, for example, when providing custom graphic design elements (e.g. logos) or custom programming to be inserted in pages (e.g. HTML/Javascript) for you, and in these cases only for paying customers (not for potential cilents who do not progress past the prototyping stage).
To minimise client tie-in in the unlikely event of a client wanting to move away from our service, we grant a single site licence to clients who have been with us, or who have paid us, for 12 months, so that the client can take a static HTML copy of their final website (using tools such as HTTrack) to host the site elsewhere. A static HTML website copy will not have any content management features or other server-side features such as email forms processing, and can only be edited using a web design package, it could however be migrated into another content management system by a web development company. We can also provide an osCommerce database backup and images directory backup for clients who wish to move towards their own semi-bespoke osCommerce system in the future. The licence we grant for leaving clients is a single site licence meaning it is only applies to their website, they cannot make copies for resale, and since the website is still based on our design layouts we cannot transfer copyright of these layouts, merely a licence to use the layout (otherwise leaving clients could prevent other existing clients from using our layouts if they owned copyright).
2. The awebapart.com sitebuilder service provides a layout-based customiseable website service. This is different to a fully bespoke custom web design you may get from a traditional web designer where you have more control over the site's look and features (normally at a higher cost), and our service is priced lower accordingly. As such there are limitations to work within, the web design is not fully customiseable, only customiseable to a certain extent, an extent which we feel should meet the needs of most businesses. A 'web design' link is placed at the bottom of all sitebuilder sites, which links to our site, and this is not customiseable. For these reasons, we offer a try before you buy service, so you can be assured that it is customiseable enough for your needs. We are however, always open to client feedback on ways we can improve the service.
3. Payment is yearly upfront (£250+VAT per annum), after you are happy with the working prototype (we recommend that you try before you buy). There is no minimum contract, we hope clients will stay with us because they like our service. If you decide to leave after say 6 months we will happily refund a remaining part of the service cost based on a pro-rata calculation which considers both months remaining and support costs to date. Future pricing for new clients may go up or down depending on the market, and future pricing for existing clients may also go up and down, however future pricing for any client, new or existing, will not go up any more than the standard UK rate of inflation, and if general prices for new clients are lowered below prices for existing clients, then the existing clients will be moved onto the better deal too. This is our price guarantee.
4. You can keep your domain at any domain name registrar, as long as your registrar has the ability to point the domain at our servers, either through nameservers, or WWW A records. We recommend that you keep in control of your domain name by purchasing and registering the domain name yourself at established domain registrars such as www.123-reg.co.uk - that is why we do not include a free domain name with our service (a .co.uk domain only costs £2.79 per year). Whilst we do not purchase the domain name, we can and often advise our clients on the selection of an appropriate domain name that will provide the most benefit in terms of branding and search engine optimisation and to avoid any legal issues with other companies owning similar names.
5. Support is 9:00am to 5:30pm normal UK business working days, via email and telephone (local number 01933 - Wellingborough, Northants). This doesn't mean that we don't cover times outside this, just that we don't guarantee it. We usually respond to requests within 24hrs, urgent problems we obviously try to address sooner. Clients going through VARs (Value Added Resellers) should not be contacting us directly, they should be contacting their VAR. In order to keep our service running optimally for all clients we operate a fair use policy where support is concerned. Fair use means sensible usage which is appropriate for most clients, and to protect our service to these clients we have to implement this fair use policy to stop the odd client excessively using our resources. Fair use is support for just one person within the cilent organisation administering the client website. Fair use does not include excessive support usage, exceeding what we deem to be reasonable levels of support for a small business client, with basic PC and web familiarity, using a service from us set at our pricing level, or support requests for services or software outside of our remit (e.g. broadband supplier, PC software, learning to use the PC and web, payment processor, etc.).
6. We state a 99.9% uptime policy. This is based on our experience to date. Some things can go wrong which make your website unavailable, usually network problems at the UK internet infrastructure or web host end which we have no control over. The worst downtime we have experience so far was a 2 hour monday afternoon period due to this, but it was a one-off in 2006 and the external suppliers have put infrastructure in place so this problem does not happen again, but where something as complex as the internet is involoved nothing can be 100% guaranteed, hence the 99.9% uptime policy. When your site is unavailable this does not mean that you will lose emails sent to you (the internet email system copes with these problems). But things do go wrong, and it would be unrealistic of us to offer 100.00% uptime. We do not offer any compensation, nor are we liable, for loss of client business during any downtime period. However if downtime periods occur beyond the 0.1% downtime per year we will consider the disruption caused to each client on a case by case basis and take into account when the downtime occurred and the cause of the downtime, to see if we should refund an appropriate amount up to the amount the client has paid for the base cost of the service for that year.
7. Our servers are currently hosted in the UK, London Docklands data centre. In the future we may also make use of other high performance UK data centres. Websites are hosted on our own performance monitored and load balanced dedicated servers. To maximise performance, page load times and reliability we place no more than 50-100 websites on each server, and we do not allow any client to upload and run their own server side code.
8. 20 GB per month bandwidth allowance (this should be enough for most businesses, and it is there to stop anyone trying to set up the next high bandwidth youtube.com video site). Bandwidth is for client's use only and is not available for resale or sub-letting.
9. 2MB maximum website file upload limit, this means that you cannot upload videos or pdfs or images to the website which are greater than 2MB. This is a current limit although we may increase this in future (up to 5MB, since the latest 9 MegaPixel prosumer digital cameras are now producing 2.5MB files). For larger files we suggest using a specialist fileserver/download service, e.g. fileburst.com, the files hosted at fileburst can be linked to from your website hosted with us (e.g. www.instantmagictricks.com uses this setup). Clients cannot upload their own server-side scripts (e.g. php files), these are neither necessary nor appropriate for a sitebuilder managed service and there is always a small chance that this could compromise our server integrity (we operate a service which has higher levels of integrity and security than typical shared hosting plans from hosting companies because of this fact that we do not allow any client to upload server-side scripts).
10. You get up to 20 POP3 email accounts. Email accounts are for client's use only and are not available for resale or sub-letting.
11. By using our service, clients are agreeing to these terms and conditions.
12. Since our service is a continually improving one, from time to time these terms and conditions will change, either to improve them just for clarification, or to incorporate terms for new services added. Clients will be notified of any major changes to these terms and conditions.
If you have any more specific questions, or if you currently have any specific/unusual webhosting features then please contact us.
|
|
