Terms of Service
Spring Hill Design provides web design and management services for a number of websites around the world. We have a responsibility to provide each client with the best services available. The following guidelines were designed to insure these services.
Billing – Payment:
Customer will pay to Spring Hill Design the service fees for the Services in the manner set forth in the Order Form.
Unless otherwise specified, all fees and related charges shall be due and payable within seven (7) days after the date of the invoice. If any invoice is not paid within seven days the account will be suspended.
There is a $50 fee for any illegitimate chargebacks placed against us. Any illegitimate chargebacks or threatened illegitimate chargebacks are grounds for immediate account cancellation.
If Spring Hill Design collects any payment due at law or through an attorney at law or under advice there from or through a collection agency, or if Spring Hill Design prevails in any action to which the Customer and Spring Hill Design are parties, Customer will pay all costs of collection, arbitration and litigation, including, without limitation, all court costs and Spring Hill Design’s reasonable attorneys’ fees.
If any check is returned for insufficient funds Spring Hill Design may impose a processing charge of $50.00.
In the event that any amount due Spring Hill Design remains unpaid thirty (30) days after such payment is due the unpaid services will be terminated.
Customer acknowledges and agrees that Spring Hill Design may pre- charge Customer’s fees for the Services to its credit card supplied by Customer during registration for the Initial Term.
YOU ACKNOWLEDGE, AGREE AND AUTHORIZE Spring Hill Design TO AUTOMATICALLY BILL AND/OR CHARGE ON YOUR CREDIT CARD FOR SUCCESSIVE TERMS OF EQUAL LENGTH AS THE INITIAL TERM, UNLESS TERMINATED OR CANCELLED BEFORE PAYMENT IS DUE.
Cancellation/Refunds:
To cancel your account contact billing@springhilldesign.net.
We have a 30 day unconditional money back guarantee. All cancellations must be received within 30 days of account activation to receive a refund. After cancellation notice is received refunds will be processed within 10 days. Refunds are not given on domain name registrations for any reason. Dedicated servers and setup fees (ie. stacking domains, dedicated, etc.) are non-refundable.
Activities Subject to Immediate Deactivation:
Any Hosting Account that is used for Illegal, Abusive or Unethical Activity may be immediately deactivated by us without warning to you. Any misuse or overuse of the server will result in immediate deactivation of an account. Illegal, Abusive or Unethical Activities include, but are not limited to inclusion of or linking to, pornography, obscenity, nudity, violations of privacy, hacking, irc related scripts and programs, non approved server scripts, eggdrops, computer virus, and any harassing or harmful materials or uses, as determined by us. You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from any claim resulting from your publications or use of Illegal, Abusive or Unethical materials. Although we will make reasonable efforts to alert you to such activities and allow you an opportunity to cure them within a 12-hour period after discovery, we are not required to give notice before deactivating your use of our services if, in our discretion, your use is or results in Illegal, Abusive or Unethical activities. If a Hosting Account is disabled, the regular monthly fees still apply. Spring Hill Design reserves the right to Cancel/Deactivate any account at any time for any reason.
Examples of non-acceptable content or links:
- Pirated software
- Hackers programs or archives
- Warez Sites
- Adult Sites
- Illegal MP3s
Spring Hill Design will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.
Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (spam):
You are expressly prohibited from sending unsolicited bulk mail messages (“junk mail” or “spam”). This includes, but is not limited to, bulk-mailing of commercial advertising, information announcements, and political tracts. Such material may only be sent to those who have specifically requested it. Malicious or threatening email is also prohibited. We reserve the right to immediately deactivate your use of our service if we discover such activity. Further, you agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from any claim resulting from your use or distribution of electronic mail services through the service provided through this Agreement. Anyone using our services for spamming will be immediately subject to a $250 cleanup/network abuse fee.
Definition of UCE (Unsolicited Commercial E-mail), or spam:
- The bulk UCE, promotional material, or other forms of solicitation sent via e-mail that advertise any IP address belonging to Spring Hill Design or any URL (domain) that is hosted by Spring Hill Design.
- Unsolicited postings to newsgroups advertising any IP or URL hosted by Spring Hill Design.
- The use of web pages set up on ISPs that allow spamming (also known as “ghost sites”) that directly or indirectly reference customers to domains or IP addresses hosted by Spring Hill Design.
- Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to facilitate a means to spam.
- Forging or misrepresenting message headers, whether in whole or in part, to mask the true origin of the message.
Spam, mailing lists and other email restrictions:
Due to the increased problems and risk to our network, Spring Hill Design also prohibits the use of 3rd party mailing lists and FFA’s. Examples that we do not allow include but are not limited to:
- Safelist
- Purchased / Sold mailing lists
- FFA’s
Impacts to Spring Hill Design:
Spam is not only harmful because of its negative impact on consumer attitudes toward Spring Hill Design, but also because it can overload Spring Hill Design’s network and resources.
There are many groups that report and block the networks that spam is sent from. In the event spam is generated off of ours or our customers servers, our network can be blocked and this impacts other users putting our network at risk.
Our Providers:
Since it is unsolicited, users who receive spam often become angry and send complaints to our upstream providers. This upsets our providers who abhor spam for the same reasons that Spring Hill Design does – it causes negative consumer attitudes and drains resources. We strive to maintain favorable business relationships in the Web community and obviously will not allow any practice that threatens these relationships.
Consequences/ Penalties for Spamming:
Spring Hill Design reserves the right to terminate, without warning, any account that violates this policy. Usage of Spring Hill Design services constitutes acceptance and understanding of this policy.
Spring Hill Design reserves the right to decide what it considers “spam”, “UCE”, “mail bombing”, or “bulk e-mail”, and to determine from all of the evidence whether or not the e-mail recipients were from an “opt-in” e-mail list.
Should you choose to e-mail from Spring Hill Design servers, especially if you use mailing lists, you must read and adhere to the following guidelines, which are offered as a statement of Internet standards and best current practices for proper mailing list management and preventing e-mail abuse.
Basic Mailing List Management Principles for Preventing Abuse
Mailing lists are a vehicle for distributing focused, targeted information to an interested, receptive audience. Consequently, mailing lists have been used successfully as a highly effective direct marketing tool.
Unfortunately, some marketers misuse mailing lists through a lack of understanding of Internet customs and rules of the forum pertaining to e-mail. Others fail to take adequate precautions to prevent the lists they manage from being used in an abusive manner.
- The e-mail addresses of new subscribers must be confirmed or verified before mailings commence. This is usually accomplished by means of an e-mail message sent to the subscriber to which s/he must reply, or containing a URL which s/he must visit, in order to complete the subscription. However it is implemented, a fundamental requirement of all lists is the verification of all new subscriptions.
- Mailing list administrators must provide a simple method for subscribers to terminate their subscriptions, and administrators should provide clear and effective instructions for unsubscribing from a mailing list. Mailings from a list must cease promptly once a subscription is terminated.
- Mailing list administrators should make an “out of band” procedure (e.g., a means of contact by which messages may be sent for further correspondence via e-mail or telephone) available for those who wish to terminate their mailing list subscriptions but are unable or unwilling to follow standard automated procedures.
- Mailing list administrators must ensure that the impact of their mailings on the networks and hosts of others is minimized by proper list management procedures such as pruning of invalid or undeliverable addresses, or taking steps to ensure that mailings do not overwhelm less robust hosts or networks.
- Mailing list administrators must take adequate steps to ensure that their lists are not used for abusive purposes. For example, administrators can maintain a “suppression list” of e-mail addresses from which all subscription requests are rejected. Addresses would be added to the suppression list upon request by the parties entitled to use the addresses at issue. The purpose of the suppression list would be to prevent subscription of addresses appearing on the suppression list by unauthorized third parties. Such suppression lists should also give properly authorized domain administrators the option to suppress all mailings to the domains for which they are responsible.
- Mailing list administrators must make adequate disclosures about how subscriber addresses will be used, including whether or not addresses are subject to sale or trade with other parties. Once a mailing list is traded or sold, it may no longer be an opt-in mailing list. Therefore, those who are acquiring “opt-in” lists from others must examine the terms and conditions under which the addresses were originally compiled and determine that all recipients have in fact opted-in specifically to the mailing lists to which they are being traded or sold.
- Mailing list administrators should make adequate disclosures about the nature of their mailing lists, including the subject matter of the lists and anticipated frequency of messages. A substantive change in either the subject matter or frequency of messages may constitute a new and separate mailing list requiring a separate subscription. List administrators should create a new mailing list when there is a substantive change in either the subject matter or frequency of messages. A notification about the new mailing list may be appropriate on the existing mailing list, but existing subscribers should never be subscribed automatically to the new list. For example, if Company A acquires Company B, and Company B has compiled opt-in mailing lists, Company A should not summarily incorporate Company B’s mailing lists into its own.
Mailing Lists
We have a strict policy regarding use/spam on our network, but we do allow use of mailing lists within the constraints of our spam policy above. However, sending thousands of e-mails off of a given server can impact the performance of the server. Therefore we limit the amount of e-mail allowed on our Shared Servers to no more than 1000 e-mails per day and 30 emails in 10 seconds.
Shared Server Resource Abuse:
Spring Hill Design allows CGI, PHP, Perl and many other normal processes used for hosting to be used on all Virtual Servers. These processes can be resource intensive however, and because a Virtual Server must be shared with other users, we must limit how much of the CPU, memory, disk I/O, disk space and database use can be used by any one account on a shared server. Therefore any program (application, script, etc.) or usage that consumes too many resources that impacts other customers in either performance or reliability is considered resource abuse. Shared servers are ‘shared’ and we all need to play fair. In the event a user requires more resources than is acceptable on a shared server environment, a dedicated server is recommended.
What does Spring Hill Design consider “System Resource ABUSE”?
Any site whose traffic, programs and/or processes are using excessive amounts of system resources. Excessive amounts is defined as any amount that results in substantial degradation of server performance. Spring Hill Design is the sole determinant of what constitutes degraded server performance.
Using a shared account as a backup/storage device is not permitted, with the exception of one cPanel backup of the same account. Please do not take backups of your backups.
Examples of unacceptable material on all Shared and Reseller servers include:
- TopsitestbZwIEqXB9
- IRC Scripts/Bots
- Proxy Scripts/Anonymizers
- Pirated Software/Warez
- Image Hosting Scripts (similar to Photobucket or Tinypic)
- AutoSurf/PTC/PTS/PPC sites
- IP Scanners
- Bruteforce Programs/Scripts/Applications
- Mail Bombers/Spam Scripts
- Banner-Ad services (commercial banner ad rotation)
- File Dump/Mirror Scripts (similar to rapidshare)
- Commercial Audio Streaming (more than one or two streams)
- Escrow/Bank Debentures
- High-Yield Interest Programs (HYIP) or Related Sites
- Investment Sites (FOREX, E-Gold Exchange, Second Life/Linden Exchange, Ponzi, MLM/Pyramid Scheme)
- Sale of any controlled substance without prior proof of appropriate permit(s)
- Prime Banks Programs
- Lottery Sites
- MUDs/RPGs/PBBGs
- Hateful/Racist/Harassment oriented sites
- Hacker focused sites/archives/programs
- Sites promoting illegal activities
- Forums and/or websites that distribute or link to warez/pirated/illegal content
- Bank Debentures/Bank Debenture Trading Programs
- Fraudulent Sites (Including, but not limited to sites listed at aa419.org & escrow-fraud.com)
- Mailer Pro
Cron Jobs
We allow customers to set up cron jobs to perform routine functions automatically. Due to the impact on the server, running some automated processes can take up considerable server resources and in those cases, our technicians may disable the cron job.
Liability:
Spring Hill Design is in no way responsible for down time either resulting from a users actions, or natural fluctuations in internet consistency. Spring Hill Design will however, do everything within it’s power to assure that each and every client site is up as consistently as possible. Spring Hill Design is in no way responsible for the data on your site. We do keep backups of every site we host but we do not guarantee the usability of our backups. You should always keep a backup of all data.
Public Nature of Internet:
Please understand that all information submitted on the Hosting Account shall be considered publicly accessible. Important and private information should be protected/backed up by you. For example, we are not liable for protection or privacy of electronic mail or other information transferred through the Internet or any other network provider that you may use.