Hosting terms

These terms cover website and email hosting from Bang! Hosting. They are separate from the contract for any design or build work, which is set out in the proposal you would sign before that work starts.

Bang! Hosting is a trading name of Andrew Luckman, a sole trader in the United Kingdom.

Our address for correspondence is 29 Broomfield Avenue, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, SS9 4BL.

These terms apply to your hosting from the day the service starts. We will point you to this page when your hosting begins and link to it on every renewal invoice. The version that applies to you is the one published here on the date your hosting year starts, and the date it was last updated is shown above. Continuing to use the hosting after we have told you about a change means you accept that change.

1. What you are buying

Hosting is space on our servers for one website and its email, together with the services listed on our hosting page as included at the time you sign up: an SSL certificate, Timeline Backups, malware scanning, server maintenance, the content delivery network and five mailboxes.

Hosting does not include changes to your website, updates to WordPress, its theme or its plugins, or work to put right something that has broken. Those are care and support services and are priced separately.

2. The platform behind it

Our hosting runs on a UK data-centre platform we license from a specialist provider. You are our client and we are your point of contact; you have no contract with them and they have no relationship with you. Because the platform holds our whole account to its rules, the limits in clause 5 and the restrictions in clause 6 are conditions of the service.

Your website files, databases and email are stored on that platform in the United Kingdom. The provider processes them on our behalf under a written contract with us and takes no other role; our privacy policy says more about what is held and why.

3. Fees and payment

Hosting is charged annually and paid in advance. The price is the price published or quoted to you at the time you take the service.

Additional mailboxes beyond the five included are charged monthly and billed annually in advance alongside the hosting.

We may change our prices. We will tell you at least 30 days before a change takes effect, and no change will apply to a year you have already paid for.

Invoices are issued 30 days before the due date and payment is due before that date.

Where any other invoice from us is outstanding, hosting will not be renewed until it is settled.

4. Uptime

We do not warrant that access to your website or email will be uninterrupted or error free. We will use reasonable endeavours to keep any downtime to a minimum.

We do not offer a service level agreement or an uptime guarantee, because our supplier does not offer one to us for this class of hosting.

5. Fair use, and the limits that come with it

Your hosting allows generous website space and bandwidth for normal website use. It is not unmetered in every circumstance, and the following limits apply because our supplier applies them to us.

(a) Where a website allows the downloading of video, audio or other files, a bandwidth limit of 250 GB per calendar month may be applied.

(b) No single website may use more than 10% of the platform's processing capacity.

(c) Each database is limited to 1024 MB. Where more is needed, further databases can be added.

(d) The service must not be used as an offsite backup facility. Files kept on the server must form part of the operation of the website.

If your website approaches any of these limits we will tell you and talk through the options before anything is restricted.

6. What the hosting may not be used for

You may not use the hosting to send unsolicited bulk email. Our supplier operates a zero tolerance policy and any account that causes their IP addresses to be blacklisted will be suspended immediately.

You may not operate a proxy website or service, give away web space under your domain, or store or distribute unlawful material.

You may not use the hosting for anything that breaks the law, or to store or distribute material that infringes somebody else's copyright or other rights, or malware, phishing pages, or anything else designed to deceive or to harm other systems.

You may not run cryptocurrency mining, port scanning, attacks on other systems, or anything else that uses the platform's resources out of proportion to the normal operation of a website.

Where a breach of this clause puts our account with the platform, or other clients' websites, at risk, we may suspend first and discuss it with you afterwards.

You are responsible for the content of your website and for anyone you allow to administer it.

7. Backups

Timeline Backups are included and run daily. Website files are retained for 30 days, databases for 60 days and every mailbox for 30 days, stored away from the server being backed up.

Backups are a safety net rather than a substitute for your own copies. We do not warrant that any backup will be complete or that a particular restore will succeed, and we recommend you keep your own copies of anything you could not afford to lose.

8. Late payment and suspension

Invoices are due before the date shown on them. Interest is charged on anything unpaid after that date at 8% a year above the Bank of England base rate, until payment is received.

If an invoice is still unpaid 30 days after the due date, a late payment charge of £40 is added.

Where an invoice remains unpaid we may suspend the hosting, or replace the website with a holding page, but not without telling you first that we intend to. We would always rather talk to you about it.

We may suspend immediately and without notice if the website breaches clause 6, or puts the platform or other clients at risk.

Where hosting has been suspended for non-payment, a reinstatement fee of £40 applies.

A suspended account remains recoverable for 30 days. After that we cannot guarantee it will still exist, because our supplier deletes any service left deactivated for 50 consecutive days.

9. Ending the arrangement

You may cancel at the end of any paid year. The renewal invoice is issued 30 days before that date, and telling us at any point before the year ends is enough.

We may end the arrangement at any time by giving you 30 days' notice in writing.

Hosting is paid annually in advance and fees for the current year are not refundable if you cancel part way through it.

Where the hosting ends part way through a year because we have ended it, or because of a fault on our side, we will refund the unused months.

10. What happens to your website when it ends

The domain, the content and the website are yours.

You will be given access to your hosting control panel if you do not already have it, from which you can download your website files, your databases and your email. Where we hold the domain, an authorisation code will be provided on request so you can transfer it.

Moving the website and its email to another provider is your responsibility, or that of whoever you appoint.

11. Deletion when hosting ends

When hosting ends, the website files, databases and all email held on the account are permanently deleted. This happens as soon as the account is closed rather than after a grace period.

It is your responsibility to download anything you wish to keep before the closing date. We will confirm that date to you in writing and will not close an account without having done so.

12. Liability

We are not liable for loss of profit, loss of business, loss of data, or any indirect or consequential loss.

Our total liability to you in connection with hosting is capped at whichever is higher: the hosting fees you have paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or £500.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. Where a change materially affects you we will tell you at least 30 days before it takes effect, and it will not apply to a year already paid for.

14. Domains

Where we buy or manage a domain for you, the domain is yours. Our fee covers buying it and administering it.

Domains we buy for you are registered through Namecheap, using our contact details as the administrative contact. This does not affect your ownership, and the registration will be moved into your own details on request.

15. Domain renewal

We do not renew domains automatically. Renewal is arranged with you each time, and it is your responsibility to tell us if you want a domain renewed.

Where a domain has expired, the cost of recovering it rises the longer it is left, and after a period that varies with the domain extension it is released and may be bought by somebody else.

Where any invoice from us is outstanding, a domain will not be renewed until it is settled.

16. Moving a domain away

You may move a domain to another provider at any time. We do not charge an administration fee for this, and an authorisation code will be provided on request.

17. Telling us about problems

If something is wrong with your website or email and we have not already told you about it, please let us know through the contact form or by phone. We cannot look into a problem we have not been made aware of.

18. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory laws of the country you live in.

Questions

Anything unclear? Ask through the contact form. If a term here is unclear enough to need asking about, it is probably badly written, so tell us and we will fix the page too.

The terms for using this website, and for project work, are on the terms page.