Shared Hosting Policy & Service Guidelines

We provide web hosting to thousands of clients, and we have a responsibility to protect each client and to provide the best services available. The following guidelines were designed to ensure these obligations are met.

TRAFFIC RESTRICTIONS:

When your site/s exceed bandwidth parameters, we monitor bandwidth usage and adjust your billing histories accordingly. When we find a domain has exceeded their bandwidth allotment, we will add an a la carte bandwidth package of $1.00 per GB of bandwidth overage fees per month to the client's account. If your bandwidth overage charge would exceed the difference between your package and an upgraded package with bandwidth allotments that would place you within that account packages parameters, we will upgrade your account to that package retroactively instead of charging bandwidth fees. You will be allowed to downgrade or cancel the a la carte package if your traffic stays below the original package's bandwidth level for one quarter.

STORAGE RESTRICTIONS:

CPU/MEMORY/MySQL RESTRICTIONS:

Current Packages:

Legacy Packages:

If resource usage for any of these defined resources falls into another account level for more than 4 out of any 7 days period and you do not respond to our emails, DrakNet will charge $4 per month per total percentage point over your allotment to cover excessive reource costs. Resource usage averages over 10% are charged in weekly fees based on the 7 days average, and not monthly. Excessive Resource usage that puts the server in imminent harm or imminently negatively affects services and resources for other clients may cause the site to be temporarily suspended or permenantly terminated.

FORWARDING RESTRICTIONS:

Forwarding email off the server to your ISP is prohibited. You may only use forwarding to forward email to email addresses within the server itself, or to a repository email account on the server which can then pull the email off of the server via POP or IMAP. Some selective offsite forwarding is forcefully blocked.

MASS-MAILING RESTRICTIONS:

Sending mass unsolicited email is considered spam. Unsolicited email is defined as email sent to a recipient who has not double-opted in to mailings from the Customer. Senders of mass mailings must maintain complete and accurate records of all opt-ins, including the email and its headers if applicable, and provide such records to DrakNet upon request. If positive and verifiable proof of opt-in cannot be provided, complaints from recipients of the mailing are considered proof they did not subscribe and the mailing is unsolicited.

DrakNet's mass mailing rules also apply to mailing lists, list servs, or mailing services contracted for by Customer. The policy is stated as follows: An acceptable mailing list will be focused at a targeted audience that has voluntarily signed up for e-mail information using a double opt-in process or that has made their e-mail address available to Customer for distribution of information. The list must also allow for automatic removal by all end Customers with non-distribution in the future.

All customers are advised of the following mailing restrictions:

• No web-installed script may send out more than 100 emails per hour for performance reasons. If any single script installed on our servers sends out more than 100 emails in one hour, that script will be locked automatically for the safety and performce of the server. Emailings must be throttled to send it batches of less than 100 emails at a time, once per hour. (To throttle PHPList, see the directions on this page.)
• The max total emails that any domain may send per hour is 500. This includes all mail sent from the server from web scripts, regular email use of all parties, webmail use, and mailman use. If you have a large Mailman discussion list you may contact us for a possible exemption.

KNOWLEDGE LEVEL:

Use of DrakNet's service requires a certain level of knowledge in the use of Internet languages, protocols, and software. This level of knowledge required will vary depending on what you wish to implement on your site. By signing up you agree that you have the necessary knowledge to create and use your web site services and that it is not our responsibility to provide this knowledge outside of our defined services and support. If you want to learn while doing here, great - but be prepared to read a lot. You can get "coddling" help for an extra fee.

SSL:

You may use an SSL certificate from any signing authority on our servers provided its a single root certificate. DrakNet will not install chained certificates.

DrakNet reserves the right to update its servers at anytime. As a result we can not be held responsible to anything that may result in a persons site(s) not working properly due to the changes or updates on the server. We recommend that you keep up with changes through the DrakNet Blog, the forum, or by following @draknet on Twitter.

While DrakNet does accept orders outside the United States, DrakNet may limit accounts from certain countries with a high fraud rate. DrakNet limits shell access from IPs outside of the United States, and cannot accept any orders originating from Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria due to United States law.

You are free to use any dynamic scripts you wish that fall within our acceptable use policy, however we reserve the right to disable any dynamic script that effects normal server operation without prior warning. No dynamic scripts may email more than 100 emails at a time, and if any dynamic programs disable the server in any way and we feel there is reason to believe that continued access to the server by the account holder puts the normal operation of the server in jeopardy, your shell access/the program will be restricted and/or your account will be suspended/deleted. There is a $50.00 fee per incident if we have to deal with this situation due to negligence. We do not provide technical support for any dynamic scripts that you install. If you install it, you have to figure it out. For additional guidelines see our Abuse Policy.

BACKGROUND PROCESSES:

We do not allow our customers to run background running programs on any of our machines without prior consultation with DrakNet.

DNS

Your main domain on your account must resolve here to our IP address. Any main domain package's installed domain that expires and does not resolve, or who's main A record is pointed to another hosting company's IP address will be assumed to be abandoned, and will be terminated to prevent charges that may be chargedback due to the client forgetting to terminate the account.

This is not a guarantee that DrakNet will terminate your account as soon as you move regardless of whether you cancel. You are still liable for charges up until we "catch" the issue if you do not formally terminate your account.

BILLING:

Invoices for monthly, quarterly, and semi-annual accounts are generally sent on the 1st of each month for all packages renewiing the following month. All invoices for monthly, quarterly, and semi-annual accounts are due by the last day of the calendar month. Annual+ accounts are invoiced and charged (if there is a card on file) three months prior to your due date, without exception due to the high rate of card expiration dates and declines, and which gives clients at least a full 90 days to make changes.

Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover Cards may be placed on file for recurring charges, and PayPal Subscriptions may be created from within billing. Manual payments are accepted via PayPal, Credit Card, Check, Money Order, and Electronic Check.

You are solely responsible for any and all fees charged to your Payment Method by the issuer, bank, or financial institution including, but not limited to, membership, overdraft, insufficient funds and over the credit limit fees.

Fraudulent credit card charges as well as unauthorized credits or any other type of chargeback will have the domain name revoked, and your account cancelled without notice. All chargebacks will be reported to chargebackprotection.org, and you will be barred from obtaining hosting at DrakNet in the future.

All issued invoices are due by the posted due date without exception, and payments not received by that date may cause service interruption.

There are no refunds issues for monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or lifetime account pre-payment unless a proper cancellation is made before the invoice due date in question. In the event of a requested cancellation date that falls before the end of an already entered into period, DrakNet will not issue a refund unless cancellation takes place within the first 30 days of the account. Annual and Biennual payments are refundable as long as cancelation is submitted 30 days previous to the package renewing, and/or 30 days before the invoice due date.

Refunds are processed on the last day of the calendar month.

REFUSAL OF SERVICE:

ABUSE OF STAFF:

CANCELLATION:

We require 30 days notice before you cancel your account though we may waive that upon request at our sole discretion, however, cancellations that take place less than 30 days that are allowed to be canceled will be done so for DrakNet account credit only. Your request to cancel must come before your invoice is charged for the next renewal, though in the case of annual accounts invoiced 3 months in advance, you have 60 days from the date of invoice to cancel and obtain a refund. Transferring your domain to another provider does not constitute canceling your DrakNet account. You must notify DrakNet to formally cancel your account to avoid being liable for further charges. DrakNet will close any accounts that we have determined to be abandoned by its owners, whether by inference (non-payment) or statement by account owner publicly or privately.

A cancellation form, located here: https://www.drak.net/ordering/cancel.php must be filled out. It is the date on that cancellation form submission that is the formal cancellation date for compliance purposes with this section.

TRANSFER OF LIABILITY (RESELLING):

Full standard accounts may not be resold. You may not resell individual services within any account other than a Reseller account, such as web space, emails accounts, add on domains, or mailing lists. All domains, add-on domains, and subdomains must be for sites controled by or promoting published content or businesses that are solely controlled by the registered billing owner of the account.

RESELLERS ACCOUNTS:

FREE DOMAIN NAMES (Legacy)

Please note that this program is no longer offered, though all domains names obtained through this program are still bound by these terms.

DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION

Domain name prices for DrakManaged domain names are posted on the site, and are non-refundable. If domain names are abandoned (the hosting account is canceled and the domain name is not ported), DrakNet will place the domain up for sale if the cancelation specifies that the domain name is being abandoned regardless of how much time is left on the registration. Non-payment of a renewal fee by the client will also result in the domain name being placed up for sale if the companion hosting account is terminated for non-payment.

Fees for renewal of a domain name in the Redemption Period if DrakNet chose not to place the domain up for sale are $300 plus the annual renewal for the year. Late domain name payments must be reported if the domain name has already expired, as the domain name will already be outside of our automated renewal system and must be manually renewed.

DOMAIN NAME RENEWAL HOSTING ACCOUNTS CLOSED

If the domain name expires for 21 days with no contact or payment, DrakNet may choose to renew the domain and place the domain up for sale. At that point, you may enter into negotiations for the domain name like any other purchaser.

Accounts terminated for non-payment with a balance owing will have their domain name or names revoked at the time of account closure, with the balance of time credit for unused registration time going to pay off the moneys owed for provided hosting, and the domains will be placed up for sale and considered abandoned when the account is 30 days past due.

CONTENT:

All services provided may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any United States Federal, State or City law is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret and other statute. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold us harmless from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Commercial pornography content for fees is prohibited on all our servers. We will be the sole arbiter in determining violations of this provision.

Sites that promote any illegal activity or present content that may be damaging to our servers or any other server on the internet are additionally prohibited. Links to such materials are also prohibited.

• Pirated software
• Proxy Servers, including but not limited to SOCKS proxies, Squid proxies, Bittorrent Proxies, Tor, and any CGI or PHP proxy scripts.
• All IRC activity including but not limited to IRC client software, IRC server software, web-based IRC software, IRC bots such as "eggdrop", and IRC proxies such as "psyBNC".
• Hacker programs or archives
• Warez sites
• Gambling sites
• Commercial MP3s where you are not the copyright owner.

We will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.

SPAM:

BACKUPS:

SERVER ABUSE:

TECHNICAL SUPPORT POLICIES:

VIOLATION ACTIONS:

• Issue written or verbal warnings requiring compliance.
• Disable access to a client's content or service which violates TOS with or without notification.
• Remove content which violates TOS with or without notification.
• Block mail or any other network service with or without notification.
• Null-route client's IP address with or without notification.
• Suspend the client's account with or without notification.
• Terminate the clients's account with or without notification.
• Bill the client for administrative costs and/or reactivation charges with or without notification.

The aforementioned list of actions shall not be construed in any way to limit the actions or remedies that DrakNet may take to enforce and ensure compliance with these Terms. DrakNet reserves the right to recover any and all expenses in connection with a client's violation of this TOS.

Disclaimer: