PolicyTerms of Service
The use of services from Northern Host LLC, [hereafter referred to as "Northern Host"] constitutes agreement to these terms. You may view our Privacy Policy here.
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Account Setup / Email on file
We will setup your account after we have received payment and we and/or our payment partner(s) have screened the order(s) in case of fraud. It is your responsibility to provide us with an email address which is not @ the domain(s) you are signing up under. If there is ever an abuse issue or we need to contact you, the primary email address on file will be used for this purpose. It is your responsibility to ensure the email address on file is current or up to date at all times. If you have a domain name registered with Northern Host, it is your responsibility to ensure that the contact information for your domain account and your actual domain name(s) is correct and up-to-date. Northern Host is not responsible for a lapsed registration due to outdated contact information being associated with the domain. If you need to verify or change this information, you should contact our support team via email. Providing false contact information of any kind may result in the termination of your account. In high risk transactions, it will be necessary to provide government issued identification and possibly a scan of the credit card used for the purchase. If you fail to meet these requirements, the order may be considered fraudulent in nature and be denied.
Ownership
The credit card holder or owner of the PayPal e-mail address which is utilized for payment on the account is designated as the authorized owner of the account.
Transfers
Our transfers team will make every effort to help you move your site to us. However, transfers are provided as a courtesy service, and we can not make guarantees regarding the availability, possibility, or time required to complete an account transfer. Each hosting company is configured differently, and some hosting platforms save data in an incompatible or proprietary format, which may make it extremely difficult if not impossible to migrate some or all account data. We will try our best, but in some cases we may be unable to assist you in a transfer of data from an old host.
The free transfer services are available for 30 days from your sign up date. Transfers outside of the 30 day free period will incur a charge; please contact a member of our transfers department with specific details to receive a price quote.
Dedicated IP Address Allocation
Any dedicated IP order in addition to ones provided with a hosting package may be subject to IP Justification. Justification practices are subject to change to remain in conformity with policies of American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). We reserve the right to deny any dedicated IP request based on insufficient justification or current IP utilization.
Third Party Providers
All transactions with third party providers are solely between the visitor and the individual provider. Northern Host is not the agent, representative, trustee or fiduciary of you or the third party provider in any transaction. Some products provided by Northern Host are provided under license with vendors, and the use of any such third party products will be governed by the applicable license agreement, if any, with such third party.
All discounts, promotions and special third party offers may be subject to additional restrictions and limitations by the third party provider. All transactions with third party providers are subject to the terms and conditions under which the provider agrees with you to provide the goods or services. You should confirm the terms of any purchase and/or use of goods or services with the specific provider with whom you are dealing.
We do not make any representations or warranties regarding, and are not liable for, the quality, availability, or timeliness of goods or services provided by a third party provider. You undertake all transactions with these providers at your own risk. We do not warrant the accuracy or completeness of any information regarding third party providers.
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Hosting Content
All services provided by Northern Host may only be used for lawful purposes. The laws of the State of Michigan, and the United States of America apply.
The customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Northern Host from any claims resulting from the use of our services.
Use of our services to infringe upon any copyright or trademark is prohibited. This includes but is not limited to unauthorized copying of music, books, photographs, or any other copyrighted work. The offer of sale of any counterfeit merchandise of a trademark holder will result in the immediate termination of your account. Any account found to be in violation of anothers copyright will be expeditiously removed, or access to the material disabled. Any account found to be in repeated violation of copyright laws will be suspended and/or terminated from our hosting. If you believe that your copyright or trademark is being infringed upon, please contact us with the information required. A list of required information may be found here. If the request is of a licensing issue, we may require further documentation.
Using a hosting server 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 Northern Host servers include:
- Topsites
- 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/Gambling Sites
- MUDs/RPGs/PBBGs
- 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)
- Push button mail scripts
- Broadcast or Streaming of Live Sporting Events (UFC, NASCAR, FIFA, NFL, MLB, NBA, WWE, WWF, etc)
- Tell A Friend Scripts
- Anonymous or Bulk SMS Gateways
- Bitcoin Miners
- Examples of unacceptable material on all Dedicated servers include:
- IRCD (irc servers)
- IRC Scripts/Bots
- Pirated Software/Warez
- IP Scanners
- Bruteforce Programs/Scripts/Applications
- Mail Bombers/spam Scripts
- Escrow
- 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/Gambling 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
- Broadcast or Streaming of Live Sporting Events (UFC, NASCAR, FIFA, NFL, MLB, NBA, WWE, WWF, etc)
Northern Host services, including all related equipment, networks and network devices are provided only for authorized customer use. Northern Host systems may be monitored for all lawful purposes, including to ensure that use is authorized, for management of the system, to facilitate protection against unauthorized access, and to verify security procedures, survivability, and operational security. During monitoring, information may be examined, recorded, copied and used for authorized purposes. Use of Northern Host system(s) constitutes consent to monitoring for these purposes.
Any account found connecting to a third party network or system without authorization from the third party is subject to suspension. Access to networks or systems outside of your direct control must be with expressed written consent from the third party. Northern Host may, at its discretion, request and require documentation to prove access to a third party network or system is authorized.
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Any material that, in our judgment, is obscene, threatening, illegal, or violates our terms of service in any manner may be removed from our servers (or otherwise disabled), with or without notice.
Failure to respond to email from our support department within 48 hours may result in the suspension or termination of your services. All abuse issues must be dealt with via troubleticket/email and will have a response within 48 hours.
Sites hosted on using our service(s) are regulated only by U.S. law. Given this fact, and pursuant to Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act, we do not remove allegedly defamatory material from domains hosted on our service(s). The only exception to this rule is if the material has been found to be defamatory by a court, as evidenced by a court order. Northern Host is not in a position to investigate and validate or invalidate the veracity of individual defamation claims, which is why we rely on the legal system and courts to determine whether or not material is indeed considered defamatory. In any case in which a court order indicates material is defamatory, libelous, or slanderous in nature; we will disable access to the material. Similarly, in any case in which a US Court has placed an injunction against specified content or material; we will comply and remove or disable access to the material in question.
The language of Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act fundamentally states that Internet services providers like Northern Host and many of Northern Host's other webhosting services and brands are republishers and not the publisher of content. Our service merely provides a hosting platform and space on which to host content, and any creation or publication of content on our services is the sole responsibility of the third-party user which creates or publishes the content. Therefore, Northern Host should not be held liable for any allegedly defamatory, offensive or harassing content published on sites hosted under Northern Host's webhosting service(s).
If in doubt regarding the acceptability of your site or service, please contact us and we will be happy to assist you.
Potential harm to minors is strictly forbidden, including but not limited to child pornography or content perceived to be child pornography (Lolita). Any site found to host child pornography or linking to child pornography will be terminated immediately without notice. Violations will be reported to the appropriate law enforcement agency.
It is your responsibility to ensure that scripts/programs installed under your account are secure and permissions of directories are set properly, regardless of installation method. When at all possible, set permissions on most directories to 755 or as restrictive as possible. Users are ultimately responsible for all actions taken under their account. This includes the compromise of credentials such as user name and password. It is required that you use a secure password. If a weak password is used, your account may be suspended until you agree to use a more secure password. Audits may be done to prevent weak passwords from being used. If an audit is performed, and your password is found to be weak, we will notify you and allow time for you to change/update your password.
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Payments / Cancellations / Refund Information
You agree to supply appropriate payment for the services received from Northern Host, in advance of the time period during which such services are provided. Subject to all applicable laws, rules, and regulations, all payments will apply to the oldest invoice(s) in your billing account. You agree that until and unless you notify Northern Host of your desire to cancel any or all services received, those services will be billed on a recurring basis.
Cancellations must be done in writing via the cancellation form provided within the Client Area. Once we receive your cancellation and have confirmed all necessary information with you via e-mail, we will inform you in writing (typically email) that your account has been canceled. Your cancellation confirmation will contain a ticket/tracking number in the subject for your reference, and for verification purposes. You should immediately receive an automatic "Your request has been received..." email with a tracking number. An employee will confirm your request (and process your cancellation) shortly thereafter. If you do not hear back from us, or do not receive the automatic confirmation email within a few minutes after submitting your cancellation, please contact us immediately via phone. We require that cancellations of service are done through the online form to (a) confirm your identity, (b) confirm in writing you are prepared for all files/emails to be removed, and (c) document the request. This process reduces the likelihood of mistakes, fraudulent/malicious requests, and ensures you are aware that the files, emails, and account may be removed immediately after a cancellation request is processed. Upon cancellation of your service, your information will be queued for deletion. Upon the effective date of termination, we shall have no obligation to maintain or provide any of your data and shall thereafter, unless legally prohibited, delete all of your data in our systems or otherwise in our possession or under our control.
As a client of Northern Host, 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 Northern Host of your desire to cancel any or all services received (by the proper means listed in the appropriate section of the Terms of Service), those services will be billed on a recurring basis, unless otherwise stated in writing by Northern Host. Northern Host reserves the right to bill your credit card or billing information on file with us. Northern Host provides a 10 day grace period from the time the invoice is generated and when it must be paid. Any invoice that is outstanding for 10 days and not paid may result in a $10 late fee and/or an account suspension until account balance has been paid in full. The $10 late fee is applied in addition to whatever else is owed to Northern Host for services rendered. Access to the account will not be restored until payment has been received.
It is the customer's responsibility to notify our sales team after paying for a domain renewal and to ensure the email is received and acted upon. Domain renewal notices and invoices are provided as a courtesy reminder and Northern Host cannot be held responsible for failure to renew a domain or failure to notify a customer about a domain's renewal.
Subsequently, domain renewals are billed and renewed 30 days before the renew date. It is the customer's responsibility to notify our help desk for any domain registration cancellation. No refunds can be given, once a domain is renewed. All domain registrations, and renewals are final.
Invoices that have been paid more than once with multiple Paypal Subscriptions can only be added as credit towards the account and cannot be refunded. If you require assistance with this provision, please contact our help desk.
Northern Host reserves the right to change the monthly payment amount and any other charges at anytime.
Cancellations and Refunds
Northern Host reserves the right to cancel, suspend, or otherwise restrict access to the account at any time with or without notice.
Exchange rate fluctuations for international payments are constant and unavoidable. All refunds are processed in U.S. dollars, and will reflect the exchange rate in effect on the date of the refund. All refunds are subject to this fluctuation and Northern Host is not responsible for any change in exchange rates between time of payment and time of refund.
Customers may cancel at any time via a cancellation form provided within the Client Area. Northern Host gives you an unconditional 30 day money back guarantee on all hosting accounts for any customer who paid the first invoice. (This does not include refunds for custom website development, there are no refunds.)
Cancellations requested after the initial 30 days for all hosting accounts will go into effect on the renewal date for that particular hosting package. Unless specifically requested, the account will remain active until the period expires. If the account is eligible, any request for a refund outside of the initial 30 day period will be given on a prorated basis with any previous extended term discount withheld. Refunds are to be determined once the account has been canceled. Payments older than 60 days may require a refund via PayPal or mailed check due to our merchant account policies and procedures.
The following methods of payments are non-refundable, and refunds will be posted as credit to the hosting account:
- Bank Wire Transfers
- Western Union Payments
- Checks
- Money orders
There are no refunds on administrative fees, and install fees for custom software. Refund requests for .com, .net., and .org domain names (made within the 30 day money-back guarantee period) will have the common market value subtracted for those tld's. Any ccTLD's domain name purchases are non-refundable. Please note that domain refunds will only be considered if they were ordered in conjunction with a hosting package. Eligibility of said refunds will be determined at the time of cancellation.
Only first-time accounts are eligible for a refund. For example, if you've had an account with us before, canceled and signed up again, you will not be eligible for a refund or if you have opened a second account with us.
Violations of the Terms of Service will waive the refund policy.
Money back Guarantee
We reserve the right to refund a prorated amount or no refund at all.
Each of Northern Host's managed servers carry a 30 day unconditional money back guarantee on them. If you are not completely satisfied with our services within the first 30 days of your service, you will be given a full refund of the contract amount. Remember, this is only for hosting packages and does not apply to administrative fees, install fees for custom software, or domain name purchases.
Northern Host will not activate new orders or activate new packages for customers who have an outstanding balance with Northern Host. For a new order to be setup or a new package to be activated, you must have a balance of $0.00, unless otherwise stated by Northern Host in writing.
Price Change
We reserve the right to change prices listed on our website, and the right to increase or decrease the amount of resources given to plans at any time.
Coupons
Discounts and coupon codes are reserved for first-time accounts *or first-time customers* only and may not be used towards the purchase of a domain registration unless otherwise specified. If you have signed up using a particular domain, you may not resign up for that domain using another coupon at a later date. Any account found in violation of these policies will be reviewed by our sales department and the appropriate invoices will be added to the account. Coupon abuse will not be tolerated and may result in the suspension or termination of the account. Coupons or discounts are only valid towards the initial purchase, and do not affect the renewal or recurring price.
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Zero Tolerance Spam Policy
We take a zero tolerance stance against sending of unsolicited e-mail, bulk emailing, and spam. "Safe lists", purchased lists, and selling of lists will be treated as spam. Any user who sends out spam will have their account terminated with or without notice.
Please read our generalized mail policy here.
Sites advertised via SPAM (Spamvertised) may not be hosted on our servers. This provision includes, but is not limited to SPAM sent via fax, phone, postal mail, email, instant messaging, or usenet/newsgroups. No organization or entity listed in the ROKSO may be hosted on our servers. Any account which results in our IP space being blacklisted will be immediately suspended and/or terminated.
Northern Host reserves the right to require changes or disable as necessary any web site, account, database, or other component that does not comply with its established policies, or to make any such modifications in an emergency at its sole discretion.
Northern Host reserves the right to charge the holder of the account used to send any unsolicited e-mail a clean up fee or any charges incurred for blacklist removal. This cost of the clean up fee is entirely at the discretion of Northern Host.
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Backups and Data Loss
Your use of this service is at your sole risk. Our backup service runs once a week, overwrites any of our previous backups made, and only one week of backups are kept. This service is provided to you as a courtesy. Northern Host is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on Northern Host servers.
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Right To Terminate
Northern Host reserves the right to terminate your use of our service, without notice, for any or no reason whatsoever.
If you transfer from us to another host, Northern Host reserves the right to terminate your hosting account immediatley upon transfer approval.
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Resource Usage
User may not:
- Use 25% or more of system resources for longer then 90 seconds. There are numerous activities that could cause such problems; these include: CGI scripts, FTP, PHP, HTTP, etc.
- Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in time on the server. This includes any and all daemons, such as IRCD.
- Run any type of web spider or indexer (including Google Cash / AdSpy) on servers.
- Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.
- Run any bit torrent application, tracker, or client. You may link to legal torrents off-site, but may not host or store them on our servers.
- Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities
- Run any gaming servers such as counter-strike, half-life, battlefield1942, etc.
- Run cron entries with intervals of less than 15 minutes.
- Run any MySQL queries longer than 15 seconds. MySQL tables should be indexed appropriately.
- When using PHP include functions for including a local file, include the local file rather than the URL. Instead of include("http://yourdomain.com/include.php") use include("include.php")
- To help reduce usage, do not force html to handle server-side code (like php and shtml).
- Only use https protocol when necessary; encrypting and decrypting communications is noticeably more CPU-intensive than unencrypted communications.
INODES
The use of more than 250,000 inodes on any hosting account may potentially result in a warning first, and if no action is taken future suspension. Accounts found to be exceeding the 100,000 inode limit will automatically be removed from our backup system to avoid over-usage, however databases will still be backed up. Every file (a webpage, image file, email, etc) on your account uses up 1 inode.
Sites that slightly exceed our inode limits are unlikely to be suspended; however, accounts that constantly create and delete large numbers of files on a regular basis, have hundreds of thousands of files, or cause file system damage may be flagged for review and/or suspension. The primary cause of excessive inodes seems to be due to users leaving their catchall address enabled, but never checking their primary account mailbox. Over time, tens of thousands of messages (or more) build up, eventually pushing the account past our inode limit. To disable your default mailbox, login to cPanel and choose "Mail", then "Default Address", "Set Default Address", and then type in: :fail: No such user here.
Bandwidth Usage
You are allocated a monthly bandwidth allowance. This allowance varies depending on the hosting package you purchase. Should your account pass the allocated amount we reserve the right to suspend the account until the start of the next allocation, suspend the account until more bandwidth is purchased at an additional fee, suspend the account until you upgrade to a higher level of package, terminate the account and/or charge you an additional fee for the overages. Unused transfer in one month cannot be carried over to the next month.
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Uptime Guarantee
If your server has a physical downtime that is not within the 99.9% uptime you may receive one month of credit on your account. Approval of the credit is at the discretion of Northern Host dependent upon justification provided. Third party monitoring service reports may not be used for justification due to a variety of factors including the monitor's network capacity/transit availability. The uptime of the server is defined as the reported uptime from the operating system and the Apache Web Server which may differ from the uptime reported by other individual services. To request a credit, please contact our help desk with justification. All requests must be made in writing via email.
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Miscellanous Information
Reselling
You may not resell web hosting to other people.
Indemnification
Customer agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold Northern Host harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including reasonable attorney's fees asserted against Northern Host, its agents, its customers, officers and employees, that may arise or result from any service provided or performed or agreed to be performed or any product sold by customer, its agents, employees or assigns. Customer agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Northern Host against liabilities arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with Northern Host; (2) any material supplied by customer infringing or allegedly infringing on the proprietary rights of a third party; (3) copyright infringement and (4) any defective products sold to customers from Northern Host's servers.
Arbitration
By using any Northern Host services, you agree to submit to binding arbitration. If any disputes or claims arise against Northern Host or its subsidiaries, such disputes will be handled by an arbitrator of Northern Host's choice. An arbitrator from the American Arbitration Association or the National Arbitration Forum will be selected in the state of Michigan. Arbitrators shall be attorneys or retired judges and shall be selected pursuant to the applicable rules. All decisions rendered by the arbitrator will be binding and final. The arbitrator's award is final and binding on all parties. The Federal Arbitration Act, and not any state arbitration law, governs all arbitration under this Arbitration Clause. You are also responsible for any and all costs related to such arbitration.
Disclaimer
Northern Host shall not be responsible for any damages your business may suffer. Northern Host makes no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide. Northern Host disclaims any warranty or merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This includes loss of data resulting from delays, no deliveries, wrong delivery, and any and all service interruptions caused by Northern Host and its employees.
Disclosure to law enforcement
Northern Host may disclose any subscriber information to law enforcement agencies without further consent or notification to the subscriber upon lawful request from such agencies. We will cooperate fully with law enforcement agencies.
Changes to the Terms of Service
Northern Host reserves the right to revise its policies at any time without notice.