TERMS & CONDITIONS / ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

 

OUR CLIENTS

It is your responsibility to keep your billing account financial, if your billing account falls in arrears all services (web/email hosting accounts) associated with it will be suspended until account is settled.  You will be given several email notices prior to your hosting accounts being suspended**

** Note: You must keep your email address on your account up to date and monitor it regularly as this is the method we contact you with. It is advised to use an alternate email address than your account you have hosted with us.

Our web design services are priced and provided with the intention of Youchoose Pty Ltd providing the ongoing hosting. By using our services, you agree to comply with this Policy. You are expected to use the Internet with respect, courtesy, and responsibility, giving due regard to the rights of other Internet users. We expect you to have a basic knowledge of how the Internet functions, the types of uses, which are generally acceptable, and the types of uses, which are to be avoided.

Common sense is the best guide as to what is considered acceptable use. The following are unacceptable uses: Illegality in any form, including but not limited to activities such as unauthorized distribution or copying of copyrighted software, violation of Australia’s export restrictions, harassment, fraud, trafficking in obscene material, drug dealing, and other illegal activities.

Interpretation: The provisions of this Policy are intended as guidelines and are not meant to be exhaustive. Generally, conduct that violates law, regulation, or the accepted norms of the Internet community, whether or not expressly mentioned in this Policy, is prohibited.

 

EMAIL POLICY

Mass Mailings: Youchoose Pty Ltd has a zero stance policy on SPAM, Junk E-mail or UCE. Spam, Junk-mail and UCE are defined as: the sending of the same, or substantially similar, unsolicited electronic mail messages, whether commercial or not, to more than one recipient. A message is considered unsolicited if it is posted in violation of a newsgroup charter or if it is sent to a recipient who has not requested or invited the message. UCE also includes e-mail with forged headers, compromised mail server relays, and false contact information. This prohibition extends to the sending of unsolicited mass mailings from another service, which in any way implicates the use of Youchoose Pty Ltd services.

Mailing Lists: Mass mailing rules also apply to mailing lists, list serves, or mailing services you may contract with. The policy is stated as follows: An acceptable mailing list will be focused at a targeted audience that has voluntarily signed up for your e-mail information or that has made their e-mail address available for distribution of information from you. The list must also allow for automatic removal by all end clients with non-distribution in the future.

If your actions have caused our mail servers or their IP address ranges to be placed on black hole lists and other mail filtering software systems used by companies on the internet, you will be responsible and accountable for any and all charges incurred by Youchoose Pty Ltd as a result.  This charge may be up to and including $1000 plus $600 per hour for administrative charges incurred to remove and protect mail servers and IP ranges.

 

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT

Coverage and Terminology: This Service Level Agreement (SLA) applies to you (“client”) if you currently hold an account with any of the Shared Web Hosting services from Youchoose Pty Ltd (the “Services”) and your account is current (i.e., not past due) with Youchoose Pty Ltd.

As used herein, the term “Web Site Availability” means the percentage of a particular month (based on 24-hour days for the number of days in the subject month) that the content of client’s Web site is available for access by third parties via HTTP and/or HTTPS, as measured by Youchoose Pty Ltd.

 

SERVICE LEVEL OBJECTIVE: YOUCHOOSE PTY LTD AIMS TO ACHIEVE 100% WEB SITE AVAILABILITY FOR ALL CLIENTS.

Remedy: Except under the conditions mentioned in the next section below, if the Web Site Availability of client’s Web site is less than 100%, Youchoose Pty Ltd will issue a credit to client according to the following table:

WEB SITE AVAILABILITY	TOTAL DOWNTIME IN A 30 DAYS CALENDAR MONTH	CREDIT PERCENTAGE
99.9 to 100%	0 to 43.2 minutes	0%
98% to 99.8%	43.2 mins to 14 hrs 24 mins	10%
95% to 97.9%	14 hrs 24 mins to 36 hrs	25%
90% to 94.9%	36 hrs to 72 hrs	50%
89.9% or below	more than 72 hrs	100%

The credit will be calculated based on the yearly service fee divided by a factor of 12 to determine the monthly service fee for the affected Services.

 

MAINTENANCE PROCEDURE

1. Youchoose Pty Ltd will do its best to announce any scheduled maintenance at least 24 hours ahead of time to the client.
2. Youchoose Pty Ltd reserves the right to perform emergency maintenance without any prior notification, should it be deemed necessary to protect and maintain the security and integrity of the Service.

Conditions: Clients shall not receive any credits under this SLA in connection with any failure or deficiency of Web Site Availability caused by or associated with:

1. circumstances beyond Youchoose Pty Ltd’s reasonable control, including, without limitation, acts of any governmental body, war, insurrection, sabotage, armed conflict, embargo, fire, flood, strike or other labour disturbance, interruption of or delay in transportation, unavailability of or interruption or delay in telecommunications or third party services, virus attacks or hackers, failure of third party software (including, without limitation, ecommerce software, payment gateways, chat, statistics or free scripts) or inability to obtain raw materials, supplies, or power used in or equipment needed for provision of this SLA;
2. failure of access circuits to the Youchoose Pty Ltd’s Network or it’s upstream providers, unless such failure is caused solely by Youchoose Pty Ltd;
3. scheduled maintenance and emergency maintenance and upgrades;
4. Any and all DNS issues;
5. issues with FTP, POP, IMAP, or SMTP client access;
6. false SLA breaches reported as a result of outages or errors of any Youchoose Pty Ltd’s measurement system;
7. A client’s acts or omissions (or acts or omissions of others engaged or authorized by client), including, without limitation, custom scripting or coding (e.g., CGI, Perl, HTML, ASP, etc.), any negligence, wilful misconduct, or use of the Services in breach of YOUCHOOSE’s Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy;
8. e-mail or webmail delivery and transmission;
9. DNS (Domain Name Server) Propagation.
10. outages elsewhere on the Internet that hinder access to your account. Youchoose Pty Ltd is not responsible for browser or DNS caching that may make your site appear inaccessible when others can still access it. Youchoose Pty Ltd will guarantee only those areas considered under the control of Youchoose Pty Ltd : Youchoose Pty Ltd server links to the Internet, and Youchoose Pty Ltd’s servers.

 

CREDIT REQUEST AND PAYMENT PROCEDURES

In order to receive a credit, client must make a request via email to Youchoose Pty Ltd. Each request in connection with this SLA must include client’s account name (per client’s control panel login) and the dates and times of the unavailability of client’s Web site and must be received by Youchoose Pty Ltd within ten (10) business days after client’s Web Site was not available. If the unavailability is confirmed by Youchoose Pty Ltd, credits will be applied at the next billing cycle after Youchoose Pty Ltd Hosting’s receipt of client’s credit request. Credits are not refundable and can be used only towards future billing charges.

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, the total amount credited to client in a particular month under this SLA shall not exceed the total hosting fee paid by client for such month for the affected Services. Credits are exclusive of any applicable taxes charged to client or collected by Youchoose Pty Ltd and are client’s sole and exclusive remedy with respect to any failure or deficiency in the Web Site Availability of client’s Web site.

Note: Credits are not refundable and can be used only towards future billing charges.

 

DATA BACK-UP

Youchoose Pty Ltd takes all reasonable steps to safeguard the Youchoose Pty Ltd Web Hosting Servers and the data contained there-in, however Youchoose Pty Ltd will not be responsible for any loss of client data or DNS records stored or intended to be stored on the Youchoose Pty Ltd Servers and/or back-up devices.

Youchoose Pty Ltd backups are provided as a courtesy and are not guaranteed. Clients are responsible for their own backups and web content and should make their own backups for extra protection.

The client will not be entitled to any form of compensation from Youchoose Pty Ltd in the event of loss of data. You as the client are responsible for your own backups. Whilst Youchoose Pty Ltd actively performs a variety of backups daily, there may be times when the backups fail or become unavailable.

As such the final responsibility for all your data stored on Youchoose Pty Ltd Servers is ultimately your own. By payment of your invoice you are acknowledging our Terms and Conditions and you free Youchoose Pty Ltd from any legal action in the event of data loss and you agree that you will not be entitled to any form of compensation for said loss.

 

SERVER LOADS

Client agrees that any hosting account that uses excessive CPU or Memory resources (25% or more) for a sustained period of time (ten minutes or more) may be suspended at any time without notice. Youchoose Pty Ltd  reserves the right to terminate sites that are repeatedly using excessive resources at any time with prior notification.

 

SOFTWARE UPDATES

The client agree’s that applications and scripts installed or uploaded are the sole responsibility of the client and must be kept up-to-date. Failure to do so may expose our servers to possible exploits and costs to restore services may be recovered from the client of the site initially affected. In such circumstances, Youchoose Pty Ltd reserves the right to suspend client’s account to protect our servers and associated IP addresses from possible exploits and damage both physical and reputation.

 

ACCOUNT SUSPENSION

Youchoose Pty Ltd actively scans Client’s account for malicious code and activity including bulk generated email. Youchoose Pty Ltd reserves the right to suspend all services (web/email hosting accounts) associated with Client’s account should we be alerted to suspicious activity and/or files associated with the Client’s account including bulk generated email. Youchoose Pty Ltd will contact the Client account holder to advise them of such suspension and reasons for. Youchoose Pty Ltd will also be suspended all services (web/email hosting accounts) associated with Client if billing account falls in arrears. Clients shall not receive any credits under this SLA in connection with an account being suspended.

 

TERMINATION

Youchoose Pty Ltd reserves the right to refuse service to anyone. Youchoose Pty Ltd, in its sole discretion, may immediately terminate this Agreement if we deem you, as our client, have breached our Terms and Conditions. Clients shall not receive any credits under this SLA in connection with an account being terminated.

 

LIABILITY

The parties agree that in no event shall Youchoose Pty Ltd be liable to any third party for client’s breach or alleged breach of any of the terms and conditions set forth in this Agreement. Client agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Youchoose Pty Ltd from any and all expenses, losses, liabilities, damages or third party claims resulting from client’s breach or alleged breach of any client obligations set forth here-under.

 

LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

In no event shall Youchoose Pty Ltd be liable for damages resulting from loss of data, profits, use of the Youchoose Pty Ltd site or any Youchoose Pty Ltd products or services, or for any incidental, indirect, punitive, or consequential damages in connection with this agreement or in connection with any products or services provided hereunder. In no event shall Youchoose Pty Ltd cumulative liability exceed an amount greater than one hundred dollars ($100.00).

 

WEB DESIGN & BUILDS – LICENSES – YOUCHOOSE PTY LTD

All CMS (content management systems) websites have themes, plugins and widgets used in the process of achieving the desired result and license fees may be applicable on these themes, plugins and widgets to access any available updates. All themes, plugins and widgets used by Youchoose Pty Ltd to build client’s sites will have a minimum of 3 months worth of updates available (where applicable and available from their creators) from the launch date of the site. After this 3 months, the client may need to renew said licenses in order to continue getting updates for them. Youchoose Pty Ltd do have numerous developer licensed themes, plugins and widgets which can be continued being used on our built sites after the said 3 months providing Youchoose Pty Ltd’s developer’s license is current and that the client remains an active Youchoose Pty Ltd hosting customer. As Youchoose Pty Ltd’s tools used to build sites evolve, such developers licenses fees may be selected to not renew at which point the client would need to arrange their own licenses to access any updates for them.

 

WEB DESIGN & BUILDS – CORE FILES, THEMES & PLUGIN CONFLICTS – YOUCHOOSE PTY LTD

All CMS (content management systems) websites have core files, themes, plugins and widgets used in the process of achieving the desired result and as these products are updated, conflicts may happen between said items. For a period of 3 months after the launch date of client’s site, Youchoose Pty Ltd (at our cost) will resolve any such conflicts that occur or replace the conflicting item used with an equivalent item. After the said 3 months, any works taken by Youchoose Pty Ltd to resolve such conflicts would be chargeable.

 

WEB DESIGN & BUILDS – SOFTWARE UPDATES

The client agree’s that applications and scripts installed or uploaded are the sole responsibility of the client and must be kept up-to-date. Failure to do so may expose our servers to possible exploits and costs to restore services may be recovered from the client of the site initially affected. In such circumstances, Youchoose Pty Ltd reserves the right to suspend client’s account to protect our servers and associated IP addresses from possible exploits and damage both physical and reputation.

 

YOUCHOOSE MANAGED WORDPRESS SOFTWARE UPDATES SUBSCRIPTION

- the monthly time allocation does not rollover to subsequent months and if not used within the month, the time allocated is forfeited.
- monthly time allocation is not transferable between months.
- on average, at least 1 hour per month is required to maintain the core file, plugin and theme updates as they arrive
- you can cancel at any time with no lock-in contracts
- additional site works required that are found by this maintenance agreement may be chargeable.
- if cancelled your subscription will be marked as 'do not renew' and no refunds are provided for unused months of a current subscription.
- the above website maintenance packages are charged over and above the yearly hosting fee that is charged.
- after each software update we do not comprehensively check over your site for issues, we check that the homepage loads fine, subtle issues on your site may be missed
- additional work may be required if an issue is found which may be chargeable over and above the WordPress Software Maintenance Fee