Web and Email Hosting Terms and Conditions of service

Please read the following carefully. This document details the terms of use you agree to abide by when using our services related to web site and e-mail hosting.

If you have a seperate agreement in place with BITS relating to ongoing technical support, hardware or infrastructure supply then you should be aware that those services provided by us retain their own terms and conditions. These terms and conditions relate exclusively to our web and email hosting services.

Last Updated: 21/06/2021

Definitions

• The use of the words ‘clients’ and ‘customers’ are used interchangeably below and mean the same thing.
• Any reference to ‘BITS’ refers to ‘BITS Pty Ltd’.
• ‘Termination’ and ‘cancellation’ refer to the same thing.
• Suspension of an account differs from full cancellation in that while all services paid for are disabled to prevent continued use, your files on the server are not deleted.
• "Agreement" means this End User License Agreement.
• "The service" means any system, product or service provided by BITS, unless the reference is to a Third Party Service.
• Any reference to "yourself" or "you" means the account holder, person, persons, legal entity or agents acting on behalf thereof that are accepting this agreement.
• "Your account" means the registered BITS account belonging to the account holder, person, persons, legal entity or agents acting on behalf thereof that are accepting this agreement.

Accepting these Terms

These terms and conditions represent the default and generic terms of service that govern many of the services we provide. If the service being provided presents or is provided with an alternative license agreement or terms of service then that agreement overrides this one in all respects and you should stop reading and instead refer to that in its entirety.

If you access or use our products or services, it means you agree to be bound by all of the terms below. It is important that you read all of the terms prior to using any of our services or products. If a term does not make sense to you, please contact us.

Changes to the Terms of Service

BITS IT Pty Ltd reserves the right to revise its policies and terms of service at any time without notice. This may be due, but not limited to, changes to laws, products and features we offer or other mitigating circumstances that require a change to the way we operate.

Your Rights

This license agreement terms and conditions attempts to balance your rights (as a consumer) while limiting the scope of liability upon the operator (BITS IT Pty Ltd) that may arise from intentional or unintentional miss-use of the provided service and services. As a small operator this is essential for both allowing us to operate and to provide these services at the price we do.

It attempts to do this by outlining what you can reasonably expect to receive as part of the service, our behaviour as a supplier and our expectations upon you as a subscriber to the service.

Whenever we make changes to these Terms, the changes are effective immediately after we post such revised Terms (indicated by revising the date at the top of these Terms) or upon your acceptance if we provide a mechanism for your immediate acceptance of the revised Terms (such as a click-through confirmation or acceptance button). It is your responsibility to check this document or the product or service you are using for changes to these Terms.

If you continue to use the Service after the revised Terms go into effect, then you have accepted the changes to these Terms.

Our services

BITS IT provides on-going services to clients/customers who pay for them. Examples of these services are (but not limited to):

• Web hosting
• Email hosting

Additional Information and Agreements

Third-Party Services

From time to time, we may provide you with links to third party websites or services that we do not own or control. Your use of the Service may also include the use of applications that are developed or owned by a third party. Your use of such third party applications, websites, and services is governed by that party's own terms of service or privacy policies. We encourage you to read the terms and conditions and privacy policy of any third party application, website or service that you visit or use.

Account Setup (Web, Email and other types of hosting)

Upon request we perform the initial creation of the server account for a new customer or client. This involves the technical setup work necessary for our server to host your data files and perform the tasks required.

At our own discretion we may offer to migrate your existing web site data to our servers for free or at a cost depending on the work involved. In all other cases you are responsible for the supply of the data in which you wish us to host.

Domain Name Transfers

Unless it is otherwise agreed, it is your responsibility to organise the transfer and delegation of your domain name to our servers.

Content

Hosting and related services provided by BITS IT may only be used for lawful purposes. As a customer you agree to indemnify and hold harmless BITS IT Pty Ltd from any claims from the use or misuse of our services.

Use of our services to infringe upon any copyright or trademark is prohibited. This includes but is not limited to unauthorised 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. If you believe that your copyright or trademark is being infringed upon, please contact us with the information required.

Examples of unacceptable material on all accounts include:
RC Bots, Proxy Scripts / Anonymizers, Pirated Software / Warez, image, filedump, or banner-ad services (similar to rapidshare, photobucket, or commercial banner ad rotation), topsites, commercial audio streaming, locally hosted chat scripts, Escrow, High-Yield Interest Programs(HYIP) or related sites, Investment sites (FOREX, egold exchange), sale of any controlled substance without prior proof of appropriate permit(s), AutoSurf sites, Bank Debentures, Bank Debenture Trading Programs, Prime Banks Programs, lottery sites, muds / rpg’s, hate sites, hacker focused sites/archives/programs, or sites promoting illegal activities, IP Scanners, Brute Force Programs, Mail Bombers and Spam Scripts.

Accounts found to be infringing these conditions will be terminated without refund.

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Any material that, in our judgment, is obscene or threatening is prohibited and will be removed from our servers with or without notice. Failure to respond to an email concerning abuse within 48 hours may result in the suspension or termination of your services.

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 or refund. Violations may be reported to the appropriate law enforcement agency. If in doubt regarding the acceptability of your site or service, please contact us and we will be happy to assist you.

Unless we have been requested to and have undertaken the work on your behalf, 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. Customers are ultimately responsible for all actions taken under their account. This includes the compromise of credentials such as username and password. Any script or executable program found to be adversely affecting server performance or excessively using bandwidth may be disabled with or without notice to the account holder.

Zero Tolerance Spam Policy

We take a zero tolerance stance against sending of unsolicited e-mail, bulk emailing, and spam.

"Safe lists" and "double opt-in" will be treated as spam. Any user who sends out spam will have their account terminated with or without notice.

We may also draw issue with sites hosted on our servers that are advertised via SPAM (Spamvertised) This provision includes, but is not limited to SPAM sent via fax, email, instant messaging, or usenet/newsgroups.

No organisation 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.

BITS IT Pty Ltd 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. We also reserve the right to charge the holder of the account used to send any unsolicited e-mail a clean up fee. The cost of this clean up fee is entirely at the discretion of BITS IT Pty Ltd.

Limitations and Intent of the Service

General

Our services are not intended for critical emergency systems. That is, while we strive for high reliability our systems are not designed for situations that may govern direct threats to individual safety or lives.

Use and Misuse

- The services provided by BITS IT may only be used for lawful purposes. As a customer you agree to indemnify and hold harmless BITS IT Pty Ltd from any claims from the use or misuse of our services.

- You also agree to use the service strictly for the purpose it was intended. You may not at any time attempt to gain unauthorised access to any other account or misuse or 'trick' the system into revealing any information outside of your own account. This includes any behaviour or actions that will or might compromise the service or the servers it runs upon.

- Use of our services to infringe upon any copyright or trademark is prohibited. This includes but is not limited to unauthorised 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. If you believe that your copyright or trademark is being infringed upon, please contact us with the information required.

Accounts found to be infringing these conditions may be terminated or suspended without refund.

Your Content & Conduct

Maintaining your Account

- When you create an account, or request that we open one for you, or use another service to log in to the service, you agree to maintain the security of your password and accept all risks of unauthorised access to any data or other information you provide to the Service.

- You also accept full liability and responsibility for all personnel and authorised agents who have access to your account and information they are allowed to enter or modify.

- If you discover or suspect any service security breaches, please let us know as soon as possible.

- Unless we have been requested to and have undertaken the work on your behalf, it is your responsibility to ensure the integrity of your data. Customers are ultimately responsible for all actions taken under their account. This includes the compromise of credentials such as username and password.

Backups and Data Loss for Shared Hosting

Full backups are made daily and a copy of your website data is synced offsite nightly. No guarantees are made of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the integrity of these backups. They are made for server restoration purposes only. It is the customers’ responsibility to maintain local copies of their web content and any information. If loss of data occurs due to an error of BITS IT, BITS IT will attempt to recover the data without charge to the customer. If data loss occurs due to the negligence of a customer in securing their account, by an action of the customer or an action by a person or persons acting on behalf of a customer, BITS IT will attempt to recover the data from the most recent archive for a AUD $150 per hour fee + GST (GST where tax applicable).

NoteBackups are an additional charge for dedicated VPS products and services.

Payments

General

You agree to supply appropriate payment for the services received from BITS IT, in advance of the time period during which such services are provided. You agree that until and unless you notify BITS IT of your desire to cancel any or all services received, those services will be billed on a recurring basis.

As a client of BITS IT, it is your responsibility to ensure that your payment information is up to date, and that all invoices are paid on time.

If your subscription is handled by a credit card gateway facility provided by the software then you are responsible for ensuring your billing and credit card information is current. It will notify us of any failed transactions that take place and may also attempt to notify you as well. Upon such notification our systems will attempt to provide you further notifications of the problem and request prompt rectification of the situation.

If you have entered into an agreement that involves paying by invoice, BITS IT provides a 7 day grace period from the time the invoice was originally issued and when it must be paid. Unless alternative payment schedules have been agreed upon between yourself and BITS IT the time frame indicated on the invoice is the limit upon which payment is due. We do our best to give our clients enough leeway to pay their bills and establish a payment cycle that best suits both parties. If we believe there is a discrepancy between the invoices issued to you and the payments received we will make all reasonable efforts to get in contact with you and resolve it. This may involve contacting you via phone or email if the need arises. If we believe all communications with you have not resolved the situation and we are beyond reasonable doubt that you are unwilling or unable to pay for your usage to date your account will be suspended until further notice.

In either of the cases above, if the payment is not received within a period of 15 days then access to your account may be automatically suspended by our systems until payments are restored.

Any service you have utilised and are invoiced for are separate from any other products or services you may purchase or receive an invoice for now or in the future. As a client you unconditionally agree that you will never intentionally withhold, partially or fully, payment for a service as leverage for any other agenda.

Additional Charges

In addition to regular ongoing charges you may be issued an invoice for additional bandwidth usage at the start of the following month if your account is found to have exceeded its monthly quota. You may also incur additional charges if you require support that is deemed to be out of scope. See section titled "Out of Scope Support" below for more information.

Adjustments to Prices

From time to time prices and associated costs for various services will go up. When this happens we will make all reasonable efforts to notify affected customers (no one likes surprises) but BITS IT reserves the right to make such adjustments without notice.

Price adjustments and exchange rates

Some of the prices for the services we provide are sensitive to currency exchange rates.

Some examples of such services are (but not limited to):

• Purchase of SSL certificates
• Shared Hosting (email and/or web sites)
• Dedicated server Virtual machines (also known as VMs, VPS or Virtual Private Servers).

In such cases the products and services we provide are in-turn provided to us by suppliers that bill their services in foreign currency such as USD. To that affect the month to month pricing we provide those products at are dependant on the current exchange rate between Australia (AUD) and the currency that our supplies charge to us in.

As much as possible we try to absorb minor fluctuations in exchange rates but major movements in currency will force us to adjust our pricing accordingly. When we do so, this pricing change is effective immediately for all existing customers as well as new customers.

Cancellation and Refunds

For customers properly abiding by these terms and conditions BITS IT reserves the right to cancel your account at any time with reasonable written notice, except in extreme or other circumstances out of our control that may require the suspension or termination without prior written notice. Examples of such circumstances may be, but are not limited to:

• Requests from law enforcement or other registered authorities.
• Any circumstance that has dictated that we suspend the service as a whole (either temporarily or permanently with immediate enforcement).
• Abusive or threatening communications in any medium or format to agents of BITS IT or its suppliers.

Customers found to be in breach of these terms and conditions may also have their accounts suspended or terminated without prior or further notice. Please note: Being unable or unwilling to pay the required fees for the service constitutes a breach of these terms and conditions.

Customers may cancel at any time with notification by email or phone. Once we receive your cancellation and have confirmed all necessary information your account will be cancelled. If you do not hear back from us via email or phone, please contact us. If we have provided a facility in the service for you to cancel your account, please read all information provided (including any additional terms and conditions) carefully.

Upon cancellation BITS IT reserves the right to decide an amount, if any, is refundable to you. This will be calculated based on the service usage within the time frame the service is being billed for. Our services are billed on a monthly basis for the month ahead so refunds are generally not applicable.

When an account is cancelled all accounts and associated files for you (emails, web site files, databases) are deleted from the server. Our rotating backups may hold a copy of your account for a short while longer but you should make sure you have a copy of everything you may need from your account before going through with the cancellation.

If you wish to re-activate your account at a later period you may do so by contacting us via email or phone.

Bandwidth allowance

You are allocated a monthly bandwidth allowance. This allowance varies depending on the hosting package you purchase. Should your account pass the allocated amount you will be issued an invoice for additional usage at the start of the following month. You should note that your bandwidth usage encompasses both ingoing and outgoing traffic from our server under your account. Excess usage is charged in 1GB blocks rounded up to the nearest GB.

We do our best to work with our clients to alert them to when they are in danger of going over and how rapidly they are using their quota. We may at our discretion even offer advice on how to control and bring your usage down but ultimately you are responsible for what you use.

Server Uptime

General

We have a reasonable understanding of the times our customers operate within and in general the service remains online 24 hours per day (with exceptions, see below). This extends only to the reliability of the server and the software running on it. Although we have done our best to make sure the service is housed in a secure data centre with multiple redundancies and procedures in place we make no guarantees on their behalf and cannot be held responsible for outages caused by them or other associated third parties.

Software and Service Updates

From time to time we will need to make updates to the software which may involve temporarily taking one or more of our servers offline. The times in which this is likely to occur will be during evening hours but there may be some instances where emergency updates are required at any point in the day. While we do our best to notify all customers and users there may be times dictating that such updates happen without notice.

Accessibility

The services we provided are largely cloud-based, which means you must have a reliable internet connection to be able to access it. You accept full responsibility for maintaining your own internet connection and ensuring your business can reliably access the world wide web. BITS IT cannot be held liable for any internet outages occurring from your own premises or associated internet providers. Likewise we cannot be held liable for any software running directly on your device, from within your local area network within your premises (or locations from which you are operating), or that is running from your internet provider that may inhibit or restrict your ability to access the service.

In the event of internet outages we recommend you either have an alternative access method to the internet on standby or have alternative/emergency procedures for gaining access when it is necessary.

Likewise, you also accept full responsibility in both time and cost for supplying and maintaining both any and all hardware and software used to access our services. BITS IT does not supply standard end-user personal computer hardware or provide computer technical support.

Support Availability

BITS IT operates within the hours of 9am to 5pm on weekdays (Australia/Melbourne EST) and will endeavour to provide you with timely support to the best of our ability within these hours.

The level of the support we can provide is limited in capacity. We will do our best to satisfy any requests you make. We may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive, require disproportionate technical support, jeopardise the privacy of others or are highly impractical to undertake.

If we deem the nature of any request to be outside of the scope of what we consider to be standard support we reserve the right to quote and charge additional fees before undertaking the request. See section titled "Out of Scope Support" below for more information.

Technical Support Covered by Subscriptions

In general we provide support for issues arising out of the services, hardware and software, that is directly under our control. Examples of this include:

• The running of the operating system, email server software and web server software on our shared hosting services.
• The running of the operating system and requested installed services on dedicated server solutions (with exceptions, see section titled "Out of Scope Support" below for more information.)
• The running and maintenance of any web applications that we sell as a subscription service.

Out of Scope Support

Unless otherwise stated or communicated directly to you, the following items will typically incur additional charges.

• Phone-based or on-site technical support for any hardware or software on your end (e.g. personal computers, phones or tablets etc) to set up access to our services or resolve problems therein (e.g. set up of email clients/programs on your own hardware). We typically provide all details to you via email that are required for accessing and using the services being paid for.
• On our dedicated server offerings, we do not provide support for any software, including web sites, that you install on them yourselves or should otherwise be reasonably expected to be responsible for the running of.
• Any problem resolution or investigation required (dedicated servers or shared hosting) that arise out of modifications made by yourself or agents acting on your behalf that have affected the performance or running of the supplied services.
• Any action or in-action by yourself that requires us to clean up or rectify a situation on our servers caused by a malware infection or poorly written software or software that is acting in a rogue-like fashion. An example of this is an installed web site that was either implemented insecurely to begin with or a web site built in an off-the-shelf package such as WordPress that you have neglected to apply regular security updates to.

Charges for Out of Scope Support

Rates for during stated working hours: $150 AUD per hour + GST (where tax is applicable).

Out of hours rates (both after hours and weekends): $210 AUD per hour + GST (where tax is applicable).

Copyright Ownership

Distribution of Ownership

You guarantee to us that any elements of text, graphics, photos, designs, trademarks, or other artwork that you upload to our services are either owned by yourself, or that you have permission to use them.

We make no claims of ownership over any data you upload or input into the service.

We retain the ownership to all of the documents and computer programs that we have brought into existence or that have been produced/generated by the service and we license them to you for use under this agreement. This does not include documents and computer programs or services prepared and provided by third parties.

We put a lot of effort into creating our products and services including, the logo and all designs, text, graphics, pictures, information and other content (excluding your content). This property is owned by BITS IT Pty Ltd and is protected by local and international copyright laws. We grant you the right to use it within the bounds stipulated in this license agreement.

However, unless we expressly state otherwise, your rights do not include: (i) publicly performing or publicly displaying the Service; (ii) modifying or otherwise making any derivative uses of the Service or any portion thereof; (iii) using any data mining, robots or similar data gathering or extraction methods; (iv) downloading (other than page caching) of any portion of the Service or any information contained therein; (v) reverse engineering or accessing the Service in order to build a competitive product or service; or (vi) using the Service other than for its intended purposes. This extends to any staff, agents or personnel accessing your account.

Hyperlinks and Third Party Content

You may create a hyperlink to our services. This includes links and references on social media platforms. But, you may not use, frame or utilise framing techniques to enclose any of our trademarks, logos or other proprietary information without our express written consent.

BITS IT Pty Ltd makes no claim or representation regarding, and accepts no responsibility for third party websites accessible by hyperlink from our services or systems or websites linking to our services. When you leave the Service, you should be aware that these Terms and our policies no longer govern.

Defects, Errors and Liability

While we take pride in the services and products we provide and take reasonable steps to ensure they are reliable we cannot guarantee that they will be fault or error free at any time so we cannot be liable to you or any third party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages arising out of the operation of or inability to operate the provided service or product, even if you have advised us of the possibilities of such damages.

If there is any content on our services from you and others, we don't review, verify or authenticate it, and it may include inaccuracies or false information. We make no representations, warranties, or guarantees relating to the quality, suitability, truth, accuracy or completeness of any content contained in the Service. You acknowledge sole responsibility for and assume all risk arising from your use of or reliance on any content.

If any provision of this agreement shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this agreement and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.

Indemnification

As a customer you agree that you shall defend, indemnify, save and hold BITS IT Pty Ltd harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including reasonable attorney’s fees asserted against BITS IT Pty Ltd, 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 BITS IT Pty Ltd against liabilities arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with BITS IT Pty Ltd; (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 BITS IT’s server.

Disclaimer

BITS IT Pty Ltd shall not be responsible for any damages your business may suffer. BITS IT Pty Ltd makes no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide. BITS IT Pty Ltd 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 BITS IT Pty Ltd and its employees.

Jurisdiction and Governing Law

You expressly agree that exclusive jurisdiction for any dispute with our services or relating to your use of them, resides in the courts of Victoria, Australia and you further agree and expressly consent to the exercise of personal jurisdiction in the courts of the Victoria, Australia in connection with any such dispute including any claim involving the services provided by BITS IT. You further agree that you and BITS IT will not commence against the other a class action, class arbitration or other representative action or proceeding.

Termination

If you breach any terms in this license agreement, we have the right to suspend or disable your access to or use of the services in question.

Disclosure to law enforcement

BITS IT 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.

Feedback

Please let us know what you think of our services or these Terms. When you provide us with any feedback, comments or suggestions about our services or these Terms, you irrevocably assign to us all of your right, title and interest in and to your feedback, comments and suggestions.

Entire Agreement

These Terms constitute the entire agreement between you and BITS IT Pty Ltd regarding the use of our services, superseding any prior version of this agreement between you and BITS IT Pty Ltd relating to your use of our services, excepting any case in which seperate terms of service are provided with the specific service being payed for by yourself. If the service being provided offers its own seperate agreement or terms of service then these terms of service do not supersede or invalidate those agreements. Those license agreements will be updated as needed and you should refer to them as and when necessary.

If you have any questions or concerns arising out of these terms of service please contact us