Terms of Service

Billing | Scope of Support | Acceptable Use Policy | Liability | DMCA Complaints

Agreeing to Acorn Host's Terms of Service is mandatory to use the hosting services. If you have any questions, please contact us.

Billing

You may purchase hosting monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or yearly, as you prefer. If you choose to set up autobill, your credit card will be automatically billed on the term you select. We will notify you 15 days before your payment is due, and each time you are charged.

If you choose to pay manually, we will send you an reminder via email 15 days before your account is due. We send another reminder when it becomes overdue, and your account will be suspended if it becomes more than 15 days overdue and you have not made arrangements with us to pay.

Refunds: If you are not satisfied within your first 30 days we are happy to provide you with a full refund. After this point, refunds are calculated on a pro-rated basis to the day, with a $2 minimum. If you paid via credit card, your payment(s) will be refunded to that card. If you paid via other means, your refund will be delivered via PayPal.

Please note that SSL certificates are non-refundable if the order has already been processed. If we grant you an exception to pay ahead more than one year, we cannot refund additional years, as this is not our standard billing setup.

Cancellations: You may cancel any time from within the Customer Portal. There are no contracts or termination fees.

Payments: Our regular payment method is via Visa or MasterCard. Your account will be set up and your welcome email with your login information will be sent upon receipt of payment.

Older customers have been grandfathered in to pay via check. If your account has pay-by-check enabled, you will see "Fund by Check" on the menu in the Customer Portal. Checks must be in US dollars.

We are phasing out payments via PayPal. If you set up to be automatically billed via PayPal, and that subscription gets cancelled, we will ask you to set up a new payment plan via credit card.

Late Payments: All accounts are billed according to the date on which they were first activated. Accounts that are overdue more than 15 days will be suspended. Suspension may be delayed on an individual basis solely at our discretion.

Paypal Subscription Cancellations: If you subscribed to hosting and chose to pay via Paypal subscription and if your subscription is cancelled, we will email you with instructions to set up a new payment method. Your hosting account may be suspended if it becomes overdue by more than 15 days.

Scope of Support

Acorn Host provides web hosting. We do not provide web design, web development, scripting, or code writing services. Your website is your responsibility to create, manage, and maintain.

We do not provide support for errors in your code that are causing your website to not display properly. We will assist in troubleshoosting efforts to determine if a problem is the result of an issue with the server or with the code. We will fix server issues; we will not fix code issues.

We are happy to modify server settings or install modules that will help your script run better as long as they do not impact the health or security of the server.

We may, at our discretion, provide additional support or assistance beyond this scope, but it should be considered an exception and not be taken as an expectation of further support outside this scope.

Pre-installed Scripts: Acorn Host provides many pre-installed scripts. We will make sure the installer for these scripts works and the base install of the application will work on our servers. We do not support the scripts themselves or any plugins or themes you may install. If you have questions or problems with a script, please contact the makers of it and/or your web developer.

Home Software: Certain aspects of the Acorn Host service are accessed through software on the user's computer, such as email clients and FTP programs. While we are happy to provide assistance in configuring these software programs to access Acorn Host's services, the use of this software is ultimately the user's responsibility. We cannot provide technical support on how to use these programs, or provide troubleshooting beyond basic configuration help.

Abuse of Support: By using our service, you agree to treat our staff with respect. Customers who are deemed to be abusing the support system may be suspended or terminated, at our discretion. Abusive behavior includes but is not limited to: using insulting and disrespectful language, yelling, repeatedly writing in ALL CAPS, and creating multiple tickets over and over for the same issue.

Acceptable Use Policy

All services provided by Acorn Host 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 judged to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret and other statute.

You may not host content of the following nature:

• Content related to hacking, cracking, and warez.
• Content promoting hate crimes, discrimination, homophobia, racism, or violence.
• Pornography. This includes sites that include sexually explicit or hardcore images and/or advertising.
• Illegal content.

Downloads: You may host software downloads only if you are the writer and copyright holder or have written permission from the owner to host them. Audio and video files may be hosted for download as long as they do not violate copyright laws.

If you think your site may violate these Terms Of Service, please ask before signing up for an account so that we may determine if we can host your site. Acorn Host reserves the right to determine what is and is not an acceptable website according to this acceptable use policy. We don't allow any conduct that violates regulations, or normally accepted practices within the Internet community, whether or not expressly mentioned in this Terms of Service.

Streaming: We support streaming in the sense of having audio or video on your site that people can listen to or play while on your site. Our server does not support having an always-on stream like online radio, which requires certain server software.

CGI Scripts: Each account comes with its own cgi-bin. You are free to use any CGI scripts you wish that are not banned, however we reserve the right to disable any CGI script that effects normal server operation without prior warning.

Banned Scripts: The following scripts are banned from use on the servers and may not be uploaded or run. Reasons for banning them include adverse effects on server load, invitations to hackers/spammers/criminal activity, etc.

• IRC or IRC egg drops or bots
• Proxy servers
• Mail bombers
• Anonymous mailers
• IP spoofers
• Port scanners
• nph-proxy
• UBB (Ultimate Bulletin Board, all versions)
• Ikonboard, Yabb (all versions)
• lstmrge.cgi
• FormMail.cgi, FormMail.pl from Matt's Script Archive are not allowed, nor or any scripts which are based on them (for instance, a simple port to PHP). Secure alternatives: Secure PHP Form Mailer Script, or remotely hosted form services like Wufoo or Formstack.

Background Running Programs: Background daemons in general are prohibited.

Spam: Acorn Host servers may not be the source, intermediary, or destination address involved in the transmission of spam, flames, phishing, fraud, or mail bombs. Your domain may not be referenced as originator, intermediary, or reply-to address in any of the above. SPAM /illegal content advertising sites on other servers which in turn contain links to a domain on the servers is prohibited. Spam is any mass unsolicited message in the mediums of newsgroups and/or email. If you are found to have spammed, then your domain will immediately, without warning, be disabled. We reserve the right to refuse or cancel service to known spammers. Lastly, we reserve the right to determine what violates this policy. Any violation will result in immediate deactivation of services without refund.

Server Abuse: Any attempts to undermine or cause harm to a server is strictly prohibited.

Overuse of resources: Badly written MySQL queries or other website processes can consume a large amount of server resources and slow the whole server down. In this instance we attempt to contact the owner if at all possible to remedy the problem themselves. Occassionally however, if the problem is severe and we need to take immediate action, or if there has been no response from the owner of the account, we will take action such as disabling the script or suspending the account.

Accounts Reinstatement: Accounts and domains deleted due to deliberate violation of this acceptable use policy cannot be reinstated.

Refusal of Service: We reserve the right to refuse, cancel, or suspend service at our sole discretion.

The acceptable use policy is actively and strictly enforced. Offending content or users are suspended from the network, usually as soon as they are discovered.

Liability

Use of Acorn Host's services is at the customer's sole risk, we make no warranties.

Backup: Acorn Host is not responsible for backups for MySQL databases. Subscriber acknowledges that they will backup their own databases from the backup utility provided from their control panel. Acorn Host will however do other backups of websites, images, cgi-bin, mail, etc. Backups are performed as a courtesy and we are not responsible for damages due to loss of data.

Subscriber acknowledges that the service provided is of such a nature that service can be interrupted for many reasons other than the negligence of the company and that damages resulting from any interruption of service are difficult to ascertain. Therefore, subscriber agrees that the company shall not be liable for any damages arising from such causes beyond the direct and exclusive control of the company. Subscriber further acknowledges that the company's liability for its own negligence may not in any event exceed an amount equivalent to charges payable by subscriber for services during the period damages occurred. In no event shall the company be liable for any special or consequential damages, loss or injury.

Indemnification: Customer agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold Acorn Host and its associates harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including reasonable attorney's fees asserted against Acorn 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, it's agents, employees or assigns. Customer agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Acorn Host against liabilities arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with Acorn Host services; (2) any material supplied by customer infringing or allegedly infringing on the proprietary rights of a third party and (3) copyright infringement.

Limitation of Liability: Acorn Host shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental and consequential damages, which may arise from Acorn Host servers going off-line or being unavailable for any reason whatsoever. Furthermore, Acorn Host shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental or consequential damages, resulting from the corruption or deletion of any web site from one of Acorn Host servers. All damages shall be limited to the immediate termination of service.

Acorn Host cannot be held liable for system downtime, crashes, or data loss. We cannot be held liable for any predicted estimate of profits in which a client would have gained if their site was functioning. Certain services provided by Acorn Host are resold. Thus, certain equipment, routing, software, and programming used by Acorn Host are not directly owned or written by Acorn Host. Moreover, Acorn Host holds no responsibility for the clients' use of their accounts.

Acorn Host retains the right to change any or all of the above policies and disclaimer without notification.

DMCA Complaints

If you believe that your copyright has been infringed by content hosted on our servers, please email us with your complaint (submit it to the General/Sales department).

Take-Down Procedures
If we are notified of a credible claim of copyright infringement, we will remove or disable access to the content that is potentially infringing by means up to and including suspension of the account hosting the content. We will attempt to notify the account owner in such cases. Please be sure to keep your email with us up to date.