[Service Agreement - General Terms]

  • we do not allow Warez or illegal MP3 sites.
  • adult content must be UK/SA-legal.
  • users must not participate in any form of unsolicited bulk e-mailing or spam.
  • IRC services are not allowed.
  • data stored on your server is not guaranteed to be backed up unless you have purchased a backup service. If you do not have a backup service, it is recommend that you keep an independent copy of all data stored on your server.
  • you must not divulge your passwords to any other person, and you should take reasonable precautions to ensure that it is not discovered by other people.
  • we shall not be held liable for any loss or damages caused by the use or misuse, unavailability or removal of services.
  • we are not responsible for the services or applications that you run within your hosting solution
  • if you require support assistance to solve an issue outside of the hosting solution itself ( eg. an application within your hosting solution and not provided by eMailStor ), you will be billed at standard support rates for such support
  • no time frame is guaranteed to solve issues outside of those applicable to the hosting solution itself 
  • we reserve the right to cancel your services at any time without notice in the event of a breach in these Terms and Conditions.
  • should your account be closed, all files (including web pages etc.) will be removed within 2 weeks of termination.wWe reserve the right to amend and update these Terms and Conditions and the Acceptable Use Policy at any time without notice.
  • eMailStor can provide demo versions of certain products - the default demo term is 7 days. Data relating to demo products will be removed after the demo term is reached/expired.

[Definitions]

  • "eMailStor", "we" or "us" means eMailStor.
  • "Customer" or "you" means the person, firm or company that has requested any Services.
  • "Service" or "Services" means any services supplied or to be supplied by eMailStor, including but not limited to the provision of Internet hosting services.
  • "Order" means the electronic Service order annexed herein by reference.
  • "Server" means an Internet-connected server, virtual or otherwise, provided by eMailStor for the Customer's use.

[Service agreement]

This agreement is made by and between eMailStor and the Customer:

Overview

This agreement is intended to cover any and all Services provided by eMailStor and received by the Customer. This agreement contains the entire understanding between eMailStor and Customer with respect to the Services described in the Order and supersedes all prior agreements, understandings, negotiations and discussions, whether oral or written, between eMailStor and the Customer. The Customer acknowledges and agrees that its entire right relating to eMailStor  Services are as set forth in this agreement.

 

1. Services

Subject to the terms and conditions of this agreement, eMailStor agrees to provide the Internet hosting services specified in the Order. Subject to Customer's right to terminate this agreement in accordance to Section 4.2 of this agreement, eMailStor may expand or contract the scope of eMailStor's services by issuing an amended order form to the Customer in advance of such change.

 

2. Initial Term

The initial term of this Agreement is stated in the Order ("Initial Term"). The Initial Term shall not commence until eMailStor accepts the Order from the Customer and until first payment as set out in the Order is made in full by the Customer for Services to be provided during the Initial Term.

 

3. Renewal Term

Unless terminated by eMailStor or in accordance with Section 4.2 of this Agreement, this Agreement will automatically renew for successive terms of equal length to the Initial Term at the applicable rate and discounts.

 

4. Fees and Payment

The Customer agrees to pay eMailStor, without limitation, for the Services it uses. eMailStor reserves the right to charge the Customer standard hourly rates as specified in the support matrix, to cover the resolution of excessive or unusual problems.

    4.1 Invoices - Invoices are emailed to the current billing email address. Unless stated in 4.4 exceptions below, Monthly Service Fees are invoiced between the 1st and 3rd day of each service month and due no later than the 10th of the current service month.

    4.2 Cancellation Policy - Unless stated under 4.4 exceptions or otherwise negotiated in writing, all Service contracts are one rolling month. In order to cancel a Service contract the Customer must notify eMailstor via email. The minimum contract term is 30 days, therefore if a service is cancelled with less than 30 days remaining, an invoice will be issued for the pro rata additional days of the next month. There are no partial refunds or credits for early cancellations. All payments to eMailStor are final and non-refundable. Cancellations will be deemed accepted once a cancellation notice has been received at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we have responded to you with a confirmation. No retrospective refunds will be applied in the case of cancellations except for the current payment cycle where a full payment was made and a pro-rata payment was due.

    4.3 Overdue payments - All invoices are due by the 10th of the stated invoice month. At our discretion, we may refer overdue payments to our debt collections agency, and in that event an administration charge will be added to the outstanding amount, independently of service disconnection. The value of the administration charge is discretionary, but would be a minimum of 25% of the overdue amount.

Clients are fully responsible to ensure payment of all amounts due are paid on time independently of receiving invoice or billing notifications by email from eMailStor. Overdue accounts may be disconnected or result in suspension of services at any time after the invoice expiry date. All data will be deleted 2 weeks after the invoice expiry date unless alternative arrangements are made with eMailStor.

In the event of annual domain fee renewals, the client accepts that non-settlement of due fees may result in the cancellation of domains in the ZACR system and the loss of ownership of that domain. In the event non-payment affects email, web or cloud storage accounts, the client accepts that existing data may be deleted 2 weeks after the default of due fees.

Domain transfer requests ( away from eMailStor ) will not be honoured should there be any outstanding invoices on account.

    4.4 Exceptions - Some of our Services have different payment and cancellation terms. Please inquire about these.

    4.5 OverUsage - All packages enact certain limits on usage ( eg. disk, bandwidth ); should these limits be exceeded, additional over-usage charges will be applicable in the payment cycle following the over-usage. These charges are either indicated in the product page or on request.

 

5. Acceptable Use Policy

Customers shall at all times comply with and help ensure that they and their clients comply with the terms of the current version of the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) posted at https://www.emailstor.co.za/index.php/business-documentation/78-acceptable-use-policy. Customer agrees that eMailStor may amend the terms of the AUP from time to time by posting a new or different version of the Acceptable Use Policy at www.emailstor.co.za. For existing customers, changes shall come into effect one week after they are published on the eMailStor website. The Customer shall include the terms and conditions set out in the Acceptable Use Policy in an Acceptable Use Policy with its own clients.

We remind all clients in addition, that our services may not be used for UCE, and that the sending of bulk email requires a specific product (eMailStor Relay).

 

6. Response Times, Guarantees, Responsibility

i) Hardware Maintenance; eMailStor is responsible for the replacement of any hardware components that fails. This includes chassis, PSU, disks, memory and motherboard of the server. The customer will not be charged for any failure or replacement of hardware. In the case of a hardware fault which results in a server failure eMailStor will replace the faulty hardware within 3 hours of isolating the cause of failure. All of our Servers use RAID disk configuration so in the event of a single disk failure no disruption to service should occur and the replacement would be carried out at a mutually convenient time.

ii) Connection Guarantees; We guarantee that all of our UK Servers are within a maximum of twenty milliseconds of 95% of UK areas. We have triple redundant uplinks via physically diverse cables into the UK backbone to ensure maximum connectivity uptime. Where the connection is metered we guarantee that the full burst capability will be available at all times. Where the Server's connection is unmetered, we guarantee that the maximum divided by the contention will be available at all times (eg. 2Mbps in the case of a 10Mbps connection with 5:1 contention). In general, we attempt to ensure that an unmetered connection's maximum burst is available at least 80% of the time, and have a large contention pool to ensure that.

iii) Response Times; Response time is defined as the time it takes to identify a fault and report back to the customer by either of the following methods; E-Mail, SMS or telephone call. The customer is responsible for ensuring that eMailStor has the correct contact details. eMailStor will advise all customer's who have the Advanced Port Patrol™ option correctly configured of any service failure (eg. HTTP, SMTP, SSH) via SMS or E-Mail within five minutes of any fault being diagnosed. Response times of non-urgent questions or queries via e-mail will be dealt with in business hours with a guaranteed response time of four hours during week days/times.

eMailStor will guarantee that if a customer can prove that any of the above services or response times have not been met the customer shall receive a day's credit for every incident up to a maximum of 10 days credit within any calendar month.

iv) CloudApp: we take responsibility for the following components:

  • cms installation
  • site management/updates
  • template management
  • database management
  • plugin/extension management
  • integration with payment gateways
  • ecommerce integration

We do not take responsibility for content, design or product catalogues. Should you require these features, please talk to us directly.

v) Web/email hosting: we do not take responsibility for any data you may have unless you take our backup option. We are not responsible for design, content and and management of websites.

vi) Websites and applications: absent using our CloudApp service, we do not take responsibility for the installation, configuration and/or management of your website or application - this remains the responsibility of the client.

vii) eMailStor offers a free domain content transfer service when provisioning a domain with us - this includes email, website and database. This service is free dependent on the provision of all access details. Otherwise, a fee of R450-00 will be charged.

 

7. 99.95% Availability Guarantee

We endeavour to provide the most reliable infrastructure as practical to Customers. To Customers in good financial standing with us we guarantee that the following aspects of our services are available 99.95% of the time in a year, excluding scheduled maintenance:

i) Network; The network is defined as core network infrastructure up to your server or other Service but excluding the server hardware, services and software running on your server. Network downtime (and "outage") is measured from the moment the Customer notifies our support team of a network failure to the time the Network responds to an external "ping" request.

ii) Notification of an outage must occur at the time of the outage and not after the fact. The Customer will be refunded 1 day's worth (3.4%) of their monthly hosting fee in the event that the total outage period in one month exceeds 22 minutes (0.05% of a month), and an additional day for each additional 30 minutes of downtime up to 50% of the Customer's monthly hosting fee.

Refunds shall not be provided to the Customer if the outage results from: a) scheduled maintenance; b) circumstances beyond our reasonable control, including, but not limited to: dDoS or other network attacks, upstream or 3rd party network outages, war, fire, flood, sabotage, labour disturbance, acts of government; c) any actions or inactions of you or any third party; d) breaking this Agreement or our Acceptable Use Policy.

8. Temporary Service Suspension

The Customer agrees that it may be necessary for eMailStor to Temporarily suspend Services for technical reasons or to maintain the eMailStor network, the equipment or any other facilities, the timing of which will be as determined by eMailStor. Such suspension of the Services will not be an interruption of the eMailStor Services for the purpose of calculating network availability or the Customer's entitlement to credit for network interruption.

 

9. Emergency Service Suspension

eMailStor may interrupt the Services at any time for any duration of time, without penalty or liability for any claim by the Customer, where necessary to prevent improper or unlawful use of eMailStor Services or network. Such suspension of Services will not be an interruption for the purpose of calculating network availability or the Customer's entitlement to credit for network interruption.

 

10. Daily Backups

eMailStor offers daily backup services of critical data files. If a customer has chosen the Daily Backup Option then it is eMailStor's responsibility to ensure we have a Backup of the customer's chosen data. It is the customer's responsibility to ensure that any backup folder creation or similar is set up in order for us to take the backups. eMailStor cannot be held responsible for the integrity of the customer's data or the fact that the data may be corrupt. The Customer will hold eMailStor without penalty or liability for any claim resulting from a failed backup and/or restore procedure. It is the customer's responsibility to confirm the backups integrity.

The Daily Backup option is required if you need a backup of your data and do not have a support contract with us or a CloudApp subscription - an email request needs to be sent to use at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to activate this service.

Backups are kept for a maximum of 13 days.

 

11. Compromised /Hacked Server

A compromised or "hacked" server is a serious threat to our network. eMailStor, at its sole discretion, will take any and all measures to prevent a compromised server from doing additional damage to its own system and files or to the rest of the network. Determination that a server has been compromised: By the Customer - If you believe your system may have been hacked, immediately report the situation to eMailStor technical support. eMailStor will examine your system and may implement additional monitoring of your system. By eMailStor - If a eMailStor System Administrator believes a server on our network is compromised, eMailStor will: 1) disconnect the server from the network, 2) contact the client, and 3) provide evidence of the server being "hacked".

 

12. Termination of Agreement

If Customer breaches any of its obligations under this agreement or the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) then eMailStor may terminate this agreement at any time and without prior notice.

 

13. Limitation of Liability

Customer acknowledges and agrees neither eMailStor nor any of its members, shareholders, directors, officers, employees or representatives will be liable for any special, indirect, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages, or damages (including but not limited to damages for loss of profits or savings, loss of data, or loss of use) in connection with this agreement. If, despite the foregoing limitations, eMailStor or any of its shareholders, directors, officers, employees or representatives should become liable to Customer or any other person in connection with this agreement for ANY REASON, then the maximum aggregate liability of eMailStor, its members, shareholders, directors, officers, employees and representatives for all such things and to all such parties will be limited to the amount payable by Customer to eMailStor for one month of service under this agreement.

 

14. Indemnity

Customer will indemnify and save harmless eMailStor and its members, shareholders, directors, officers, employees, agents, contractors, and representatives from and against all damages, losses, costs and expenses (including actual legal fees and costs), fines and liabilities incurred by or awarded, asserted or claimed against eMailStor or any of its members, shareholders, directors, officers, employees and representatives in connection with Customer's negligence, activities or omissions, or breaches of its obligations under this agreement, including claims brought by a person using or relying upon any advice given or publication produced and distributed by Customer.

 

15. Customer Acknowledgement

Customer acknowledges that it accepts all risk of any unauthorised or illegal use of the eMailStor network or any inter-connected network by third parties. eMailStor provides no warranties, makes no representations, and accepts no liability for the unauthorised or illegal access or interference with the Customer's server/network unless such access or interference is caused by the intentional unlawful acts of Memset®/Hetzner, its agents or employees.

 

16. eMailStor Administrative Account and Software

For the purposes of Network/Server maintenance, inventory and related activities, eMailStor staff and management retain the right to administrative access to any and all Servers on their network. To facilitate this, all eMailStor Servers include a eMailStor administrative account and/or daemon designed for these purposes. See Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for more details.

 

17. Governing Law

This Agreement is governed by the law of United Kingdom/South Africa, and the Customer agrees that any court action brought under this agreement shall be brought in the jurisdiction of England. If any provision of this agreement is held by any competent authority to be unlawful, invalid or unenforceable in whole or in part then the provision shall be deemed to be severable from the remaining provisions and shall not affect their validity or enforceability.