Acceptable Use Policy

This page, together with the General Terms, Privacy Policy, Terms of Use and any documents referenced within them, sets out the terms between you and us under which you may use the hosting services we provide ("Hosting Services"). By using the Hosting Services, you confirm that you accept, and agree to comply with, all of the policies listed above. These policies supplement our terms and conditions of sale.

You must not allow any third party to access or use the Hosting Services unless you have purchased a hosting package specifically for a client. Where you do permit a third party ("Third Party") to access or use the Hosting Services, you are responsible for monitoring their use and ensuring that they comply with this acceptable use policy. Any breach of this acceptable use policy by a Third Party will be treated as a breach by you.

The Hosting Services are provided by The Webhosting Group Limited, a company registered in England and Wales under Company No. 10516712. Our registered office address is c/o South West Tax, 55 Elm Road, Mannamead, Plymouth PL4 7AZ, and our trading address is Unit A1, Windmill Park, Sully CF64 5SG.

Some hosting packages may operate on an "unlimited" basis, meaning we do not actively impose fixed limits on disk space or bandwidth. Reseller accounts may display usage thresholds, but these are review levels rather than strict limits. All unlimited services are subject to fair use. If a customer uses an amount of disk space or bandwidth that is excessive when compared with typical usage on the same platform, we may, at our discretion, recommend or require an upgrade to a more suitable solution.

Although we provision a large storage capacity across our infrastructure, no physical or virtual server can offer truly unlimited disk space due to hardware and software constraints. If your account grows significantly, we may periodically review it and may require that it be moved to a server or environment better suited to its resource needs. This ensures stability, performance and service quality for all customers. We reserve the right to carry out such moves at our discretion. If a required account move is ignored or refused, this may result in suspension or termination of the account.

1. Resource usage

1.1 The Hosting Services provide you with web space on our servers to enable you to upload pages and files for the purpose of publishing websites.
1.2 The Hosting Services are intended for normal routine "non-file-distribution" web usage. For websites that allow users to download video, audio or other large files, we reserve the right to impose a bandwidth limit of twenty-five (25) gigabytes (26,843,545,600 bytes) per calendar month. Any limits applied to file-distribution activity will not affect normal non-file-distribution usage unless otherwise specified within your hosting package.

2. Prohibited uses

2.1 You may use the Hosting Services only for lawful purposes. You must not use the Hosting Services:
2.1.1 in any way that breaches any applicable local, national or international law or regulation;
2.1.2 in any way that is unlawful or fraudulent, or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect;
2.1.3 for the purpose of harming or attempting to harm minors in any way;
2.1.4 to send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use or re-use any material that does not comply with our content standards (see section 5);
2.1.5 to transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material or any other form of similar solicitation (commonly known as SPAM);
2.1.6 to send bulk email that exceeds the global limit for your account, or to send email at a rate that exceeds any hourly or system-imposed limits, or that negatively affects delivery for other customers. Any loss of revenue caused by restrictions imposed by third-party service providers may result in an amercement relative to that loss;
2.1.7 to knowingly transmit any data, or upload any material, that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware.

2.2 When using the Hosting Services (other than where you are using your own virtual server or dedicated server), you must not:
2.2.1 use more than 5 percent of our cloud server processing capacity. Activities that may cause excessive load include, but are not limited to, CGI scripts and intensive FTP, PHP or HTTP operations;
2.2.2 run stand-alone or unattended server-side processes or any daemons, including but not limited to IRCd;
2.2.3 run any type of web spider or indexer, including but not limited to GoogleCash or AdSpy;
2.2.4 run any software that interfaces with an Internet Relay Chat network;
2.2.5 run any bit torrent application, tracker or client. You may link to legal torrent files hosted off-site, but you may not host or store them on our servers;
2.2.6 participate in any file-sharing or peer-to-peer activities;
2.2.7 run any gaming servers or set up databases that connect remotely to gaming servers;
2.2.8 run cron entries or other scheduled tasks except through the scheduling tools provided in our control panel;
2.2.9 give away web space under a domain;
2.2.10 operate a proxy website or proxy service;
2.2.11 use the Hosting Services as a remote file host for other websites.

2.3 You must not use the Hosting Services as an offsite backup facility. All files uploaded to our servers must be visible and accessible to the outside world (web-visible) unless they are required for the operation of the website of which they form part. We reserve the right to delete files or directories that are not web-visible without notice.

2.4 All pages of a website stored on our servers will be available to search engines unless you take action to prevent this. If you choose to optimise your website for search engines, you agree to use coding and techniques that comply fully with the guidelines issued by Google, Bing and other major search engines.

3. Reselling

3.1 You agree:
3.1.1 not to re-sell or offer any part of the Hosting Services for use by third parties unless you have purchased the Hosting Services specifically for inclusion within a client project or you are using a Reseller account;
3.1.2 not to access without authority, interfere with, damage or disrupt:
3.1.2.1 any part of the Hosting Services;
3.1.2.2 any equipment or network used to provide the Hosting Services;
3.1.2.3 any software used in the provision of the Hosting Services; or
3.1.2.4 any equipment, network or software owned or used by any third party.

4. Interactive services

4.1 Where you use, or allow the use of, the Hosting Services to host a website that provides interactive services (for example, chat rooms or bulletin boards) ("interactive services"), you must ensure that those interactive services are operated using recognised best practice.
4.2 Even where best practice is followed, you must assess any potential risks to users (particularly children) arising from third-party interactions on any interactive service you host or allow to be hosted using the Hosting Services. You must apply appropriate moderation in light of those risks. We are under no obligation to oversee or monitor your use of the Hosting Services in relation to any interactive services you provide or permit.

5. Content standards

5.1 These content standards apply to all material that you allow to be hosted through the Hosting Services ("Material"), as well as to any interactive services associated with it.
5.2 You must comply with both the spirit and the letter of the following standards. The standards apply to each part of any Material as well as to its whole.

5.3 Material must:
5.3.1 be accurate where it states facts;
5.3.2 be genuinely held where it states opinions; and
5.3.3 comply with applicable law in the UK and in any country from which it is posted.

5.4 Material must not:
5.4.1 contain any material that is defamatory of any person;
5.4.2 contain any material that is obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory;
5.4.3 contain any material that is pornographic;
5.4.4 promote violence;
5.4.5 promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age;
5.4.6 infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person;
5.4.7 be likely to deceive any person;
5.4.8 be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence;
5.4.9 promote any illegal activity;
5.4.10 be threatening, abusive, invade another person's privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety;
5.4.11 be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person;
5.4.12 be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person;
5.4.13 give the impression that the Material emanates from us, if this is not the case; or
5.4.14 advocate, promote or assist any unlawful act, including (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse.

5A. Zero-tolerance illegal content

5A.1 We operate a strict zero-tolerance policy toward illegal content. You must not use the Hosting Services to store, publish, distribute or link to any material that is illegal under UK law or the laws of any applicable jurisdiction.
5A.2 Prohibited material includes, but is not limited to, content involving child sexual abuse, exploitation, terrorism, extremist activity, human trafficking, illegal drugs, or any material that facilitates or encourages criminal activity.
5A.3 Where we become aware of illegal content or activity, we may immediately suspend or terminate the Hosting Services and will report the matter to the relevant authorities where required.

5B. Copyright infringement and DMCA-style notices

5B.1 You must not use the Hosting Services to store, publish or distribute material that infringes the copyright, trade mark or other intellectual property rights of any person.
5B.2 If we receive a valid copyright complaint or takedown request (including a DMCA-style notice), we may remove or disable access to the material in question and notify you where appropriate.
5B.3 If you believe that material has been removed in error, you may submit a counter-notice. We may restore the material at our discretion unless doing so would breach applicable law.
5B.4 Repeated or serious copyright violations may result in suspension or termination of the Hosting Services.

5C. Security response policy

5C.1 You must ensure that any website, application or service hosted using the Hosting Services is kept secure, updated and free from vulnerabilities. This includes maintaining current software versions, applying security patches and using strong authentication practices.
5C.2 If your website or application is compromised, used for malicious activity or poses a risk to our infrastructure or other customers, we may take immediate action to protect the platform. This may include temporary suspension, null-routing, rate limiting or isolating the affected service.
5C.3 We may also take action where your service is the target of an attack, including distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Protective measures may include null-routing or temporary isolation to maintain platform stability.
5C.4 You are responsible for the security of your own code, applications, plugins and integrations. We are not responsible for vulnerabilities arising from customer-managed software.
5C.5 We may cooperate with law enforcement or other authorities where required in relation to security incidents or malicious activity.

6. Suspension and termination

6.1 We will determine, at our discretion, whether a breach of this acceptable use policy has occurred through your use of the Hosting Services. Where a breach has occurred, we may take any action we consider appropriate.
6.2 Failure to comply with this acceptable use policy constitutes a material breach of our terms and conditions of sale under which you are permitted to use the Hosting Services. This may result in us taking any or all of the following actions:
6.2.1 immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use the Hosting Services;
6.2.2 immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any Material (as defined in paragraph 5.1) uploaded to our servers;
6.2.3 issuing a warning to you;
6.2.4 issuing legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach;
6.2.5 taking further legal action against you; or
6.2.6 disclosing such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably consider necessary.

6.3 We exclude liability for actions taken in response to breaches of this acceptable use policy. The actions described in this policy are not exhaustive, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.

7. Changes to the acceptable use policy

7.1 We may revise this acceptable use policy at any time by amending this page. You are expected to review this page periodically to take notice of any changes we make, as they are legally binding on you.