Terms of Service (TOS)

Preface

It is unfortunate that we live in a day and age where common sense does not prevail.  Our job is to provide you friendly service, a web hosting account, and technical assistance at an extremely reasonable cost.

Many individuals and companies operate by exploiting low cost accounts for their own personal gains, which is unfortunate as it only hurts everyone in the process. To protect all of our valued customers, (and to make the lawyers happy) we have an extensive Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Agreement. Please understand that by far most customers never need to be concerned with breaching their contracts, but the "fine print" is all here to protect both you and us from those who are out to exploit our services for their own selfish gain.

Please read and understand our complete Terms of Service and Acceptable Use agreement below, as use of our services constitutes acceptance of and agreement to abide by this policy.

Terms of Service and Acceptable Use

This Services Agreement (the “Agreement”) contains the complete terms and conditions applicable to your subscription to the Web hosting, Dedicated Servers, e-commerce, Domain Registrations, or other related services (the “Services”) provided by FPO Hosting, as specified in this Agreement.

As used in this Agreement, “FPO Hosting” or "FPOHosting.com"  means Smith Family Enterprises, the owner and operator of FPOHosting.com,  and “Client”, “Customer”, “Subscriber”, "User", “you”, and “your” means you.

By ordering and using our services, you acknowledge that you have read and agree to the entire terms and conditions contained herein and all policies posted on the FPO Hosting website.

1. Privacy

Protecting your privacy is very important to FPO Hosting, so we work hard to safeguard your personally identifiable information. Use of our Services constitutes acceptance of and agreement to this policy. You may view our Privacy Policy here.
 

2. Term

By submitting an order, Customer hereby agrees to be bound by the service term selected on the online or printed order form. This Agreement begins on the date you register for the Services and shall continue in effect on a month-to-month basis from the first of each month to the end of each month unless otherwise specified by separate agreement (the “Term”). Termination must be in accordance with the account cancellation provisions of this Agreement.

3. Account Setup / Email on file

We will setup your account after we have received payment and we and/or our payment partner(s) have screened the order(s) for indications of fraud. It is your responsibility to provide us with a valid, operating email address. If there is ever an abuse issue or we need to contact you, the primary email address on file will be used for this purpose. It is your responsibility to ensure the email address on file is current or up to date at all times. Providing false contact information may result in the suspension or termination of your account. 

4. Content

All services provided by FPOHosting.com may only be used for lawful purposes. The laws of the State of Virginia and the United States of America apply.

The customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless FPOHosting.com from any claims resulting from the use of our services.

Use of our services to infringe upon any copyright or trademark is prohibited. This includes but is not limited to unauthorized 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. A list of required information may be found here. If the request is of a licensing issue, we may require further documentation.

Examples of unacceptable material on all accounts include, but are not limited to:

IRC Bots, Proxy Scripts / Anonymizers, Pirated Software / Warez, image, filedump, mirror, or banner-ad services (similar to rapidshare, photobucket, or commercial banner ad rotation), topsites, commercial audio streaming, Escrow, High-Yield Interest Programs (HYIP) or related sites, Investment sites (FOREX, egold exchange), sale of any controlled substance, 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. Forums and or websites that distribute or link to warez content are prohibited.

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Any material that, in our judgment, is obscene or threatening is prohibited and may be removed from our servers without notice.

Failure to respond to email from our abuse or support department within 24 hours may result in the suspension or termination of your services. All abuse issues must be dealt with via troubleticket/email and will have a response within 48 hours.

If in doubt regarding the acceptability of your site or service, please contact us at our Contact Page and we will be happy to assist you.

Potential harm to minors is strictly forbidden, including but not limited to pornography, adult content, child pornography or content perceived to be child pornography. Any site found to host child pornography or linking to child pornography will be suspended immediately without notice. Violations will be reported to the appropriate law enforcement agency.

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. When at all possible, set permissions on most directories to 755 or as restrictive as possible. Users are ultimately responsible for all actions taken under their account. This includes the compromise of credentials such as username and passwords. It is required that you use a secure password. If a weak password is used, you may be contacted and your account may be suspended until you agree to use a more secure password. Audits may be done to prevent weak passwords from being used. If an audit is performed, and your password is found to be weak, we will notify you and allow time for you to change/update your password.
 

Adult Content Prohibited

Because the Internet is a global communication tool, and we have clients from nearly every country in the world it is difficult to dictate what is considered "adult material."  This being said, there are still several reasons why FPO Hosting has been forced to create its no adult sites policy.

What does FPO Hosting consider "Adult Material"?

FPO Hosting reserves the right to decide what it considers "adult content", "adult material", "sexually explicit", or "sexually related". Let us know if you are unsure of the approval of your site before placing an order. Please contact us for review of your content and/or site.

Why does FPO Hosting have this policy?

Core Values
Our core values dictate that no adult sites will be allowed.  We as a family-owned and operated business are vehemently opposed to adult or pornographic sites of any nature.

Bandwidth and Resources
A shared server is a shared environment where many servers reside on each particular machine. This being said, consider that an average "adult site" gets more hits than 100 standard web sites. Some of the smaller adult sites get around 5 GB of transfer per day. With these types of resources being utilized, our servers would be severely slowed if we allowed these high traffic sites to also reside on our servers. On top of that, we would be forced to raise our prices to pay for the additional bandwidth. We strive to keep our servers fast and inexpensive, and our bandwidth clear; therefore, adult sites are not an option.

Banned IPs
Adult sites tend to get blocked. Since many of our shared accounts also share IP addresses and/or the range of IPs is blocked, all other users on that server or network range are impacted.

Association
Many people do not want to be associated with adult content, based on personal opinions and beliefs.  IPs are assigned to a server in ranges and IP address are in many cases shared IPs. Consequently, we want our shared servers to be 'adult content' free.

Defamatory or Abusive Language Prohibited

Using FPO Hosting's network as a means to transmit or post defamatory, harassing, abusive, or threatening language.

Any content that is discriminatory based on gender, race, age and/or promotes hate or violence is prohibited.

5. 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 may have their account suspended or terminated without notice.

Please read http://www.fpohosting.com.com/main/mailpolicy.htm for our email and mail-list policy.

Sites advertised via SPAM (Spamvertised) may not be hosted on our servers. This provision includes, but is not limited to SPAM sent via fax, email, instant messaging, or usenet/newsgroups. No organization or entity listed in the ROKSO may be hosted on our servers. Any account which results in our IP space being blacklisted may be immediately suspended and/or terminated.

FPOHosting.com 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 to protect the availability of hosting servers to all customers.

FPOHosting.com reserves the right to charge the holder of the account used to send any unsolicited e-mail a clean up fee. This cost of the clean up fee is entirely at the discretion of FPOHosting.com.
 

6. Billing and Payment

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


During the term of this Agreement, Client will pay FPO Hosting the fees and charges for the Services ordered. All amounts shall be paid in U.S. dollars and FPO Hosting shall either:

Delinquency

FPO Hosting shall be entitled to immediately terminate this Agreement for Client’s failure to make timely payments. For further information, see Late Payments.
 

Service Fees

During the term of the Agreement, Customer shall pay the fees for the Services set forth on the online form, including initial installation fees and monthly recurring fees. If Shared server Customers use bandwidth or disk space beyond what is set forth on the order form, Customer agrees to pay additional charges at the then current rates.

Late Payments

Payments not received within twenty-five (25) days of the invoice date, will be assessed a late fee of five percent (5%) per month or the highest rate allowed by applicable law, whichever is lower. The minimum late fee is $5.00. Late fees will continue to accrue as long as there is an outstanding balance. Accounts with balances 45 days past due are delinquent and eligible for discontinuation without further notice. Delinquent accounts require payment by credit card to return to good standing. Accounts that are not paid within 10 days of discontinuation are subject to immediate termination.

Returned Item Fee

Accounts with returned checks and/or e-checks will be assessed a $25.00 returned item fee. New payment must be made by credit card immediately or account will be in delinquent status. Illegitimate credit card charge backs will be assessed a $50.00 returned item fee.

Domain Name Registration Fee

If you register a domain name(s) through FPO Hosting, you acknowledge and agree to pay a registration fee(s) to register the domain name(s) with the applicable registrar. FPO Hosting does not offer refunds for domain name registrations for any reason, including misspelling of the domain name. Be sure to double-check the spelling of domain names on all correspondence when requesting domain name registration.

Taxes

Customer will be responsible for payment in full of any taxes and similar fees imposed on the transaction and/or the delivery of Services. FPO Hosting shall have the right at any time, to invoice to customer any new or increased taxes, fees, assessments, or other charges imposed or required by any governmental agency. Client will indemnify and hold harmless FPO Hosting from any and all taxes associated with or arising from Client’s use of the Services. These include any penalties and interest as well as any costs associated with the collection or withholding thereof.

7. Cancellation of Services and Refunds

FPOHosting.com reserves the right to cancel the account at any time with or without notice.

Cancellations by customer must be submitted in writing. Once we receive your cancellation and have confirmed all necessary information with you via e-mail, we will inform you that your account has been canceled. At this time, your account with us has been canceled. If you do not hear back from us or receive an e-mail confirming this cancellation, please contact us immediately.

Notice

All Cancellation requests must be received Five (5) days prior to the cancellation effective date (end of current cycle date). Cancellation requests must be made via written letter mailed to:

Attn: Account Cancellations
Smith Family Enterprises
977 Seminole Trail #383
Charlottesville, VA 22901

Date

If a Client terminates their account, FPO Hosting will disable the server/account on the day the Client specifies. It is the responsibility of the Client to remove any data off the server prior to the date provided in their cancellation notice. FPO Hosting will not maintain an archival copy of the Clients data files. No service charge refunds will be given if Client chooses a date before the end of the current billing cycle (end of the month).

Outstanding Fees

If Client terminates this Agreement, you shall be responsible for any outstanding fees owed and agrees to pay any and all fees incurred by Client. For Services provided on a monthly basis, Client will be responsible for Service Fees incurred each month, regardless of when Client provides notice of termination. Discount/Prepaid Accounts: If Client has agreed to a specific term in exchange for a discount of fees and/or has pre-paid FPO Hosting for such Services, no refunds will be issued, even if cancelled before the pre-paid term ends.

Refund policy

Hosting customers agree to a no refund policy following the 30-day unconditional guarantee.  All shared hosting accounts come with an unconditional, no questions asked, trial period. Set up fees and monthly service fees are non-refundable for any reason after the 30 day trial period.

There are no refunds on dedicated servers, administrative fees, install fees for custom software, or domain name purchases.

Only first-time accounts are eligible for a refund. For example, if you've had an account with us before, cancelled and signed up again, you will not be eligible for a refund or if you have opened a second account with us.

Violations of any portion of the Terms of Service automatically waive the refund policy.

8. Backups and Data Loss

Your use of the service is at your sole risk. FPOHosting.com is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on FPOHosting.com servers.

9. Resource Usage

9a. User may not:

a) Use 25% or more of total system resources for longer then 90 seconds. There are numerous activities that could cause such problems; these include: CGI scripts, FTP, PHP, HTTP, etc.

b) Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in time on the server. This includes any and all daemons, such as IRCD.

c) Run any type of web spider or indexer (including Google Cash / AdSpy) on shared servers.

d) Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.

e) Run any bit torrent application, tracker, or client. Please note that you may link to torrents off server, but may not host or store them.

f) Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities

g) Run any gaming servers such as counter-strike, half-life, battlefield1942, etc

h) Run cron entries with intervals of less than 15 minutes

When using PHP include functions for including a local file, include the local file rather than the URL. Instead of include("http://yourdomain.com/include.php") use include("include.php")

9b. INODES:

The use of more than 10,000 inodes on any shared account may potentially result in suspension. Accounts found to be exceeding the 10,000 inode limit will automatically be removed from our backup system to avoid overusage. Every file on your account uses up 1 inode.

Simply exceeding the limit does not constitute grounds for suspension however accounts that constantly create and delete large numbers of files on a regular basis or causing file system damage may cause your account to be flagged for review.

9c. Bandwidth Usage:

You are allocated a monthly bandwidth allowance. This allowance varies depending on the hosting package you purchase. Should your account pass the allocated amount we reserve the right to suspend the account until the start of the next allocation, suspend the account until more bandwidth is purchased at an additional fee, suspend the account until you upgrade to a higher level of package, terminate the account and/or charge you an additional fee for the overages. Unused transfer in one month cannot be carried over to the next month.

Why does FPO Hosting have resource and bandwidth usage policies?

Server performance and fairness to all customers are top priorities. A Shared Server includes many customer accounts. In all fairness, FPO Hosting cannot allow one or two clients to use all of the resources on a Shared Server, causing all other clients to suffer as a result. Excessive usage by one or more clients causes extreme slowness in all areas, often resulting in the failure of services on the server or failure of the entire server, forcing a system reboot.

10. Money back Guarantee

Each of FPOHosting.com's shared server accounts carry a 30 day unconditional money back guarantee. If you are not completely satisfied with our services within the first 30 days of your service, you will be given a full refund of the monthly service amount. Remember, this is only for monthly shared packages and does not apply to dedicated servers, administrative fees, install fees for custom software, or domain name purchases.

11. Client Responsibilities and Support

Clients are responsible for all content stored or transmitted under their account and the actions of constituents, including email transmission and all activity from client's account. All users of the hosting account or server, whether the account administrator or client's end users (email users or web-based users), must adhere to these terms of service and other policies referenced here.

General Support

FPO Hosting provides Clients with Technical Support 24/7/365 via online documentation and tutorials.  To obtain additional support, you agree to use our central support system or email address (support@fpohosting.com) and follow instructions or recommendations provided by support staff.  The data center where our servers are located is monitored by engineers 24x7.

Application Support

FPO Hosting offers technological expertise pertaining to our hosting services, but not web development, application development or consulting. As such, FPO Hosting does not guarantee assistance with issues including, but not limited to:

These questions must be directed to the third party vendor or creator of the script.

Email Client Configuration

FPO Hosting provides limited configuration support on our help pages.  Additional telephone support is available on a per-case basis, at an hourly consulting rate.  Consulting starts at $80 per hour.

Virtual Security

Virtual Security FPO Hosting offers email filtering and services designed to help prevent spam and virus infections. However, these services do not guarantee protection against all viruses. The proliferation of viruses on the Internet cannot be directly controlled. Therefore, FPO Hosting cannot be held responsible for virus infections that may occur.  Clients are responsible for securing their own computers and networks against viruses, trojans, and internet nuisances and attacks.

12. Shared / Semidedicated Servers

Shared accounts may not resell web hosting to other people. Shared or Semidedicated servers are not backed up. You must maintain your own backups of data stored on the server.

13. Dedicated Servers

FPO Hosting reserves the right to reset the password on a dedicated server to audit servers as needed and to perform administrative actions at the request of our hosting partner and datacenter. Dedicated servers are NOT backed up by us and it is the responsibility of the client to maintain your own backups.

14. Service Fees and Price Changes

During the term of the Agreement, Customer shall pay the fees for the Services set forth on the online form, including initial installation fees and monthly recurring fees. If Shared server Customers use bandwidth or disk space beyond what is set forth on the order form, Customer agrees to pay additional charges at the then current rates.

Our practice is not to increase the cost of hosting plans for existing customers.  We do reserve the right to change prices listed on FPOHosting.com, and the right to increase the amount of resources given to plans for new clients at any time. 

15. Indemnification

Customer agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold FPOHosting.com harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including reasonable attorney's fees asserted against FPOHosting.com, 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 FPOHosting.com against liabilities arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with FPO Hosting; (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 FPO Hosting's server.  Customer shall pay to FPO Hosting all expenses incurred by FPO Hosting in exercising any of its rights under this Agreement or applicable law, including, but not limited to, reasonable attorneys' fees and the fees of any collection agency retained by FPO Hosting.

In any legal proceeding between the parties under this Agreement, the prevailing party shall be entitled to recover its costs, expenses and reasonable attorney’s fees.

16. Disclaimer

FPO Hosting shall not be responsible for any damages your business may suffer. FPO Hosting makes no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide. FPO Hosting 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 FPO Hosting, its service providers, suppliers and its employees.

THE SERVICES AND THE FPO Hosting SITE ARE PROVIDED TO CLIENT ON AN “AS IS” BASIS AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ALL PRODUCTS AND SERVICES DISPLAYED OR OFFERED ON THE FPO Hosting SITE, ALL TEXT, GRAPHICS, LINKS AND APPLICATIONS. FPO Hosting DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO EACH OF THE FORGOING, WITHOUT LIMITATION: ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT OR ARISING UNDER FROM A COURSE OF DEALING. WITHOUT LIMITING THE GENERALITY OF THE FOREGOING, FPO Hosting SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTY THAT (1) THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE; (2) DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED; (3) THERE ARE NO VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS, AND (4) THE SECURITY METHODS EMPLOYED WILL BE SUFFICIENT.

17. Limitation of Liability

IN NO EVENT SHALL FPO Hosting BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES RESULTING FROM LOSS OF DATA, PROFITS, USE OF THE FPO Hosting SITE OR ANY FPO Hosting 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 FPO Hosting CUMULATIVE LIABILITY EXCEED AN AMOUNT GREATER THAN FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($500 US).

THE DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITY ARE MATERIAL TO THIS AGREEMENT.

18. Arbitration

By using any FPO Hosting services, you agree to submit to binding arbitration. If any disputes or claims arise against FPO Hosting or its subsidiaries, such disputes will be handled by an arbitrator of FPO Hosting's choice. An arbitrator from the American Arbitration Association or the National Arbitration Forum will be selected in the state of Virginia. Arbitrators shall be attorneys or retired judges and shall be selected pursuant to the applicable rules. All decisions rendered by the arbitrator will be binding and final. The arbitrator's award is final and binding on all parties. The Federal Arbitration Act, and not any state arbitration law, governs all arbitration under this Arbitration Clause. You are also responsible for any and all costs related to such arbitration.

19. Severability

If any of the provisions, or portions thereof, of this Agreement are found to be invalid under any applicable statute or rule of law, then, that provision notwithstanding, this Agreement shall remain in full force and effect and such provisions or portions thereof shall be deemed omitted.

20. Integration

This Agreement, including the Exhibits, attachments, and/or any addenda, represents the entire agreement of the parties with respect of the subject matter hereof and supersedes all prior and/or contemporaneous agreements or understandings, written or oral between the parties. No obligations beyond those set forth in this Agreement shall be assumed.

21. Disclosure to law enforcement

FPO Hosting 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.

22. Changes to the Terms of Service

FPO Hosting reserves the right to revise its policies at any time without notice. The current Terms of Service will be posted on this web site.