Terms of Service
Our goal at Spark Web Hosting (Spark) is to provide a low-cost, safe, and efficient hosting service for everyone. Therefore, we have a few rules in place.
By hosting with us, you agree to and accept both our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
Provision of Services
All orders are manually reviewed and processed. Please allow 1-2 business days for us to approve and process your order. Our business hours are during Pacific Time, Canada.
If you’re order is denied we will return your payment in full. We have every right to deny providing service to you, without exception.
Acceptable Content
Our rule of thumb for hosting sites is pretty simple. If you wouldn’t want your child or partner to see it, we don’t want to either.
Hosting sites which violate our acceptable use policy and terms of service include, but are not limited to: pornography, sexually explicit content, violence, sites promoting illegal activities, fraud, payday loans, gambling, most gaming sites, racism or discrimination, and any other type of website we deem unsuitable.
We will deny all orders for these types of sites. We will also suspend sites which are found promoting these activities.
Acceptable Usage
Spark Web Hosting strives to create a stable hosting environment for all users. We do not use inodes to limit your plan. However, we do monitor CPU usage, memory limits, IO usage, and number of concurrent connections (CCO). These limits are set within your hosting plan. Such limits may cause your account to be throttled if these limits are exceeded.
If your account is causing a noticeable drain of server resources or significantly impacting other users, we may take action on your account. Such actions may include, but are not limited to:
- Working with you to identify the cause of the issue, and finding a solution.
- Limiting the number of sites, database queries, and/or memory used.
- Upgrading your plan or resources to better suit your needs.
- Suspending the site or account repeatedly causing issues.
Banned Plugins
The following plugins present a significant security threat, and have known vulnerabilities. Use of these plugins has resulted in hacked sites, and are banned from use on our servers:
- WP File Manager
- WordPress Social Sharing Plugin – Social Warfare
These plugins will immediately be removed from your hosting account, and a warning issued. Repeatedly Repeatedly installing these plugins, may result in your account being suspended.
Storing and Streaming Media Files
We do not allow customers to store and stream media files. These include and are not limited to: mp3, mp4, and podcasts etc. Doing so quickly fills up disk space, and your website would hit resource limits and likely get throttled. Repeatedly using your account to store and stream media files, may result in your account being suspended.
Email Campaigns (Newsletters)
We do NOT allow the use of email for sending out mass newsletters or email campaigns. You should use a service such asMailChimp, AWeber or Constant Contact. Repeatedly using your account to send out newsletters, may result in your account being suspended.
Sending email newsletters from your account creates the following problems:
- It violates the CAN-SPAM Act. This is a US law that sets the rules for commercial email, and establishes requirements for commercial messages.
- It does not give recipients the right to have emails stopped from being sent to them.
- It does not provide email recipients the ability to opt-out of unwanted emails.
- It may cause email to bounce, and therefore trigger spam alerts to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other Web Hosting Companies.
- It may cause your domain to be blacklisted.
- It may cause our server to be blacklisted as a spam-server.
- You may inconvenience other users sending email.
What happens if I send out email newsletters?
- You may trigger the server to halt all email processing on your account.
- Emails over an hourly quota will be queued and/or discarded.
- We may flush the email queue if you sent out a large amount of emails.
- You will receive a warning, and your account will be flagged.
- If you continue to send out emails after being warned, we may suspend your account.
Refund Policy
We offer a full 30-Day Money Back Guarantee within the first 30 days of service. If you are not 100% satisfied with our hosting, for any reason, we will return your payment in full.
The following refund policies apply:
- We offer a full 30-Day Money Back Guarantee within the first 30 days of service.
- After 30 days service, no refunds are issued.
- The first monthly payment, for all hosting and managed plans, is non-refundable after 30-Days.
- Any setup fees paid are non-refundable.
- If you violate our Terms of Service after repeated warnings, you will not be eligible for any refund.
- If you transfer hosting away from us, and fail to notify us, we reserve the right to forfeit any refund.
Collecting Personal Identifiable Information
If your website collects and/or stores personal identifiable information, such as name, address and phone number etc. it is recommended you install a valid SSL Certificate. This will help to protect both your website and your client’s information. If you do not have a valid SSL Certificate installed, and are collecting or storing personal information, you do so at your own risk.
All hosting accounts include the FREE AutoSSL certificate. We provide the ability for clients to order Domain-Validated SSL Certificates with free installation.
Processing or Storing Credit Card Information
If your website processes credit card information, you will be required to adhere to the following:
(1) Use a third party payment gateway, such as PayPal or Stripe; (2) Have a valid SSL certificate installed on your website; and (3) Agree not to store credit card information.
We do not allow any website which stores credit card or other financial information.
Website Migration Service
We offer a FREE transfer service for all our clients, regardless of plan. We will move any self-hosted WordPress, cPanel, or basic website to Spark for free.
You are eligible for one free website transfer per cPanel account.
We can also move other sites such as WordPress.com, Blogger, and even SiteSell (SBI) or Wix. However, these migrations require more time and cost. We would be pleased to provide a quote.
Terms of Payment
All payment processing is completed through PayPal or Stripe. We do not process payments directly on our servers.
We do not store any credit card information on our servers. Any info displayed (such as the last 4-digits of your credit card) is processed through Stripe servers, via encryption and tokens.
Payment of all services is payable in advance.
Invoices are due as noted.
Late Payments
The following terms apply for late payments (unpaid invoices):
- 10 days overdue: First reminder notice.
- 15 days overdue: Second reminder notice.
- 20 days overdue: Third reminder notice. Notice of suspension.
- 30 days overdue: Account is suspended. Notice of cancellation.
- 45 days overdue: Account and services are cancelled without notice.
Late Payment Fees
Overdue accounts are subject to a Late Payment Fee .
If payment is not made within 30 days of purchase, 2.5 per cent (2.5%) of the amount shown on the invoice will be added for each 30 days the invoice is outstanding.
Suspension of Accounts
We reserve the right to suspend accounts for any of the following reasons, without notice, but not limited to:
- Failure to make payment after 30-Days of first invoice sent, with additional requests for payment.
- Hosting sites which violate our Acceptable Content policy as outlined above.
- Repeatedly or consistently violating our Acceptable Usage policy.
- Collecting personal identifiable information, or processing credit cards, without a valid SSL certificate.
- Storing credit card or other financial information.
- Using your account to store and stream media files (mp3, mp4, and podcasts etc.).
- Sending out newsletter campaigns, subsequent to initial warnings and/or reminders.
- Using your hosting account as an email server to solicit unwanted emails or spam, or to launch attacks or malicious files.
- Using your hosting account to cause harm, tamper with, or disrupt service to our server, network, or clients.
- Violations and attempted violations of system & network security.
- Running of programs on our servers that aren’t specifically designed to do so.
- Selling your email addresses, sub-domains, forums, etc. to additional clients.
- Using your hosting account as a reseller without prior permission (selling hosting to others).
- Abuse of our employees in any way including written or verbal threats and profanity will result in instant suspension.
- Failure to notify us you have transferred hosting to another provider.
- We reserve the right to suspend any account, for any reason deemed reasonable by us – with proper notification as outlined below.
We will provide notice if your account is suspended. If you do not reply to a suspension notice within 15-days, your account will be cancelled (see below).
Unsuspension of Accounts
Please note that suspended accounts are subject to a $25 Unsuspension Fee.
If your account was suspended for late payment, you may also be required to pay any outstanding balances. After 45 days of non-payment, your account will be cancelled.
Cancellation of Service
When your account has been cancelled by us, it means we no longer provide hosting or domain services to you. It also means we have made every attempt to contact you, and those attempts have been ignored or failed.
We may also cancel accounts immediately, which pose a threat to our network or security. These are listed above under Suspension of Accounts (reasons 7 through 11).
One your account is cancelled, we are under no obligation to provide service, store your website files, provide domain services, or account access.
When you voluntarily cancel services with us, you may elect to cancel (terminate) your account immediately. Otherwise, your account will remain in place until the next billing period, before being cancelled.
We will verify your voluntary cancellation request by email before removing any websites files. If you fail to respond to a cancellation request within 7 business days, we may place your account under suspension or terminate it.
If you cancel your account with us, it is your responsibility to download a full cPanel backup or website files, and transfer your website and files to another web host.
What Happens to a Cancelled Account?
When we cancel your account, you will lose immediate service and ownership of your services, including and not limited to: web hosting, website files, and domain ownership or access (if your domain is registered with us).
We delete all your website files, backups, and any associated personal account information.
Before removing your site off the server we will attempt to download a full cPanel backup. This backup file may be obtained free upon request, if available.
We will not be held liable for removal of any website materials or files from a cancelled account(s) – no exceptions.
Domain Renewals
Spark Web Hosting does not register or renew domains. It is the full responsibility of clients to keep their domain account and contact information up-to-date, and renew their own domains. While we make our best effort to notify clients of a pending domain expiry, it is ultimately the client’s responsibility to manage and renew their own domains.
For our domain renewal reminders, we rely on information provided through a WHOIS® query. We deem such information to be accurate, and assume no responsibility if such information is later deemed incorrect. We do not login to client’s third-party accounts (e.g. GoDaddy) to verify such information.
In no event will we be held liable for any loss or damage including without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damage whatsoever arising from expired domains.
Support Policy
Our web hosting and website support policy:
- We provide a best-effort support policy, to solve your issue.
- If the work required exceeds a reasonable support request, a quote on billable hours will be provided.
- Our support hours are Monday to Friday, from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, Pacific Time, Canada.
- If your support request falls outside of these hours, we will attend to your request the next business day.
Indemnity and Use of Service
You agree by using our services complete indemnity on our behalf.
In no event will we be held liable for any loss or damage including without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damage whatsoever arising from our hosting services, content written, suggestions made for support, loss of profits arising out of, expired domains, or in connection with, the use of this website and our services. This also applies to suspended, cancelled, and terminated accounts.
We cannot be held responsible for, including but not limited to: downtime for any reason, data loss, breaches or attacks to our network and service, hardware or server failure, maintenance periods, termination of cancelled accounts etc.
Although we store daily backup files off the server, it is up to you to download backups from your cPanel account. We make no guarantee that any backups we do make can be fully restored or be useable when restored.
Copyright and Use of this Statement
The content written in our Terms of Service, is under all rights reserved and copyright protection. It is used on our website, email correspondence, as well as other forms of media.
This Terms of Service is not to be distributed or used without prior permission.
Changes to this Statement
The contents of this statement may be altered at any time, at our discretion.
If you have any questions regarding this Terms of Service then please contact us.