Terms of Service Agreement for Hosting

The use of services from TaRA Consulting Services [hereafter referred to as "TaRA Consulting "] constitutes agreement to these terms.

1.) Account Setup / Email on file
We will setup your account prior to receiving payment but require the first payment to be made within 30 days. It is your responsibility to provide us with an email address which is not at the domain(s) you are signing up under. 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 we have on file is current or up to date at all times.

Transfers
Our transfers team will make every effort to help you move your site to us, however, we can not make guarantees of the transfer process. We provide this as a courtesy service and can not make guarantees regarding its availability or the amount of time it may take as each host is configured a little differently.

2.) Content
All services provided by TaRA Consulting may only be used for lawful purposes.

The customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless TaRA Consulting 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.

Examples of unacceptable material include:
IRC Bots, Proxy Scripts / Anonymizers, Pirated Software / Warez, ".img" / image hosting only sites that do not host an actual domain name, Escrow, High-Yield Interest Programs(HYIP) or related sites, Investment sites (FOREX, egold exchange), 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

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

If in doubt regarding the acceptability of your site or service, please contact us at contact_us@taracs.com and we will be happy to assist you.

Potential harm to minors is strictly forbidden, including but not limited to child pornography or content perceived to be child pornography (Lolita):

Any site found to host child pornography or linking to child pornography will be suspended immediately without notice.

Your services will be terminated with or 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 password. It is required that you use a secure password. 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.

3.) Zero Tolerance Spam Policy
We take a zero tolerance stance against sending of unsolicited e-mail, bulk emailing and spam. Any user who sends out spam will have their account suspended and/or terminated with or without notice.

Limits

There is a 200 hourly email limit per domain. If you send over this amount in any hour most of the e-mails will bounce back with an undeliverable error.

Any single mailing list larger than 5,000 will require a semi-dedicated or dedicated hosting solution from us.

Mailing Lists Rules

1. Anytime you're sending a message, no matter how large your e-mail list is, it must be throttled. Our recommendation is it be throttled to, at the very least, sending 1 email every 6 seconds. If the mailing list software you're using does not allow you to throttle you must switch to something else. If throttling is not done and you try sending let's say 500 emails, the server will try sending all 500 in 1 second which is not possible. This will cause the server load to go very high and for the entire server to be sluggish until this process is completed. Anyone who causes the server load to go high will be suspended and the process will be terminated. If you choose not to throttle you will most likely be suspended for crashing the server.

2. Any mailing list over 900 emails is only allowed to be sent during off-peak times to prevent high server loads. Off peak times qualify as all day Saturday and Sunday, and 1am - 8 am eastern time M-F.

3. You are not allowed to mail to a mailing list you were given or purchased. This is spam and can result in termination of the offending account. The customer will not be issued a refund.

4. Any unsolicited e-mail being sent will result in suspension and/or termination of the offending account. We take a zero tolerance stance against sending of unsolicited e-mail. The customer will not be issued a refund.

5. Any mailling list MUST comply with all guidelines set forth by the United States, available at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm and those by Canada's Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act ( PIPEDA), with information available at http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/inecic-ceac.nsf/en/h_gv00248e.html

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 will be immediately suspended and/or terminated.

TaRA Consulting 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.

4.) Payment Information
You agree to supply appropriate payment for the services received from TaRA Consulting, in advance of the time period during which such services are provided (with exception of the first payment period). You agree that until and unless you notify TaRA Consulting of your desire to cancel any or all services received, those services will be billed on a recurring basis. Cancellations must be made in writing to support@taracs.com.

TaRA Consulting reserves the right to change the monthly payment amount and any other charges at anytime.

5.) Backups and Data Loss
As a courtesy, TaRA Consulting agrees to make periodic back-ups of site files. However, TaRA Consulting 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.

6.) Cancellations and Refunds
TaRA Consulting reserves the right to cancel the account at any time with or without notice.

There are no refunds on dedicated servers, administrative fees, install fees for custom software, or domain name purchases. Refund requests after 30 days will be refunded on a prorated basis of any unused time.

Only first-time accounts are eligible for a refund.

Violations of the Terms of Service will waive the refund policy.

7.) Resource Usage
User may not:
a) Use 25% or more of 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 any type of interactive real-time chat applications that require server resources. Remotely-hosted services are fully allowed.
c) Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in time on the server.
d) Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.
e) Run any bit torrent application, tracker, or client.
f) Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities
g) Run any gaming servers such as counter-strike, half-life, battlefield1492, 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")

8.) Bandwidth Usage
You are allocated a monthly bandwidth allowance. This allowance varies depending on your hosting package. 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.

9) Uptime Guarantee
If your shared server has a physical downtime that is not within the 99.9% uptime you may receive one month of credit on your account. For plans that include site maintenance, this credit will equal up to 50% of the total monthly fee. Approval of the credit is at the discretion of TaRA Consulting and is dependant upon justification provided. Third party monitoring service reports may not be used for justification due to a variety of factors including the monitor's network capacity/transit availability. The uptime of the server is defined as the reported uptime from the operating system of the server which may differ from the uptime reported by individual services. To request a credit, please contact support@taracs.com with justification. All requests must be made in writing via email. Uptime guarantees only apply to shared solutions. Dedicated servers are covered by a network guarantee in which the credit is prorated for the amount of time the server is down which is not related to our uptime guarantee.

10.) Shared Server Hosting
Shared accounts may not resell web hosting to other people.

11.) Dedicated Server Hosting
It is the responsibility of the client to ensure that there is a valid email address and current root password on file for their dedicated server on file to prevent downtime from forced password resets.

12.) Price Change
We reserve the right to increase the amount of resources given to plans at any time.

13a.) Indemnification
Customer agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold TaRA Consulting harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including reasonable attorney's fees asserted against TaRA Consulting, 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 TaRA Consulting against liabilities arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with TaRA Consulting; (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 TaRA Consulting managed hosting server.

13b.) Arbitration
By using any of TaRA Consulting services, you agree to binding arbitration. If any disputes or claims arise against TaRA Consulting or its subsidiaries, such disputes will be handled by an arbitrator of TaRA Consulting choice. All decisions rendered by that arbitrator will be binding and final. You are also responsible for any and all costs related to such arbitration.

14.) Disclaimer
TaRA Consulting shall not be responsible for any damages your business may suffer. TaRA Consulting makes no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide. TaRA Consulting 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 TaRA Consulting and its employees.

15.) Disclosure to law enforcement
TaRA Consulting 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.

16.) Changes to the Terms of Service Agreement
TaRA Consulting reserves the right to revise its policies at any time without notice.