Usage policy

What’s this all about?

To ensure that the service we provide is extremely stable, we use a number of technologies that ensure that individual accounts cannot adversely impact on the experience of other users.

This policy exists to clearly define the resource usage limits of our plans, and to also outline content that we don’t permit on our servers. We strive to provide excellent performance for all of our client accounts, and so the aim of this policy is to eliminate bad practices which might lead to clients negatively impacting the performance of others. The vast majority of accounts will never hit the limits we impose, and those that do will almost certainly be adversely affecting the service other users on the server are receiving. This policy is in addition to our terms of service.

Resource Usage Limits

Each account will have a resource allocation. The ‘Default Limit’ will be applied to all accounts that are created for each client. Individual accounts may be ‘boosted’ to allow a higher resource allocation, as outlined in the below:

LIMITS PER ACCOUNT:
1 CPU CORE
0.5GB RAM
MAX 30 MYSQL CONCURRENT CONNECTION
TOTAL PROCESSES 30 MAX
MAX DB SIZE 0.5GB
MAX PHP PROCESSES 20
MAX FILES PER ACCOUNT 25,000Databases

• Accounts should not exceed an average of 1 second of CPU time per query for MySQL queries performed in any given hour.
• Databases may not be accessed by externally hosted sites, except for the purposes of administering the database.
• Databases within an account must be in active use by that account, and may not be used for historical archiving purposes.
• Databases may not be shared between accounts.
• *The default concurrent MySQL connection limit is 30. This may be increased on a case by case basis if your plan permits more concurrent connections, upon review by our system administration team. It may be possible to reduce the required number of concurrent connections your site or application requires using page or database caching.

Emails

• Attachments larger than 25MB in size should not be sent by email.
• IMAP/POP Email Boxes must be no larger than 4GB each. Old mail can be archived or deleted to remain below this limit.
• Outbound emails should not be sent to more than 50 recipients at any one time.
• If you need to send mail to more than 50 recipients per email, then mailing list software should be used. Any such software should be capable of throttling email sending to remain within hourly email sending limits as outlined above. Mailing software without this functionality is not permitted.
• Mailing lists/email marketing can be sent to a maximum of 2,000 unique recipients. Users with mailing lists larger than 2,000 subscribers will require the use of a 3rd party SMTP gateway or API,.
• Any emails sent to a mailing list must contain an unsubscribe link to an automated email removal system. This system must not be behind password protection.
• No more than 200 emails may be sent per hour.

Processes

Any processes attributed to or initiated by your user account, must not:

• Create core dumps.
• Execute a script or binary that forks in a way to create a fork bomb, or spawn subprocesses.
• Run in the background.
• Listen to a network port.
• Open more than 100 files.
• Open or access a file greater than 2GB in size.

Shell Access

• You are not permitted to log into any other server or network from our servers.
• You may not use the “find” command recursively on folders more than 5 levels deep.

Unsolicited Email / SPAM

Unsolicited email / SPAM carries not only a financial burden, but can also severely damage our reputation as a spam-free network. This damage can prevent legitimate email from being delivered via our network or servers. We, therefore, maintain a zero-tolerance anti-spamming policy. We prohibit the sending of SPAM or any unsolicited commercial email, being sent either over our network OR over any network if the email advertises or mentions in any way a site hosted on our network.

We do not permit email to be sent from ‘bought’ lists, you may only send email to lists that you yourself have collected. We are made aware of bought lists as they almost always contain spam trap email accounts, which are monitored by spam prevention groups.

In addition to the sending of bulk email, we prohibit account holders from cross-posting messages on a large number of newsgroups, websites or forums, and/or posting obscene or threatening messages whilst using or referring to an email address or website URL hosted on our network.

If you violate this policy then your account will be subject to a thorough investigation and may be terminated without notice. Any damages will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Content Restrictions

Adult Content

We do not permit pornography, including adult-oriented pictures, videos, links to adult sites or sites containing content of a sexually explicit nature.

Backups, Storage Archives & FTP Storage Space

Hosting accounts are to be used for the purposes of hosting websites – they are not to be used to back up content from remote computers, as a general purpose file storage system or as an FTP upload repository. We permit the storage of a single backup of your account to be stored within your space, however, these must not be stored for more than 45 days. We do not permit the storing of audio music, videos, photos, or other downloadable media unless these files are being used specifically on your publicly accessible website.

Trash Box

cPanel operates a ‘trash box’ which allows you to restore files which were deleted from the cPanel file manager or recover emails which have been added into an IMAP trash box. Files and emails in trash boxes will count towards your total disk space usage. Trash boxes can be emptied by clients manually but it is important to note that trashed content will automatically be purged once they have been in the trash for 30 days.

Chat Software

We do not permit real-time chat software to be hosted from within your hosting account. Third party chat solutions that integrate with your website but are remotely hosted are permitted.

Web Applications

All third-party web applications that you install must be kept up-to-date. Failure to keep third-party applications up-to-date leaves them open to vulnerabilities, which can lead to the server being exploited. It is your responsibility to regularly check for updates to applications – we would suggest doing this once per month. Any applications which are being actively exploited will be automatically quarantined and we will contact you to advise you of the situation. If you decide to take no action, quarantined files will be automatically deleted after 14 days.

General

The following are strictly prohibited:

• Banner rotation services & link exchanges.
• Bit torrent or other peer-to-peer applications, trackers and clients.
• Offering of free or paid image, file, document or data storage.
• Offering free hosting or email services.
• Online RPGs, hate sites, sites that promote hacking, SPAM, warez content or other illegal activities.
• Material that infringes any rights (including Intellectual Property Rights) of any third party.
• Operating a public download mirror.
• Running a gaming server.
• Running a proxy server or anonymizer, either publicly accessible or password protected.
• Web spiders and indexers.
• IRC Egg Drops & Related Programs.
• UltimateBBS, Ikonboard, YaBB, YabbSE.
• Shell, SSH, Telnet Scripts and all alternatives.
• formmail.pl, formmail.php, formmail.cgi OR alternative names for the same script, except the secure version available for install from the Control Panel.
• Any script using a large flat file database.