Terms of Service

1The agreement#

"We", "us" and "BPHOST" mean the BPHOST business and its operators. "You" means the person or company that holds the account. "Services" means anything you buy from us — shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS, dedicated servers, domain registrations, SSL certificates, and design or SEO work.

Your agreement with us is made up of these terms, our Acceptable Use Policy, our Privacy Policy, and the description and price of the specific service you ordered. If they conflict, the order description wins on scope and price, and the Acceptable Use Policy wins on conduct.

An order is only accepted once we confirm it and the service is provisioned. We may decline an order, and we do not have to give reasons.

2Your account#

• The details you give us must be accurate and kept up to date. Notices go to the email address on your account, so a stale address is your risk — including renewal and suspension notices.
• You are responsible for everything done under your account, whether by you, your staff, your developer, or someone who got hold of your password.
• Keep your credentials secret, use a strong and unique password, and turn on two-factor authentication where we offer it. Tell us immediately if you suspect a compromise.
• You must be at least 18 and legally able to enter into a contract.

3Fees, billing and renewals#

All prices are quoted in South African Rand. Where we are registered for VAT, VAT at the prevailing rate applies and your invoice will show it.

• Services are billed in advance on the cycle you chose — monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually or biennially.
• Services renew automatically at the end of each cycle so your site does not go dark. Invoices are issued before the due date and we send reminders.
• We accept card, EFT and the payment methods shown at checkout. EFT payments are only applied once they reflect in our account — allow for clearing time.
• Renewal is charged at our price at the time of renewal, not the price you first paid. Where a renewal price increases, we will give you reasonable notice before it applies.
• Promotional pricing applies to the initial term only unless the offer says otherwise.

4Money-back guarantee and refunds#

New shared hosting accounts carry a 30-day money-back guarantee. If the service is not for you, tell us within 30 days of activation and we will refund the hosting fee.

What is never refundable:

• Domain registrations, renewals and transfers. The registry fee is paid out the moment the domain is registered and cannot be recovered. The domain remains yours for its term.
• SSL certificates once issued.
• Design, development and SEO work already performed.
• Accounts terminated by us for breach of these terms or the Acceptable Use Policy.
• Setup and migration fees, where charged.

VPS, dedicated servers and custom work are not covered by the 30-day guarantee, because the resources are allocated to you specifically. Refunds are made to the original payment method.

Where a promotional term ran for longer than 30 days, the guarantee still runs 30 days from activation, not from the end of the promotion.

5Your rights as a consumer#

If you are a consumer under the CPA, these rights apply in addition to anything above:

• Cooling-off (ECTA s44). For services ordered electronically you may cancel within 7 days without reason or penalty, and we will refund you within 30 days. This does not apply once you have asked us to begin the service and it has been performed, or to domain registrations, which cannot be reversed once lodged with the registry.
• Cancelling a fixed-term agreement (CPA s14). You may cancel on 20 business days' written notice. We may charge a reasonable cancellation penalty, and we will tell you what it is before you commit.
• Renewal notice (CPA s14). For fixed-term agreements we will notify you in advance of expiry rather than rolling you over silently.

Section 14 of the CPA does not apply where you are a juristic person above the prescribed asset or turnover threshold.

6Late payment, suspension and termination#

If an invoice is not paid by its due date:

• We send reminders before and after the due date.
• The service may be suspended once payment is overdue. Your data is retained during suspension, and the service is restored when the account is settled. A reconnection fee may apply.
• If the account remains unpaid, the service and its data may be terminated and deleted. We aim to give clear warning before this point, but once deletion has happened it cannot be undone.

We may suspend or terminate immediately, without notice, where a service is being used unlawfully, where it threatens the stability or security of the platform, or where we are legally required to act.

7Cancelling your service#

You can cancel any service from the client area. Submit the cancellation request before the next renewal date — a request submitted after an invoice has been generated may still leave that invoice payable.

Choose immediate cancellation or cancellation at the end of the paid term. We do not pro-rata refund an unused portion of a term unless the CPA requires it or we have agreed otherwise in writing.

Take your backups before you cancel. Once a cancellation is processed the data goes.

8Your content and your responsibilities#

You own your content, and you remain responsible for it. You confirm that you have the rights to everything you host, and that it does not infringe anyone else's rights or break any law.

You are responsible for:

• Keeping your applications, themes and plugins updated. Outdated software is the single most common cause of a hacked site.
• The conduct of anyone you give access to.
• Complying with our Acceptable Use Policy, which forms part of this agreement.
• Your own legal obligations to your visitors — including your own privacy policy where you collect their personal information.

We do not monitor or pre-screen what you host. Where we are made aware of unlawful content we will act on it.

9Backups#

We take regular backups of the shared hosting platform as a courtesy and for our own disaster recovery. You may be able to restore from them, and we will help where we can.

10Availability and resources#

We run to a 99.9% uptime target and we take it seriously. It is a target we engineer for, not an unconditional guarantee, and it excludes scheduled maintenance, faults in your own code or applications, third-party failures upstream of us, and events outside our reasonable control.

We give notice of planned maintenance where we can, and we may perform emergency maintenance without notice where security or stability requires it.

Fair use of shared resources

Shared hosting is exactly that — shared. Where a plan is described as "unlimited" or "unmetered" it means we do not set an arbitrary cap, not that one account may consume a server. If an account's CPU, memory, disk I/O, inode count or process usage degrades the experience of others, we will contact you and work out a fix, which may mean optimisation or moving to a VPS or dedicated server.

Hosting accounts are for hosting websites and their email. They may not be used as remote backup, file storage, archiving or media distribution for content unrelated to a hosted site.

11Domain names#

• Domains are registered subject to the rules of the registry for that extension, and those rules take precedence over these terms.
• Availability results are indicative until the registry confirms the registration. Occasionally a domain shown as available is taken in the moments before your order completes — we will refund and tell you.
• Renewal is ultimately your responsibility. We invoice and remind you, but if a domain expires it may enter a redemption period with a substantial registry fee, and after that it is released to the public and can be taken by anyone.
• Transfers in and out follow the registry's process, including any lock periods. We do not hold domains hostage — where a domain is paid up and eligible, we will release it.
• You are responsible for the accuracy of registrant contact details. Some registries suspend domains with unverified or invalid contact details.

12Design, development and SEO#

Project work is quoted separately and governed by the quotation's scope, milestones and payment schedule, read together with these terms.

• Deposits are payable before work begins and are non-refundable once work has started.
• Ownership of the final deliverables passes to you on full payment. Third-party components — themes, plugins, stock images, fonts — remain under their own licences.
• Timelines assume you supply content, feedback and approvals when asked. Delays on your side move the delivery date.
• SEO outcomes cannot be guaranteed. Nobody controls search engine rankings, and anyone promising a specific position is misleading you. We commit to the work, not to a ranking.

13Third-party and resold services#

Some of what we provide depends on third parties — registries, certificate authorities, payment providers, network and infrastructure suppliers, and software vendors. Where a service is resold, it is also subject to that supplier's terms.

We choose our suppliers carefully and we will pursue a failure on your behalf, but we are not liable for a third party's acts, omissions or outages beyond our reasonable control.

14Intellectual property#

The BPHOST name, logo, site content and platform are ours and may not be copied or used without written permission. Nothing in this agreement transfers our intellectual property to you.

Equally, nothing here transfers your intellectual property to us. We take a limited licence to host, copy and transmit your content only to the extent needed to provide the service.

15Limitation of liability#

We provide the services with reasonable skill and care. To the fullest extent permitted by law:

• We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of business, loss of goodwill, or loss of anticipated savings.
• We are not liable for loss or corruption of data, save where it results from our gross negligence.
• Our total liability for any claim is limited to the fees you paid us for the affected service in the three months before the event giving rise to the claim.

Nothing in this clause limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited — including rights you have under the CPA.

16Indemnity#

You indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from your content, your use of the services, your breach of this agreement or the Acceptable Use Policy, or your infringement of a third party's rights.

We will tell you promptly about any such claim and give you a reasonable opportunity to deal with it.

17Changes to these terms and to services#

We may change these terms — to reflect new services, new suppliers or new law. The effective date at the top of this page shows the current version. For material changes we will give reasonable notice by email or in the client area. If you do not accept a change, you may cancel before it takes effect.

We may also modify, add to or discontinue a service. Where we discontinue a service you are paying for, we will give reasonable notice and refund any unused prepaid portion.

18Governing law and disputes#

This agreement is governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa. You consent to the jurisdiction of the Magistrate's Court having jurisdiction over you, even where the claim would otherwise exceed that court's limits, without affecting our right to proceed in a High Court.

Before either of us litigates, we should try to resolve the matter directly — raise it with us in writing and we will engage with it properly. Consumers may also refer a dispute to the National Consumer Commission or an accredited consumer goods ombud.

19General#

• Notices. We write to the email address on your account; you write to the contact address at the foot of this page or open a ticket in the client area. Notices are treated as received on the day they are sent, unless it bounces.
• Force majeure. Neither of us is liable for a failure caused by something genuinely outside our reasonable control.
• Assignment. You may not transfer this agreement without our written consent. We may transfer it as part of a sale or restructure of our business, on notice to you.
• Severability. If a clause is found unenforceable, the rest stands.
• Indulgence. If we do not enforce a right immediately, we have not given it up.
• Whole agreement. These terms, the linked policies and your order form the entire agreement between us on their subject matter.