Terms of Service

Introduction

This page was last updated on: September, 2011

Smooth Stone Services offers a variety of services. As a result, we have made an effort to simplify our terms of service into two categories. Please read the terms carefully for which you qualify.

  1. Web Hosting Terms (For our web hosting clients)
  2. Website Usage Terms (For our website visitors)

Please note that for both our web hosting terms and our website usage terms, you acknowledge that we reserve the right to update the terms at any time.

 

Web Hosting Terms

If you are planning to host your website with us through our any of our web hosting solutions (including Managed VPS), you are required to agree to the following terms:

 

General Terms

  1. Before your web hosting account is made active, you must register with us at www.smoothstoneservices.com/user and register your information at www.smoothstoneservices.com/register.
  2. We provide a 99.95% monthly server up-time guarantee. If your website is down for more than 0.05% within a single month (defined as 30 days), we will refund you that month's charge.

Data Usage, Financial Donations, & E-Commerce

  1. While we perform daily and weekly backups of our servers for disaster recovery purposes, you should also make your own backups of your own files.
  2. We do not allow any adult (pornography of any kind) or gambling related material to be hosted on our servers. In the event we find this condition has been breached, we will immediately close your account and you will not be issued a refund.
  3. Websites that contain illegal or copyrighted material of any kind will not be tolerated, including music, videos, pictures, written material, and anything else that is not your own. In the event we find this condition has been breached, we will immediately close your account and you will not be issued a refund.
  4. E-commerce websites and donation forms are allowed. However, special security considerations absolutely must be taken into account:
    1. You agree to use, at minimum, 256 bit encryption on any login pages, and any pages that require a user login. Pages that process any credit cards or bank account & routing numbers must be protected behind a user login.
    2. There are some cases when websites want to store credit card or bank account / routing numbers locally. This is not allowed (on our shared servers)! If you want to store this type of information on your website, you will need to purchase a Managed VPS Solution, and provide reasonable justification.
      1. Note that some payment processing services may ask you to store sensitive information such as credit cards & bank account / routing numbers in a report. This is an irresponsible requirement, and we will not allow this type of report to be saved. The only exception to this reporting requirement is when all but the last 4 numbers are replaced with a generic placeholder (an "x" for example).
      2. Any credit card data that is stored should be stored in an encrypted format.
      3. The PCI Security Standards Council makes it very clear that a website should not store cardholder data unless absolutely necessary. Please see https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/pdfs/pci_fs_data_storage.pdf for more information.

Payment Terms

  1. At this time, payment cycles are on an annual basis only.
  2. We offer a 15 Day Money Back Guarantee. If you are unhappy with our services, simply tell us to cancel your account within 15 days of registering, and we will gladly refund you the full amount, minus any possible setup fees.
  3. Full payment for service must be received within fourteen (14) days of receiving an invoice, which we will email you. Otherwise, we may suspend your account.
  4. There will be a $15 fee for any returned (bounced) checks, in addition to any possible bank fees we are assessed.
  5. After initial payment is received, you will be invoiced on an annual basis. Subsequent payments must be made within 14 days of the invoice date, or your account may be suspended.

Other

  1. Sometimes websites hosted in a shared environment need additional memory resources, or they might cause high disk activity, reducing the performance of the other websites. In the event that your website causes too much stress in the shared environment, we reserve the right to notify you, issue a prorated refund for the time you have left, and migrate you over to our Managed VPS Solution (at $35/month).
  2. These terms may be updated from time to time.

 

Website Usage Terms

Smooth Stone Services provides its website usage (on http://www.smoothstoneservices.com) at no cost to its members. You must agree:

  1. To conduct yourself in a responsible and respectful manner - to not harm, harrass, flame, or otherwise use our system to abuse another member
  2. To not post anything that is misleading
  3. To not post any spam

In addition, you agree that:

  1. Smooth Stone Services does not necessarily endorse, sponsor, or support any of the content posted on our Wiki (http://www.smoothstoneservices.com/wiki) or Forum (http://www.smoothstoneservices.com/forum).
  2. Our Wiki and Forum is a community collaborative effort and anyone within our community may make additions or changes.
  3. All content posted on our Wiki and Forum will stay on topic.
  4. Smooth Stone Services retains all rights on content posted outside of the Wiki and Forum.
  5. All content posted in the Wiki and Forum is not copyrighted material.