Mantis Hosting is dedicated to providing an all-round top quality service. The terms and conditions which follow are necessary to ensure that we may continue to provide the best possible service to all of our customers whilst at the same time satisfying our legal and ethical responsibilities.
Failure to follow any term or condition will be grounds for immediate account deactivation without notice. Mantis Hosting will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of any of these provisions.
Activity which results in the suspension or deactivation of an account will result in a forfeiture of all fees paid. Complaints made regarding abuses of an account will be investigated and if found guilty will be grounds for immediate suspension.
To report offences, please contact us using the link in the menu above (you will not be taken to another page).
Mantis Hosting servers may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or distribution of any information, data or material in violation of any applicable law or regulation is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property right used without proper authorisation, prescription drug sales, and material that is obscene, defamatory, constitutes an illegal threat, or violates export control laws or the laws of the United Kingdom. Examples of non-acceptable content or links: Pirated software, Hackers programs or archives, Warez sites, MP3, and IRC bots. The subscriber to Mantis Hosting service agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Mantis Hosting from any claims resulting from the use of the service that damages the subscriber or any other party.
No online pharmacies are allowed on our network.
Sites related to HYIP (High Yield Investment Programs), Ponzi schemes or pyramid schemes are prohibited.
Mantis Hosting will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.
Violations of system or network security are prohibited, and may result in criminal and civil liability. Examples include, but are not limited to the following: Unauthorized access, use, probe, or scan of a systems security or authentication measures, data or traffic. Interference with service to any user, host or network including, without limitation, mail bombing, flooding, deliberate attempts to overload a system and broadcast attacks. Forging of any TCP-IP packet header or any part of the header information in an email or a newsgroup posting.
Any website that uses a high amount of server resources (such as, but not limited to, CPU time, memory usage, and network resources) will be given an option of either paying extra for a dedicated server / semi-dedicated server (which depends on the resource needed) or reducing the resource used to an acceptable level. Mantis Hosting shall be the sole arbiter of what is considered to be a high server usage level.
Mantis Hosting does not provide nor allow chat room's On shared hosting environments. You may elect for a Dedicated Server to Run a chat room efficiently.
Mantis Hosting does not allow background Daemons such as IRC bot's; eggdrop; BitchX; XiRCON; and any other program that interferes with normal server operation. If you are found operating such programs, you will have your account terminated. Mantis Hosting will be the sole arbiter of the action taken for such offence.
Mantis Hosting does not allow IRC server, IRC bots, or IRC shells to be operated on our network.
We do not allow proxy servers or scripts, torrent trackers or torrent clients to be run from our shared/reseller hosting servers.
Mantis Hosting performs daily backups on all servers to ensure critical files are never lost. However Mantis Hosting is NOT responsible for lost data, time, income or any other resource due to faulty backups or non-existent backups.
Please always backup your own data for redundancy. For us to restore a backup for your account due an error made beyond our control, there is a £10.00 one time fee required. If your account or data is lost due to system or drive we will restore it at no additional charge. The data on our shared servers are backed up on a separate hard on a weekly and/or daily basis. Due to the nature of hard drives having errors or issues we can not ensure 100% recovery, however we will always strive to recover 100%. The charge for the restore is used to maintain the highest level of security and integrity on our backups and to strive to be able to help you restore data which may be unrecoverable without backups.
The client is responsible for all activity originating from the account unless proven to be a victim of outside hacking or address forgery. The client is responsible for securing their username/password. The client assumes responsibility for all material on their site that may be put on by a third party (such as the usage of Free For All links pages). Use of Mantis Hosting's service requires a certain level of knowledge in the use of Internet languages, protocols, and software. This level of knowledge varies depending on the anticipated use and desired content of the web space by the client. The following examples are offered: Web Publishing: requires knowledge of HTML, properly locating and linking documents, FTP'ing Web contents, Graphics, text, sound, image mapping, etc. FrontPage web publishing: knowledge of the FrontPage tools as well as Telnet and FTP understanding and capability. CGI-Scripts: requires a knowledge of the UNIX environment, TAR & GUNZIP commands, Perl, C Shell scripts, permissions, etc. Mail: a use of mail clients to receive and send mail, etc. The client agrees that he or she has the necessary knowledge to create and maintain their web space. Client agrees that it is not the responsibility of Mantis Hosting to provide this knowledge or support outside matter specific to Mantis Hosting servers.
The client understands that Mantis Hosting does not build websites for new clients, however, we do supply a free website builder with every new client account to easily make a website with little knowledge of web-programming.
Uploading, posting, emailing, transmitting or otherwise making available any UNSOLICITED or unauthorised advertising, or promotional materials where examples of these include but are not limited to "junk mail," "instant messaging," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of unauthorised solicitation from or through a Mantis Hosting server or using an email address or system that is maintained by Mantis Hosting is STRICTLY prohibited. Mantis Hosting will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. If you engage in any of the foregoing activities using the service of another ISP or IPP, but channeling activities through a Mantis Hosting server as a mail drop for responses, you are in violation. Violators will be assessed a minimum of £160.00 fine and will face an immediate suspension and/or termination. See our NO SPAM Policy for more details.
Any attempts to undermine or cause harm to a Mantis Hosting server or customer of Mantis Hosting is strictly prohibited.
Any sub-networks of Mantis Hosting and dedicated servers must adhere to the above policies. The failure to meet or follow any of the above guidelines are grounds for account deactivation. We reserve the right to remove any account without prior notice.
User agrees to only use shared hosting services for its intended applications. Misuses include scientific/grid/distributed computing, data warehouse/backup storage, or bandwidth sinks. Mantis Hosting (UK), will be the sole arbiter to what is considered a misuse of service. User agrees to ask Mantis Hosting (UK) in the event they are unsure of their application's fitness for our shared hosting services, in which case we will work with you to put your website right.
Mantis Hosting's shared Web Hosting accounts are not to be used for the purposes of distributing software and multimedia products. If you wish to distribute software and/or multimedia files, please contact info@mantishosting.co.uk for special arrangement.
Multimedia files are defined as any graphics, audio, and video files. Mantis Hosting's Web Hosting accounts are not to be used for the purposes of distributing and storing unusual amount of multimedia files. Any Web site whose disk space usage for storing the multimedia files exceed 70% of its total usage, either in terms of total size or number of files, will be deemed to be using unusual amount of multimedia files.
Mantis Hosting will take necessary steps to register domain names on behalf of the client when requested. However, clients are responsible for renewing their domain names. Mantis Hosting does not take responsibility for failing to renew domain names. If your domain name was registered via our company, you must check and take appropriate actions to renew a domain that is about to expire. We do not handle renewals unless specifically asked for by sending a ticket to our helpdesk.
The failure by a customer to meet or follow any of the above policies/terms is grounds for account deactivation. Mantis Hosting will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of the TOS. Mantis Hosting reserves the right to remove any account without prior notice.
When Mantis Hosting becomes aware of an alleged violation of its TOS, Mantis Hosting will initiate an investigation. During the investigation, Mantis Hosting may restrict a customer's access in order to prevent further potentially unauthorised activity. Depending on the severity of the violation, Mantis Hosting may, at its sole discretion, restrict, suspend, or terminate a customer's web hosting account and/or pursue other civil remedies. If such violation is a criminal offense, Mantis Hosting will notify the appropriate law enforcement authorities of such violation.
Mantis Hosting does not issue credits for outages incurred through service disablement resulting from TOS violations.
Mantis Hosting customers agree to indemnify and hold harmless Mantis Hosting from any claims resulting from the use of our services that damages them or any other party. The Mantis Hosting service is provided on an as is, as available basis without warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including, but not limited to, warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement. Mantis Hosting expressly disclaims any representation or warranty that the Mantis Hosting service will be error-free, secure or uninterrupted. No oral advice or written information given by Mantis Hosting, its employees, licensors or the like, will create a warranty; nor may you rely on any such information or advice. Mantis Hosting and its partners and suppliers will not be liable for any cost or damage arising either directly or indirectly from any transaction or use of the service.
Mantis Hosting reserves the right to add, delete, or modify any provision of this Policy at any time without notice.
Mantis Hosting, makes no endorsement, claims, or promises regarding the services offered by our customers and will not be held liable for any disputes or claims against said customers. In no event shall Mantis Hosting be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special and exemplary damages, or any damages whatsoever, arising from the use or performance of a customer web site or from any information, services or products provided through a customer web site. If there is questionable content on any server in our network, we will not take any action against any material or action until the website is brought to our attention by contacting our abuse department.
As consideration for the software or services purchased by you and provided to you by Mantis Hosting, you agree to pay Mantis Hosting at the time you order. All fees are due immediately and are non-refundable unless otherwise expressly noted, even if your services are suspended, terminated, or transferred prior to the end of the services term. Mantis Hosting expressly reserves the right to modify pricing through email notification and/or notice on its web site. You may make payment by providing either a valid credit card or PayPal email address.
Shared hosting, reseller hosting, dedicated servers and collocation services are all billed on an automatic basis on the first of every month. If you sign up mid month you will be charged a pro-rated amount from signup date to the first of the next month. Regular monthly charges will begin the following month. If you sign up for an annual plan you will also be charged a prorated amount and billed on a similar fashion. Mantis Hosting will automatically renew your services when they come up for renewal and will take payment from the payment method you have on file with Mantis Hosting at Mantis Hosting's current rates.
If for any reason, Mantis Hosting is unable to charge your payment method for the full amount owed, or if Mantis Hosting is charged a penalty for any fee it previously charged to your payment method (such as a charge back dispute), you agree that Mantis Hosting may peruse all available remedies in order to obtain payment. You agree that among the remedies Mantis Hosting may peruse in order to effect payment, shall include but will not be limited to, immediate cancellation without notice to you of any domain names or services registered or renewed on your behalf.
You agree that you are solely liable for arranging that your services are renewed, and that Mantis Hosting shall not be liable to you or any third party if it is unable to charge your payment method in order to renew your services. You also agree that you are liable for all services that have been rendered on your behalf until a termination of service has been officially received by the accountholder for services.
If at any time, your hosting payments become past due, you will receive a notification via email (to the most recently updated email address on file) with instructions on rectifying the situation. Please note that Mantis Hosting holds the right to deny access to and/or de-activate accounts hosted on our servers of which have unpaid past due balances.
Accounts are at risk for suspension of service if payment for hosting is not received 10 days after the due date.
Shared/Reseller Accounts 15 days past due will be assessed a £15.00 GBP late fee to re-activate service. Dedicated Server Accounts 15 days past due will be assessed the cost of their server for 1 month late fee to re-activate service.
If an account holder submits a bank assisted dispute for services rendered, their hosting account will be de-activated within 48 hours if the payment issue has not been recovered. A £35.00 GBP charge back fee will be added to the amount disputed by the customer.
We only accept credit cards, debit cards, or PaypPal for payment of services. Yearly plans renew automatically and are charged to the most recently updated credit card (or Paypal address) on file. In the event that your yearly/monthly charge is denied and we are unable to contact you, then the aforementioned fees to enable your account shall apply. Monthly installments will incur for the entire duration services are rendered and you remain subscribed to until you submit proper cancellation of the account.
Any debt not paid 90 days after the due date will be forwarded to an outside collections agency for proper collection. At that time, the account holder will incur a £50.00 GBP collection fee added to the balance previously due, unless you can give us a date that the monies will be aid by.
Please note that Mantis Hosting holds the right to deny access to and/or de-activate accounts hosted on our servers with past due balances.
We reserve the right to refuse, cancel, or suspend service at our sole discretion.
The client is responsible for all activity originating from the account unless proven to be a victim of outside hacking or address forgery. The client is responsible for securing their username/password. The client assumes responsibility for all material on their site that may be put on by a third party (such as the usage of Free For All links pages). Use of Mantis Hosting service requires a certain level of knowledge in the use of Internet languages, protocols, and software. This level of knowledge varies depending on the anticipated use and desired content of the web space by the client. The following examples are offered: Web Publishing: requires knowledge of HTML, properly locating and linking documents, FTPing Web contents, Graphics, text, sound, image mapping, etc. FrontPage web publishing: knowledge of the FrontPage tools as well as Telnet and FTP understanding and capability. CGI-Scripts: requires a knowledge of the UNIX environment, TAR & GUNZIP commands, Perl, CShell scripts, permissions, etc. Mail: a use of mail clients to receive and send mail, etc. The client agrees that he or she has the necessary knowledge to create and maintain their web space. Client agrees that it is not the responsibility of Mantis Hosting to provide this knowledge or support outside matter specific to Mantis Hosting servers.
Any website on our shared servers that uses a high amount of server resources (CPU, memory usage, and network resources) will be given an option to pay for a dedicated server. The abuse and misuse of system resources is a serious problem, and Mantis Hosting does not tolerate it. Accounts on a shared server must be shared with other users, so we must limit how much of the CPU and memory that can be used by any one account.
In all fairness, we cannot allow one or two clients to use all of the system resources on a shared machine and have all other clients suffer because of it. Excessive CPU & memory usage by one or more clients causes extreme slowness in all areas: MySQL, Email, HTTP and more. If the CPU & memory usage by a few clients gets out of hand, all sites hosted on the machine will return errors and not be accessible in any way.
Memory usage may not exceed 10% per domain/file/application
CPU usage may not exceed 15% per domain/file/application
Apache connections may not exceed 30 connections
15 MySQL maximum user connections allowed
350 emails per hour, per domain
There are special exceptions to these rules to be determined at the time we discover abuse. There are different combinations of usage that can create problems and other special cases. At any given time a server is unstable and an account is found to be the cause, we reserve the right to suspend the account to keep the server online and operating normally. If the usage is an increasing trend, we recommend the user invest in a dedicated server so the website can grow at a normal rate without restriction.
In the event your website has been suspended for resource abuse (abuse that cannot be resolved by removing/changing a script, etc.) and you do not wish to upgrade to a dedicated server to accommodate your site needs, we will only release the suspension within 24-48 hours. This is to ensure the CPU intensive site slows down in traffic to avoid further damage and problems. A backup will then be provided of your files or you will be allowed FTP/cPanel access for a certain time period. Any questions about our abuse policy may be answered by emailing us: info@mantishosting.co.uk
This web site availability service level agreement (SLA) applies to you if you have ordered any hosting plan ("service") and you are in good financial standing with Mantis Hosting.
Mantis Hosting endeavours to have network connectivity available for http access by third parties 99% of the time ("web site availability"). We simply endeavour to achieve this goal and in the past 12 months we have achieved this on all our servers. However, we cannot offer any guarantees. If you require a guaranteed service we recommend looking elsewhere. We cannot be held responsible financially or otherwise should your website not be available for a period of time; it is simply an impossibility!
In the event that there is no web site availability, Mantis Hosting will credit the monthly service charge for the service as calculated below and as measured 24 hours a day in a calendar month. The maximum credit is not to exceed the monthly service charge for the affected month (total yearly cost paid minus domain cost if applicable divided by 12):
Web site availability credit
95% to 99% = 25%
90% to 94.9% = 50%
89.9% or below = 100%
In order for you to receive a credit on your account, you must request such credit within seven (7) business days after you experienced no web site availability so that we may check our stats and your stats. You must request credit by contacting our support team through our support ticket system (click on contact in the menu). For security, the body of this message must contain your domain name, the dates and times of the unavailability of your web site, and such other customer identification requested by Mantis Hosting. Credits will usually be applied within sixty (60) days of your credit request. Credit to your account shall be your sole and exclusive remedy in the event that there is no web site availability.
Credits shall not be provided to you in the event that you have no web site availability resulting from (i) scheduled maintenance, (ii) your behaviour or the performance or failure of your equipment, programs or applications, or (iii) circumstances beyond Mantis Hosting's reasonable control, including, without limitation, acts of any governmental body, war, insurrection, sabotage, embargo, fire, flood, strike or other labour disturbance, interruption of or delay in transportation, unavailability of interruption or delay in telecommunications or third party services (including DNS propagation), failure of third party software or hardware or inability to obtain raw materials, supplies, or power used in or equipment needed for provision of your website.
Online problems occur continuously. There might come a time when you cannot access your website or any other service. This is not necessarily due to Mantis Hosting. Perhaps your ISP is experiencing technical difficulties, or there might be a routing problem between your ISP and the data centre utilised by Mantis Hosting, making communication difficult or impossible. We cannot bear the responsibility of such problems. Our monitoring agents determine the uptime of our service, and not any one client's experience.
In a shared hosting environment, having a few hundred POP3 accounts check mail every minute is abusive to the server and can increase server load. If you do not need to auto-check your mail accounts, please disable the feature in your email client and manually check your mail when needed. Because of users that do need to check their mail very often, we have to impose a mail policy for everyone's sake. This portion of our mail policy deals directly with POP checks per hour, per domain. Our default allowance per domain is 60 checks per hour. This can allow one account, for example: mail@domain.com to check every 1 minute. If you have two accounts: mail@domain.com and mail2@domain.com, the checks can be spread out between those accounts equally at 2 minute intervals. If you have more than two accounts, you can increase the intervals as needed. Please also remember that you can use email address forwarders; they can be extremely useful for you if you need to have multiple email addresses in use.
While we would like to let everyone poll the server as many times as they want, and for as many accounts that they have, we have to impose limits on our servers. We have to be realistic since the performance of the server is very important. It would be easier to have policies than to be on a server that is timing out on web requests, or having trouble queueing mail at all due to load spikes.
As covered earlier, we understand that in some cases you will have numerous people checking mail@domain.com, mail2@domain.com and mail3@domain.com. If you have many mail accounts under one domain, the policy will still have to apply as is. We cannot permit many accounts checking every minute, especially under ownership of one account, when there are ways to alleviate the effects. We will review this policy and increase the limit if server load appears not be being affected.
If you have popped your mail more than the amount of times allowed, your password will be rejected and you will see a message such as this:
There was a problem logging onto your mail server. Your Password was rejected. Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR You have exceeded the number of connections you are permitted to make per hour. Please wait a couple of minutes and try again.'
If this occurs, you can check your webmail at:
http://yourdomain.co.uk:2095
So with that said, there will never be a point where you cannot access your email. There is always another route. In a shared environment, limits do need to be placed, there is no doubt about it. Problems occur if there are no limits at all. The reliability of a shared server relies on the success of proper planning and management.
It is important to note that at times a server's limits will be changed from what they were set to previously. Accounts on an individual server have different (and sometimes unpredictable) needs and perform varying activities. We can state that the limits will remain at X and Y, but if a server is showing signs of trouble, we will need to cut additional corners on what processes are using the most CPU time. On the flip side, if we see a server is performing perfectly as is for months, we can then expand the limits gradually until a new comfortable but safe zone is reached. However, this mantra can be applied to many aspects of server use policies, not just mail.
If you choose to engage in marketing your site and/or services via email please heed the following. The only permitted form of email marketing is that in which the list is "opt-in". By definition, opt-in is where people provide you with their email address specifically requesting to be on your email list for information about your site and/or service. Even opt-in has its share of issues, so we cannot guarantee we will host this type of site on our network. If we find your account trasnmitting email to persons that did not authorize such activity, that is grounds to suspend and terminate your site.
Note: On the flip side, the joining of an opt-in email list does not guarantee the legitimacy of such a list. Please contact us before joining any such list so that you will not be a victim of spam from second and third parties of such lists. We would be happy to help you determine if a list looks legitimate.
Mantis Hosting has a zero tolerance policy regarding unsolicited commercial email (UCE) and unsolicited bulk email (UBE) also known as "spam". The definition of spam:
An electronic message is "spam" IF:
You will be cited with "UCE/UBE Abuse" if you send any email to persons who have not specifically asked to receive email from you. The sending origin of such email is irrelevant. Upon confirmation of abuse, any Mantis Hosting customer engaging in this practice will have their service suspended. Not only does spam place a strain on the server that can negatively effect that server's uptime record and performance record, you subject that server to the possibility of being blacklisted. Getting a server IP taken off a blacklist is a very time consuming process and while the process happens many customers are affected as mail bounces back to them. We must all work together on a shared server to ensure blacklisting does not happen.
If your site will be sending mailings out to subscribers, this is a checklist of what you are required to do:
You must not try to hide, forge or misrepresent the sender of the e-mail and sending site of the e-mail.
Bulk mailings must specifically state how the persons' e-mail addresses were obtained and must indicate the frequency of the mailing.
Bulk mailings should contain simple and obvious unsubscribe mechanisms. We recommend that this be in the form of a working link to a one-click unsubscribe system; however, a valid "reply to:" address may be used instead.
All subscription based e-mail must have valid, non-electronic, contact information for the sending organization in the text of each e-mail including either a phone number or physical mailing address.
All bulk e-mail must be solicited, meaning that the sender has an existing and provable relationship with the e-mail recipient and the recipient has not requested not to receive future mailings from the sender. Documentation of the relationship between the sender and the recipient must be made available upon request.
Prohibited Uses of Mantis Hosting Systems and Services Regarding Spam
Sending Unsolicited Bulk Email ("UBE", "spam"). The sending of any form of Unsolicited Bulk Email through Mantis Hosting servers is prohibited. Likewise, the sending of UBE from another service provider advertising a web site, email address or utilising any resource hosted on Mantis Hosting servers, is prohibited. Mantis Hosting accounts or services may not be used to solicit customers from, or collect replies to, messages sent from another Internet Service Provider where those messages violate this Policy or that of the other provider.
Running Unconfirmed Mailing Lists. Subscribing email addresses to any mailing list without the express and verifiable permission of the email address owner is prohibited. All mailing lists run by Mantis Hosting customers must be Closed-loop ("Confirmed Opt-in"). The subscription confirmation message received from each address owner must be kept on file for the duration of the existence of the mailing list. Purchasing lists of email addresses from 3rd parties for mailing to from any Mantis Hosting hosted domain, or referencing any Mantis Hosting account, is prohibited.
Operating an account on behalf of, or in connection with, or reselling any service to, persons or firms listed in the Spamhaus Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database at www.spamhaus.org.
We receive automatic reports from Spamhaus, AOL and SpamCop for our IP ranges. If there are more than three complaints logged against your site in one day, the site will be suspended until a resolution/explanation is made.