Sanders Hosting Policy Page

Note: items in red mean that such item has been recently added

Just like in any other web host, there are policies on what you can do with your web hosting account and can't do. However, we are usually more flexible than other web hosts whenever we need to enforce a policy.

Good behavior
Each customer is expected to use his/her account for the purpose of maintaining a web site only, with responsibility and respect toward other Internet users. Common sense is the best guide as to what is right and wrong, and it's the same guide we'll use when analyzing an event of bad behavior.

Lawful purposes only
All customers must use their web hosting accounts for lawful purposes only. This means that you can't house or transmit any kind of information that could be considered illegal by a government body.

Unauthorized use
No customer may use an account at Sanders Hosting to:

Try to break in to the account of another customer or user on the Internet.
To "hack" another account, computer or network at a local or remote location.
Run scripts that can be damaging to another account or computer system either local to our network or remote.
Password cracking, port scanning, or any other method used to find weaknesses on a local or remote computer system.
Other events we might consider to be harmful to a computer system or network.

Legal and acceptable content only
No customer may transmit or link to data that we may consider illegal or immoral. This includes:

Anything we might consider graphic, obscene or of adult content (and this includes banners too), be it text, photos, cartoons, renderings, etc. The final determination of what constitutes such material is made by Sanders Hosting.
Information that is damaging to an individual, group or organization. This includes information promoting racism or hate crimes.
MP3s or other formats containing music that has not been authorized for public distribution.
Game ROMS that can be considered damaging to a company, its sales and/or brand.
What is known as "warez" files.
Software serial numbers, crackz, software for hacking, etc.
Any other files not mentioned above but considered illegal and/or unacceptable. Such determination is to be made by Sanders Hosting.

FACT OF LIFE: a web host is in no way responsible for the content in a customer's web site, and thus will not protect you in anyway if you are against the law.

Acceptable use of account
Customers on Sanders Hosting may not:

Use their webspace to store files that are not part of their web site (i.e. using it as a backup location for your personal data or placing files so that other web sites can link to them), or have big or too many "orphaned" files. Orphaned files are files that were once part of your web site, but not anymore. Please do cleanups from time to time.
Run scripts or have CGIs that will consume an unacceptable amount of server resources (CPU and/or RAM), as this affects the overall performance of a server, and thus affects other web sites. See below.
Users may not leave any kind of software running on the server while user is not logged in the system.
No software related to IRC may be used on our servers (this includes bots, downloaders, etc.).
Clients may not use the account for excessive downloads through a user's shell by means of FTP, web (Lynx) or download utilities (wget).

E-mail, spam and mailing lists
"Spam" is the act of sending mass unsolicited advertising (through any means, either email, USENET, ICQ, etc.) to users that have not requested it. We do NOT tolerate spam. The account of a customer found to be spamming will be terminated immediately (even if the spam did not originated from our servers but it's about advertising a web site or service on our servers) and will be charged a "cleanup" fee of $30. Account termination is done only after necessary research and after it is proved that the customer indeed originated the spam. A violation of this policy also includes any spam sent from outside our systems, but still mentioning any web site within our systems.

Emails sent to other users should be respectful and considerate. If it is proven that emails originating from a client is affecting any other Internet user/organization in a negative way, then the client will have his/her account terminated immediately. Mailbombing, subscribing a user to a mailing list without his/her authorization, the posting of outrageous messages to generate response and/or cross posting to an excessive number of newsgroups to bring traffic is forbidden by Sanders Hosting, and the general Internet population.

Mailing lists provided by web sites must all include instructions on how a receiver can unsubscribe from the mailing list. We also request that all mailing lists deliveries be made between 3:00AM and 7:00AM EST, which are non-peak usage hours.

Users with excessive usage of email will be monitored and might have their email restricted if the user's usage of email is harmful to the server's performance. This includes excessive email deliveries due to a site that had web based email in a previous occasion but is no longer offering such service (email addressed to previous users will still arrive, sometimes reaching thousands of messages per hour), a large number of undelivered messages bouncing back to our servers as a result of poorly maintained mailing lists/delivery lists, etc., and any other number of reasons that cause an excessive and harmful amount of email usage.

Webspace usage
Contrary to popular belief, high quality webspace is not cheap. Yes, a 100GB hard drive might cost around $150 (as of January 2003), but a 100GB RAID5 storage device costs over $1,000 (as of January 2003). Because of this, the usage of webspace by customers is constantly monitored. Here are the guidelines for webspace usage:

Customers may use their webspace to ONLY store their web site.
You may not download files to your account (by using Lynx of wget), unless the file is to become part of the web site.
You may not store personal files on your account. Webspace is not for personal backups!
All files on your webspace must be linked to pages. That is, you may not have "orphaned files" (files that are not part of the web site). Please do maintenance from time to time and delete files that are no longer used.
Always delete temporary files (like those created by wget).
Do not store thousands of files on a single directory. This slows down access to the filesystem, and will make the delivery of your files slower.

CPU/RAM usage
The CPU/RAM consumption of a web site may in no way affect the performance of a server. This means that the implementation of CGIs on a web site must be carefully studied by the account's owner. Examples of what can cause high CPU/RAM usage are:

CGIs that handle too much data from text files. An example of this is a message board. The UBB (Ultimate Bulletin Board) is very known to consume very high amounts of CPU anytime it has to handle its flat file database (like when someone posts a message).
Perl scripts constantly executed consume a lot of server resources, since the Perl interpreter must be launched each time the script is called. Please read our CGI FAQ for information on how to prevent this.
Scripts with long loops.
Scripts that are constantly calling a database and doing complex queries.
Sites with traffic in excess of 140,000 hits per day will consume plenty of CPU and RAM, since the webserver has to handle more. No web sites with more than 140,000 hits/day will be accepted for shared hosting at Sanders Hosting. Such web sites will need a dedicated server. Note: This policy will apply to all accounts at Sanders Hosting.
Web sites with more than 140,000 hits per day can be accepted at special rates. Contact our sales department for more information.

If a script (and its instances) is found to be consuming too much CPU power (more than 10% constantly) and/or RAM, and it's affecting the overall performance of a server, Sanders Hosting has the right to move the script, and warn the account's owner. The warning will consist of a request to improve the performance of the script, or to replace it by a more efficient one. If, the account's user pays no attention to a warning (or several ones) and puts the script back to work, Sanders Hosting has the right to delete the script and change the account's password until the user complies. If, after that, the user still pays no attention to the warning and puts the script back, Sanders Hosting will delete the account. No refunds for the current month of service will be given (advanced payments will be refunded) and a $35 clean up fee might be charged.

Data loss policy
Sanders Hosting is not responsible for any data loss and/or damages that can incur due to such event. This includes data loss caused by the user, lack of caution by the user (i.e.: leaving your password written down where others can see it, log in, and delete/steal your data), hardware/software/human error, or a server security breach. Sanders Hosting is *very* strict about server security, and it is something we monitor constantly every day. We are also very good at maintaining hardware in optimum conditions thanks to our years of extensive experience in the server hardware industry.

FACT OF LIFE: Most web hosts pay no attention to server security and constantly have security breaches. We know this due to experience with other web hosts and their systems (specially with major web hosts). Most don't apply security patches and use default operating system installations (!!!). Some leave ports open, unnecessary services running, etc. This is not the case with Sanders Hosting. However, we can't guarantee 100% fool proof security (actually, no one can guarantee you such a thing) since, as you might know, security bugs constantly appear on all operating systems before solutions to them are available.

Partial hosting
Partial hosting is the practice of having a web site on one server, and having different sections of it on different web hosts. For example, the web site on one web host, and its images on another. Or, the front end to a script on one web host, and its MySQL database backend on another. We do not allow a web site on another web host to have parts of it on ours. This is usually done by very high traffic customers, and of course, their high traffic sections on our servers cause problems for us. But if your site is on our servers, you can have parts of it somewhere else (like chat rooms, email service, etc.).

Billing
All customers have 15 days to pay their accounts after their accounts become due. Web access to the account will be blocked if account is not paid within those 15 days. It will be deleted after 30 days. Credit card chargebacks made by customers on charges made by Sanders Hosting will incur a fee of $25, just the same if a check sent by a customer bounces.

Bandwidth usage
If you are found to be exceeding the amount of bandwidth your account allows then we will contact you and ask you to upgrade your account or add extra bandwidth. If your site is using more that 24GB of bandwidth per month then we will contact you on an individual basis to determine a solution (possibly dedicated server or pay per extra GB of bandwidth)

Free domain offer
All customers who register for a new account, will receive a free domain name with their purchase of the account. This domain name will be owned by the customer but Sanders Hosting will be listed as the Technical, Administrator, and Billing contacts. If the customer decides to leave in good standing then the domain name will remain his, and all contact information will be changed into his name. If the customer leaves after staying with Sanders Hosting for less than 3 months then a $15 fee will be billed via PayPal to settle the domain name charge. If the customer refuses to pay this fee then the ownership of the domain name will be turned over to Sanders Hosting.

Unlimited email feature
The unlimited account features are not to be used to provide your visitors with some kind of "free email" offer. Doing so could kill a server, as thousands of people using email at a time can crash the operating system due to the excessive load, PLUS, their email messages will take a LOT of hard drive space. Email accounts are only for the internal use of a web site's staff.

Procedures
Sanders Hosting will proceed as necessary against any web sites violating these policies, in any of the following ways:

Sanders Hosting will give you a warning (by email or phone) if we consider that your policy violation is not of a serious matter.
If you are found to be distributing or storing "warez" software (for example, a copy of Adobe Photoshop or MSOffice), then the files will be deleted and we'll send you a warning. We'll also charge you a "cleanup" fee of $30.
Any obscene material of the type graphic, racist or hate related, will be deleted immediately and you will be charged a "cleanup" fee of $30 with NO advanced notice. Any other obscene material not of those types will mean an immediate warning.
You will be given an immediate warning if a copyright holder of some file you are distributing contacts us for removal and submits evidence. If the file is of the kind mentioned above in this section, it will be deleted and information about you will be given to the copyright holder if he/she/they request it. If it is not of the type mentioned above, contact information about the customer will be given to the copyright holder so that a beneficiary agreement can be reached between both customer and copyright holder.
Warnings must be replied within 36 hours. If not, clean up or termination of account might follow.
Any account that is terminated will not be refunded the current month of service. Months that have been paid in advanced will be refunded.

Refunds
Sanders Hosting offers a refund of any months of service you have prepaid. By this, it is understood that:

The current month of service will not be refunded, but you will be refunded any months of service you have prepaid.
If you applied for the "free domain offer" and you cancel during the first 3 months from when the account is created then a $15 charge will be billed to your account.

Domain renewal policy
Sanders Hosting will take care of your domain's renewal fees, as long as:

You registered the domain through Sanders Hosting, and you still have a web hosting account at Sanders Hosting when the domain's renewal date comes.
The domain is a .com, .net, .org, .us, .biz, .info, or .ws.
You do not leave Sanders Hosting for more than one month and come back again before the domain's renewal time comes.
You have been with Sanders Hosting with an active web hosting account for at least a year, even if the domain was not registered through Sanders Hosting.
You agree to transfer your domain from your registrar (Network Solutions, Register.com, etc) over to the registrar Sanders Hosting uses if you did not registered that domain through Sander Hosting (note this must be done 30 days before the domain becomes due again, and is the responsibility of the customer).

Domain registration policy
You may register any domain you want, as long as the domain is not of a trademark owned by someone else (i.e.: you can't register a domain like IBM.com even if it were available), however, the ability to successfully register the domain does not make you immune from objection to the use or registration of the domain.

Our rights
Sanders Hosting has the right to deny business to a customer, if this customer is:

being rude to a member of our staff,
attempting to re-open an account after the user's account has been previously canceled due to a policy violation,
constantly creating problems on a server,
constantly having billing problems
demanding or expecting in a rude fashion more than what our service provides or what we can do ("I want you to install X software for me. Do it now or else", "I want more email accounts for free. I'm the customer and you have to satisfy me. So give me the extra email accounts", etc etc).

Always be polite. If you are not, we have the right to no longer provide you with web hosting service. If we decide to stop providing you service due to any of these reasons, we'll give you service until the end of your billing cycle so that you have time to move to a new web host. If we consider the event to be too severe, the account will be terminated immediately.

Note: Such a decision would be *FINAL*.

Sanders Hosting reserves the right to modify these policies at any time.