eSmart Hosting

We want to make being an eSmart customer the best experience it can be. The terms of using our service are set out with this in mind. If you have any queries about our terms of use, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

eSmart provides internet, email & application hosting and additional services. eSmart reserves the right to suspend or cancel a customer's access to any or all services provided by eSmart when eSmart decides that the account has been inappropriately used or otherwise.

Note: all our services are covered by the General Terms and Conditions below, in addition please see service specific terms and conditions.

Our business is continually evolving and as such we reserve the right to change our Terms and Conditions when necessary. It is your responsibility to ensure that you are up to date with all of our T&Cs. We will, however, notify you of any prominent changes we feel you need to be pro-actively made aware of.

By signing up for and/ or otherwise accessing any of the services or products offered by eSmart Technologies Ltd you agree to be bound by all the Terms and Conditions listed here. These Terms and Conditions supersede all earlier versions. To the extent that You are deemed to be a consumer as defined by the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 or the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 (UTCCR), these conditions will not affect Your rights and will only apply to the extent that applicable law allows.

Payment Policies

All accounts are set up on a prepay basis. Although eSmart reserves the right to change prices of accounts or services at any time, all pricing is guaranteed for the period of prepayment.

Payment is due every 30 or 365 days, following the date the account was established. Customers will automatically be charged again at the end of their prepay period unless closure notification has already been given. In situations where the card number on file is declined eSmart will immediately suspend the facility to purchase services on-line until the outstanding charge is processed successfully.

In addition, eSmart reserves the right to suspend other services until the outstanding debt is cleared. Any non-payment of a recurring invoice is subject to a £20 administration charge. The customer is responsible for all money owed on the account from the time it was established to the time that the customer sends a written cancellation request.

You are required to have a valid credit/debit card and email address registered on your account at all times, failure to do so may result in suspension of your account. No bills or invoices will be sent by regular mail. All invoices will be sent directly to customers via email shortly after the purchase has been made. At this point the customer's card will be charged automatically.

No bills or invoices will be sent by regular mail. All invoices will be sent directly to customers via email shortly after the online purchase has
been made. At this point the customer's card will be charged automatically.

We reserve the right to add a late payment fee of £20 to any invoices that remain unpaid for more than 30 days past their stated due date.

All payment is in UK sterling, and all prices are displayed ex VAT unless stated otherwise.

General Terms and Conditions:

Server use

eSmart reserves the right to refuse service and/or access to its servers and/or services to anyone.
eSmart does not allow any of the following content to be stored on its servers:
Adult material - includes all pornography, erotic images, or otherwise lewd or obscene content.
Excessive download content or non-linked content.
Refusal of service based on content matching either of these two criteria is entirely at the discretion of eSmart.
eSmart reserves the right to move your data to a different server with no previous notice.

Support

We will endeavor to provide a continuous high quality service. If you experience problems with your service, you should consult our support website. Should you fail to find a resolution to your problem in our Knowledge Base you will find our 24/7 support contact details on our contact pages.

Please note we may require suspension of some of our services for short scheduled periods to carry out maintenance or repair to our services. Information concerning scheduled downtime will be made available on the eSmart support ticket system and emailed to you in advance.

Reselling of Services

All accounts other than our Reseller account are to be used by the primary owner only, and do not allow the holders to resell, store or give away web-hosting services of their website to other parties.

Web hosting services are defined as allowing a separate, third party to host content on the owner's web site. Exceptions to this include ad banners, classified ads, and personal ads.

Customers may however resell all of our services with our Reseller package.

eSmart reserve the right to suspend access to the automated management facilities of the Reseller account including the API (Application Programming Interface) if a customer's use is deemed to be affecting the platform. Access may be reinstated pending investigation.

Unlimited Use Policy

High bandwidth usage: eSmart offers an unlimited use policy by maintaining very large ratios of bandwidth per customer. In rare cases, eSmart may find a customer to be using server resources to such an extent that he or she may jeopardize service performance and resources for other customers. In such instances, at eSmart's discretion, eSmart reserves the right to impose the High Resource User Policy for the consideration of all customers.

Database Usage

If you exceed the limits on our database products (MS SQL and MySQL) then we will automatically charge you for the additional space you use at our current prices. For example if you have a 150MB database and 200MB is in use at any point during a month then we will charge for the extra 50MB in that month.

High Resource User Policy

Resources are defined as bandwidth, processor utilization or disk space.

eSmart may implement the following policy to its sole discretion:

When the resources utilised by a customer in using a service are abnormally high, eSmart reserves the right to suspend that service immediately. This policy is only implemented in extreme circumstances and is intended to prevent the misuse of our services. Customers may be offered an option whereby eSmart continues supplying the service under a reduced usage criteria specified by eSmart. Failure to comply with such measures may result in your service being terminated.

Uploads via scripting languages

We limit uploads made via scripting languages - including PHP, ASP and ASP.NET. Uploads made using PHP are limited to 20MB per file.

Your personal details

Please note that whilst your email is primarily used for billing purposes, eSmart reserves the right to email you information about enhancements to our systems and product offerings. You can unsubscribe from marketing communications within your eSmart login.

We will not provide any of your personal information to other companies or individuals without your permission. However, we may need to provide your name and delivery address to third parties that eSmart may use for the purposes of delivering specific services to you (e.g. customer support).

Payment options

In order to streamline our accounting procedures and keep costs down eSmart currently runs a limited number of payment options.

Credit / Debit Cards: eSmart accepts MasterCard, Visa, Visa electron, Switch/Maestro and Solo.

Cheque Payment: This option is only available to business customers who pay for their eSmart account via consultation with our prior agreement. A credit/debit card number will still be required if customers require the facility to purchase domains and other services on-line. eSmart cannot guarantee that a service will be provided until after any received cheques have been cleared.

30 day trial

For customers opening their first account the initial 30 days are available on a trial basis. Customers will not be entitled to this benefit if they have previously had an account with eSmart unless the period of absence has been greater than one year. New customers will not be entitled to a trial period if any account has previously been created at the same postal address within the same 12 month time span.

The 30 day trial does not apply to our Domains, or Dedicated Server offerings.

Contract Terms

All hosting, email and dedicated server accounts are subject to a 12 month minimum contract term.

Cancellations

• After the minimum contract period, customers may cancel any package by contacting us directly. Customers must provide details of the account/package to close, including the account Password for verification. eSmart will not, under any circumstances, close an account without first confirming the Account Password.
• Customers will be required to complete a Closure Confirmation form, authorising the permanent removal of all website and email services on the account, from our system.
• On receipt of a completed Closure Confirmation form, the account will be scheduled to close. eSmart will acknowledge the closure by sending an email to the email address registered on the account.
• If eSmart do not receive the completed Closure Confirmation form within 14 days of sending, the cancellation request will be discarded and the account/package will remain open.
• Any incentives that were offered to customers when opening their account will also be cancelled. Customers may be given the option to purchase services which were offered as start-up incentives, in the result of a cancellation.
• eSmart reserves the right to cancel the service at any time.

Refunds

Fees charged on a pre-pay basis (together with account set-up fees, where applicable), are non-refundable.

Customers will only be entitled to a refund when the service is within a trial period, or where the service is cancelled by eSmart.

In the event that eSmart cancels the customer's service, the customer will be entitled to a pro rata refund based upon the remaining period of membership. If a customer contravenes eSmart's Terms of Service a refund may not be issued in the event of a cancellation.

Customers who cancel during the initial 30 day trial period will only be entitled to a full refund for their hosting fees, but will not be entitled to a refund for any additional services purchased. Any incentives offered to customers when opening the account will also be cancelled. Customers may be given the option to purchase services which were offered as start-up incentives in the result of a cancellation.

Acceptable use policy

Guidelines
This policy is subject to change, so please check regularly for updates. This policy is in addition to eSmart Terms and Conditions.

1) Web hosting

1.1) eSmart reserves the right to suspend or cancel a customer's access to any or all services provided by eSmart , where eSmart decides that the account has been inappropriately used. eSmart reserves the right to refuse service and/or access to its servers to anyone.
1.2) eSmart offers unlimited web space and bandwidth with some account types. By this, we mean unlimited space for legitimate web site content and bandwidth for visitors to view it. All files on a domain must be part of the active website and linked to the site. Sites should not contain any backups, downloads, or other non-web based content. We will treat all password protected archive (e.g. zip and rar) files as unacceptable. Multimedia content such as audio and video is acceptable provided it is streamed to the user, links to HTTP download of this content is not acceptable. eSmart offers a streaming media service for this type of content.
1.3) Scripts on the site must be designed to produce web-based content, and not to use the server as an application server. Using the server to generate large volumes of email from a database is an example of activity that is not allowed. Scripts should not attempt to manipulate the timeouts on servers. These are set at the present values to ensure the reliability of the server. Sites that reset these do so because they are resource intensive, and adversely affect server performance and are therefore not allowed. Scripts that are designed to provide proxy services, anonymous or otherwise, are not allowed.
1.4) eSmart will disable any domain that fails to adhere to the following criteria as soon as we are made aware, in line with current working practices:
1.4.1) The primary purpose of any site must be to provide web-based content to viewers. Files on the site must be linked to the web site.
1.4.2) The primary purpose of any script must be to produce a web page. Scripts that send a single email based upon user entered information, or update a database are acceptable. Scripts that send bulk email or perform processor intensive database processes are not allowed. All outgoing mail is monitored and filtered.
1.4.3) Sites must not contain Warez, copyright or other illegal material. The onus is on you the customer to prove that you own the rights to publish material, not for eSmart to prove that you do not.
1.4.4) Sites must not contain pornographic or other lewd material. Adult Material includes all pornography, erotic images, or otherwise lewd or obscene content. The designation of "adult material" is left entirely to the discretion of eSmart.
1.4.5) Sites must not use excessive amounts of server resources. These include bandwidth, processor utilization and / or disk space. Please see the 'High Resource Use Policy' in the General Terms and Conditions.
1.4.6) Sites must not contain scripts that attempt to access privileged server resources, or other sites on the same server.

2) Email

2.1) If eSmart identify a mailbox or domain that is causing problems; we will either remove the offending mailboxes or change their settings to resolve the issue. In extreme cases, we will disable email or suspend all services to the domain as appropriate.
2.2) Common issues that cause problems are:
2.2.1) Where a mailbox receives large volumes of undeliverable email.
2.2.2) Where mailboxes have forwarders set to other mailboxes where mail cannot be delivered.
2.2.3) Where mailboxes have forwarders and/or auto-responders that generate circular mail loops.
2.3) You may not use eSmart email services for any of the following:
2.3.4) To send messages or communications, which are unsolicited, offensive, abusive, indecent or obscene.
2.3.5) To send messages causing annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety to another user of the Internet.
2.3.6) To send messages for the purpose of Fraud and /or with the intention of committing a criminal offence.
2.4) To prevent the sending of bulk unsolicited mail, SMTP traffic to and from a server will be blocked in the following scenarios:
2.4.1) Where we identify a server that has an open mail relay.
2.4.2) Where a significant volume of mail is sent from a domain in a defined timescale.
2.4.3) Where we have received significant volumes of complaints concerning unsolicited mail originating from a eSmart hosted domain.
2.5) To prevent eSmarts' IP Addresses being blocked by IP Address blocking, a domain held on eSmart servers may be disabled:
2.5.1) Where we have received significant volumes of complaints concerning unsolicited mail originating from or unsolicited email being sent to promote sites being hosted on a eSmart server.

3) Dedicated servers

3.1) All dedicated server customers are responsible for the activities and security of their server. Servers will be disconnected from the network in the following scenarios:
3.1.1) Any server that attempts network scans or other possible hacking activities.
3.1.2) eSmart believe a server has been compromised.
3.1.3) Where there is a sudden increase in a server's use of network capacity, which impacts other servers on the same network.

Disclaimers and Warranties

1. eSmart does not back up Your data/website and whilst every attempt would be made in the unlikely event of any corruption or hardware failure, eSmart cannot guarantee to be able to replace lost data. This includes loss of data resulting from delays, non-deliveries, wrong delivery, and any and all service interruptions caused by eSmart and its employees.
2. eSmart makes no warranties or representations that any service will be uninterrupted or error-free. You accept all services provided hereunder "as is" without warranty of any kind.
3. All implied conditions, warranties and terms (whether express or implied by statute, common law, custom or otherwise) including, but not limited to, those relating to the exercise of reasonable care and skill, fitness for purpose and satisfactory quality (where applicable) are hereby excluded in relation to each of the services to be provided hereunder to the fullest extent permitted by law.
4. eSmart shall not be liable for any services or products to be supplied by any third party.
5. eSmart shall not be liable for any loss or damage of whatsoever nature suffered by You arising out of or in connection with any breach of this Agreement by You or any act, misrepresentation, error or omission made by You or on Your behalf.
6. eSmart will not be liable for any indirect loss, consequential loss, loss of profit, revenue, data or goodwill howsoever arising suffered by You or for any wasted management time or failure to make anticipated savings or liability You incur to any third party arising in any way in connection with this Agreement or otherwise whether or not such loss has been discussed by the parties pre-contract or for any account for profit, costs or expenses arising from such damage or loss.
7. No matter how many claims are made and whatever the basis of such claims, eSmarts' maximum aggregate liability to You under or in connection with this Agreement in respect of any direct loss (or any other loss to the extent that such loss is not excluded by other provisions in this Agreement) whether such claim arises in contract or in tort shall not exceed a sum equal to twice the fees paid by You for the services in relation to which Your claim arises during the 12 month period prior to such claim.
8. None of the clauses herein shall apply so as to restrict liability for death or personal injury resulting from the negligence of eSmart, its employees or its sub-contractors.
9. eSmart shall not be liable for any interruptions to the services or outages arising directly or indirectly from:-
   • I. interruptions to the flow of data to or from the internet;
   • II. changes, updates or repairs to the network or software which it uses as a platform to provide the services;
   • III. the effects of the failure or interruption of services provided by third parties;
   • IV. factors outside of eSmarts' reasonable control;
   • V. Your actions or omissions (including, without limitation, breach of Your obligations set out in the Agreement) or those of any third parties;
   • VI. Problems with Your equipment and/or third party equipment;
   • VII. Interruptions to the services requested by You.

Please note: by signing up for any of our services you agree to be bound by all eSmart terms and conditions.