It is compulsory that you completely agree to the below terms of service before creating your Advantage Creations hosting account and enrolling in hosting services. By using or continuing to use any of the Advantage Creations hosting services, you are automatically agreeing to the conditions of this document.
The Advantage Creations terms of service (“TOS”) have been designed to provide our clients with a very clear and transparent understanding of what we expect of them while using any of the services offered here at Advantage Creations. The use or continued use of any of the Advantage Creations hosting services represents your complete acceptance and compliance to the Advantage Creations TOS, regardless of whether you have physically read them or not.
Upon initial registration Advantage Creations has accepted your use of our services across our entire network. For this reason under normal conditions your accounts activity will not be monitored regularly. Additionally, Advantage Creations does not implement editorial control over any content of any web site. This includes but is not limited to newsgroup material, e-mails, articles, or personal blogs. However in full agreement with the Advantage Creations TOS, Advantage Creations reserves the right to remove any material that in our judgement appears to be illegal, may subject Advantage Creations to any degree of liability or may violate the Advantage Creations TOS. Advantage Creations will always reserve the right to assist with legal proceedings whether that is with third parties and/or directly with law enforcement to further examine any suspected or alleged crime or civil offence. Violation of the Advantage Creations TOS to any extent may result in the immediate suspension or termination of your relevant Advantage Creations service in addition to the suspension or termination of any other Advantage Creations hosting services you may have.
All Advantage Creations hosting services experience irregular monitoring for system exploitation, security and fraud risks. All risks and/or inappropriate use of any Advantage Creations hosting services that Advantage Creations discovers as well as those brought to the attention of Advantage Creations through third parties that violates the Advantage Creations TOS will result in swift action taken against the offending client with consequences deemed appropriate by Advantage Creations.
If any Advantage Creations client directly or indirectly violates the Advantage Creations TOS, Advantage Creations reserves the right to terminate any and all services linked to the offending client without notice. If Advantage Creations perceives the offence to be unbeknownst to the client, Advantage Creations under the sole discretion of Advantage Creations will notify the offending client of the mischievous or inappropriate activity alongside any necessary corrective action that Advantage Creations deems appropriate. If corrective action is not volunteered by the offending client in a period of time Advantage Creations finds reasonable or if Advantage Creations perceives the offence to be deliberate and obvious violations of the Advantage Creations TOS, Advantage Creations will take immediate action against the offending client. It must be understood that a delayed action or complete failure on Advantage Creations’ part to implement this policy for whatever reason will not be construed as a waiver of Advantage Creations’ right to do so at any time.
In review, while utilizing any of the Advantage Creations’ services you alongside the rest of the Advantage Creations client base are expected to access your account morally, sensibly and most of all responsibly.
1. Advantage Creations Account Activation and Setup
Once your order has been placed, the setup of your service however requires manual intervention as it is processed after payment has been received for potentially fraudulent activity. For all new shared, reseller and domain accounts, you can expect same day setup when order is placed on a business day during business hours. For VPS, hybrid, dedicated and collocation accounts, setup time drastically differs depending upon the complexities of your requests – on average our custom tailored virtual and dedicated managed hosting environments are deployed in under 90 minutes, but please speak with your account representative for an accurate estimate. These estimates exclude migration time.
2. Data Migration Policy
Advantage Creations has built a reputation over the years as a company both capable and willing to migrate complex applications and websites to our infrastructure, generally free of charge. While we will continue to do so on a case-by-case basis, our standard migration policy extends purely between cPanel and Direct Admin control panels. Going the extra mile for our clients is part of our daily routine, if your website or application does not use cPanel or Direct Admin, or does not use a control panel at all, please reach out to us prior to signing up and we may be able to make arrangements.
The bottleneck of a migration is the connection to your previous host and the speed of their support. Advantage Creations will begin your migration typically immediately after the proper logins have been provided and the account has been setup, however we cannot provide any guarantees on time. We will always work as fast as we can, keep you updated throughout, but it is recommended to do migrations during off-peak hours to account for potential issues with the previous host as well as propagation of the DNS (domain name servers).
Advantage Creations offers our free migration service under a best-faith effort policy, and while we have successfully completed many thousands of seamless migrations of all shapes and sizes, Advantage Creations does not make any guarantees or take on any liability with potential issues that may arise. It is your responsibility to keep backups, stay involved in the migration, ask questions, and fully test the website or application before and after. If any issues are found Advantage Creations will work to resolve them under the best-faith effort policy, but will not make any guarantees of any kind. While we do perform double and triple checks, it is ultimately your responsibility to confirm everything has been migrated properly.
3. General Content And Behavior
All of the services provided by Advantage Creations will only be used for lawful and moral purposes. All Advantage Creations clients agree to indemnify and hold Advantage Creations harmless from any claims ensuing from the use of our services.
Some examples of unacceptable applications of our service can consist of but are not limited to: Hosting Video or Music files of which no proof of ownership is available Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Bots Illegal adult oriented material Warez (torrents, cracks, serial keys, etc) type websites Proxy scripts Any hateful material whether racial, religious or otherwise Any sort of password sharing or hack themed website Hosting pirated software
3.I Distribution of Mischievous Code Or Programs
Distribution of software to any extent that attempts to and/or successfully causes damage, aggravation, or annoyance to any individual, data set or technical device are absolutely forbidden. Examples of such mischievous code or programs can consist of but are not limited to; Trojan horses, computer viruses and internet worms. Any evidence of such an offence having occurred or continues to occur will result in immediate termination of the account in addition to the termination of any associated services. If applicable the proper authorities will be notified.
3.II Copyright Violations
Violating copyrighted, patented or trademarked works through reproduction and/or distribution will not be tolerated. It is not acceptable to use a Advantage Creations service to convey any form of the material that violates a copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, intellectual property right or other right of any third party. These violations can consist of but are not limited to the illicit replication of copyrighted material, the digitization and/or distribution of photographs from print sources as well the illicit transfer of copyrighted programs. Advantage Creations operates within the guidelines of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) when handling infractions and will respond to all accusations that are formatted in accordance with the DMCA
3.III File Hosting
File storage or file hosting of any kind is forbidden across all Advantage Creations hosting services. Under no circumstance may our clients use their Advantage Creations service as file storage and/or a download warehouse. This does not mean that downloads are a direct violation of the Advantage Creations (TOS), it does however mean that your Advantage Creations service(s) cannot drive a website that focuses primarily on downloads. Additionally you may not use your Advantage Creations service as a storage warehouse for games, videos, music files or backups. Any Advantage Creations service may not surpass 10% of space or bandwidth in games, videos, music files or backups. These values are only adjustable by Advantage Creations staff.
3.IV Adult Oriented Websites
While no pornography is permitted, adult oriented websites and applications are under the condition they are mutually legal within the laws of the USA and the state of Illinois. Advantage Creations will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.
4. Payment Information
You understand that in order for Advantage Creations to process your payments in a timely manner and ensure your service remains uninterrupted it is necessary to have accurate and up to date payment information on file. Additionally by agreeing to the Advantage Creations (TOS) you agree to supply appropriate payment for the services received from Advantage Creations in an advanced arrangement for the time period during which such services are received. You also agree that unless you notify Advantage Creations a minimum of seven (7) days prior to the completion of your billing period of your desire to revoke any or all services received, those services will continue to be billed on a recurring basis.
5. Data Loss And Backup
Your use of any of Advantage Creations service is done so at your own risk. Advantage Creations under no circumstance is responsible or can be held liable for any data held on Advantage Creations servers. Advantage Creations makes an attempt at mitigating potential data loss by keeping regular backups for shared, reseller, VPS and hybrid accounts, however it remains impossible for Advantage Creations to guarantee an appropriate backup will always be obtainable. You agree to take full responsibility for any and all data transferred to and from Advantage Creations servers and to preserve suitable backups of said data. Realizing the importance of data backups, Advantage Creations offers 20GB of free R1Soft backups on all shared, reseller, VPS and hybrid accounts. Although Advantage Creations does perform daily backups, each kept for 7 days, it is in the client’s best interest to consider an additional backup option as it is not Advantage Creations’ responsibility to maintain the integrity of your data.
5.I Unique Circumstances And Emergencies
We reserve the right to take any practical and proactive steps that Advantage Creations deem necessary to maintain the integrity, security, performance and connectivity of our network and hardware. This includes but is by no means limited to actions requiring Advantage Creations to shut down the Advantage Creations network, hardware, eliminate clients, as well as deactivate or manipulate the content of certain websites or applications. In unexpected circumstances Advantage Creations may require a complete deletion of a certain website, e-mail and/or account because of an exploit or abusive behavior. In these situations Advantage Creations will make a best-effort to have backups on hand, but it is ultimately the client’s responsibility to maintain up to date backups.
5.II Termination of Data
In an effort to maintain an enhanced level of privacy and security, all data from terminated and cancelled services and accounts should be considered instantly deleted and flushed from the Advantage Creations servers. This also includes any and/or all of the available backups. As part of your responsibility in preserving your data, please ensure to backup all of your data before canceling your Advantage Creations account. In certain circumstances the deletion and flush may not be instantaneous.
5.III Advantage Creations Account Security
Mistreatment or abuse of your Advantage Creations account is your sole responsibility. This includes activity on your Advantage Creations account by family, friends, guests, fellow employees or anyone else that may act on your behalf, with or without your knowing. Therefore it is necessary for you to take precautions against others gaining unapproved access to your account. Additionally, you may not use your Advantage Creations account maliciously to breach the security of another Advantage Creations account or attempt to gain access to another network or server, Advantage Creations or otherwise.
Your assigned or chosen password provides immediate and unrestricted access to your Advantage Creations account and all related services. It is your sole responsibility to maintain a secure password at all times. Advantage Creations under no circumstance will be held liable for any mistreatment or abuse of your Advantage Creations account. Take precautions from others knowing your password as you will be held entirely responsible.
Any Advantage Creations client who infringes on the security of Advantage Creations or another client will be forwarded to the appropriate authorities. Advantage Creations will fully cooperate with law enforcement in any investigation.
6. Email Policy And Spam
Having personal e-mail accounts ourselves, we know what it’s like to receive our fair share of spam. For this reason, Advantage Creations strong arms all unsolicited e-mailing, bulk emailing, and spam in general. Furthermore, applications such as safe lists and double opt-ins will be considered spam. Any Advantage Creations account that shows evidence of directly or indirectly aiding in or sending out spam will result in the client’s accounts and services being immediately terminated with or without notice.
Depending on the severity of the spam, Advantage Creations may issue a cleanup fee. In this case the Advantage Creations account responsible for aiding in or issuing the spam will be charged a fee based on damages.
Advantage Creations shared and reseller services are capped at 500 emails per hour, exceeding this limit will bounce back to the sender. If for any reason you require more than 500 e-mails per hour as some legitimate mailing lists may, please open a support ticket with your reasoning.
There are no limits on VPS, Hybrid or dedicated emails, however these services cannot be used purely as mail servers and will be monitored regularly.
Advantage Creations reserves the right to delete, disable or change any website, application, database, Advantage Creations account or any component under Advantage Creations’ control that does not completely comply with this policy. In certain situations Advantage Creations may need to act urgently, in this case Advantage Creations reserves the right to do so with or without notice.
6.I Usenet (Newsgroup, Articles, Messages, etc.) Spam
Usenet spam can consist of but is not limited to posting messages, articles or ads which violate regulations, charters or rules of a newsgroup or mailing list. With this in mind, any messages that are suitable under the rules and regulations of a newsgroup or mailing list, providing they do not violate the Advantage Creations TOS are permitted.
7. Refund, Guarantee And Cancellation Policy
Advantage Creations operates under a forty five (45) day money back guarantee for all first time Advantage Creations shared and reseller clients. This guarantee begins at the date of sale and retains its value for a total of forty five (45) consecutive days. This guarantee encompasses only the base cost excluding fees such as but is not limited to domain costs and software licenses.
Additionally Advantage Creations operates under a seven (7) day money back guarantee for all first time Advantage Creations virtual private server (VPS) and hybrid clients. This guarantee begins at the date of sale and retains its value for a total of seven (7) consecutive days. This guarantee encompasses only the base cost excluding fees such as but is not limited to domain costs and software licenses.
Advantage Creations currently offers no guarantees or refunds of any kind for domain, backup, dedicated or collocation services.
If you wish to cancel any of your Advantage Creations hosting services you may do so providing you give seven (7) days’ notice prior to your next billing cycle. If you used a PayPal subscription please simply login to your PayPal account and cancel your subscription agreement with Advantage Creations. Otherwise, if you purchased your Advantage Creations hosting services through a credit card please login to your Advantage Creations account and submit a cancellation request.
You may have joined Advantage Creations under an annual, semiannual, quarterly or monthly plan. When cancelling your service, your Advantage Creations account will remain active until your billing period ends. After which your cancelled Advantage Creations service will be terminated unless you renew your Advantage Creations account prior to the billing term expiring or you have specified otherwise.
Advantage Creations will treat all data of terminated accounts exactly as outlined in the above section 5.II.
We do not prorate for unused time.
7.I Cancellation For Lack of Payment
Any Advantage Creations account that has unpaid invoices more than ten (10) days old may be terminated at any time with or without notice. Advantage Creations will treat all data of terminated accounts exactly as outlined in the above section 5.II.
8. Domain Names
All new domain name registrations, transfers and renewals are subject to the Registration Agreement. See your ICANN Registrant Rights and Responsibilities
9. Web Design, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) And Submission
Advantage Creations offers web design/development, internet marketing and search engine submission or optimization services. If you wish to have any of your websites worked on or marketed please contact us to discuss further.
10. Service Refusal
Advantage Creations reserves the right to completely refuse or refuse any amount of service or services to any client under the sole discretion of Advantage Creations. Additionally Advantage Creations completely reserves the right to suspend, cancel or terminate any account at any time Advantage Creations sees fit. Advantage Creations will treat all data associated with the termination of an account as outlined in the above section 5.II.
11. Resource Usage Limitations
Please realize that these policies are in place to protect our clients (you) from poor service. Typically, if we have to impose a restriction on an account for resource usage, that account is already in violation of several aspects of the Advantage Creations TOS, and not just these usage policies. Most clients who fall into this realm affect at least two of these policies, and if left unchecked would begin adversely affecting other clients on their server. The overwhelming majority of sites, upwards of 99%, will never have to take these limits into consideration. That being said, it is important they are in place and it is important you are aware of them.
Advantage Creations uses what is called soft limits to enforce most of these limitations. These limits do not “kill” your service when reached, but rather set off a series of notifications in motion to notify us of potential issues. Many clients will find that they can exceed many or even most without receiving a notice from us. The issue becomes when a single account starts to affect the performance of an entire server, it is then necessary to have these limits in place. Advantage Creations has been known to give extensive leeway to folks who need it, providing them time to work with us to reduce the overall load or if not possible, enter discussions for a potential upgrade. With our highly optimized servers it is rare we ever have to suspend a client for abuse, but under the Advantage Creations TOS, we do reserve the right to do so if excessive.
While Advantage Creations VPS, Hybrid and Dedicated services are limited only by the physical resources in the selected plan, shared and reseller services have a few more limitations.
1 Full CPU Core which equates to ~3.4Ghz 1GB of physical memory 50 Concurrent Processes 10MB/s disk I/O 2GB of an account’s website backup data to be stored within the same account Each database is restricted to 2 GB of disk space
12. Price Change
Advantage Creations reserves the right to change the prices and plans listed throughout the Advantage Creations website in addition to the resources allocated to each of the Advantage Creations plans at its own discretion. Further, Advantage Creations has the right to end and/or refuse any promotional codes for any reason.
13. Auto Billing (Reoccuring Payments)
For convenience and to prevent an interruption in service, Advantage Creations has employed a reoccurring billing cycle on most monthly, quarterly, semiannual and annual plans. If you do not want reoccurring payments on your account it is necessary to notify Advantage Creations at least seven (7) days prior to the payment taking place. Failure on your part to notify Advantage Creations of your intention to not be billed on a reoccurring basis will automatically result in your account being billed as originally agreed. If you are using PayPal subscriptions, it is your responsibility to cancel with PayPal directly.
14. Bandwith Usage
When purchasing you selected a monthly bandwidth allowance based on the package chosen. As your monthly bandwidth limit approaches an e-mail will be sent to the contact address on file, it is your sole responsibility to be aware of such limitations and will not hold Advantage Creations liable for any downtime experienced from account suspensions due to bandwidth overages. If overages are experienced or projected for a certain month, all Advantage Creations clientele have the option to upgrade to a larger plan, pay $0.50 per GB or simply wait until the following month. Bandwidth usage is measured on a monthly basis coinciding with Client’s billing cycle.
15. Responsibilities And Expected Knowledge
By the use of any Advantage Creations service a certain level of knowledge is assumed on topics consisting of but are not limited to; internet languages, slang, jargon, terminology, protocols, name servers (DNS), website development and software. While knowledge levels differ greatly, the Advantage Creations client agrees that they possess the necessary knowledge to create their website with the desired content, look and functionality. The customer agrees that it is not the responsibility for Advantage Creations to provide this knowledge to help create, design, program or publishing of a client’s website.
16. Root And SSH Access
Jailed SSH access is available to all shared and reseller clients, but not by default. Please open up a ticket requesting access. VPS, hybrid and dedicated clients will have root SSH access to their respective servers by default and included in their welcome emails.
17. Disclaimer
Advantage Creations under no circumstance will be responsible for damages of any kind that your business may suffer. Advantage Creations makes no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide other than the aforementioned guarantees mentioned within this document. Advantage Creations disclaims any warranty or merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This includes but is not limited to, loss of data resulting from delays, non-deliveries, hardware and software failures, hacking, sabotage, terrorist attacks, network issues, wrong delivery and any and all service interruptions caused by Advantage Creations, its employees or otherwise.
18. Indemnification
Customer agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold Advantage Creations harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including any and all attorney fees asserted against Advantage Creations, its agents, its customers, officers and employees, that may arise or result from any service provided or performed or agreed to be performed or any product sold by customer, its agents, employees or assigns. Customer agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Advantage Creations against liabilities arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with Advantage Creations; (2) any material supplied by customer infringing or allegedly infringing on the proprietary rights of a third party; (3) copyright infringement and (4) any defective products sold to customers from a Advantage Creations server.
IF LAWSUIT(S) ARE THREATENED AGAINST Advantage Creations. If Advantage Creations is sued or threatened with a lawsuit in connection with Advantage Creations service(s) provided, we may turn to you to indemnify us and to hold us harmless from the claims and expenses which include but are not limited to attorney fees and other court costs. Under these circumstances you agree that you will upon demand, obtain a performance bond with a reputable bonding company or, if you are unable to obtain a performance bond, that you will deposit money with us to pay for our reasonably anticipated expenses in relation to the matter for the coming year. Such deposit will be drawn down as expenses are incurred, with all account notices sent to the WHOIS contact information provided in association with your domain names and/or account. We shall not be obliged to extend you any credit in relation to such expenses and we may terminate our services for a failure to make or renew such a deposit. We will return any unused deposit one year from the conclusion of the matter.
18. Potential Changes to the Advantage Creations Terms of Service (TOS)
Advantage Creations reserves the right to alter, revise, update and change in the Advantage Creations Terms of Service (TOS) in anyway without notice at any time under Advantage Creations’ sole discretion and can apply any and all changes and updates retroactively.
As a Good Faith Reminder And Brief Summary to Our Amazing Advantage Creations Clientele
THE CONTINUED USE OF THE Advantage Creations hosting services AND/OR PRODUCTS CONSTITUTES THE IMPLIED CONFORMITY WITH THE Advantage Creations TERMS OF SERVICE (TOS) IN ITS ENTIRETY. BY USING THE SERVICES, THE CLIENT (YOU) AGREE TO BE BOUND BY ALL TERMS ASSOCIATED WITH SAID SERVICES, INCLUDING THIS AGREMEENT.
THE CLIENT’S (YOUR) ONLY RECOURSE IN THE EVENT OF A DISAGREEMENT IS TO TERMINATE THIS CONTRACT AND SERVICE IMMEDIATELY AS DISCUSSED WITHIN THIS AGREEMENT.