Acceptable Usage Policy
Please read this agreement carefully, as it contains important information. By accessing our website or contracting with us for any of our services, you agree, without limitation or qualification, to be bound by this Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and any other additional terms, conditions, or policies displayed to you in connection with the relevant service.
1. General
Hostking (Pty) Ltd, a private company registered in South Africa under company registration number 2013/095847/07, having its registered office at 105 Wellington Street, Vasco Estate, 7460 and principal place of business at Business Centre, Publishing City Free Zone, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (hereinafter referred to as 'Hostking').
Hostking provides hosting services to clients worldwide, and we have a responsibility to protect each client and to provide the best services available. All registered clients of Hostking agree to and are subject to our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and this Acceptable Use Policy. All services provided by Hostking may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any South African law is prohibited. Services provided by Hostking that reside outside of South Africa must still abide by these terms and must not be in violation of any relevant laws of the hosting city, state and country. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret and other statute.
The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Hostking and its employees from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party. The provisions of this AUP are intended as guidelines and are not meant to be exhaustive. Generally, conduct that violates law, regulation, or the accepted norms of the Internet community, whether or not expressly mentioned in this AUP, is prohibited. We reserve the right at all times to prohibit activities that damage our or our affiliates' commercial reputation and goodwill. We will be the sole and final arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of our policies.
2. ISPA Membership and Code of Conduct
Hostking confirms that it is in compliance with Section 72 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002. Hostking is a member of the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) and has adopted and implemented the association's official Code of Conduct, which can be viewed at https://www.ispa.org.za/code-of-conduct.
In terms of Section 75 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, Hostking has designated ISPA as an agent to receive notifications of infringements as defined in Section 77 of the Act.
Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA)
Telephone: 010 500 1200
Take-down notice email: complaints@ispa.org.za
3. Spam and Unsolicited Bulk Mail
All users must comply with all relevant legislation and regulations on bulk and commercial e-mail, including but not limited to the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Users may not send mass unsolicited e-mail, which is email that is sent to recipients who have not opted-in to mailings from the user.
Users who send mass mailings must maintain complete and accurate records of all consents and opt-ins and provide such records to Hostking upon request. If a user cannot provide positive and verifiable proof of such consents and opt-ins, we will consider the mass mailing to be unsolicited. Any user-maintained mailing list must also allow any party on the list to remove itself automatically and permanently.
Other prohibited activities include, without limitation, the following:
Use of our network for the receipt of replies to unsolicited mass e-mail.
Forgery of e-mail headers (spoofing).
Spamming via third-party proxy, aggregation of proxy lists, or installation of proxy mailing software.
Configuration of a mail server to accept and process third-party messages for sending without user identification and authentication.
Hosting web pages advertised within spam e-mail sent from another network (spamvertising).
Hosting web pages or providing services that support spam.
Any other unsolicited bulk messages, postings, or transmissions through media such as weblog posts, IRC/chat room messages, guestbook entries, HTTP referrer log entries, usenet posts, pop-up messages, instant messages, or SMS messages.
Instructing others in any activity prohibited by this AUP.
If, as a result of your actions, our domains and/or IP address ranges are placed on blackhole lists or other mail filtering systems, your service may be suspended and possibly terminated upon further investigation. Should our IP address be blacklisted due to unsolicited bulk mail originating from your account, any costs incurred to delist the IP address may be billed to your account.
4. Prohibited Uses
The following uses are prohibited on our network. Engaging in these activities on our services will result in an account and/or service suspension without notice.
Copyrighted content hosting and/or linking to pirated content
Open proxies
Stressers/booter websites
Mail/SMS bombers
Mass mail
IP spoofing
Network/port scanning
Distribution of credentials and/or personal information
Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks
TOR exit nodes
Open DNS resolvers
Hola
Kloxo
Virtual currency mining (including but not limited to cryptocurrency mining software)
Cryptocurrency exchange platforms, margin trading platforms, or similar financial trading services
World Community Grid, Folding at Home, or similar distributed computing software
CrystalMines
HitLeap or any artificial traffic generation
HYIP websites
Investment sites including FOREX trading platforms, ponzi schemes, MLM or pyramid schemes
iBusinessPromoter or similar software
Vulnerability scanning
Bruteforcing
Social media crawlers
Cracking
Botnets
Pornography
Hivemail
Telnet or SSH access scripts
Usenet
Destructive activities including but not limited to phishing, malware and/or distributing malicious content
Illegal activities including but not limited to ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, phishing, scam websites and pirating software
Video streaming
Content delivery networks (CDN)
LIULIANGKUANG
Multics, CCcam, or any other card sharing software
Chinese private game servers and related websites
Lottery and gambling sites
Hate speech websites
Politically affiliated websites promoting illegal activities
Any form of file hosting, file storage, cyberlocker, leeching or similar activity is prohibited.
Some network ports are blocked on our network to ensure our services are not used maliciously and to protect machines from known vulnerabilities. Any port(s) may be added or removed from the list of blocks without prior notice. Please create a support ticket if you require more information on specific port blocks.
5. Protection of Minors
Hostking strictly prohibits customers from using our services to harm or attempt to harm a minor in any way. This includes, but is not limited to, hosting, possessing, disseminating, distributing or transmitting material that is unlawful, including child pornography, exploitative content, or cyberbullying material. Hostking strictly prohibits the hosting of any sexually explicit or pornographic material of any nature on our platforms.
6. Overages
Please note that if you do not stay within the bounds of your plan, you may receive an overage bill. We reserve the right to charge for such overages without notification. You may query this with our support department at any time.
VPS: Bandwidth overages on VPS Servers will result in automatic suspension. It is the responsibility of Unmanaged VPS customers to keep their servers secure.
7. DDoS Attacks
Users who are targeted with frequent and/or disruptive attacks may have action taken against their service and/or account. If your service(s) are found to be persistently impacting the experience of other users, you will be notified via support ticket and requested to prevent further disruption or relocate to another provider.
8. Fair Usage
Unlimited and unmetered claims are subject to software and hardware limitations, and are governed by a discretionary fair use policy. Our hosting plans are intended only for content relevant to a hosted website. Any form of backup storage, file locker services, or personal media (e.g. photos, movies, music or any other form of media) is not permitted. The use of a shared hosting account as a backup or general storage device is not permitted.
If you are using more of any resource than is considered realistic or reasonable for the relevant platform, you will be notified via support ticket to reduce your usage. If any user's usage of a resource poses a risk to the integrity of the platform, their service(s) may be suspended to prevent disruptions. We reserve the right to move customers deemed to have excessive resource usage to a more suitable product, such as a VPS or dedicated server. Customers will be given notice of any such requirement and informed of any cost implications.
9. Shared Hosting — Resale Prohibited
Shared hosting packages are intended for use by an individual, SME, or small business for their own website, email, and related services only. Shared hosting may not be used to resell, sub-host, or provide hosting services to third parties in any form. This includes, without limitation, providing paid or unpaid hosting to other persons or entities, or hosting multiple unrelated third-party customer websites under a single shared hosting account.
Where Hostking determines, at its sole discretion, that a shared hosting account is being used for resale purposes or in a manner inconsistent with its intended use, Hostking reserves the right to require the customer to migrate to an appropriate reseller hosting plan, or to suspend or cancel the shared hosting service without notice. Hostking accepts no responsibility or liability for any loss, damages, or service interruptions arising from a customer's misuse of a shared hosting package.
10. Email Account Storage Limit
As a shared hosting provider, we have limits in place to ensure fair usage and to keep our email services running optimally. When email accounts exceed 20 GB, indexing takes longer and statistics processing may be affected. For this reason, we enforce a 20 GB limit per email account. If any customer has an email account storing more than 20 GB of data, this is against this policy and we may request that the customer migrate their hosting or upgrade to a VPS. We recommend that customers regularly clean their email accounts and remove emails they no longer require.
The Provider may, from time to time, purge emails stored on shared and reseller hosting servers for longer than 180 days (6 months). Customers are responsible for ensuring important emails are backed up or archived externally.
11. Web Hosting+
Account resources
All accounts are protected by CloudLinux virtualisation. The resources allocated to accounts through our packages are not dedicated, and no right to use the entirety of any resource is guaranteed. These limits are in place to reduce the impact of disruptive or abusive behaviour on other customers sharing the same node. If you are persistently reaching these limits, we may request that you upgrade your plan (if applicable) or move to a more powerful environment such as a VPS or dedicated server. We retain the right to change these limits without notice and to suspend services that are persistently reaching their resource limits.
All DirectAdmin accounts on our Shared and Reseller plans have an inode limit ranging from 20,000 to a maximum of 2,000,000 inodes, which increases from plan to plan. You may temporarily exceed your soft limit for up to 7 days. If usage does not reduce below the limit within this period, or if you reach your hard limit, your account will be denied write access and you will be required to remove data to restore full functionality. In computing, an inode is a data structure on a Unix-style file system. One inode is equal to one file, such as an image.
Outgoing mail on all of our DirectAdmin hosting nodes is limited to 250 emails per hour per individual account. This includes Mailman lists and PHP mail. We retain the right to alter this limit without prior notice.
Hostking reserves the right to limit, suspend, or terminate email services on any account that generates excessive spam complaints, causes Hostking IP addresses or domains to appear on email blacklists, exceeds outbound mail thresholds, or negatively impacts the email reputation of shared infrastructure. Where Hostking incurs costs in delisting IP addresses or domains from email blacklists as a result of a customer's outbound mail activity, those costs may be recovered from the customer's account.
Hostking reserves the right to immediately suspend, isolate, or remove any website or hosting account found to contain malware, phishing content, spam scripts, backdoors, web shells, or any other security threat — without prior notice. Customers are solely responsible for keeping their websites, applications, plugins, and scripts secure and up to date. Where Hostking incurs costs in investigating, containing, or remediating a security incident caused by a customer's negligence — including malware cleanup, blacklist removal, IP delisting, or emergency response — Hostking reserves the right to recover those reasonable costs from the customer.
Hostking reserves the right to restrict disk I/O (Input/Output Operations per Second) on any shared or virtual hosting account where the customer's usage is negatively affecting the performance of the shared environment or other customers on the same node. This may be applied without prior notice and will remain in effect until usage returns to acceptable levels.
Bandwidth usage statistics displayed in the control panel may reflect data that is up to 48 hours out of date. Hostking makes no warranty as to the real-time accuracy of bandwidth monitoring tools. Customers are responsible for monitoring their own resource usage and ensuring they remain within their plan limits.
SSH access granted by Hostking is jailed by CloudLinux LVE to prevent access to unauthorised directories and binaries. If you are found to be installing or running processes that are not suited to the platform you are on, those processes will be terminated and your SSH access will be revoked. Severe and/or persistent abuse may result in account suspension.
12. Backup Policy
All DirectAdmin hosting nodes run daily backups of accounts with a maximum retention period of 14 days. This process occurs during off-peak hours and may cause a temporary decrease in server performance. We are not responsible for any performance decrease during this process. Accounts using more than 2,000,000 inodes are typically excluded from the backup process to ensure tasks are completed in a timely manner.
We provide these backups as an emergency failsafe only and cannot guarantee their availability. Hostking will not be liable or responsible for the backing up, restoration, or loss of data under any circumstances. Customers are solely responsible for ensuring their data is regularly backed up and for restoring such backups in the event of data loss or corruption.
For shared and reseller accounts, backups older than 14 days may be removed from the server at our discretion. You agree that we may remove impermissible data from our servers at any time at our sole discretion without notice. We may also delete the following types of files if we find them to be using excessive amounts of disk space, especially if affecting other users:
DirectAdmin or other backups stored locally.
Softaculous backups stored locally.
Softaculous backup temp files.
Common CMS backups stored locally.
Common CMS backup temp files.
Common CMS backup logs.
Excessively sized error logs.
Any other large files deemed unnecessary for core website functionality or not containing any valuable data.
13. Website and Application Compatibility+
Customers are solely responsible for ensuring that their websites, applications, and any custom code are compatible with the server environment and any software versions (including but not limited to PHP, MySQL, and operating system updates) installed as part of Hostking's services. Hostking does not guarantee that updates, upgrades, or changes to server configurations will be compatible with customers' websites or applications. Customers are responsible for testing and updating their own code or applications as necessary to maintain compatibility.
14. Data on Termination
Upon termination or cancellation of a customer's services with Hostking, it is the customer's sole responsibility to back up and retrieve all data from Hostking's servers prior to the termination date. All data is permanently and irreversibly removed from our servers upon termination. Hostking accepts no liability for any data loss resulting from the termination of services.
15. VPS+
Server resources
On our VPS platform, CPU, network and disk I/O are shared among other users on the same node. If your VPS is persistently consuming these resources for a prolonged period and/or disrupting the experience of other users on the same node, we will notify you via support ticket to reduce your usage. Severe cases may result in your VPS being rebooted, shut down, migrated to a different node, and/or suspended. Failure to acknowledge an abuse ticket will result in suspension of your VPS.
16. VPS Server Backups
Managed VPS Servers include one weekly backup, which is overwritten each weekend. This is intended to protect against full data loss in the event of a server or system failure. Both Managed and Unmanaged clients may create their own additional backups, and we strongly recommend doing so as data corruption can occur.
Unmanaged VPS servers do not include local or scheduled backups (though we may create one on a best-effort basis). Unmanaged VPS clients are responsible for setting up their own backup system for database and web file revisions. Managed servers may be configured for daily, weekly or monthly backups from within WHM in cPanel or Plesk; however, these backups are stored locally on the server.
Hostking will not be liable or responsible for the loss of data on any VPS server under any circumstances. Customers are solely responsible for maintaining adequate backup arrangements.
17. Technical Support
As all VPS plans are unmanaged, we will only directly assist when the following are negatively affected:
Proxmox/SolusVM issues
Network connectivity
OS template/ISO issues
Server hardware
Questioned uses
The following are acceptable uses on VPS, provided they comply with the rest of this policy:
IRC (must not be used for spam, abuse or botnet activity)
Game servers (must host legal content and abide by all applicable laws)
Desktop environments
VPN servers
Torrenting of legal content only (you must limit your client/seeder to 20Mbps)
Dedicated Servers — Data Protection
All dedicated servers are automatically and securely wiped upon cancellation or termination. This involves overwriting the drive(s) with zeroes to ensure that any data previously present is not recoverable by the next user.
18. Restrictions
Any attempts to bypass, modify and/or disrupt the internal settings of the server will result in the server being suspended without prior notice. This includes entering the BIOS or modifying IPMI controls.
Activities that result in damage to server hardware are prohibited and will result in immediate suspension without prior notice. This includes the use of hardware stress testing tools.
19. User Responsibilities
Customers are responsible for any misuse of Hostking's services that occurs through their account, whether by the customer or any third party accessing the account with or without the customer's knowledge. It is the customer's responsibility to ensure that unauthorised persons do not gain access to or misuse Hostking's services.
Where a customer has authorised a minor to use any of Hostking's services, the customer accepts full responsibility as the parent or legal guardian of that minor for the minor's online conduct, their access to and use of Hostking's services, and the consequences of any misuse by the minor.
20. Complaints Procedure
Complaints relating to a violation of this AUP should be submitted in writing via a support ticket at my.hostking.host. Complaints must be substantiated and clearly state the nature of the problem and its connection to Hostking's network or services. Hostking will investigate all credible complaints and may take any of the following actions at its sole discretion:
Warn the customer and request corrective action.
Suspend the account and/or service.
Terminate the account and/or service.
Assist law enforcement agencies in the investigation of any unlawful activity.
Institute civil or criminal proceedings where appropriate.
21. Take Downs and ISPA
We may receive take-down notifications from ISPA and will inform our customers regarding the information received, or we will take down any abusive, phishing or spam-related content as we see fit or as ISPA instructs us to do so. Take-down notices may be submitted directly to ISPA at the contact details listed in Section 2 of this policy.
22. Policy Amendments
Hostking reserves the right to amend or alter this Acceptable Use Policy at any time and without prior notice to the customer. It is the customer's responsibility to review this policy periodically. Continued use of Hostking's services following any amendment constitutes acceptance of the revised policy. Hostking also reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to cancel a customer's services or account with immediate effect for any violation of this AUP.