Terms & Conditions
The following are the terms and conditions under which anyone using services provided by SparseZone must abide. They are designed to create an environment which is fair and equal to all customers.
Definitions
SparseZone, sparsezone.com, we, us, our — Defined as sole-trader Chris Reece, trading as sparsezone.com.
Customer, you and your - Defined as you, the person or persons in whose name(s) a service is maintained by sparsezone.com.
Service - Defined as any service sparsezone.com offers, including but not limited to Solaris Zone hosting, SMS system integration, email ticketing systems and bespoke database solutions.
Machine - Defined as any virtual server, Solaris Zone, or other container/device.
Business hours - Defined to be between 8am and 4pm UK time, Monday to Friday.
SparseZone infrastructure - The servers, switches, routers and other network/systems hardware that comprises the sparsezone.com infrastructure.
Contact details
It is the customer's responsibility to maintain current contact and payment details including a current email address. Any changes should be propagated to sparsezone.com by way of email or telephone. The customer's email address must be accessible regardless of the state of any services hosted by sparsezone.com.
We can be contacted by various methods. For general sales/support requests please use these contact details. For emergency contact details please refer to your account sign-up documentation.
Support
Day to day support is provided via email. Support requests have a guaranteed response time of 8 business hours however in practice response times will generally be less than one business hour. Support requests outside business hours are guaranteed to be acknowledged within the next 8 business hours and in practice are generally acknowledged within 4 hours. Emergency support is available via the contact details provided with each account.
Termination of Service and Warranty
We reserve the right to block access to or terminate any service at any time, at our discretion and without warning. This may normally only become necessary if payment is not received in a timely manner, our Acceptable Use Policy is breached, a machine becomes the cause or target of any network attack, or a machine is causing an excessively degraded service to other users through CPU or bandwidth consumption.
We offer no warranty for any service, or guarantee that it is fit for any particular purpose. We will however make a best effort to keep the service operating correctly and reliably. Any scheduled maintenance will be advertised in advance by email and down time for customers' services kept to an absolute minimum.
We reserve the right to amend these terms and conditions without notice. However, customers will usually be given 30 days notice of any policy changes.
If we choose to terminate your contract for any reason, a copy of your data will be sent on DVD media to the registered billing address unless doing so could knowingly cause a breach of UK law. An example would be where a customers contract was terminated for hosting illegal software - under these circumstances a copy of the customers data would not be returned to them.
Any IP addresses assigned to the customer remain the property of sparsezone.com and are not transferable. On the termination of a contract any IP addresses allocated to the customer will be returned to sparsezone.com.
Payment and Cancellation
Payment is expected by the due date shown on the invoice unless otherwise agreed by us in writing in advance. If no payment is received by the date it is due the customer will be contacted by email to request payment. If, after 10 days, payment has still not been received, we may at our discretion remove access to all services in arrears.
Costs are payable either:
- annually in advance, subject to a minimum term of 12 months
- quarterly in advance, the minimum term being three months
Any special pricing deal is valid for the life of each contract taken out on that deal unless otherwise stated.
Bandwidth usage beyond your prearranged amount will be monitored and charged automatically without notice. Bandwidth usage statistics are available via the web monitoring page. The customer is responsible for monitoring and controlling their own bandwidth usage.
All fees paid are non-refundable. In exceptional circumstances, and at the discretion of sparsezone.com, a refund may be issued pro-rata for services paid in advance.
Subject to any minimum term contracts, subscription services can be cancelled at any time unless otherwise stated. Requests to cancel a subscription should be directed to sparsezone.com by email or telephone and are only valid once acknowledged by sparsezone.com.
Acceptable Use
No service provided directly or indirectly by sparsezone.com may be used for any purpose which contravenes UK law.
The customer may not store or transmit through the SparseZone infrastructure any of the following types of material:
- viruses or virus creation tools
- material in any format which infringes or violates copyrights, trademarks or patents
- content or material in any format which can be classed as obscene, threatening or libelous.
- bulk unsolicited network traffic e.g. spam email.
The customer is entirely responsible for all activities associated with their machine and services and agrees to fully indemnify SparseZone against any claims, liabilities or expenses in respect to activities conducted on any service under the customer's control.
The customer acknowledges that their use of hosted Solaris zones can affect other users and agrees to cease any activities which sparsezone.com observe are causing a negative effect on other customers.
Customers are responsible for the security of their hosted Solaris zones, including but not limited to, user accounts and network services. We will attempt to notify a user if any of their services appear to have been compromised and at our discretion may modify access to that service.
Network Monitoring and Privacy
We reserve the right to monitor all network communications that pass through the SparseZone infrastructure for the purpose of fault diagnosis, investigating possible breaches of these terms and conditions or as requested by official UK authorities.
Copyright
All trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.