Simple Helix Company Policies

Terms of Service

Simple Helix will never sell, distribute, reveal, or make available of any customer information. We support the work of the anti-spam organizations. If there is ever a need to contact you in regards to your specific account and service, we will only contact you though email. Simple Helix reserves the right to make any reasonable adjustments to our terms of service at anytime. Clients agree to abide by any additions or adjustments to our terms of service, as they are available to be viewed by anyone at anytime.

Satisfaction Guaranteed

For Shared Accounts ONLY: If for any legitimate reason you are unsatisfied with the services received from Simple Helix Hosting during the first 30 days, you may request to discontinue our services and receive your full refund by emailing us at sales@simplehelix.com. You must provide us with a reason as to why you are choosing to cancel our services. We are the sole arbiter in determining the validity of your reason. If all possible steps were taken on your side and on ours to correct the situation a full refund will be issued. This guarantee only applies to the first 30 days and does not apply to any accounts other than shared.

Domain Names and Domain Transfers

As part of our "ethical hosting guidelines", Simple Helix Hosting will take necessary steps to register domain names on behalf of the client when requested. However, clients are responsible for renewing their domain names. Simple Helix Hosting does not take responsibility for failing to renew domain names. If your domain name was registered via our company, you must check and take appropriate actions to renew a domain that is about to expire. We do not handle renewals unless specifically asked for by sending a ticket to our help desk. If you have any questions at all about DNS changes or domain names in general, please email support@simplehelix.com.

Payments

All invoices will be generated and sent out 7 days before they are due. All clients will receive a reminder of the generated invoice 3 days before the invoice due date. Invoices will be emailed and available on the Simple Helix Hosting control panel to be paid. Credit Card, Check and PayPal are the three forms of payment accepted.

3 days after the invoice is due you will receive an overdue reminder. If payment is not received within 48 hours of the overdue reminder the account will be suspended until payment is made. After 30 days from time of suspension, the account will be terminated and remaining invoice balance will be sent to collections.

Please be advised that by selecting the yellow PayPal "Pay Now" or "Subscribe" button, a recurring PayPal subscription will be initiated. PayPal is a third party payment gateway, and as a result, clients are solely responsible for the creation, maintenance, and cancellation of any recurring subscriptions. Simple Helix does not have the ability to initiate or cancel a PayPal subscription on behalf of our clients. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the client to cancel PayPal subscriptions along with any Simple Helix services to prevent continuous billing through PayPal. All approved PayPal refunds will be issued via paper check. In an instance a duplicate PayPal subscription is created, Simple Helix will either issue account or credit or issue a refund check for the duplicate PayPal payment. For questions regarding your PayPal payments, please contact our Billing Department.

Simple Helix reserves the right to update product and service pricing at any time. Simple Helix agrees to notify clients 30 days in advance of any hosting plan price changes, and seven days in advance of any "add on" service price changes. Clients will be notified of said changes via support ticket opened on the client's behalf by Simple Helix staff.

Affiliates Program

Affiliate Program members may choose to withdraw their affiliate earnings to be applied as client account credit. Members may also choose to be paid by check to be mailed to the specified physical address of the affiliate member. Clients wishing to receive their affiliate earnings via check agree to complete and submit a W9 before payout will be processed. Affiliate withdrawals can only be made in the minimum withdrawal amount of $100.00. Affiliate withdrawal payouts will be processed at the end of each month upon receipt of an affiliate withdrawal request. To submit your affiliate withdrawal request, please submit a support ticket.

Cancellations

Shared Only - If you wish to cancel your services, you must file your request via our cancellation form eight days prior to your renewal date. If you submit cancellation of your services between eight and one day prior to your service renewal, you will also need to submit a support ticket to ensure billing of these services does not continue. Services canceled after the renewal date are not applicable for a refund.

If you cancel your account and your payments still continue for any reasons such as 1) by fault of Simple Helix Hosting staff 2) by fault of the credit card processor 3) by fault of any other payment collection company we are not responsible for any overdraft fees that are issued by your financial institution.

Overage Charges

Our hosting plans are designed to accommodate the majority of usage scenarios given the needs of our customers. However, your usage may vary and require additional allocations, specifically in the areas of storage and traffic. We will never charge your card automatically if your account requires more resources. You must keep your email address updated within your cPanel, so that you may receive an email when your account reaches certain limits determined solely by our system. You will receive a bandwidth exceedment warning at 80% at which time you may contact us to purchase a higher transfer quota for your account. If you do not contact us, your services may be suspended if your allotments exceed. Clients with overages will be charged $1.00 per GB of overage to be automatically invoiced on your service renewal date. If you chose to upgrade your plan to accommodate your usage, this fee may be waived.

Refunds/Account Termination

If, for any reason, Simple Helix.com fails to deliver said services, a prorated credit can be issued upon request. No credits will be issued if abuse of our stated policies forces simplehelix.com to suspend or terminate your services prematurely. In the event you request account cancellation, once your service has been cancelled your account will be suspended from use. It will then be deleted within 30 days.

Cancellations of accounts pre-paid for on a monthly basis will not receive a credit/refund for the remainder of the billing period, therefore we encourage to only submit cancellation when the account will no longer be used. Cancellations of accounts pre-paid on a yearly basis will only receive a pro-rated credit, not a refund, based on the monthly rate of the same hosting plan, where any applicable credits will be issued to the client account and can be used to purchase other services/products by client at anytime. All add-on service payments are non-refundable as they are included only during the life of the hosting plan. If for any other reason your account becomes suspended and remains suspended it will be deleted after a 30-day period.

In the event your website has been suspended, cancelled or terminated for any reason, Simple Helix reserves the right (but undertakes no obligation) to retain one or more copies of the information on the website for its own records. Simple Helix further reserves the right to distribute any information on any website to the information's owner of record, upon said owner providing adequate proof of ownership as determined in Simple Helix's sole discretion. You specifically release and hold harmless Simple Helix from any claims arising out of the foregoing.

Resource Abuse

Force Majeure

Simple Helix agrees to take every reasonable precaution to provide the agreed upon services to our clients. However, Simple Helix is not liable for service interruption due to circumstances beyond our control including but not limited to: natural disaster, fire, downtime caused by failure of the power grid, or downtime caused by government acquisition of Simple Helix assets.

Suspensions

In the event your website has been suspended for resource abuse (abuse that cannot be resolved by removing/changing a script, etc.) and you do not wish to upgrade to a dedicated server to accommodate your site needs, we will only release the suspension within 24-48 hours. This is to ensure the CPU intensive site slows down in traffic to avoid further damage and problems. A backup will then be provided of your files or you will be allowed FTP/cPanel access for a certain time period.

In the event your website is suspended due to non payment, the site will not be unsuspended until payment has been received and applied to all overdue invoices. Clients have the ability to pay, add funds, and apply those funds to any outstanding invoices through their client area. Services will be unsuspended within 24 hours upon receipt of payment.

Restorations

In the event that any, or all information on your site is inadvertently removed, Simple Helix will provide a restore from our backups for a $25.00 fee. If files have been inadvertently removed due to a fault on the part of Simple Helix staff, a restore will be provided free of charge at the reasonable discretion of Simple Helix.

Acceptable Use Policy

Simple Helix does not routinely monitor the activity of services used by customers for violation of this Policy. However, in our efforts to promote good citizenship within the Internet community, we will respond appropriately if we become aware of inappropriate use of our Services. Although Simple Helix has no obligation to monitor Services provided and/or the network, Simple Helix and it various affiliates and partners reserve the right to monitor bandwidth, usage, and content from time to time to operate our Services; to identify violations of this Policy; and/or to protect the network and Simple Helix customers. In other words,Simple Helix reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse, or remove any or all content from any Service for any reason.

Prohibited Actions under the Acceptable Use Policy include, but are not limited to:

Objectionable Content- Any content (written, visual, or implied) that:

• infringes upon any copyright, trademark, trade secret, or patent of any third party;
• violates any obligation of confidentiality;
• violates the privacy, publicity, moral or any other right of any third party;
• is hateful or obscene;
• is being used to harass, stalk, or otherwise threaten a person;
• is libelous, defamatory, knowingly false or misrepresents another person or;
• is threatening, promotes violence, promotes discrimination (whether based on sex, religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, or age), promotes illegal activities or otherwise contains materials that Simple Helix informs you that it considers objectionable.

Impersonation/Forgery:

• Adding, removing, or modifying identifying network header information (aka "spoofing") in an effort to deceive or mislead.
• Attempting to impersonate any person by using forged headers or other identifying information.

Network unfriendly activity:

• Any activities which adversely affect the ability of other people or systems to use ISI services or the Internet are prohibited. This includes "denial of service" attacks against the ISI servers, network hosts or individual user.

Commercial Email

• Sending unsolicited commercial e-mail using a Simple Helix product or service to distribute unsolicited commercial e-mail is prohibited.
• Sending large volumes of unsolicited e-mail (aka "mail bombing") is prohibited.

Access control and Authentication

• Attempting to circumvent user authentication or security of any host, network, or account (aka "cracking"). This includes, but is not limited to, accessing data not intended for the customer, logging into a server or account the customer is not expressly authorized to access, or probing the security of ISI servers and networks.

Proxy Hunters, Spiders, Robots:

• Using any program/script/command, or sending messages of any kind designed to interfere with a user's session by any means, locally or by the Internet.

We prefer that you self-govern your content and remain responsible and all-knowing of the information your website publicly provides. Even if other users have access to your account, you are responsible for their actions. However, if simplehelix.com is made aware of any questionable or objectionable content on a Simple Helix Hosting-hosted site, we will address the concerns immediately and directly with you to seek a resolution. If any person contacts us about content they have found on an Simple Helix server that copyrights their own material or that they wish to be removed, we require a proper DMCA notice to begin investigation, but may remove the material in question pending the result of that investigation.

Simple Helix believes in the freedom of speech and prefers to advise customers of inappropriate behavior and any necessary corrective action. However, if our services are used in a way which Simple Helix or its distribution affiliates, in their reasonable discretion, believe violate this Policy, Simple Helix or its distribution affiliates may take any responsive actions they deem appropriate. Such actions include, but are not limited to, temporary or permanent removal of content, cancellation of newsgroup posts, filtering of Internet transmissions, and the immediate suspension or termination of all or any portion of services provided by Simple Helix. Neither Simple Helix nor its distribution affiliates will have any liability for any such responsive actions. The above described actions are not Simple Helix's exclusive remedies and Simple Helix may take any other legal or technical action it deems appropriate.

Simple Helix reserves the right to investigate suspected violations of this Policy, including the gathering of information from the user or users involved and the complaining party, if any, and examination of material on Simple Helix's servers and network. During an investigation, Simple Helix may suspend the service or services of the customer involved and/or remove material which potentially violates this Policy. You hereby authorize Simple Helix and its distribution affiliates to cooperate with (i) law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected criminal violations, and (ii) and system administrators at other Internet service providers or other network or computing facilities in order to enforce this Policy. Such cooperation may include Simple Helix providing the name, IP address(es), or other identifying information about a customer. Upon termination of a customer's service, Simple Helix is authorized to delete any files, programs, data and email messages associated with such account.

You agree that you are solely responsible for (and that Simple Helix has no responsibility to you or to any third party for) any content that you create, transmit or display while using any goods or services provided by Simple Helix and for the consequences of your actions (including any loss or damage which Simple Helix may suffer) by doing so.

The failure of Simple Helix or its distribution affiliates to enforce this Policy, for whatever reason, shall not be construed as a waiver of any right to do so at any time. You agree that, if any portion of this Policy is held invalid or unenforceable, that portion will be construed consistent with applicable law as nearly as possible, and the remaining portions will remain in full force and effect. This Policy shall be exclusively governed by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of the State of Alabama.

Privacy Policy

Privacy for our customers is extremely important to Simple Helix. We take your privacy seriously and we do not share your personal information with any third parties without your permission. Your email addresses are not for sale or trade and are strictly guarded. Our Terms of Services agreement prohibits our customers from sending unsolicited bulk commercial email (aka "spam") using our services. If it is brought to our attention that one of our customers is violating this policy, we take steps to stop them and ensure it doesn't happen again. We also do everything within our power to keep non-customers from using our email servers for spam. All client information such as email, phone numbers, addresses, etc is used only for internal purposes. This contact information is used to get in touch with you when necessary and for announcements. Financial information that is collected is used to bill you for products and services.

Liability Limitations

Simple Helix.com, makes no endorsement, claims, or promises regarding the services offered by our customers and will not be held liable for any disputes or claims against said customers. In no event shall Simple Helix.com, be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special and exemplary damages, or any damages whatsoever, arising from the use or performance of a customer web site or from any information, services or products provided through a customer web site. If there is questionable content on any server in our network, we will not take any action against any material or action until the website is brought to our attention by emailing our abuse department at abuse@SimpleHelix.com.

By using any product or service offered by Simple Helix, you expressly agree that use of such product or service is at your sole risk. Express as expressly provided to the contrary, the products and services offered by Simple Helix are provided on an "AS IS" and "as available" basis. Neither Simple Helix nor its parent company, affiliates, subsidiaries or designees nor each of their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, third-party content providers, designers, contractors, distributors, merchants, sponsors, licensors or the like (collectively, "Associates") warrant the accuracy, integrity, or completeness of the products or services offered by Simple Helix. Further, Simple Helix makes no representation that products and services provided on are applicable to, or appropriate for use in, locations outside of the United States. Simple Helix and its Associates specifically disclaim all warranties, whether expressed or implied, including but not limited to warranties of title, merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, except as specifically and expressly provided to the contrary. No oral advice or written information given by Simple Helix or its Associates shall create a warranty. Some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain warranties, so the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you.

Under no circumstances shall Simple Helix or its Associates be liable for any direct, indirect,incidental, special, or consequential damages that result from your use of or inability to use the products and services of Simple Helix, including but not limited to reliance by you on any information obtained from Simple Helix that results in mistakes, omissions, interruptions, deletion or corruption of files, viruses, delays in operation or transmission, unauthorized intrusions or any failure of performance. The foregoing Limitation of Liability shall apply in any action, whether in contract, tort or any other claim, even if an authorized representative of Simple Helix has been advised of or should have knowledge of the possibility of such damages. User hereby acknowledges that this paragraph shall apply to all content, merchandise, and services available through Simple Helix. Some states do not allow the exclusion of limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you.

ANY MATERIAL DOWNLOADED OR OTHERWISE OBTAINED THROUGH THE USE OF THE SERVICES IS DONE AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION AND RISK AND YOU WILL BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM OR OTHER DEVICE OR LOSS OF DATA THAT RESULTS FROM ANY SUCH MATERIAL.

ANY AMOUNTS IN EXCESS OF THE TOTAL FEES PAID TO SIMPLE HELIX OR ITS ASSOCIATES FOR SERVICE OR EQUIPMENT DURING THE SIX (6)-MONTH PERIOD IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING THE OCCURRENCE GIVING RISE TO LIABILITY;

Indemnification

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Simple Helix, its Associates, its affiliates and subsidiaries (the "Simple Helix Parties") from and against any and all claims, demands, actions, causes of action, judgments, liabilities, damages, losses, injuries, costs and expenses arising from (a) the use or misuse of the Service or Equipment by you or by any person you allow to use the Service or Equipment, or (b) any breach of these Terms by you, including, but not limited to, claims by any owner of the primary location where you use the Service and claims by or through any customers you may have. You also agree to pay each Simple Helix Party's reasonable attorneys' fees and costs related to prosecuting or defending such claims and to enforcing these Terms, including any and all such fees incurred in connection with any appeal. The rights and responsibilities established in this paragraph will survive any termination of this Agreement.

Scope of Support

At Simple Helix, we understand that the technical support you receive from your web hosting provider is just as important as the service we deliver. We're pleased to provide our customers with access to our "in house", 24/7 Technical Support Team through our support ticket system. Due to the nature of web hosting, there are certain aspects of your site that Simple Helix cannot manage or support on your behalf for reasons of liability. For your convenience, we've provided the following document to outline what aspects of your website and hosting services our highly capable staff can assist you with.

Simple Helix Supports:

Hardware

If you're on our shared servers, or on one of our managed dedicated servers, then you can rest assured that Simple Helix is stringently monitoring your server day and night with protective measures in place and ready to go in the unlikely event that hardware failure should occur.

Server Software

We maintain, update, and secure all software on our servers such as PHP, Apache, and MySQL. While Simple Helix makes every attempt to keep our software "up to date", we cannot guarantee that each server will always have the most recent version of all software installed.

DNS Zone Files

For clients using our DNS, we've got you covered by providing you with a DNS zone file adequate for typical hosting usage.

Basic Services

We know what our clients want and need, and we gladly support basic email function, web service, trouble shooting within your control panel, basic FTP and upon request we can enable SSH. We frequently monitor all of these services to ensure that they are working and functioning up to our high standards.

Basic Magento Queries

Being a Magento specific hosting company, the large majority of support inquiries we receive are Magento related. Our Tech Support Team is fully capable of assisting you with Magento installation and initial setup/configuration inquiries. We also provide support for Magento upgrades. Just keep in mind that each upgrade is as new to our staff as it is to you, and as is often the case with any upgrade, we won't be able to identify any "bugs" or "quirks" right off the bat. Our Tech Support Team generally recommends holding off on upgrades until about two weeks after their release. (That way, other people get to work out the "kinks" and we get the benefit of the knowledge, without having to suffer through any of the initial "discovery".)

Our Clients Support:

Basic Foundation

When signing up for services, we assume that our clients have at least a sub structural understanding of the web hosting basics (email, FTP, DNS...etc). For our clients needing assistance in this area, we do provide basic tutorials for both control panels. You can view them here.

Domain Names

We do not have the ability to update nameservers or contact information of domain names that are not in our control. If you are not using our nameservers, we cannot adjust your DNS records. On a similar note, our clients are responsible for ensuring that their domain names transfer successfully to our system. Upon your request, we can investigate the status of a domain name transfer and even re-initiate the transfer if necessary. For answers to questions about your domain name transfer, visit our knowledgebase.

FTP and Email Client Configuration

As Simple Helix does not configure your FTP or Email clients, we do not have the ability to support your advanced FTP or Email client configurations. We may be able to offer advice regarding your setup, however, any suggestion offered by Simple Helix staff is to be implemented at the client's discretion. Simple Helix will not accept responsibility for the outcome of any instruction offered outside of our Scope of Support.

Scripts and Applications

Simple Helix cannot provide support for your customized script or application. We may be able to provide suggestions or support for some common applications, though there may be an additional charge associated with such support. Not to worry, Simple Helix will notify you of any support related charges before proceeding with the requested support.

Site Content

While Simple Helix staff can ensure that FTP and your control panel are functioning properly, our clients are responsible for adding and editing site content. This includes, but is not limited to: adding images, removing images, uploading video, editing HMTL, or programming.

Magento Store Content

Just as we don't support site content, Simple Helix staff cannot alter your Magento store content. This includes but is not limited to: adding products, removing products, Magento store design, and editing product descriptions, templates or themes, payment gateways,and extensions.

Service-Level Agreement (SLA)

The Simple Helix ("Simple Helix, LLC" or "SimpleHelix.com") SLA covers three components that support the availability of your web site:

1. Network Infrastructure

2. Data Center Infrastructure

3. Server Hardware

1. Network Infrastructure

We guarantee that our data center network infrastructure will be available 100% of the time (as measured on a monthly basis), excluding scheduled or emergency maintenance. The data center network means the portion of the Simple Helix network extending from the outbound port on your edge device to the outbound port of the data center border router.

Should the Simple Helix network infrastructure become unavailable for a cumulative period up to 20 minutes beyond the 100% minimum in any month of service, the client can receive a credit equivalent to 5% of the client's recurring monthly fees up to 100% of your monthly fee for the affected server(s).

2. Data Center Infrastructure

We guarantee that data center HVAC and power (including UPSs, PDUs and cabling) will be available 100% of the time (as measured on a monthly basis), excluding scheduled or emergency maintenance. Data center infrastructure power does not include the power supplies on your server hardware.Should the Simple Helix data center infrastructure become unavailable for a cumulative period up to 20 minutes beyond the 100% minimum in any month of service, the client can receive a credit equivalent to 5% of the client's recurring monthly fees up to 100% of your monthly fee for the affected server(s).

3. Server Hardware

We guarantee 100% functioning of all server hardware components and will replace any failed component at no cost. "Server Hardware" means the processor(s), RAM, hard disk(s), motherboard, NIC card and other related hardware included with the server. Server hardware replacement will begin once we identify the cause of the problem and will be complete within one hour of problem identification.

Once server hardware has been identify as faulty, the client can receive a credit equivalent to 5% of the client's recurring monthly fees up to 100% of your monthly fee per additional hour of downtime for the affected server(s).

Credit Request - All credit calculations will be based on unavailability in 20-minute increments unless credit is related to a server hardware guarantee, which will be calculated in hourly increments. Any and all credits to the client will not exceed 100% of the client's recurring monthly fees for the month in which the credit is paid. All SLA credits must be requested within 15 days of the incident via the client area.