Terms of Service

Black Chicken Host Shared and WordPress Hosting Terms of Service

(please scroll down for VPS Terms of Service)

Black Chicken Host provides web hosting services to subscribers around the world. The following terms of service are designed to provide the highest level of service available.

Content
All services provided by Black Chicken Host are to be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any United States Federal, State or Local law is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, material that jeopardizes national security, or material protected by trade secret or other laws. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Black Chicken Host from any claims resulting from the subscriber’s use of Black Chicken Host’s services which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Note: Pornography and sex-related merchandising are prohibited on any Black Chicken Host shared account. This includes sites that may imply sexual content, or link to adult content elsewhere. This is also true for sites that promote any illegal activity or content that may be damaging to Black Chicken Host servers or any other server on the Internet. Links to such materials are also prohibited.

Shared account holders agree not to store or process credit card orders on the Black Chicken Host shared servers. Payments must be handled by third-party, external payment gateways such as PayPal, Google Checkout,  or Amazon. 

Examples of prohibited content or links on shared servers include (but are not limited to:)

  • IRC Software
  • Pirated software
  • Hacking sites, programs or archives
  • Warez Sites
  • Distribution of music files or any other material in which the account holder does not own the copyright.
  • Adult Sites
  • Game Servers (dedicated game server programs)

Black Chicken Host will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. Content that does not meet these standards will be removed without prior notice to the subscriber.

Housing of any of the following files is considered a violation of the terms of service:

IRC – We currently do not allow IRC, Egg Drops, BNC, or IRC bots to be operated on our servers or network. Files with references to IRC or any likeness thereof are prohibited. Also any program that acts like an IRC server or that provide chat functions that run as background processes are not allowed.

Proxies – We do not allow proxy servers of any kind, whether for personal or business use. Files with references to any proxy or likeness thereof are prohibited.

PortScanning – We do not allow any kind of portscanning to be done on or from our servers or network.

Commercial Advertising – Email –

  • High volume email deployments (email blasts) of any type are not permitted with any Black Chicken Host shared account.
  • Spamming, i.e. the sending of unsolicited email, from any Black Chicken Host server or any server located on the Black Chicken Host network is STRICTLY prohibited. Black Chicken Host will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. This also includes Opt-in/Opt-out mail programs and mail that either directly or indirectly references a domain contained within an account at Black Chicken Host.
  • Running Unconfirmed Mailing Lists. Subscribing email addresses to any mailing list without the express and verifiable permission of the email address owner is prohibited. All mailing lists run by Black Chicken Host customers must be Closed-loop (“Confirmed Opt-in”). The subscription confirmation message received from each address owner must be kept on file for the duration of the existence of the mailing list. Purchasing or selling lists of email addresses from 3rd parties for mailing to or from any Black Chicken Host-hosted domain, or referencing any Black Chicken Host account, is prohibited.
  • Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet Service Provider, which includes, but is not limited to, the facilitation of the means to send Unsolicited Bulk Email, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail-bombing, text-bombing, unsolicited bulk text messaging or denial of service attacks is prohibited.
  • Email address cultivating, or any unauthorized collecting of email addresses without prior notification of the email address owner is strictly prohibited.
  • Operating an account on behalf of, or in connection with, or reselling any service to, persons or firms listed in the Spamhaus Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database at www.spamhaus.org is prohibited.

ShoutCast Servers – We do not allow Shoutcast Servers due to bandwidth and load issues.

Background Running Programs – We ask that users request permission before enabling persistent background processes of substantial load.

PHP Shell – PHP Shells or any likeness thereof are prohibited. Files with any reference to PHP Shells or likeness thereof are prohibited. These files may be removed without warning.

Server Abuse – Any attempts to undermine or cause harm to a Black Chicken Host server or subscriber of Black Chicken Host is strictly prohibited including, but not limited to:

  • Logging into a server or account that you are not authorized to access
  • Accessing data or taking any action to obtain services not intended for you or your use
  • Attempting to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of any system, subsystem or network
  • Tampering, hacking, modifying, or otherwise corrupting or breaching security or authentication measures without proper authorization
  • Transmitting material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines or engines with the intent or effect of damaging, destroying, disrupting or otherwise impairing a computer’s functionality or the operation of the System
  • Interfering with, intercepting or expropriating any system, data or information
  • Interfering with service to any user, host or network including, without limitation, by means of overloading, “flooding,” “mailbombing,” or “crashing” any computer system

The account holder will be held responsible for all actions performed by his or her account, whether it be done by the account holder or by others.

All sub-networks of Black Chicken Host and all dedicated servers must adhere to the above policies. 

Domain Registration Information
Here is some additional important information regarding domain registrations, transfers, and other registrar-related matters:

http://www.icann.org/en/resources/registrars/registrant-rights/benefits

http://www.icann.org/en/resources/registrars/registrant-rights/educational

Please feel free to review your rights and responsibilities as a domain owner, and to contact us with any questions.

Scheduled Maintenance and Downtime
Black Chicken Host will use commercially reasonable efforts to provide services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Subscriber acknowledges that from time to time the services may be inaccessible or inoperable for various reasons, including periodic maintenance procedures or upgrades (“Scheduled Downtime”); or service malfunctions, and causes beyond Black Chicken Host’s control or which are not reasonably foreseeable by Black Chicken Host, including the interruption or failure of telecommunications or digital transmission links, hostile network attacks, or network congestion or other failures. When possible, Black Chicken Host will provide at least 48 hours advance notice to the subscriber for Scheduled Downtimes, and will use commercially reasonable efforts to minimize any other disruption, inaccessibility and/or inoperability of its web servers. Black Chicken Host has no responsibility for downtime resulting from a user’s actions. Additionally, the 100% network uptime guarantee does not apply for shared accounts.

Automatic Updates of Software
In order to maintain a secure and stable hosting environment, Black Chicken Host reserves the right to update without notification any code on our servers to its most current supported version, including, but not limited to:

  • Content Management Systems (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, et cetera)
  • Plugins
  • Themes
  • Scripts
  • All packages offered by the Softaculous installer

Refunds
Refunds will be pro-rated unless notice of cancellation is given before the first of the month to receive a full month’s refund. Setup fee is NON-refundable. $17.50 will be deducted from the money refunded if the user’s domain was registered via Black Chicken Host’s free domain registration method. A 25% cancellation and processing fee will be deducted from the total amount refunded to all customers. Dedicated server refunds will only be issued for such time paid ahead of the minimum monthly agreement.

Any violation of Black Chicken Host’s Terms of Service Agreement shall result in no refund.

Promotional Use
Black Chicken Host may refer to You, Your company, or Your logos for promotional purposes. Your company name, logos and the services that were provided to the customer by Black Chicken Host may be used in promotional materials, advertising, marketing releases, newsletter, public disclosures and on the Black Chicken Host website. This reference will be strictly limited to disclosure that Black Chicken Host has provided services to the company and will not contain any confidential, sensitive or proprietary information in such a reference. The reference will also not provide any personally identifiable information about the individual or technical information regarding the server configuration and design used by the customer at Black Chicken Host. However, Black Chicken Host may disclose any information requested by law enforcement or when compelled by court order, applicable laws or regulations.

Any work or professional services performed or provided by Black Chicken Host under this Agreement shall not be deemed Work For Hire, but Black Chicken Host shall grant a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to You, for the duration of this Agreement, its employees, affiliates, and third parties commissioned by Black Chicken Host.

Limitations on Use
Any account using 15% or more of the server CPU or memory can be suspended and/or terminated without advance warning to protect other users of the server. Reasonable notice will be given after such an event.

Any account that uses excessive amounts of bandwidth can and will be subjected to bandwidth throttling.

Background Processes. Unauthorized background processes shall result in immediate termination of the account. Black Chicken Host maintains the right to cancel accounts at its discretion.

Account Setup, Termination, and Billing:
The account will be charged on the day the order is processed, regardless of the account billing date. The account will not be charged again until the next billing cycle. Billing dates are recurring by the cycle selected by the customer.

Check Orders: Black Chicken Host does not accept paper checks.

Disabling of accounts due to overdue payment: Accounts will be disabled if payment is not received within 10 days of the invoice date. If your account has been disabled multiple times, you may be charged a re-connection fee of up to $50 in order to re-enable your account.

Termination of accounts due to overdue payment: If the account is not paid within 30 days of the invoice date, the account will be terminated and all information within the account will be irrevocably deleted. We will make reasonable efforts to contact the account holder before proceeding.

Cancellation Procedure: Valid proof of account ownership will be required to terminate an account. This includes, but is not limited to, billing information in the form of payment information, or the Black Chicken Host account password. Non-secure information, such as the contact email address or account billing address, is not sufficient as a security verification.

Parked Domain Names: There may be a one-time fee of $15 for parking additional domain names if manual parking by a Black Chicken Host staff member is required. This fee is nonrefundable.

Domain Name Transfers: Black Chicken Host shall not be held responsible for failed domain transfers. The account holder is responsible for completing any steps necessary for successful domain name transfers, including responding to registrar emails within the specified time period.

Free Domain Name Registration: Black Chicken Host will register any available .com, .org, .me, .name, or .net domain for free upon creation of a new account with a free domain offer. The free domain offer does not apply to existing accounts, or to orders that did not request the free domain registration at the time the order was placed.

Free registration is for the first year only, subsequent renewals will be charged normally.

If a Free SSL Security Certificate was chosen for a promotion, this offer extends to the first year the certificate is issued and is for new signups only. Payment for subsequent certificate renewal is the sole responsibility of the customer and must be made in advance prior to certificate renewal. Please contact sales for renewal requests.

Courtesy Services for Customers
All services such as backup and cPanel are provided for the courtesy of the subscriber. It is the sole responsibility of the subscriber to maintain the subscriber’s own backup of any data. Black Chicken Host is not responsible for lost data or for lost data due to third party software that is not maintained by Black Chicken Host staff (cPanel, Softaculous, WordPress, et cetera, are not associated with Black Chicken Host.)

Limitation of Damages
Recovery of damages from Black Chicken Host may not exceed the amount of fees it has collected on the account.

General
Terms Of Service are subject to change without any prior notification.

These Terms of Service are a legally binding contract between the subscriber and Black Chicken Host.

By opening an account, the subscriber agrees to the above-stated terms.

Anything not listed in the Terms of Service is open to interpretation and change by Black Chicken Host administrators without prior notice.

All prices, with the exception of the 30-day money back guarantee, are non-refundable and non-negotiable.

The 30-day money back guarantee does not pertain to Virtual Dedicated and Full Dedicated server plans.

Any violation of these Terms of Service will result in termination of the account. Black Chicken Host maintains the right to terminate accounts without prior notification.

We reserve the right to remove any account with 15 days prior notice.

Dispute Resolution
Any dispute between Black Chicken Host and a subscriber shall be determined by arbitration conducted by the American Arbitration Association pursuant to its commercial arbitration rules. The arbitrator shall decide any dispute in accordance with Michigan law, without the application of choice of law principles. Each party shall bear its own expenses and legal fees for the arbitration. The arbitration shall be conducted in Ingham County, Michigan, unless both parties agree in writing to a different location. The arbitration award is enforceable as a judgment of any court having proper jurisdiction.

 

Black Chicken Host VPS Hosting Terms of Service

Black Chicken Host provides web hosting services to subscribers around the world. The following terms of service are designed to provide the highest level of service available.

Content
All services provided by Black Chicken Host are to be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any United States Federal, State or Local law is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, material that jeopardizes national security, or material protected by trade secret or other laws. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Black Chicken Host from any claims resulting from the subscriber’s use of Black Chicken Host’s services which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Examples of prohibited content or links include (but are not limited to):

  • IRC Software
  • Pirated software
  • Hacking sites, programs or archives
  • Warez Sites
  • Distribution of music files or any other material in which the account holder does not own the copyright.

Black Chicken Host will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. Content that does not meet these standards will be removed without prior notice to the subscriber.

Housing of any of the following files is considered a violation of the terms of service:

IRC – We currently do not allow IRC, Egg Drops, BNC, or IRC bots to be operated on our servers or network. Files with references to IRC or any likeness thereof are prohibited.

Proxies – We do not allow proxy servers of any kind, whether for personal or business use. Files with references to any proxy or likeness thereof are prohibited.

PortScanning – We do not allow any kind of port scanning to be done on or from our servers or network.

Commercial Advertising – Email –

  • Spamming, i.e. the sending of unsolicited email, from any Black Chicken Host server or any server located on the Black Chicken Host network is STRICTLY prohibited. Black Chicken Host will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. This also includes Opt-in/Opt-out mail programs and mail that either directly or indirectly references a domain contained within an account at Black Chicken Host.
  • Running Unconfirmed Mailing Lists. Subscribing email addresses to any mailing list without the express and verifiable permission of the email address owner is prohibited. All mailing lists run by Black Chicken Host customers must be Closed-loop (“Confirmed Opt-in”). The subscription confirmation message received from each address owner must be kept on file for the duration of the existence of the mailing list. Purchasing, selling, or utilizing lists of email addresses from 3rd parties for mailing to or from any Black Chicken Host.-hosted domain, or referencing any Black Chicken Host account, is prohibited.
  • Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet Service Provider, which includes, but is not limited to, the facilitation of the means to send Unsolicited Bulk Email, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail-bombing, text-bombing, unsolicited bulk text messaging or denial of service attacks is prohibited.
  • Email address cultivating, or any unauthorized collecting of email addresses without prior notification of the email address owner is strictly prohibited.
  • Operating an account on behalf of, or in connection with, or reselling any service to, persons or firms listed in the Spamhaus Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database at www.spamhaus.org is prohibited.
  • All commercial email marketing companies must adhere to the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003. In addition, such companies are prohibited the sending of bulk mail from “disposable domain names” with whois privacy protection.

Server Abuse – Any attempts to undermine or cause harm to a Black Chicken Host server or subscriber of Black Chicken Host is strictly prohibited including, but not limited to:

  • Logging into a server or account that you are not authorized to access
  • Accessing data or taking any action to obtain services not intended for you or your use
  • Attempting to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of any system, subsystem or network
  • Tampering, hacking, modifying, or otherwise corrupting or breaching security or authentication measures without proper authorization
  • Transmitting material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines or engines with the intent or effect of damaging, destroying, disrupting or otherwise impairing a computer’s functionality or the operation of the System
  • Interfering with, intercepting or expropriating any system, data or information
  • Interfering with service to any user, host or network including, without limitation, by means of overloading, “flooding,” “mailbombing,” or “crashing” any computer system

The account holder will be held responsible for all actions performed by his or her account whether it be done by the account holders or by others.

All sub-networks of Black Chicken Host and all dedicated servers must adhere to the above policies.

Bandwidth Measurement and Overage Fees
Incoming bandwidth to your account is free. 2 TB outgoing bandwidth is included with all VPS and Dedicated accounts. Any bandwidth usage exceeding either the incoming or outgoing bandwidth total will be billed at the rate of $0.10 per GB over.

Dedicated Server Support
Basic support and maintenance of dedicated servers is provided at the discretion of Black Chicken Host. In the case of erroneous instances or support issues extending beyond what we determine to be within the realm of reasonable assistance, support is priced as follows:

  • $50/hour

Scheduled Maintenance and Downtime
Black Chicken Host will use commercially reasonable efforts to provide services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Subscriber acknowledges that from time to time the services may be inaccessible or inoperable for various reasons, including periodic maintenance procedures or upgrades (“Scheduled Downtime”); or service malfunctions, and causes beyond Black Chicken Host’s control or which are not reasonably foreseeable by Black Chicken Host, including the interruption or failure of telecommunications or digital transmission links, hostile network attacks, or network congestion or other failures. When possible, Black Chicken Host will provide at least 48 hours advance notice to the subscriber for Scheduled Downtimes, and will use commercially reasonable efforts to minimize any other disruption, inaccessibility and/or inoperability of its web servers. Black Chicken Host has no responsibility for downtime resulting from a user’s actions.

Refunds
Refunds will be posted for FULL months only. Notice of cancellation must be given before the month in question begins. Setup fee is NON-refundable. $15.00 will be deducted from the money refunded if the user’s domain was registered via Black Chicken Host’s free domain registration method. A 25% cancellation fee will be deducted from the total money refunded to all customers.

Any violation of Black Chicken Host’s Terms of Service Agreement shall result in no refund.

Account Setup, Termination, and Billing:
The account will be charged on the day the order is processed, regardless of the account billing date. The account will not be charged again until the next month’s billing cycle. Billing dates are recurring on the cycle selected by the customer. Refunds for dedicated servers will only be issued for time paid ahead of the minimum monthly agreement.

Check Orders: Black Chicken Host does not accept paper checks.

Disabling of accounts due to overdue payment: Accounts will be disabled if payment is not received within 10 days of the invoice date. If your account has been disabled, you may be charged a reconnection fee of up to $50 in order to re-enable your account.

Termination of accounts due to overdue payment: If the account is not paid within 30 days of the invoice date, the account will be terminated and all information within the account will be deleted.

Cancellation Procedure: Valid proof of account ownership will be required to terminate an account. This includes, but is not limited to, billing information in the form payment information, or the Black Chicken Host account password. Non-secure information, such as the contact email address or account billing address, is not sufficient as a security verification. The month-to-month agreement for services is automatically renewed each month in perpetuity subject to written cancellation via help desk ticket or email sent to our support team (email subject to valid proof of account ownership).

Courtesy Services for Customers
All services such as backup and cPanel are provided for the courtesy of the subscriber. It is the sole responsibility of the subscriber to maintain the subscriber’s own backup of any data. Black Chicken Host is not responsible for lost data or for lost data due to third party software that is not maintained by Black Chicken Host programming staff. (cPanel is not associated with Black Chicken Host.)

Promotional Use
Black Chicken Host may refer to You, Your company, or your logo’s for promotional purposes. Your company name, logos and the services that were provided to the customer by Black Chicken Host may be used in promotional materials, advertising, marketing releases, newsletter, public disclosures and on the Black Chicken Host website. This reference will be strictly limited to disclosure that Black Chicken Host has provided services to the company and will not contain any confidential, sensitive or proprietary information in such a reference. The reference will also not provide any personally identifiable information about the individual or technical information regarding the server configuration and design used by the customer at Black Chicken Host. However, Black Chicken Host may disclose any information requested by law enforcement or when compelled by court order, applicable laws or regulations.

Any work or professional services performed or provided by Black Chicken Host under this Agreement shall not be deemed Work For Hire, but Black Chicken Host shall grant a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to You, for the duration of this Agreement, its employees, affiliates, and third parties commissioned by Black Chicken Host.

Limitation of Damages
Recovery of damages from Black Chicken Host may not exceed the amount of fees it has collected on the account.

General
Terms Of Service are subject to change without any prior notification.

These Terms of Service are a legally binding contract between the subscriber and Black Chicken Host.

By opening an account, the subscriber agrees to the above-stated terms.

Anything not listed in the Terms of Service is open to interpretation and change by Black Chicken Host administrators without prior notice.

All prices, with the exception of the 30-day money back guarantee, are non-refundable and non-negotiable.

The 30-day money back guarantee does not pertain to Virtual Dedicated, Full Dedicated server plans, Smart Server Plans or Colocation plans.

Any violation of these Terms of Service will result in termination of the account. Black Chicken Host maintains the right to terminate accounts without prior notification.

In the case that a customer is terminated for violating one or more of the Black Chicken Host Terms of Service, Black Chicken Host reserves the right to deny access to, and/or, destroy customer data stored on the offending server or account. Black Chicken Host may at its own discretion allow access to a terminated account. If Black Chicken Host agrees to provide access to an account which has been terminated due to a Terms of Service violation, the customer may be subject to a one-time charge of $500 or more to cover the cost of hard drives, cloning, processing and shipping.

Dispute Resolution
Any dispute between Black Chicken Host and a subscriber shall be determined by arbitration conducted by the American Arbitration Association pursuant to its commercial arbitration rules. The arbitrator shall decide any dispute in accordance with Michigan law, without the application of choice of law principles. Each party shall bear its own expenses and legal fees for the arbitration. The arbitration shall be conducted in Ingham County, Michigan, unless both parties agree in writing to a different location. The arbitration award is enforceable as a judgment of any court having proper jurisdiction.

Indemnification
Customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Black Chicken Host, its subsidiaries, their affiliates and each of their respective directors, officers, employees, shareholders and agents (each an “Indemnified Party”) against any losses, claims, damages, liabilities, penalties, actions, proceedings, judgments, or any and all costs thereof (collectively, “Losses”) to which an Indemnified Party may become subject and which Losses arise out of, or relate to the Agreement, Customer’s use of the Products and Services, breach of any confidentiality obligation or any alleged infringement of any trademark, copyright, patent or other intellectual property right and will reimburse an Indemnified Party for all legal and other expenses, including reasonable attorneys’ fees incurred by such Indemnified Party, in connection with investigating, defending, or settling any Loss, whether or not in connection with pending or threatened litigation in which such Indemnified Party is a party.

Black Chicken Host may from time to time, at the request of the CUSTOMER, be enlisted to perform server administration tasks on CUSTOMER hardware which is colocated at Black Chicken Host facilities. This service shall be referred to as “Remote Hands”. Customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Black Chicken Host, its subsidiaries, their affiliates and each of their respective directors, officers, employees, shareholders and agents (each an “Indemnified Party”) against any incidental damages caused to CUSTOMER hardware in the performance of Black Chicken Host remote hands server administration.

Domain Registration Information

Here is some additional important information regarding domain registrations, transfers, and other registrar-related matters:http://www.icann.org/en/resources/registrars/registrant-rights/benefits

http://www.icann.org/en/resources/registrars/registrant-rights/educational

Please feel free to review your rights and responsibilities as a domain owner, and to contact us with any questions.