System Policies & Guidlines

Sonoma Web Hosting provides web hosting to many clients, and we have a responsibility to protect each client and to provide the best services available. When you abide by these guidelines, you help ensure that our obligations to you and our other customers are met.

• MENU:
• Support
• Unacceptable Content
• Email
• System and Network Abuse
• Limitation Of Liability
• Free Domain Registration
• Money Back Guarantee
• Account Activation
• Account Deactivation/Cancellation
• Payment Policies

	Support

Sonoma Web Hosting support is available via the web, email and phone during regular business
Sonoma Web Hosting Online Help Center

NOTE: We provide limited technical support for 3rd party software, scripts and coding. This includes HTML coding, CGI & Java Scripts not done by our staff, or any other software that you utilize to design and implement your web pages. We will do our best to answer all 3rd party questions, but some we just can't. Please refer to our webmaster resources page for information regarding some of these topics.

	Unacceptable Content

All services provided by Sonoma Web Hosting may 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 City law is prohibited. 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 Maine Hosting Solutions and its employees from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Examples of unacceptable content or links:
- Pornography and sex-related merchandising
- Pirated software
- Hacker programs or archives
- Warez sites

Sonoma Web Hosting Oasis will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.

Pornography and sex-related merchandising is prohibited on all Maine Hosting Solutions servers. This includes sites that may infer sexual content, or link to adult content elsewhere. Sonoma Web Hosting Oasis will be the sole arbiter in determining violations of this provision.

Also prohibited are sites that promote any illegal activity or present content that may be damaging to MHS servers or any other server on the Internet. Links to such materials are also prohibited.

Sites with banners, graphics or cgi's running from their domain used on other domains:
When you employ services such as Link Exchange or a cgi host who lets 1000's of others link to their site, it is important that you require any sites you exchange ads with to display your ad on their server. Not only will not abiding to this guideline cause your site to load slowly, you will be responsible for the data transfer used in this process.

Sites using more than 20% of system resources:
Maine Hosting Solutions will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.

Chat Rooms & IRC:
We do not allow clients to install their own chat rooms. These tend to be a large drain on system resources and we cannot allow it as an account option. We currently do not allow IRC or IRC bots to be operated on our servers.

	Email

Spamming, or the sending of unsolicited e-mail including, without limitation, commercial advertising and informational announcements, from a Sonoma Web Hosting server or using an e-mail address or domain that is maintained on a Sonoma Web Hosting Oasis machine as reference is STRICTLY prohibited. Maine Hosting Solutions will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. A user shall not use another site's mail server to relay mail without the express permission of the site. Sonoma Web Hosting Oasis will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of these provisions.

	System and Network Abuse

Server Abuse:
Any attempt to undermine, compromise the security of, or otherwise cause harm to any Sonoma Web Hosting server or customer accounts is strictly prohibited and will result in the cancellation of the account.

Background Running Programs:
We may allow programs to run continually in the background. These are considered on a case-by-case basis and an extra charge will be incurred based on system resources used and operational maintenance needed.

Refusal of Service:
We reserve the right to refuse, cancel, or suspend service at our sole discretion.

	Limitation of Liability

Sonoma Web Hostin shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental and consequential damages, which may arise from Sonoma Web Hostin servers going off-line or being unavailable for any reason whatsoever. Furthermore, Sonoma Web Hostin shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental or consequential damages, resulting from the corruption or deletion of any web site from one of Sonoma Web Hostin servers. All damages shall be limited to the immediate termination of service.

Violations of these Acceptable Uses Policies should be referred to abuse@sonomawebhosting.com

All complaints will be investigated promptly.

Failure to follow any term or condition may be grounds for immediate account deactivation.

Credit for outage policy is as follows:
A credit of 5% of the monthly fee will be issued for each thirty minute period of outage to a maximum of 50% of your monthly hosting fee.

To claim outage an email must be sent to Support Sonoma Web Hosting documenting the beginning of the site downtime. An additional email must be sent when your site becomes available again.

	Money Back Guarantee

Sonoma Web Hosting is pleased to offer a money-back guarantee within 30 days of your account activation should we fail to provide satisfactory service. We do not refund InterNIC registration fees. Furthermore, Sonoma Web Hosting will not and can not be responsible for any fees that you charge for your services to your customers. Our guarantee does not apply to accounts which violate acceptable use policies or which exceed the data transfer limits during the first 30 days.

Disclaimer:
Sonoma Web Hosting cannot be held liable for system downtime, crashes, or data loss. We cannot be held liable for any predicted estimate of profits in which a client would have gained if their site was functioning. Certain services provided by Sonoma Web Hosting are resold. Thus, certain equipment, routing, software, and programming used by Sonoma Web Hosting are not directly owned or written by Sonoma Web Hosting. Moreover, Sonoma Web Hosting holds no responsibility for the use of our clients accounts. If any terms or conditions are failed to be followed, the account in question will be automatically deactivated. We reserve the right to remove any account without advanced notice for any reason without restitution as MSonoma Web Hosting sees fit.

	Account Activation

By activating your account with Sonoma Web Hosting, you agree to the above policies and disclaimer. Upon requesting an account activation, you are required to accept these policies, guidelines, and disclaimer and a copy of your acceptance is forwarded along with your activation request to be maintained within your account information.

NOTICE: If you sign up for an account and do not follow our terms, no refunds will be given. We will however let you know by email or phone before any action is taken so that you have the opportunity to resolve the matter.

	Account Deactivation/Cancellation Policy

Your account may be cancelled at anytime.

• Full Refund - If cancelled within 30 days.
• Prorated Refund - Upon cancellation after 30 days you will receive a prorated refund of unused time based on our monthly rate.
• Domain Names - Domain registration fees are non refundable. If you received a FREE domain registration you will be responsible for the registration fee if you cancel your account within 12 months of account activation.
  
  All account cancellation requests must be submitted in writing.

	Payment Policies

• Payment for web hosting services is expected prior to services rendered.
• If paying by check, payment is expected within 7 days of your billing anniversary.
• If your account is past due you will receive a Past Due Notice as soon as your account falls past due, you will then receive additional notices every 5 days until payment is received.
• If payment is not received within 30 days web hosting services will be suspended. After 30 days you will receive a late payment notice every day until payment is received.
• If payment is not received with 60 days of your due date your domain and files will be removed from the system.
• Returned Check - Non Sufficient Funds Fee: $25.00

Sonoma Web Hosting retains the right to change any or all of the above Policies, Guidelines, and Disclaimer without notification.