Definition of Terms

"3Rings", "3Rings web hosting', "us", "we" and "our" means 3Rings Web Services Limited.

"System" means the computer system, programming and communication facilities required by 3Rings for the operation of the service.

"Service" means the web hosting provided by 3Rings to customers subscribing for that web hosting.

"Client ", "Customer" and "You" means the party or parties who enters into this agreement with 3Rings.

Service scope

3Rings reserves the right to modify, enhance and withdraw the service and alter policies and service guidelines.

Terms of payment

In consideration of 3Rings providing you with the service, you agree to payment as follows:

Payment for hosting shall be monthly in advance.

You shall pay on the invoice due date the total invoice amount owed.

If we are forced to hand your account over to a debt collection agency for collection you will be liable for any collection costs incurred.

3Rings reserves the right to suspend all services for any outstanding client account till payment is received in full. If an account is suspended for more than 14 days, 3Rings may at its discretion delete the account and remove all files associated with it from our servers.

Late payment fees

A penalty fee may be added to any outstanding amount every month until the account is paid in full. In the case of accounts more than two months overdue, an administration fee of $50 may be charged.

Validity of the agreement

Either party may terminate the agreement on 7 working days' written notice to the other party.

3Rings reserves the right to cease immediately without liability (other than the refund of unearned prepaid service fees) to provide the service and to terminate this agreement if you should go into liquidation or bankruptcy, or if you fail to meet any obligation in accordance with this agreement subject to our terms or usage policy.

Assignment and Delegation

We may assign or transfer our rights and responsibilities under this contract to another party.

We may also subcontract the performance of any of our responsibilities under this contract to another party.

You may not assign or transfer any of your rights or responsibilities under this contract to anyone else without our prior written consent.

Newsletter consent

You agree to receive notifications from 3Rings via email from time to time as deemed necessary. You can choose to unsubscribe from our mail list, however this may mean that you may miss important information regarding your service.

Customer Information

You agree, for the purposes of this contract and the performance of our obligations to you, that we may collect information about you. The information we collect about you may be obtained from you and others. We may obtain information about you when the services offered to you are used, either by you or anyone else.
You may decide not to provide any information sought from you. If you do not provide it then we may not be able to provide our services to you.
We may use the information we hold about you and may exchange information about you with our contractors, agents and representatives, with other carriers, and with credit reporting and debt collection agencies for the purposes of our business.
You may obtain access to, and correct, any information held by us under the Privacy Act 1993.

Liabilities

You agree that 3Rings will not be liable for any indirect or consequential damages, including but not limited to loss of profits or for any claim made on the client by any other party, even though 3Rings may have been notified of such damage or claims.

We shall not be liable to you for any loss or damage directly or indirectly arising out of or in connection with any delay in delivery of the goods or failure to perform its obligations under this Agreement where such delay is caused directly or indirectly by an act of God, armed conflict, labour dispute, civil commotion, intervention of a government, inability to obtain labour, materials or manufacturing facilities, accidents, interruptions of, or delay in, transportation or any other cause beyond our control.

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold us harmless from and against any and all claims, losses, liabilities and expenses (including attorneys' fees) related to or arising out of the services pr ovided by us to you under this Agreement, including without limitation claims made by third parties (including your customers) related to any false advertising claims, liability claims for products or services sold by you, claims for patent, copyright or trademark infringement, claims due to disruption or malfunction of services provided hereunder, or for any content submitted by you for publication by us.

Due to the public nature of the Internet, all material submitted by you for publication will be considered publicly accessible. 3Rings does not screen in advance customer material submitted to 3Rings for publication. 3Rings' publication of material submitted by customers does not create any express or implied approval by 3Rings of such material, nor does it indicate that such material complies with the terms of this agreement.

3Rings is not responsible for customers' files residing on 3Rings servers. You are solely responsible for independent backup of data stored on 3Rings servers.

Applicable law

The Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 may apply to any services we provide to you if you acquire these services for personal, domestic or household use. If this act applies, all rights you may have under it apply in addition to the rights you may have in this agreement. Nothing in this agreement will limit or exclude your rights under this act.

Where you acquire or hold yourself out as acquiring our services for the purpose of a business, then you agree that the provisions of the Consumers Guarantee Act 1993 will not apply to our service or the provision of any other services to you.

This agreement shall be deemed to be an agreement made in New Zealand and shall be subject to, governed by and interpreted in accordance with the laws of New Zealand.

Web Site Content

You agree to abide by our acceptable use guidelines and any modification from time to time as may be deemed necessary.

Reselling

3Rings may permit you to resell 3Rings services.
If you act as a "reseller" of the services provided by 3Rings to you, then all the terms of this agreement shall pertain to the resale. Without limiting the foregoing, the contents of the disclaimer below shall apply to any and all claims made against you and/or 3Rings which arise out of the resale of 3Rings services.

Relationship of the Parties

The parties intend that an independent contractor relationship will be created by this contract, and that no partnership, joint venture or employee/employer relationship is intended or implied.

Disclaimer

3Rings shall not be liable for any damages suffered by any user of these services, nor be liable for any claims or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused, including without limitations to property damage, loss of profits, interruption of business, intellectual property infringement, personal injury, or for any special, consequential or incidental damages, whether arising out of the client's inability to use the service, breaching of warranty, contract, liability or otherwise. This includes customers of 3Rings resellers.

Services are provided by 3Rings on an 'as is, as available' basis. 3Rings specifically disclaims any other warranty, express or implied, including any warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall 3Rings be liable for any consequential, indirect, special or incidental damages, even if 3Rings has been advised by the customer of the possibility of such potential loss or damage. If 3Rings' service to customers is disrupted or malfunctions for any reason, 3Rings shall not be responsible for losses of income due to disruption of service, beyond the fees paid be the customer to 3Rings for services, during the period of disruption or malfunction.

3Rings is not liable for protection or privacy of electronic mail or other information transferred through the Internet or any other network provider its customers may utilise.

3Rings does not represent or warrant that customers will receive continual and uninterrupted service during the term of this agreement. In no event shall 3Rings be liable to customers for any damages resulting from or related to any failure or delay of 3Rings to provide service under this agreement.

Notwithstanding anything herein contained or implied no employee, agent or director of 3Rings will be liable to the customer for any breach of duty or care in contract, tort, equity or otherwise in relation to the performance of obligations under this contract or in relation to the subject matter of this contract.

This agreement shall become effective on the date of your order form being submitted to us for the service.

You shall be deemed to have read this agreement and agree to be bound by this agreement. This agreement shall supersede all proposals or prior agreements, oral or written, and all other communications between the parties relating to the subject matter of this agreement.

If, for any reason, any provisions of this contract cannot be enforced or relied on be either of us, all other terms of our contract with you remain binding.

Non Waiver

Failure by any party to enforce any right or obligation with respect to any matter arising in connection with this contract shall not constitute a waiver as to that matter or any other matter either then or in the future. Any waiver of any right or obligation under this contract shall only be of any force and effect if such waiver is in writing and is expressly stated to be a waiver of a specified right or obligation under this contract.

Acceptable Use and Service Guidelines

Content

All 3Rings services may be used for lawful purposes only. We prohibit transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any New Zealand or United States law. This includes copyrighted material, threatening or obscene content, pornography and sex-related selling. Pirated software, illegal MP3s, hacking programmes and 'warez' sites are prohibited on 3Rings servers. Similarly, sites that promote any illegal activity or content that may be damaging to our servers (or any other server on the Internet) are prohibited on 3Rings servers. Links to such materials are also prohibited. Sites or customers selling or promoting bulk email services or any 'spamming' services are prohibited on 3Rings servers. Libellous or slanderous material is prohibited on 3Rings servers. The customer agrees to indemnify and hold 3Rings harmless from any claims resulting from use of the service that damages the subscriber or any other party. We will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.

Traffic Guidelines

We strive to provide fast and reliable service for all customers, and will investigate any deterioration in performance. If, in our opinion, a site is utilising an excessive amount of bandwidth we may take steps to restrict the bandwidth available to that site. If this situation arises, the customer will be contacted immediately to discuss the options available. These options may involve limiting access, moving to another 3Rings server, or paying additional fees for an enhanced hosting service. This policy ensures a fair service for all 3Rings clients.

CGI Scripts

If your account includes a CGI bin, you may use your own CGI scripts - however, we reserve the right to disable any CGI scripts that affect server operation or performance.

Other Programmes

Programmes that run continually in the background; chat rooms; IRC or IRC bots may not be operated on our servers.

Unsolicited SPAM

Sending unsolicited emails or txt messages from our servers is strictly prohibited.

Server Abuse

Any attempts to undermine or cause harm to a server is strictly prohibited.

Refusal of Service

We reserve the right to refuse or cancel service at our sole discretion.

Termination of Accounts

If any terms, conditions, or usage policies are breached it will constitute grounds for immediate account termination.

What does "unlimited" mean

We like to keep things simple and let you use what you need without the penalty of further charges. This way you know exactly what you're paying for and there are no hidden costs.

We often get asked what exactly "unlimited" means, and the answer is simple.

We let you use the services you need, however we do actively monitor resource usage and will let you know if your usage is affecting the performance of the server, or is becoming unreasonable to a point where the expense of operating your account exceeds your monthly billing. In the event we require you to move from a shared hosting account we will discuss the options available to you. These options include hosting on our US-based server, virtual servers, and dedicated server hosting.
As a general guide we do not permit high-volume sites, file archives or free email services.
To give you a bit of a guide we generally wouldn't allow more than 5Gb webspace or 10Gb bandwidth usage and we may limit to these as default, per total unlimited account and addon's.

If you're unsure about any of these conditions please contact us to discuss your options.

What constitutes a high-volume web site?

There are a number of factors we consider and enquiries have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Some of the factors we consider are: # Volume of monthly national visitor traffic. # Volume of monthly international visitor traffic. # Nature of website content. # Requirements of sites (e.g. database or static pages)

What is a file archive?

We consider file archives to be mass storage of images, music and videos where the purpose of their storage is for portability and download.

What is a free email service?

Free email refers to a Hotmail-type service where mailboxes and associated services are offered free to the public through a website or other medium.

Backups of hosting accounts:

We process daily, weekly and monthly cpanel backups to our dedicated backup servers for our shared hosting accounts.
We may not backup accounts larger than 2000MB.
Terminated accounts backups may not be kept after the account is closed.
In certain circumstances we may charge a fee for restoration of backups.
3Rings make no guarantee's in regards to backups being provided due to any reason.