Last updated: July 15th, 2021

We don't love legal speak, so we will try to keep these terms as clear, concise and understandable as possible. This document is divided into three sections: General terms, a Service Level Agreement (SLA), and our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).

General Terms

By subscribing to use any of our services, the client agrees to comply with the following Terms of Service. Acceptance of the Terms is a non-negotiable condition for using the services of S4 Hosting. The word “services” includes the network, hardware, software and technical assistance of S4 Hosting. The client agrees to abide by all conditions specified in these Terms, which constitute an agreement between S4 and the client and take effect from the moment of subscription.

The client agrees, if an individual, that he/she is at least 18 years old, possess legal competence to manage his/her financial affairs and is otherwise fully legally competent, or, if a company or a legal person, that the client possesses all legal authority and power to undertake the commitments specified in these Terms. In addition, the client agrees that all information provided by them to S4 is accurate, complete and current upon renewal and registration of services.

Clients may always view the current version of this document at https://s-4.host/terms-of-service/

Payment and Cancellation Terms

The contractual relationship between S4 and the client commences upon the clients acceptance of these Terms and ends when either party gives notice of cancellation as set out below.

The client agrees to pay all applicable service fees as specified in the price list or in accordance with agreements made in writing between S4 Hosting and the client.

If the client is not an individual but a company, organisation or legal person, the person entering into or renewing the service agreement on behalf of the client certifies that he/she has the authority and permission to bind the client as set out in these terms.

The client can cancel their services at any time either using the online account manager or by sending an e-mail to billing@s-4.host. In the case of cancellation by email, it must originate from the contact email address that we have on file for the client. Upon cancellation the clients services will continue to operate until the next due invoice date and will then be terminated.

In the rare event that S4 Hosting has a need to cancel the service agreement with the client for any reason then we will provide 30 days notice. This notice period does not apply in cases where the client has violated these terms of service or our Acceptable Use Policy.

Intellectual Property

These terms do not confer on the client any rights to the intellectual property of S4 Hosting relating to technology, logos or trademarks. The client hereby agrees that they will not in any way, directly or indirectly, seek to obtain source codes, trade secrets or other proprietary information from S4.

Authentication Data

The client is exclusively responsible for the security of all authentication data provided to them by S4, e.g. passwords, user names, etc. The client is also responsible for all consequences of their use. The client is responsible for all use of domains hosted for them on S4 Hosting's systems. The client agrees to notify S4 immediately of any suspicion of authentication data being acquired by an unauthorised party, any threat to the confidentiality of authentication data and any suspicion of unauthorised access of our services and systems. We will not be liable for any damage or loss resulting from the use of authentication data provided to the client.

Personal Data Protection

We promise to protect information, including personal data regarding the client, through the most secure means that are available to us within reasonable cost limits, including encryption of personal data transmissions.

S4 Hosting promises not to divulge information about the client to any third party, unless required to do so by law, a court order or in cases where a third party must be employed to investigate possible infringements of these Terms. We will never provide any third party with information for use in the marketing of goods or services.

For more information , please see our privacy policy.

Shared Plans

Our Starting Out and More Traffic plans are a shared hosting service. This means that clients share hardware and/or virtual hardware resources. On these plans S4 Hosting reserves the right to transfer the Subscriber's services between machines and/or virtual machines in order to ensure balance in the use of hardware or for any other purpose that S4 deems necessary.

In shared hosting a number of customers share the system resources of a server. System resources include storage space, CPU, RAM and network bandwidth. It follows that "Unlimited" in this context does not mean that a user can take endless system resources, but rather that there is not an arbitrary limit to the use of resources for each user while the average system resource usage is at or under the limits of the shared server. This means, for example, that some users can use more storage while others use more net bandwidth or CPU. In the usage planning for a shared server, some fluctuation in usage is expected, which means that temporarily increased system resource usage is just fine. Users that need consistent access to more system resources than fall within the normal usage in a shared environment will be contacted and asked to move their sites to a more appropriate hosting plan.

Service Level Agreement

Our Service Level Agreement sets out the performance that you can expect from us. This SLA covers any and all downtime caused by any part of our network infrastructure, software, hardware, setup or equipment failure, and our support response times.

Downtime

We are massively confident in our network and software stack and guarantee uptime of 99.98% on a monthly basis. If we fall below that guaranteed uptime, we will compensate clients as follows:

The amount of compensation will be 30 times S4 Hosting's charges for services to the client for the duration of the the service interruption. This is up to a maximum of 100% of S4's charges for services during the 30 calendar day period preceding the interruption per individual interruption. The total amount of combined compensation for multiple service interruptions can not exceed 200% of S4’s charges for services during the 30 calendar day period preceding the latest interruption.

You may check the status of your hosting server uptime from our status page. You should contact our support team if you believe that you have experienced any downtime that falls under this SLA.

The following events are excluded from our calculation of downtime:

• Scheduled maintenance which clients have been notified of 24 hours in advance, and which lasts for less than 1 hour.
• Downtime caused by DNS and/or IP address changes which clients have been notified of in advance but have failed to update their unmanaged name servers.
• Distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks, hacker attacks, and other similar events.
• Downtime caused by the actions of, or software installed by, the client that is not managed by S4
• Downtime caused by a client violating any of the General Terms of Service or the Acceptable Use Policy.
• Downtime during agreed upgrade/downgrade of a clients server resources.
• Downtime during processing of your technical support request(s).
• Downtime resulting from law and public authority enforced activities.

Our calculation of network availability is based on our internal and external monitoring systems. Clients do not need to submit third-party reports as evidence to be entitled to compensation under this SLA.

Support

All clients have access to support by email and we will respond to all email support requests within 12 hours (and we will normally be much faster than that).

For any support requests that we fail to respond to within 12 hours, the client will be compensated for the cost of one day of hosting at their current plan. They will be entitled to an additional compensation of the same amount for every additional 3 hour delay.

Clients at the dedicated VPS level and above also have access to 24/7 support by skype or phone for critical issues. A critical issue is defined as the server or site being down due to network, software, hardware or setup issues that are not a consequence of a direct action taken by the client.

Note: The compensation set out in this SLA does not apply during 7 day free trial periods.

Acceptable Use Policy

We believe in freedom of speech and belief, whether political, religious or cultural. We will not censor any sites hosted on S4 because we do not share the same views on those topics as their content creators.

There are some things that we will not allow to be hosted on our servers though:

• Spam mailers – You may not use our services to send out illegal or unsolicited mass marketing email. Mails sent to subscribed lists should include unsubscribe information.
• Tech trolls – We don't want to deal with unnecessary DDOS and other attacks on behalf of clients who engage in script wars with others.
• Crypto mining - You may not use our servers for mining Bitcoin, Chia, or any other cryptocurrencies.
• Illegal activity – You may not use our services for any illegal activities online. Including, but not limited to: sharing illegal adult material; illegally sharing copyrighted works; for illegal gambling purposes; to disseminate hate speech or promote terrorist activities; for the sale or distribution of illegal controlled substances.
• Malware - You may not use our services to host or spread trojan horses, worms, time bombs, ransomware, spyware, adware, scareware, corrupted files, or any other malicious software or programs that may interrupt, damage or destroy any software, hardware or equipment;
• Unethical business - We will not host the websites of companies that engage in any of the following practices: Exploiting, or denying basic human rights to, their workers; engaging in practices of bribery or corruption; extracting or refining fossil fuels; harvesting unmanaged natural resources (for example timber); manufacturing or selling weapons

S4 Hosting reserves the full and unconditional right to decide whether to terminate services to the client, with or without notice, if we consider the materials stored on our servers to be illegal, unethical or harmful. S4 Hosting has sole discretion in these matters and the client waives all liability claims regarding possible loss resulting from a decision made on these grounds.

It is prohibited for clients to resell or allow third party usage of hosting services provided by S4 Hosting, with or without financial compensation, unless the client has explicit agreement from S4 Hosting.

Law and Jurisdiction

This notice will be governed by and construed in accordance with the law in Finland where this website is hosted, and any disputes relating to this notice shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Finland and the EU.