Terms of Service

In this document we try to write everything in plain English as much as possible. To do this, we frequently use terms like “we” and “you”. “We”, “us”, “our”, “the company”, “contractor”, and “WHD” means West Hill Digital LLC, a Limited Liability Company formed in the state of Massachusetts. “You”, “your”, “customer(s)”, or “client(s)” in this document is the subscribers, purchasers and users of services provided by West Hill Digital LLC.

The following Terms of Service (“TOS,” “Terms” or “Agreement”) are entered into by and between West Hill Digital LLC and the clients and apply to the website and services specified in your subscription, purchase, scope of work, and/or proposal. This Agreement is made effective as of the date of your order, subscription start date, or listed effective date of service. These terms apply to your use of our website and all services, features and/or content provided by WHD.

These terms of service were last updated on November 3, 2024. Your purchase of any of our products or services provided and subsequent renewal of any subscriptions affirms your agreement to these terms. We reserve the right to change them at any time. Changes to our terms will be updated and posted on this website. If our terms change substantively for a service we provide to you, we’ll notify you via the email address we have on file. If you do not agree with our updated terms, you are able to cancel your subscription or service under the previous terms of service cancellation conditions.

General Terms

These terms are applicable to all services provided by us. In the event of a conflict between these general terms and another section of terms for a specific type of service or product, these terms apply, but only to the extent of such conflict.

Definitions

• “Custom Request”, “Support Request”, or “Support Inquiry” is defined as a communication from you for assistance, questions, work order requests, regarding our provided services or your website. It can be for services actively being provided or requests for new work regarding your website or services we provide.
• “Hourly Rate” or “Labor Rate” is defined as our hourly rate that is in place at the time a service is requested, not at the time this agreement is first accepted or agreed upon.
• “Care Plan Services” or “Care Plan(s)” is defined as the services provided for the maintenance and related services for the upkeep of your website as defined in the Care Plan Terms below and as stated in your subscription.
• “Hosting Services” or “Hosting” is defined as the services provided for the storage, management, and delivery of website content using the WordPress platform on our servers and infrastructure as defined in the Hosting Terms below and as stated in your subscription.
• “Backup(s)” is defined as a compilation or copy of files, database exports and other data from or related to your website from a specific date that can be used to restore it to its state as of the date when it was taken.
• “On-site backup(s)” is defined as a backup located and kept on the same server and/or storage that your website is located.
• “Off-site backup(s)” is defined as a backup located and kept separately from the server that your website is located such as through a third-party storage provider or another server.
• “Migrate” is defined as moving your website to another server, hosting provider or physical storage location.
• “Suspension” is defined as pausing your services where no further products services you signed up for will be rendered until the suspension is lifted, but not terminating or permanently closing your account.
• “[Website] Availability” or “Uptime” is defined as the amount of time or percentage of total time your website’s server, whether through domain pointing via DNS (domain name system), direct through IP address or method of HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SSH, or database connection over the internet.
• “Transactional Email” is defined as an automated email sent outbound from your website in response to a specific action, such as but not limited to password resets, account sign-ups, purchases or order confirmations, form submissions.
• “Premium Themes” or “Premium Plugins” are those not publicly available and require a paid license to use and receive updates for.
• “Virtual patch” is a rule or set of rules deployed through our Web Application Firewall (WAF) that will mitigate a specific software vulnerability on your website, without changing the software itself.

Communication

By hiring us, completing your purchase or signing up for a subscription, you consent to receive electronic communications from us, including any necessary legal notices. We will communicate with you through the email address you provided at the time of your purchase.

Primary Contact

You shall designate one (1) person who will act as the primary liaison for all communications and approvals regarding your website or the services provided. WHD is not responsible for the actions or consequences performed by any additional people, users and third-parties you authorize and/or accounts added to your website.

Availability

We are generally available to provide services, support and communication via our primary means of communication (support portal on this website and email) Monday through Friday 8AM-4PM Eastern time, excluding weekends and holidays (subject to change without notice). We may contact you via phone or plan a digital meeting software such as Google Meet and Zoom if agreed upon, however methods of communication other than our primary method is solely at our discretion.

Scheduling of Services

Support inquiries or custom requests made outside normal business hours will be performed at the next availability during normal business hours. Our normal response time to requests is one business day, however, response time may vary. Issues, support, and custom requests are typically completed or resolved within 1-3 business days however this time is subject to availability and is not a guarantee.

In normal circumstances we do not perform labor for custom requests on weekends or holidays. Requests should be scheduled and planned accordingly. For example, if a request is submitted Friday it will likely be read and scheduled to be completed on the following Monday, with a typical completion performed between that Monday to Wednesday. If labor is performed over a weekend or holiday it is up to our sole discretion.

Clients with active care plan subscriptions receive priority response times for all requests and support.

We do not provide a general SLA (Service Level Agreement) with our services and thus provide no guaranteed delivery schedule in regards to our provided services unless explicitly agreed upon in a scope of work or addendum agreement to these terms. If you require a custom SLA, please contact us.

Hourly Rate and Labor

Throughout this document, our website and services, reference may be made to our current hourly rate. We will provide you with our current hourly rate upon request. Our hourly rate is defined as the rate charged per hour (60 minutes) in U.S. Dollars (USD) and is subject to change without notice.

Payments

We use a third party payment processor, Stripe, for our primary billing processing. Stripe will collect your payment information and process your payment. We do not collect, hold, use, share or have full access to your payment information. We are not responsible for the collection, use, sharing or security of your billing information by Stripe.

You hereby represent and warrant that you have the legal right to use the payment method(s) in connection with any purchase and that the information that you supply to us and to the third party payment processor(s) is true, correct and complete.

We accept all major credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express) and ACH/bank account (US only) transfers through Stripe. Stripe must be used as your payment method with a valid payment method on file to automatically capture your payment. Alternative payment methods may be accepted at our discretion such as pay by invoice via Stripe or a mailed check and may include an applicable surcharge.

Pricing

We reserve the right to adjust pricing for our services at any time, however we will provide you email communication of a price change at least 30 days in advanced of active subscriptions and your automatically renewed services.

Payment Terms

Our hosting and care plan services are billed as prepayment within your selected term such as monthly or annually. The payment term option is selected by you when you sign up for our services. Other services, such as by not limited to: website development, website design, consulting, projects and other one-time costs will be invoiced based on the payment terms provided in their proposal, quote, estimate or scope of work and may include a deposit, deliverable milestones or payment due after services rendered.

Payments are due within 30 days of the invoice being provided (NET30 terms) unless a different due date is provided on the invoice. All invoices, payment-due notices, and bills will be sent via email. No invoices, payment-due notices and bills will be sent by postal mail or fax.

Subscriptions and Automatic Renewals

Our website features products and services, such as our hosting and care plans that are offered via a subscription model. This model requires recurring payments, based on the term selected when you sign up, to receive the product or service. Billing for signed up product or service will renew indefinitely unless canceled. The payment method on file with our payment processor will attempt to be automatically charged upon the renewal date within your payment term.

You may change the payment method at any time by using our billing portal or providing a new payment method when paying an invoice. You are fully responsible for making sure payment is made in a timely manner and are fully responsible for keeping accurate billing information on file for renewals.

Refunds

We will not issue refunds for past payments, services already rendered, renewals that have already been processed or any purchases made on this website or through our billing platform. We do not offer refunds for any unused bundled support time or prepaid labor hours.

We will not be able to issue you a refund of the purchase price that you paid if we cancel your purchase.

Cancellations and Termination

You may cancel the automatic renewal services at any time and we will not bill for future periods. Cancellations may be processed by logging in to our billing portal and terminating your subscription. You may also cancel by contacting us through our support portal on this website or by emailing us at [email protected].

Cancellations must be done prior to a renewal processing. Cancellation of an automatically renewed service take effect immediately upon confirmation of termination via email.

No services related to the cancellation of a product or service will be provided once a termination becomes effective.

We reserve the right to cancel and terminate your purchase or service for any reason, at our sole discretion, including but not limited to fraud, inaccuracies, violations of our terms and policies, and unavailability of the items or services purchased. We will provide you with 30 days notice, provided via email, prior to cancelling your service with exception of it being related to unpaid balances or a violation of our terms and policies.

You are responsible for all unpaid and outstanding balances and fees through the effective termination date. Cancellation does not absolve Client of any outstanding financial obligations. Failure to pay outstanding balances may result in your balance being provided to a third party collection agency. We reserve the right to go through a third-party collection agency to collect outstanding payments.

Care Plan Termination

After cancelation or termination of a care plan service term, you are discontinuing any and all services related to and provided within the care plan. Any included theme, plugin or third party licenses that were provided as part of your care plan are revoked as part of your termination. The total responsibility of backups, maintenance, update, security of your WordPress website becomes yours.

Hosting Termination

If you are migrating your website to another hosting provider and require a copy of your files and/or database to perform the migration, you must request this prior to the cancellation of your automatic renewal.

A single copy of these files in the format of a .wpress backup file or zipped backup containing a database and file dump will be provided via email or third party storage link, such as but not limited to Google Drive, Dropbox, WeTransfer, at no additional charge if there are no outstanding balances at the time of the request. A third party storage link will be kept accessible for no more than (14) days.

All associated service files of your website are queued to be permanently destroyed upon your effective termination date of the hosting service. A request for a backup of files and/or database of your website made after the effective termination date may be provided at our discretion. If we provide a backup after the effective termination date the service will be charged at our hourly rate in addition to any applicable fees. There is no guarantee we are able to provide a copy of your files and/or database after your termination of the hosting service.

Late Payment, Chargebacks, Failure to Pay and Collections

Failure of the client to fully pay any outstanding balances of their account of (30) days or more, such as an invoice that is thirty days past its due date without full payment, will deem your account past due. Accounts with a past due status will result in the immediate suspension of any product or service without prior notice. Service may only resume and a suspension be lifted upon full payment, including any interest or fees.

Collections

We reserve the right to accrue interest or add late fees up to 5% of the outstanding total balance on accounts that are past due unless prohibited by law. Any suspension or termination of services does not relieve you from paying past dues.

We reserve the right to provide your balance to a third-party collection agency as a debt to collect overdue payments if in a past due status. You shall be held liable for any reasonable additional costs and fees associated with this debt such as but not limited to legal costs, attorneys’ fees, court costs and collection agency fees.

Chargebacks and Transaction Disputes

If a you or your card’s provider issues a chargeback on a payment made to WHD for a product or service, the service will immediately be suspended or terminated without prior notice. Reestablishment of the product or service will require the chargeback dispute to be canceled or in a closed state, a full repayment of the amount charged back if you were awarded the chargeback, a minimum of a 10% fee of the original amount for the chargeback and a written explanation.

Backups

We offer website system backups that are intended to recover from system failure, website infection or hacking, and unintended changes. These backups may be used for restoration of files, database or complete website restoration. These backups are created, maintained and stored as part of your hosting service. With our backups the files, folder structure and database of your website are saved at the point the backup is taken.

On-site backups are enabled for all hosting plans and are kept for a minimum of (14) days beyond their original date and are taken on a recurring daily basis (every 24 hours). On-site backups share the storage with your website. If your website suffers from malware or hacking event, storage failure or inaccessibility event on your website’s server, the on-site backups may become corrupt, unusable or inaccessible to restore the website.

Off-site backups, if included in your service, are kept for a minimum of (30) days beyond their original date and are taken on a recurring daily basis (every 24 hours). Off-site backups are stored separately from your website and would be usable to restore your website in a malware or hacking event, storage failure or inaccessibility event of the server. Off-site backups are stored at a third-party vendor of our choosing and is subject to change without notification.

Backups are not guaranteed and we are not responsible for any loss of assets, revenue, or other tangible or intangible loss due to missing or corrupt backups. No guarantees or warranties are made of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the integrity of the backups or backup services. It is your responsibility to maintain local copies of content and other stored information. If loss of data occurs due to a failure on our part, we will attempt to recover the data in-house at no charge to the client with reasonable efforts.

Care Plan Backups

Our care plans offer additional off-site backups regardless of what hosting plan or provider you are on. These backups are kept in an independent location at a third-party storage provider separate from our hosting off-site backups for redundancy and disaster recovery purposes.

Restorations

Restorations can be requested by you through the support portal on our website to a date requested if available. We will perform a maximum of (3) restorations in any 30-day period for no additional fee. Additional restorations will be performed at our hourly rate with a one-hour minimum. Backup restorations will reflect the state of the site at the time the backup was taken. Any information added or changes made to the site after the backup will not be included in the restored version and will be overwritten in the restore process.

Uptime Monitoring

In numerous of our service offerings we include website uptime monitoring. We used third party software and systems to monitor both your website’s availability from its domain/URL address and its availability from your hosting service / server we provide. Our uptime monitoring checks on your website in both of these circumstances every 30 seconds to 5 minutes from 3-5 global locations, including but not limited to North America, Asia, EU and Australia to provide us local and global statuses to help identify a case of a local outage.

Our monitoring services are offered as a 24/7 solution where if and when alerted, we will automatically take action to rectify an alerted uptime and availability issue with your website. Our monitor service is not a guarantee and we will not be held liable for any damages or loss of revenue due to the monitoring service malfunctioning or failing to notify us of an issue with your website’s uptime and availability.

Transactional Emails

We offer transactional emails with a quantity listed within the service you purchase. The quantity is typically set on a monthly basis unless otherwise agreed upon. A transactional email is counted for every outbound email sent from your website and the quantity listed does not roll over for any unused amounts. Transactional email overages will be billed at an amount of $2.50 per 1000 emails. You can purchase additional transactional emails to be included with your plan if you regularly go over the included amount.

Transactional emails will have an automatic from email address associated with your domain, such as “noreply”@ yourdomain. You can request this to be a specific email address instead of the automatically generated one. Transactional emails are not an email service. We do not provide any email service, email accounts, SMTP service or email inboxes.

Our transactional emails will be sent through a third party provider of our choosing and may be changed at any time at our discretion. We do not guarantee any specific level of deliverability, SLA, availability with transactional emails. We will not be held liable for any damages or loss of revenue for any transactional emails that fail to be delivered to their intended recipient or fail to be sent. It is your responsibility to check and test for email deliverability from the transactional emails or address at your domain.

Our transactional emails do not come with a dedicated IP address by default for your website and could be flagged as spam or spoofing of your domain by recipient’s email systems without the proper domain authentication. If you require assistance with implementing DNS records using our transactional emails to ensure or increase deliverability of your transactional emails, we will provide this information or implement it when requested if we manage your DNS. A dedicated IP address for your transactional emails can be made available and purchased on request.

Third Party Services and Content

If you choose to employ any third party services or companies, such as but not limited to providing SEO (Search Engine Optimization), marketing, social media, maintenance, development, management, content writing services, we are not responsible or liable for any changes, modifications, consequences resulting from using such services or companies.

Should our services become necessary due to any work, access or problems caused by a third party you enacted that falls outside the listed services offered within your purchased services from us, these will be billed at our current hourly rate.

We may recommend or implement plugins, themes or other materials that are created by third parties to fulfill or resolve a request or need from you. We are not liable for any third-party services or content, regardless of the recommendation or implementation.

Policy Management & Compliance

Depending on the nature of your site and your location, legal pages such as Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Return Policy, etc., may be mandated by government entities, vendors, or licensing agencies. It is your responsibility to determine whether your website requires any such legal pages and policies and how to display them.

If we provide any standardized privacy policies and terms of use or refer you to a third party policy system, we expressly do not guarantee that this language complies with any governing body’s requirements. You are hereby informed and you acknowledge that you should have any policy or language reviewed and approved by an attorney. You agree we will not be held liable for any failure to provide or comply with any such policies or on your website.

If your website is required to and was created to comply with requirements, such as but not limited to HIPAA, FERPA, WCAG, ADA, CCPA, CalOPPA, and GDPR it is your responsibility to inform us of the specific compliance requirements that were previously established, such as when your website was created, and are required to be maintained. Additional measures required by us as part of our services to maintain compliance are subject to being billed at our current hourly rate. We provide no guarantees that using our services will provide you with legal compliance of your website to any applicable laws or regulatory compliances, it is your responsibility to verify compliance and have it reviewed by legal counsel.

Content and DMCA

You agree that any materials are owned by you or that you have acquired the appropriate rights, licenses and are using them in a manner consistent with their terms. Materials on your website may consist of but are not limited to images, videos, audio, software, files and other media, code, data and wording. In no event will we be liable for any violation of any licensing, rights or intellectual property for any content on your website.

If we determine you have violated this content policy, or have received legal notice or request from a third party, such as a DMCA or Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights, we may remove the attributed content from your website, suspend your service, terminate your service, or take appropriate action at our discretion without warning.

WHD in no way endorses Client’s website or deems the website content to be suitable under the terms of this agreement.

Warranty

Our services and products are sold and provided “as is”, meaning we do not make any representations or warranties, either express or implied, without limitation. We cannot guarantee that our services will meet your requirements or that our services will be 100% available and are not responsible for any loss of content, material, revenue or any damages incurred.

Limitation of Liability

We provide our products and services with best faith effort. We’ll do our best to provide everything that is stated or advertised on our website. There is are always circumstances that something may differ or could go wrong (for example backups may fail, the datacenter where your website is kept catches on fire, your site may be hacked or corrupt beyond repair, your site may go down, we may be unreachable, etc.). In these cases we will do our best to resolve them as quickly as possible. In no event will we be liable for any lost profits, savings, incidental,. indirect, special or consequential damages due to your use of our services or the breach of this agreement.

In no event will the collective liability of the company, its affiliates and its licensors, service providers, employees, agents, officers, and directors be liable for damages of any kind, under any legal theory, for harm caused by or related to the customer’s services or inability to utilize the services, including any direct, indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, including but not limited to personal injury, pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of revenue, loss of profits, loss of business or anticipated savings, loss of use, loss of goodwill, loss of data, and whether caused by tort (including negligence), breach of contract or otherwise, even if foreseeable.

The foregoing does not affect any liability which cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

Notwithstanding anything else in this master services agreement, the maximum aggregate liability of the company or any of its employees, agents, contractors, or affiliates, under any theory of law should not exceed the amount of fees it has collected on the client’s account in the last six months.

Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless for any damages or lawsuits related to our services and that all services and facilities are used at your own risk. We specifically disclaim all warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. We shall in no even be held liable for any loss, loss of data, loss of revenue or damages.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless WHD, its subsidiaries, contractors, employees and 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 related to the Agreement, Client’s use of the 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.

Force Majeure

We shall not be considered in breach of this agreement if we are unable to complete the services or any portion thereof due to events beyond our control, including but not limited to fire, earthquake, labor disputes, power or grid failure, systems or telecommunications/internet failure, acts of God or public enemy, pandemics, acts of war, terrorist attacks, labor strikes, death, flood, illness, incapacity, or compliance with any local, state, federal, national, or international law, governmental order, or regulation (collectively, “Force Majeure Events”). In the event of a Force Majeure Event, we will endeavor to notify you of our inability to perform or any delays in providing our services.

If any part fails to perform any of its obligations under the agreement due to a “Force Majeure Event”, that party shall not be held liable for any loss or damage which may be incurred as a result of such event. Should the event continue for longer than a (30) day period, or such period as previously agreed upon, the party adversely affected shall have the option to terminate the agreement without any further liability or charges than those already accrued prior to the effective termination date. In no event shall a Force Majeure Event have the effect of discharging or postponing Client’s payment obligations under the Agreement.

Governing Law, Severability and Dispute Resolution

The laws of the state of Massachusetts govern the rights and obligations of the Client and the Contractor under this Contract, without regard to conflict of law provisions. These terms shall not be governed by the United Nations convention on contracts for the sale of international goods, the Uniform Commercial Code, nor Incoterms.

If any provision of this Agreement is determined to be invalid under any applicable statute or rule of law, it is to that extent to be deemed omitted, and the balance of the Agreement shall remain enforceable.

You agree that we each may bring claims against the other only in our or your capacity and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class or representative action.

In the event of any dispute or disagreement with respect to the meaning, effect or interpretation of this Agreement or in the event of a claimed breach of this Agreement, the parties hereto agree that such dispute shall be determined through mediation. Unless otherwise mutually agreed, the location of the mediation will be in Worcester County, Massachusetts. The client will be responsible for the costs of the mediation. The parties agree to cooperate fully with the mediator in good faith in order to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution of the dispute. If the dispute is not resolved within 60 days after it is referred to the mediator, either party has the option to litigate the dispute in a court of law located in Worcester county, Massachusetts.

All notices with respect to these terms may be sent via email to [email protected].

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Hosting Terms

Security

We implement various forms of advanced security measures and system hardening to protect and aide in preventing your website from being hijacked, hacked, attacked, maliciously penetrated and infected with malicious code or software. While our systems greatly reduce your risk and secure your website, no system is perfect or impenetrable as new vulnerabilities and measures for bypassing security features of websites, networks and servers are found, created and exploited daily. We make no guarantees that your website will be 100% protected or secure, only that we will provide our best faith effort.

The most common method for bad actors to attack and/or gain access to your website are due to core, theme and plugin vulnerabilities, sharing or using insecure credentials of WordPress users, such as those with editor and/or administrator permissions, and credentials being stolen or breached from another source, such as a data breach at a third party where you used the same credentials. If you are not utilizing one of our care plans or employing a professional service to keep your website up to date and patched against vulnerabilities, you are inherently increasing the odds and risk of your website being targeted.

While hosting a website with us, you are responsible for creating a strong and unique password for user accounts on your WordPress website, your hosting portal accounts and emails associated with these. You should utilize MFA (multi factor authentication) where available for all account types and regularly change your passwords. You should not share any WordPress accounts with other individuals. You should only access your WordPress website on encrypted and secure connections, not on public internet or WiFi connections. We are not responsible for any of your accounts being compromised your website negatively affected as a result due to not following standard and best practice security measures.

While we cannot disclose all specific measures we take, as doing so may give bad actors insight on ways to attempt to bypass them, various security measures that our hosting include are:

• Daily malware scanning of all files on the server level
• WordPress user enumeration blocking
• XML-RPC blocking
• Spam blocking and comment guarding
• Loaded scripts blocking
• PHP script execution blocking
• Utilize only stable and secure versions of PHP
• Server stack operating system is maintained, updated and kept secure
• WP-config protection
• Default security headers configured
• Rate-limiting for logins and admin-ajax and jailed login attempts
• WAF (web application firewall) used at the server level
• A+ grade SSL certificate
• Forced routing
• Password reset guarding
• Fortress security with 2FA

In the event that your website is hijacked, hacked, infested with malicious code or software, we will restore it to a backup, when available, prior to the action taking place. If no back up is available prior to the action taking place, such as but not limited to: only local backups being included in your plan and them becoming infected, you notifying us too long after the malicious issue took place so no viable backups are present, we at our discretion may offer malware remediation services to you which would be billed at our current hourly rate.

Prohibited Use

When hosting your website with us, you agree to abide by and comply with all applicable local, state, national, international laws regarding your website. In order to protect us and the clients we serve, we retain the right to cease working with a client that violate our policies and terms of use including a website that violates the prohibited uses detailed below. We reserve the right to terminate our agreement to provide services to you at any time for violating any of our policies or terms with our sole discretion. You agree we will not be held liable for any damages or loss of revenue for invoking this right. At our discretion, we will refund any applicable amounts you have previously paid for services we have not rendered at the time of termination.

• You may not use our services in any way that cause damage to our website, our servers, our other customers, or the property of any third parties.
• Transmission, distribution, uploading, posting or storage of any material in violation of any applicable law or regulation is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property right used without proper authorization, material kept in violation of state laws or industry regulations such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, and material that is obscene, defamatory, libelous, unlawful, harassing, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, constitutes an illegal threat, violates export control laws, hate propaganda, fraudulent material or fraudulent activity, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable material of any kind or nature.
• Client may not transmit, distribute, or store material that contains a virus, “Trojan Horse,” adware or spyware, malware, corrupted data, or any malicious software.
• The sending of any form of unsolicited bulk email (“spam”) through WHD’s servers is prohibited. Likewise, the sending of spam from another service provider advertising a website, email address or utilizing any resource hosted on WHD’s servers, is prohibited. WHD accounts or services may not be used to solicit customers from, or collect replies to, messages sent from another Internet Service Provider where those messages violate this AUP or that of the other provider. Client further agrees not to transmit any material that encourages conduct that could constitute a criminal offense, gives rise to civil liability or otherwise violates any applicable local, state, national or international law or regulation.
• Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available or using any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate our terms and policies, which includes, but is not limited to, the facilitation of the means to send spam, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail-bombing, denial of service attacks.
• Automatically forwarding users to any website that, if such website were hosted by us, would violate the provisions of our terms.
• Unauthorized attempts by a user to gain access to any account or computer resource not belonging to that user such as brute force attacks, DDoS / Denial of Service attacks, password cracking, hijacking or hacking. Engaging in any activities that do or are designed to harass, or that will cause a denial-of-service (e.g., synchronized number sequence attacks) to any other customer, regardless of the network.
• Using your website and our services as an online backup or storage repository, or mirroring mass downloads.
• Impersonating any person or entity, including, but not limited to, a WHD employee, or falsely stating or otherwise misrepresenting Client’s affiliation with a person or entity.
• Using WHD’s services for the operation of facilities, air traffic control or life support systems, where the use or failure of the services could lead to death, personal injury or environmental damage.

Managed DNS (Domain Name System)

When using our hosting services, you are required to point your domain (such as yourwebsite.com) to our servers to host the files, database and configuration of your website to make it accessible on the internet.

This can be accomplished in one of two ways: creating DNS records through your domain registrar that point to our servers, or changing your domain name’s nameservers through your domain registrar for us to manage your DNS on your behalf.

We manage all DNS records through Cloudflare and as such, if we manage your DNS for your domain you gain various benefits from the Cloudflare free plan, such as caching, CDN, and additional security benefits. Services provided by Cloudflare are not a guarantee and we are not responsible for any issues, outages, or problems as a result of Cloudflare’s services.

While we manage your DNS you may request additions, changes and deletions for DNS records of your domain. DNS requests are subject to our normal scheduling of services terms. Although typically resolved within a few minutes, all DNS changes can take up to 48-hours to propagate on the internet.

We are not responsible and will not be held liable for any damages or loss of revenue for DNS (domain name system) records incorrectly pointed or not pointed, DNS server failures, connected or third party systems that rely on DNS records failing due to improperly configured, missing or records that are unresolvable.

Domain Registrar

When signing up for hosting, you choose whether you want to perform the action of changing your nameservers or pointing DNS yourself, or have it done for you as part of our service. Changing your nameservers or pointing your DNS is offered as a courtesy and requires delegate access to your domain registrar where provided, or access credential to your domain registrar’s account.

Our access is generally only needed as a temporary occurrence for the singular change of DNS record or nameservers for your domain and then can be revoked. It is your responsibility to secure your account and provide proper permissions for your domain during and after our access. We are not responsible for any unintended actions or results to your domain while under delegate access permissions or provided access to your domain registrar account.

Support

Hosting support is generally limited to assistance in relation to the website’s hosting services, including but not limited to the server, server errors, critical website errors, user account assistance, DNS (domain name system) additions and changes (when we are managing your DNS) and server performance.

As a courtesy, we will generally provide general troubleshooting and support when you have a question or issue with your website. Troubleshooting includes investigating the source of the error or unexpected behavior of your website. Further action may not be included as part of your hosting service if it is determined to be outside the scope of the hosting services we provide and is determined on a case by case basis. Additional labor required to resolve such issues or questions that fall outside the scope of the hosting services being provided would be billed at our current hourly rate.

Uptime and Website Availability

We strive for and normally achieve 99.99% or greater availability for all clients’ websites, 24 hours/day, 365 days/year with the exception of scheduled or planned server maintenance and/or repair that may affect website’s availability. All websites hosted with us are monitored 24/7 for uptime to determine and measure the availability and this monitoring service will be used to determine uptime quantities and percentages. With our monitoring services we are able to determine a website’s availability from a domain/URL address in comparison to your hosting and server’s availability.

Unavailability due to scheduled or planned maintenance and/or repairs do not qualify for any service credits or constitute as downtime or your website being unavailable for the purposes of uptime and availability measurement, as long as the total scheduled maintenance or repair does not exceed 3 hours per month. We aim to perform all maintenance and repairs during off-peak hours which is typically between 10PM and 6 AM Eastern time.

Outages, service issues and related occurrences found locally, regionally nationally or internationally that result in your website being unavailable caused by or as the result of third party services such as ISP (internet service providers), internet backbone pipelines and DNS hosts such as but not limited to: Cloudflare, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. These do not constitute as downtime or your website being unavailable for the purposes of uptime and availability measurement.

We are not responsible and will not be held liable for any damages or loss of revenue for DNS (domain name system) records incorrectly pointed or not pointed your website’s domain to our server for users browsers to resolve your hosted website when trying to navigate to your domain and this does not constitute as downtime or your website being unavailable for the purposes of uptime and availability measurement.

In the event of your website not being available for 0.01% or greater value during a 30 day period of time, you can request a service credit against future services we render to you valued at the portion of time your website was unavailable equal to to the pro-rated value of hosting subscription cost for that period. This value will be determined by taking the total number of minutes in the hosting subscription period divided by the cost of the plan to establish a cost per minute. The cost per minute would be used to calculate the credit amount equal to the amount of minutes of unavailability. This credit must be requested by you within (7) days of an outage.

WHD will not be held not be held liable for any damages or loss of revenue due to any loss of uptime or availability of your website for any reason.

WordPress Maintenance Disclaimer

If you choose not to use a care plan of ours that includes maintenance for your site such as WordPress core, theme and plugin updates it is your responsibility to keep your site up to date. We highly recommend using our care plans or employing another maintenance service of a professional for every WordPress website, no matter the size.

We are not responsible and will not be held liable for issues that arise with your website, such as but not limited to hacks, errors, inoperability, incompatibility, malware due to updates not being performed or premium licenses under your responsibility not being available to perform updates.

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Care Plan Terms

WordPress Updates

Keeping your WordPress website up to date is important for security and performance. A core maintenance service of care plans is updating your WordPress core, themes and plugins on a regular basis.

If included in your plan and at our discretion, typically once a week, we will perform necessary updates that are publicly available to your core, theme(s) and plugins. Some complex configurations, as deemed by us, such as e-commerce or large sites, may have this reduced to once per month as the update process requires in depth testing prior to being done and afterwards. Some updates may be omitted if they are found to provide no benefit to your website’s performance, security or usage based on the operational requirements of your website. If your plan only includes security updates, the only updates that will be performed are those that are patching a security vulnerability. This update schedule is not guaranteed and is subject to change at any time without notice.

Update Bugs & Compatibility

Updates can sometimes introduce bugs, visual discrepancies, compatibility issues with other plugins, themes or the WordPress core that were not present prior to the update. Due to this, we generally do not perform updates immediately upon release, other than for security purposes.

We will make a best effort to inspect for issues due to new version bugs, visual discrepancies and compatibility issues with other plugins, themes or the WordPress core by comparing up to (3) main pages of your website from a ‘before’ update state to an ‘after’ update state. We are not responsible for any issues that may arise as a result of the updates caused by new version bugs, visual discrepancy, or compatibility with other plugins, themes or the WordPress core, but we will put in our best effort to rectify the issue.

If the time required to resolve a new bug, visual discrepancy, or plugin compatibility instance due to updates being performed would exceed (2) hours to resolve, we will consult with you on the course of action to take, such as billing for the additional time needed to resolve the issue, reverting to a backup, or replacing the plugin or theme.

Premium/Paid License Updates

Many WordPress themes and plugins are considered premium themes or premium plugins. These themes and plugins follow the same update terms as publicly available or free themes and plugins when available to us.

If included with your plan, we will provide and maintain the license(s) needed for your website that are part of our agency licenses, were provided as part of your website build by us, or we agreed to provide as part of your care plan. Any licenses provided to you are done so as part of your care plan and does not give you any right to reuse, distribute or claim ownership over these licenses. The licenses are non-transferable and may not be used by you for any website not currently being provided service by our care plan.

If premium licenses are not included with your plan and/or you have themes or plugins that are not covered by your plan you must acquire and maintain a valid license on your WordPress site for updates to be available and performed.

Our care plan service does not cover any issues arising from premium themes and plugins that lack proper licensing or cannot receive updates.

Automated Change Scanning

If included with your plan, we will implement automated change scanning for up to (3) pages on your website, provided by you or determined by us if not provided. Every day our system will scan these pages for visual differences compared to the previous day. We will inspect these differences when found and determine whether the change was intentional or not. For any non-intentional changes, such as a visually breaking change, we will take appropriate action. Action taken is but not limited to resolving or reverting the cause of the visual change, contacting you to inform you of our findings and determine further course of action, or reverting to a backup.

The scanning is not a guarantee to find all visual discrepancies of your website. We will not take action if a visual change is found to be under a 8% change of the total page, as this is typically related to copy/word changes. A value of 8% of greater will indicate an entire section or larger change.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO (search engine optimization) services are not included in our services. Your website’s ranking and placement on search engines depend on a myriad of factors. We cannot guarantee any ranking or placement services on any search engine.

Bundled Support Time (Labor Hours)

If included with your plan, a monthly amount of labor hours (time) is available to you at no additional cost.

All requests and tasks will have a (5) minute minimum associated. Unused time does not roll over and expires at the end of the monthly service period. Any requests and tasks performed in excess of your plan’s included time will be billed at our current hourly rate.

This time may be used for the following services. This service list may change at any time without notice:

• General website related questions, consultations and training
• Website changes and updates such as content, minor design and alteration
• Additional plugin installs/configurations
• Website additions such as content, minor design, system, and structure
• General WordPress site assistance
• Additional services at our discretion

Monthly Website Report

If included with your plan, you will receive a monthly PDF report emailed to you once per month. This report will typically contain data such as core, plugin and theme updates performed, vulnerabilities found and patched, analytic visitor counts, website performance, backups, website uptime and other statistics. The information provided is subject to change based on our systems and availability of the statistics.

You may request the report to be customized in colors, titles and/or images on the report where available to be customized. All information provided within a monthly report is an automatically gathered summary utilizing various systems and source points and is not guaranteed to be completely accurate.

Image Optimization

If included with your plan, an image optimization service through a plugin is installed, configured and licensed for images and PDFs on your website up to the amount listed in your plan per month. These will automatically compress and resize images, saving you up to 90% their original file size, while maintaining up to 99% quality of their original image. This compression greatly increases the load speed of your website pages.

Images and PDFs that are optimized are replaced with their optimized version and no backup is made. You are responsible for keeping a backup or original copy of images off-site if desired or necessary, we are not responsible for loss of originals due to you not keeping a backup.

Vulnerability Scanning and Patching

All of our care plans include vulnerability and security scanning services. Your website is scanned at least once daily for security vulnerabilities from the WordPress core, themes, and plugins installed on your website.

When available, we will implement the WordPress core, theme, or plugin’s update and/or patch to rectify their vulnerability. If any vulnerabilities are found by our scanning, we are notified and take action. We implement security patch updates within 1-3 business days of being released and available to us. Our vulnerability monitoring is not guaranteed to find and notify us 100% of software vulnerabilities. Circumstances such as plugin and theme authors not disclosing vulnerabilities or delaying in the disclosure can result in vulnerabilities not being properly detected.

Virtual patches are immediately implemented when available to prevent vulnerabilities from being exploited. Many plugins and themes that have vulnerabilities discovered never patch the vulnerability themselves and/or delay patching for months, so a virtual patch is the only way to protect against them. Virtual patches are not guaranteed for every vulnerability and are generally only created and applied for severe vulnerabilities with a CVSS score of 7 or higher.