Fair Use Policy
We operate a fair use policy for various elements of our hosting provision and our support services.
Through our fair use policy we mean to ensure that one client does not use all the available resources on a given system, thereby degrading the service for other clients who are sharing the same system.
Because we divide systems up between clients primarily based on disk space allocation, the amount of a resource that could reasonably be considered fair use is therefore dictated by the amount of hosting space you have allocated on our systems.
The most notable fair use case relates to bandwidth on our shared hosting accounts (One Plan hosting) or any service where bandwidth is not specifically mentioned (e.g. email provision).
WEBSITE HOSTING TECHNICAL SUPPORT POLICY
We operate a website technical support policy for various elements of our hosting provision and our support services.
Your website and hosting are important not only to you, but to us too. We aim to ensure that we provide all of the necessary resources and time required to keep your website functioning.
Through this policy we mean to ensure that one client does not use all the available resources and time, thereby degrading the service for our other clients. In most cases our clients need not worry about their usage as the vast majority never get anywhere near our current limits.
This method of operation also allows us some flexibility and leeway in our monitoring and approach to resource usage.
This leeway is important because we know sometimes clients may experience a heavy month of traffic (people in the events industry for example), but for the rest of the year, they’re relatively quiet. With fair use we can monitor over a period, understand the ongoing situation and disregard the odd high month if overall it’s fine.
For clients who persistently go over our limits for their package, we will work with them to ensure they are moved on to the most relevant hosting package for their needs in order to protect resources for our other clients and provide guaranteed resources for their high usage. We can then monitor their usage for 6 months and if usage declines then you may be placed on a lower package.
WEB HOSTING SUPPORT
All clients are entitled to basic support within their hosting packages however if you require more support outside of the included package, we will work with you to create a custom quote tailored to your needs for the additional support required.
As a basic rule, all clients are entitled to the following:
Emergency contact details when emails or website goes down
Fix website/emails as soon as is convenient for both parties.
Alternatively, 30 minutes of minor* alterations per month.
Free domain name purchase.**
If your website has been hacked, then we will attempt to restore the site from our back ups and advise you on preventative actions. There is no charge for this and it is done remotely as soon as possible.***
Terms and Conditions
*minor includes e.g.:
Changing but not designing a logo
Altering text (up to a maximum of 500 words). However we are not responsible for the published content. You are responsible.
Setting up a new email account (remotely)
Monthly support if not used does not roll over every month.
You cannot use the monthly support to re-design your website.
**Domain name:
Free for anything ending with .uk subject to availability and purchase cost.
Any other prefixes will be charged.
Transfer fees will apply for any domain name not purchased directly through us. Contact us for prices.
We are not responsible if a domain name cannot be transferred or the transfer process fails for any reason.
***Hacked site
We can’t guarantee that the hackers won’t find an alternative way into the site and cause more damage.
We will attempt to apply any updates or content management fixes that are available to prevent it happening again though we can’t guarantee it won’t.
Please note, it is up to the client to identify how many times their site should be backed up during the year. If the client chooses a package that does not include a free back up, then they can arrange to pay a one off fee every time they wish their site to be backed up.
****Mass Mailing
Must be done from external clients e.g. mail chimp
Any clients found spamming will have their email accounts suspended immediately.
***** Emergency contact details
In an emergency .e.g. emails or website are down, please raise a ticket with us on the support section of our website.
Website will take precedence over emails unless the client expresses otherwise.
Red Brand Media reserves the right to update these terms of use at any time.
PLEASE NOTE: Failure to keep up to date with any payments may result in your web services being suspended or this Technical Support Policy becoming null and void.
In most cases our clients need not worry about their usage as the vast majority never get anywhere near our current fair use limits.
This method of operation also allows us some flexibility and leeway in our monitoring and approach to resource usage.
This leeway is important because we know sometimes clients may experience a heavy month of traffic (people in the events industry for example), but for the rest of the year, they’re relatively quiet. With fair use we can monitor over a period, understand the ongoing situation and disregard the odd high month if overall it’s fine.
For clients who persistently go over our fair use limits, we will work with them to ensure they are moved on to the most relevant hosting package for their needs in order to protect resources for our other clients and provide guaranteed resources for the high user.
General Shared Hosting Bandwidth
Fair use bandwidth for shared hosting is based on a sliding scale and is calculated in direct relation to the amount of disk quota allocated to the client. The disk quota used in the calculation includes web, email (not including Google Apps), and databases.
The calculation is currently very simple:
Fair use shared hosting bandwidth allowance = 1GB per month per 100MB of disk quota purchased
Level 2 Support Fair Use
There are two levels of support, level 1 (emergency) and level 2 (general assistance).
The vast majority of our clients are regular people and not IT experts and we don’t expect everyone to have a solid grasp on the intricacies of Internet hosting and servers.
As such, we fully anticipate and expect that at the start of a new hosting arrangement there will be an element of support to help the client get started using our services.
Much of this initial support will be for things that are not service issues, but more like one to one consultancy and training with things like setting up email and questions about search engines and web design and so on.
The majority of our level 2 support requests can be categorised as business support, web design, IT consultancy, home network troubleshooting, broadband and telecoms support and many other services that you would have to pay a substantial price for anywhere else.
Over the years, we have found that for the majority of people, around 30 minutes level 2 support is usually more than sufficient to get them off the starting point and up and running.
As such, if a particular client is hitting us hard on the level 2 support front, we may choose to charge for any support beyond 30 minutes in any given hosting year. We will warn you before we do this.
We keep this option available to us for heavy users of level 2 support so that we don’t have to penalise everyone else by increasing our prices to cover the very significant cost of providing these support services.
If you have any questions regarding this policy, please do not hesitate to contact us.