Terms and Conditions

1. The agreement

These Terms form a legal agreement between you (the customer, subscriber, or user) and ARKNET PTY LTD, trading as Web Hosting Centre Australia ("we", "us", "WHC"). They apply to any web hosting plan, domain name registration, or related service you purchase from us, including services accessed via webhostingcentre.au and the billing portal at billing.arknet.com.au.

By placing an order, paying an invoice, or using any of our services, you agree to these Terms and confirm that you have the authority to enter into them on behalf of yourself or the organisation you represent.

2. The services we provide

We provide web hosting on servers we own and operate in Australian data centres (currently Sydney and Brisbane), along with domain name registration, email hosting, and related support. The specific resources included with your service — storage, bandwidth, number of mailboxes, and so on — are set out in your plan at the time of purchase and may be reviewed in your client portal.

We do not provide bulk email marketing, transactional email-at-scale, mass-mailing infrastructure, or backup-only storage. Customers wanting these capabilities should use a dedicated provider.

3. Refunds and cancellations

Web hosting

We offer a 30-day cancellation and refund policy on all shared web hosting plans. If you're not satisfied within the first 30 days of your initial signup, request a refund by opening a support ticket to our billing department with your account details, and we'll process a full refund of the hosting fees paid.

Before cancelling, we strongly recommend you migrate your sites and email to another provider, as cancellation removes all data on our servers associated with your account. Refunds do not apply to renewal payments, dedicated servers, VPS, or any custom-arrangement services.

Domain names

Due to the nature of domain registrations, we cannot offer refunds once a domain has been submitted to the registry — the registry's processing is final and cannot be reversed. Please double-check the spelling of your chosen domain before submitting your order; we process it exactly as you type it.

How to cancel

All cancellation requests must be submitted through our ticketing system from within your client portal at billing.arknet.com.au. This is so we can verify your identity and keep a record of the request.

4. Payment and failure to pay

Hosting and domain services are billed in advance for the term you select (monthly, quarterly, annual, or longer). Renewal invoices are issued before the renewal date. You're responsible for keeping your billing details current and for ensuring renewals are paid on time.

We may temporarily suspend or terminate services if a renewal invoice remains unpaid past its due date. Suspension and termination do not relieve you of responsibility for any amounts already accrued, including any reasonable collection fees incurred in recovering an unpaid balance.

All prices on our website include GST. Prices are subject to change with reasonable notice — see Section 12.

5. Data integrity and backups

You are responsible for maintaining a complete, current backup of your website files, databases, and emails on a system separate from our hosting servers. We do not guarantee the integrity, completeness, or availability of any data stored on our systems.

We make regular internal backups of our infrastructure for disaster-recovery purposes. These backups may include customer data, but they are not intended as a customer-facing backup service and should not be relied upon. We do not guarantee that our backups contain the most current copy of any customer's site or data.

ARKNET PTY LTD is not responsible for any lost files, information, or data, regardless of cause.

6. Email sending limits

To protect our outgoing IP reputation — which directly affects whether our customers' legitimate emails land in inboxes — we enforce sending limits on all hosting accounts.

• Maximum 30 outbound emails per hour per hosting account, regardless of plan.
• This applies to email sent via SMTP, the WordPress mail() function, contact forms, or any other method.
• Accounts exceeding the limit may have outgoing email throttled or temporarily blocked.

Customers requiring higher-volume legitimate transactional or marketing email should use a dedicated service such as Postmark, SendGrid, Mailgun, or similar. Routing these through our shared infrastructure is not permitted and is grounds for termination — see Section 7.

7. Acceptable Use Policy

You agree to use our services lawfully and not in any way that would harm us, our other customers, our infrastructure, or any third party. We reserve the right to investigate suspected violations and to suspend, terminate, or refuse service in response to a violation, at our sole discretion.

Spamming is prohibited. "Spamming" includes the sending of unsolicited bulk or commercial email, maintaining an open SMTP relay, or sending to any mailing list that is not double opt-in. We do not allow purchased lists. We reserve the right to determine whether an email campaign meets the definition of spam.

Regardless of whether a campaign is technically "spam", the 30-emails-per-hour limit in Section 6 applies to every account.

8. Prohibited content and uses

The following uses are prohibited and constitute a material breach of these Terms. Engaging in any of them subjects your account to immediate termination without notice and without refund.

Prohibited content categories

• Controlled substances, illegal drugs, drug contraband, or related instructions.
• Weapons or instructions for making, assembling, or obtaining weapons.
• Pirated software, films, music, or other copyrighted material.
• Child sexual abuse material — we will report any such content to law enforcement.
• Pornography, nudity, sexual products, escort services, or other adult-related material.
• Content used to violate intellectual property rights, trademarks, or privacy rights of others.
• Obscene, defamatory, harassing, abusive, or threatening language.
• Profanity in domain names or prominent site content.
• Personal information or images of third parties (especially minors) posted without consent.
• Content that promotes or incites illegal activity.

Prohibited technical uses

• Hacking, port scanning, penetration attempts, or any unauthorised access attempt.
• Creating, hosting, or distributing viruses, worms, trojans, or other malicious code.
• Denial-of-service attacks, mail bombing, flooding, or other disruption.
• Anonymous proxy scripts (they consume server resources and harm other customers).
• Forging or misrepresenting message headers, return addresses, or IP information.
• Using your hosting account as a backup or file-storage service ("BACKUP STORAGE" use is grounds for termination — we host websites, not archives).
• Any activity that disrupts, interferes with, or harms our services, business, reputation, or other customers.

Prohibited site types

The following types of sites and scripts are not permitted on our shared infrastructure:

• Topsites
• IRC scripts or bots
• Proxy scripts and anonymizers
• Image hosting scripts (Photobucket/Tinypic-style)
• AutoSurf / PTC / PTS / PPC sites
• IP scanners
• Brute-force programs or scripts
• Mail bombers or spam scripts
• Commercial banner-ad rotation services
• File-dump or mirror scripts (Rapidshare-style)
• Commercial audio streaming (beyond one or two streams)
• Escrow or bank-debenture sites
• High-Yield Investment Programs (HYIPs)
• FOREX, Ponzi, MLM, or pyramid schemes
• Prime bank programs
• Lottery or gambling sites
• MUDs, RPGs, or persistent browser-based games
• Hacker-focused sites or archives
• Sites distributing or linking to warez or pirated content
• Push-button mail scripts
• Broadcast or streaming of live sporting events (UFC, NASCAR, FIFA, NFL, MLB, NBA, etc.)
• Anonymous or bulk SMS gateways
• Cryptocurrency miners

For dedicated server and VPS customers, all of the above restrictions apply except the resource-usage restrictions on backup storage and audio streaming, which may be permitted subject to fair-use review.

9. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your services without notice if you breach these Terms, fail to pay an invoice, engage in any prohibited use, or place us at risk of legal or reputational harm. Where reasonable and practical, we'll attempt to notify you before taking action and give you an opportunity to remedy the issue — but we're not obliged to.

You may cancel your services at any time via the ticketing system (see Section 3). Cancellation does not entitle you to a refund of paid fees outside the 30-day window described in Section 3.

On termination of your hosting account, all data associated with that account — files, databases, emails, DNS configurations — will be deleted. We recommend you migrate to another provider before requesting cancellation.

Any property, files, or data left on our systems for more than 90 days after termination may be permanently disposed of, at which point we have no further liability to you or any third party.

10. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, ARKNET PTY LTD is not liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or exemplary damages arising from or related to your use of our services. This includes, without limitation, damages for loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or other intangible losses.

Where liability cannot be excluded by law (for example, under the Australian Consumer Law), our liability is limited, at our option, to either: (a) re-supplying the service, or (b) refunding the fees paid for the affected service.

Our total aggregate liability for any claim under these Terms, regardless of the form of action, is limited to the total amount paid by you for the specific service giving rise to the claim in the 12 months preceding the event.

You acknowledge that our pricing reflects the allocation of risk between us, and that our pricing would be substantially higher if we accepted broader liability.

11. Confidentiality

We will not disclose data files or information supplied with, stored on, or recovered from your hosting account, except: (a) to our own employees or contractors who need access to provide the service and are bound by confidentiality obligations, (b) as required by Australian law, or (c) in response to a valid legal process such as a court order or law-enforcement request.

Our privacy practices are governed by Australian privacy law including the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

12. Changes to services or pricing

We may modify, add, or discontinue services or features at any time. For existing paid subscriptions, we'll provide reasonable notice — at least 30 days — of any material adverse change, giving you the option to cancel before the change takes effect.

Prices may change with reasonable notice. Price changes apply at your next renewal, not mid-term.

We may amend these Terms from time to time. The current version is always available at webhostingcentre.au/terms-and-conditions/ and the "Last updated" date at the top reflects the most recent change. Continued use of our services after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

13. Disputes and governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of Queensland, Australia. We both agree to first attempt to resolve any dispute by good-faith discussion. If that fails, disputes will be referred to arbitration in accordance with the rules of an appropriate Australian arbitration body, with the arbitration taking place in Queensland.

Both parties acknowledge that they're waiving their rights to a jury trial in favour of arbitration. The decision of the arbitrator may be enforced in a court of competent jurisdiction.

Nothing in this section limits any right you may have under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot lawfully be waived.

14. Contact

For questions about these Terms or any of our services, open a support ticket at billing.arknet.com.au, or use the live chat on this site during AEST business hours.