Context
FREE Hosting Account Terms and Conditions addendum to Terms of Service. Please read along with the Acceptable Use Policy for FREE Hosting Accounts.
These accounts are provided to you as long as you continue to need the account and keep to the terms-of-service.
You are only permitted to have one FREE Hosting account, unless agreed in writing by us.
In order to better serve all clients who need free hosting accounts, you must prove that you need your account. This is done by keeping the content of your free site up-to-date and by logging in to it frequently. You may also keep the account by upgrading to any of the paid subscriptions.
We reserve the right to stop, suspend or close the service without notice, although we would always try to give as much notice as possible. Paid upgrades will enable you to continue to use the service, even if the free service is suspended or discontinued. This does not necessarily apply to the free subDomain name.
Domain Name
In order to use your account, you must have a domain name. There are three possibilities to achieve this.
Your Own Domain Name – Hosted Elsewhere
You may use your own domain name, hosted by us or not to use your free account. If you use your Domain Name, hosted elsewhere, then you are responsible for maintaining the DNS records associated with your FREE hosting account. We can provide support to assist you, but may charge for certain support queries via phone, email or ticket. The Forum and knowledge base are offered completely free and should be your first port of call for support.
Your Own Domain Name – CritchCorp Hosted
If you purchased your domain or your DNS account through us, then we will provide support for that through all our support channels. Some channels will be provide better support than others for your queries relating to domain names. The Forums and knowledge base should be first, then support tickets.
FREE subDomain
You may opt to use one of our free subDomains. Your use of our free subDomain is only for use with our FREE Hosting Accounts. If you relinquish the free hosting account or it is otherwise terminated, you also relinquish the use of the subDomain name. This will then be made available to others to use.
We further do not warrant that the subDomain name will be fit for any particular purpose and it is offered without any warranty of any sort, including availability.
For the avoidance of doubt, you do not own the subDomain and have no claim over it. It may be removed at any point for any reason whatsoever, as determined by us.
In the event of us removing the use of the free subDomain, you may retain your website and hosting by purchasing a domain name fo your own and associating it with your account.
Hosting Account, FREE Website Creator, FREE eMail
The FREE Hosting Account is yours to use with the FREE resources assigned to it. You may select the paid upgrades at anytime and you may downgrade, even to the FREE account, as long as the resources in use do not exceed that of the account you intend to downgrade to. If you downgrade your account and are using more than the new account level allows, you will be charged over usage fees, which in most cases are more then the upgraded account fees.
Website Creator
The FREE website Creator (CritchCorp Website Creator) is the only permitted use of the free account. We do not assert it to be fit for any type of purpose. We provide the software to you without any kind of warranty; but we will work with our technology partners to do our best to keep it up-to-date and working properly.
We reserve the right to change, remove or stop the software at any point without notice or immediate replacement.
If you pay for the account and the software is rendered unusable, we will consider a discount to the fees, however as the software is offered free of charge and is the same software without limits that is offered in the free account, the fee paid should not be considered as paying towards the software but towards the resources for the account. Should the need arise we will look at the circumstances at the time, but make no guarantees.
Number of accounts
You are entitled, while available, to only one website per account and only one FREE Hosting account on the FREE tariff. You may pay for an upgrade on the account and then apply for a second FREE Hosting Account. You may have a third FREE Hosting account only so long as you have one of the accounts on the Unlimited tariff, the second at the unlimited or other paid level.
FREE eMail Accounts
The FREE Hosting Account comes with 1 email account for use with the website. It can be used to receive contact form data and as a point of contact for the website. You can use it to reply to email or send emails form promoting your site.
You may not use the email account or email system to send bulb, unsolicited marketing emails, other emails considered to SPAM, viruses, etc. IT is your responsibility to ensure you have the necessary permission to send an email to someone before you send it. GDPR compliance is your responsibility to comply with and any other necessary laws for where you are sending from or sending to. Your emails will be coming from a server located in the United Kingdom, so these laws must apply at a minimum. More restrictive laws may apply from your location and to where you are sending to. You agree in any case that you are solely responsible for any email sent from your account and hold us harmless in any legal actions arising from your sending emails.
If we are notified that you are abusing the email system or complaints from anyone whatsoever, we will take immediate action to remedy, up to and including removing your account completely without notification. IF available and appropriate we will normally try to contact you first with a cease and desist notice with a time limit to comply on, however we still reserve the right to remove your account before this time expires if needed.
Bulk Marketing emails are not permitted from our servers and you are not permitted to use your email account or address fro the purposes of bulb marketing emails.
Newsletters and all other emails must comply with the relevant laws, such as GDPR, UK Data Protection Act (2018), etc. IE, you must have permission to send them, and that permission must be expressly given, not implied. Any permission form must default to NO or the Not given equivalent, until the user gives explicit consent. This consent must be recorded and a way to remove consent must be provided on each and every email sent, as well as alternative ways to remove consent, which must be easily accessible to the user.
Remember, the default is Opt-Out not Opt-In.
This is the same for Paid accounts and FREE accounts. Whilst paid accounts can send more emails per hour, they must still comply with the relevant laws and the above.
FREE SAN SSL
The FREE SAN SSL certificate is provided to protect your visitors to your website and is required to rank in Google at all, as unprotected sites will not rank. It is also provided to protect your communication with the server when you connect to website and email services and the control panel. The SAN element of the SSL certificate is enabled at the same time as the SSL certificate. Just tick the boxes for the relevant resources to be protected. It will be automatically installed after you accept the terms and conditions. IT will then also be auto renewed for you every three months. You will need to ensure your domain name is using the hosting server as its DNS server. If not it may not be able to verify enough to issue a certificate. In this case you can install your own certificate, or if you prefer to have your own certificate in any case, you may install it form the control panel. We have certificates available from multiple vendors, please email us with your requirements if you can’t see the one you want in the shop.
August 2023
