OUR HOSTING TERMS (DETAILED TERMS OF SERVICE)
Last updated: 14 March 2026
Previous versions: August 2011, February 2013, June 2015, February 2016
These Detailed Terms of Service apply to services provided by Sive Setfu ICT Solutions (Pty) Ltd, trading as Sive.Host (“Sive.Host”, “we”, “us”, “our”). These Detailed Terms supplement and form part of our Terms of Service, and must also be read together with our Acceptable Use Policy and Privacy Policy.
If there is any conflict between these Detailed Terms and the summary/general wording in our Terms of Service, these Detailed Terms will apply to the affected service or issue.
1. Interpretation and Definitions
Unless the context indicates otherwise, any term used in our Terms of Service has the same meaning in these Detailed Terms.
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Client Area | Our online customer portal through which you may manage services, billing, support, settings, and related account functions. |
| Domain Name | A human-readable internet address associated with a website, email service, or other online service. |
| Domain Services | The domain registration, renewal, transfer, update, cancellation, administration, and related services we provide or facilitate. |
| Email Services | Email-related services which may include mailboxes, aliases, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, forwarding, spam filtering, virus filtering, and related functionality. |
| Harmful Code | Any code, script, executable, routine, or mechanism designed to disrupt, damage, impair, gain unauthorised access to, or otherwise interfere with software, hardware, systems, services, networks, or data. |
| Illegal Content | Any content, data, communication, material, or activity that violates applicable law. |
| Location | Any data centre, server room, rack facility, network location, cloud region, or infrastructure location used by us to provide services, whether in South Africa, Rwanda, Eswatini, the United States, or any other location we designate from time to time. |
| Server | Any physical server, virtual server, VPS, cloud instance, shared hosting platform, dedicated server, or related infrastructure used in connection with a service. |
| System Abuse | Any activity which damages, impairs, overburdens, interferes with, compromises, or attempts to compromise our infrastructure, services, security, systems, networks, or the use of the services by others. |
| White Label Hosting Services | Hosting and related services supplied for resale, rebranding, delegated administration, partner fulfilment, storefront enablement, or partner-led distribution, including services such as PartnersHub, CloudPort, Domain Partner Network, and similar partner or reseller enablement services. |
2. General Service Basis
2.1. We provide hosting, VPS, cloud, dedicated server, reseller, white label, domain, email, colocation, and related internet infrastructure services subject to these Detailed Terms.
2.2. Unless expressly stated otherwise, services are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis.
2.3. You use the services at your own risk.
3. Customer Responsibilities
3.1. You are responsible for all content, websites, applications, scripts, databases, communications, software, credentials, and activity associated with your services.
3.2. You are responsible for your own software licensing unless we expressly provide the licence.
3.3. You are responsible for protecting your usernames, passwords, API keys, and all other access credentials.
3.4. You are responsible for keeping your own backups unless an express managed backup service is included in writing.
4. Website & Email Hosting
4.1. We may provide Website & Email Hosting on shared or managed infrastructure owned, leased, licensed, or controlled by us.
4.2. We may configure, patch, maintain, standardise, upgrade, replace, or restrict aspects of the hosting environment at our discretion in order to preserve service integrity, compatibility, security, and operational continuity.
4.3. You remain responsible for your websites, email usage, content, scripts, applications, databases, third-party software, and any traffic, abuse, or vulnerabilities introduced by your use of the service.
5. Managed Dedicated Hosting
5.1. Where we provide managed dedicated hosting, the server or underlying infrastructure remains our property unless expressly agreed otherwise in writing.
5.2. We may manage the hardware, base software environment, updates, patches, and infrastructure decisions at our discretion, subject to the applicable product scope.
5.3. You remain responsible for your applications, data, content, licensing not expressly supplied by us, security above the managed layer, and all activity generated through the service.
6. Bare Metal Servers
6.1. Bare Metal Servers give you the exclusive use of an allocated physical server or associated infrastructure resource, but ownership of the underlying hardware remains ours unless expressly agreed otherwise in writing.
6.2. Unless the service is expressly described as managed, you are solely responsible for the operating system, software stack, updates, security configuration, monitoring, backups, restoration, and service operation above the hardware layer.
6.3. We are not responsible for software, scripts, packages, plugins, themes, containers, images, or other components that you install, upload, run, or cause to run.
7. White Label Hosting Services
7.1. White Label Hosting Services include services supplied for resale, delegated administration, rebranding, storefront enablement, partner-led fulfilment, or similar partner-operated arrangements.
7.2. White Label Hosting Services include offerings such as PartnersHub, CloudPort, and Domain Partner Network.
7.3. Unless expressly stated otherwise in writing, white label or reseller customers remain responsible for their own downstream customer relationships, support obligations, sales representations, and billing obligations.
8. Colocation Hosting
8.1. Colocation services provide rack space, power, and connectivity for customer-owned equipment unless expressly stated otherwise.
8.2. You remain solely responsible for your own hardware, peripherals, software, licensing, data, remote access, and associated risks.
9. Software, Vulnerabilities, and Harmful Code
9.1. We are not responsible for software, plugins, themes, packages, scripts, containers, images, or other components that you install, upload, run, or cause to run.
9.2. Any vulnerabilities, abuse, compromise, performance issues, traffic spikes, spam events, malware incidents, or service degradation resulting from your software, configuration, or content remain your responsibility.
9.3. You must not use the services to distribute, host, transmit, or facilitate Harmful Code, unlawful activity, or System Abuse.
10. Traffic, Bandwidth, and Over-Usage
10.1. You are solely responsible for all traffic, bandwidth, egress, over-usage, excess resource consumption, and other usage associated with your service.
10.2. Any usage tools or traffic reports we provide are for convenience only, may not be real-time, and may be delayed, incomplete, or approximate.
10.3. You remain liable for all usage charges, including traffic generated by attacks, bots, crawlers, exploits, spam events, software vulnerabilities, malicious requests, or misconfiguration affecting your service.
11. Abuse, DDoS, and Security Incidents
11.1. If your service becomes the source or target of a denial-of-service attack, spam event, malware incident, abuse event, or similar threat, we may suspend, filter, null-route, isolate, throttle, restrict, or disconnect the service immediately if we reasonably believe doing so is necessary.
11.2. We are not liable for loss arising from protective action taken under this clause.
12. Email Services
12.1. Where included with a hosting service, Email Services may include mailboxes, aliases, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, forwarding, spam filtering, virus filtering, and related functionality.
12.2. Spam filtering and virus filtering are provided on a best-effort basis unless expressly stated otherwise.
12.3. You remain responsible for mailbox security, password security, sending practices, recipient lists, and compliance with applicable communications laws.
13. Domain Name Services
13.1. Domain registrations, renewals, transfers, updates, suspensions, cancellations, and deletions are subject to the rules, processes, timelines, technical systems, and decisions of the applicable registrar, registry, administrator, or domain authority.
13.2. We cannot guarantee the availability, successful registration, continued renewal, transferability, or retention of any Domain Name.
13.3. You are responsible for ensuring that the requested Domain Name does not infringe third-party rights, that registrant information is correct, and that renewal instructions and payments are submitted timeously.
14. Service Availability, Uptime Guarantee, and Service Credits
14.1. Where a specific uptime guarantee, response commitment, or service level applies, it applies only to the extent expressly stated for that service or product.
14.2. Unless otherwise stated, our network uptime guarantee for applicable hosting services is 99.9% in any given calendar month, excluding scheduled maintenance and exclusions set out in these Detailed Terms.
14.3. A 99.9% monthly uptime target means that network downtime should not exceed 43 minutes in a calendar month, measured from the first day to the last day of that month.
14.4. For purposes of this clause, network uptime includes the functioning of core network infrastructure under our control, including routers, switches, firewall infrastructure, and cabling, as applicable to the relevant service.
14.5. Network downtime exists when a customer is unable to transmit and receive data to and from the affected service, and the downtime is confirmed according to our monitoring systems and records.
14.6. Unless expressly stated otherwise for a specific service, uptime guarantees relate to network availability and do not guarantee the operation of your website code, application logic, scripts, plugins, themes, databases, third-party software, DNS propagation, browser caching, or email delivery to third-party networks.
14.7. If network uptime for an affected service is less than 99.9% in a given month, we may credit you 5% of the base monthly fee for every 30 minutes of confirmed downtime, up to a maximum of 100% of the base monthly fee for the affected service.
14.8. Service credits are your sole and exclusive remedy for the relevant outage or network unavailability.
14.9. No service credit applies where downtime, degradation, or interruption results from:
- scheduled maintenance or emergency maintenance;
- force majeure;
- upstream provider failures;
- registrar, registry, DNS, or propagation issues;
- DDoS attacks or other malicious traffic events;
- your software, data, content, configuration, or security failures;
- internet-wide routing issues or failures outside our control;
- your negligent, unlawful, or unauthorised acts or omissions;
- browser or DNS caching that makes a website appear inaccessible when it is otherwise reachable;
- third-party applications, control panels, plugins, or services not under our direct control.
14.10. To claim a service credit, you must submit your request through the Client Area or to our official billing contact details within 48 hours of the downtime or incident.
14.11. Your claim must include sufficient detail for us to investigate, including the affected service, the relevant domain name, server name, approximate date and time of the incident, and any other information reasonably requested by us.
14.12. Service credits will only be applied once we confirm the incident according to our monitoring systems and internal records.
14.13. Any approved credit will be applied to your account within a reasonable billing period or billing cycle, and in any event the total credit for the affected service in a given month will not exceed the base monthly fee for that service.
15. Fees and Billing
15.1. You must pay all invoices, charges, taxes, levies, usage charges, setup fees, over-usage fees, add-on charges, support charges, and all other amounts due for your services by the due date shown on the invoice.
15.2. All fees are payable in advance unless we expressly agree otherwise in writing.
15.3. We may amend service pricing, recurring fees, product rates, or related charges by notice through our website, Client Area, quotation, invoice, or email communication.
16. Late Payment, Default Charges, and Suspension
16.1. If any invoice is not paid by its due date, it becomes overdue immediately.
16.2. If any invoice remains unpaid after its due date, we may apply a late payment fee, administrative fee, risk fee, reinstatement fee, service recovery fee, default-related charge, or similar charge.
16.3. Such late payment or default-related charges may be substantial and may, at our discretion, equal or exceed 100% of the overdue invoice amount.
16.4. We may suspend, restrict, throttle, disable, refuse renewal of, refuse transfer of, or terminate any service immediately if any amount is overdue or if we reasonably believe continued provision of the service exposes us to risk.
16.5. Suspension or termination does not cancel your obligation to pay amounts already due or accrued.
17. Refunds and Cancellation Credits
17.1. Unless we expressly state otherwise in writing, all amounts paid to us are non-refundable.
17.2. Without limiting clause 17.1, the following are generally non-refundable:
- domain registration fees;
- domain renewal fees;
- domain transfer fees;
- setup fees;
- migration fees;
- usage-based charges;
- over-usage charges;
- support or custom work already performed;
- third-party costs incurred on your behalf;
- fees relating to suspended, abused, or terminated services;
- late payment fees, reinstatement fees, or default-related charges.
17.3. If we agree to a refund, service credit, or cancellation credit, we may deduct any third-party costs, setup costs, administrative costs, usage charges, or other amounts already incurred or payable in relation to the service.
17.4. No refund is due merely because you no longer require the service, failed to use the service, were suspended for breach, or allowed the service to become overdue.
17.5. Where a service includes a specifically advertised money-back period or cancellation grace period, that right applies only to the extent expressly stated for that service and does not apply to excluded costs or third-party charges.
18. Collection Costs and Debt Recovery
18.1. You remain liable for all reasonable legal costs, tracing fees, administrative costs, debt collection charges, recovery commissions, attorney fees, and related expenses incurred by us in collecting overdue amounts, to the fullest extent permitted by law.
19. Reseller Responsibilities
19.1. Resellers are responsible for supporting their own clients unless a White Label Hosting Service or other expressly managed arrangement states otherwise in writing.
19.2. We may communicate directly with a reseller’s client where necessary to preserve service continuity, respond to abuse, address legal compliance, recover unpaid service charges, or protect infrastructure integrity.
20. Third Party Services
20.1. Some services rely on third party providers, including registrars, registries, cloud vendors, data centres, software vendors, payment gateways, filtering providers, network operators, and upstream infrastructure providers.
20.2. We do not control such third party services and are not liable for their acts, omissions, failures, delays, interruptions, pricing changes, policy changes, suspensions, or terminations.
21. Suspension and Termination
21.1. We may suspend or terminate any service immediately if you fail to pay any amount due, breach these Detailed Terms, breach our Acceptable Use Policy, create legal or operational risk, or use the service for unlawful or abusive purposes.
21.2. Where circumstances permit, we may give notice before suspension or termination, but we are not obliged to do so where immediate action is reasonably necessary.
22. Limitation of Liability
22.1. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, punitive, or economic loss, including loss of revenue, loss of profit, loss of goodwill, loss of opportunity, or loss of data.
22.2. Where liability cannot lawfully be excluded, our total liability arising out of or in connection with the service will not exceed the total base fees paid by you for the affected service during the three months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim, unless a different limit is stated elsewhere in the applicable service terms.
23. Indemnity
23.1. You indemnify and hold us harmless against any claim, loss, damage, liability, penalty, expense, or cost arising from your use of the services, your content, your software, your emails, your Domain Names, your breach of these Detailed Terms, or your breach of law or third-party rights.
24. Notices and Claims
24.1. Billing queries, notices, service credit claims, and formal communications must be submitted through the Client Area or to the official billing or support contact details we publish from time to time.
24.2. We may send notices to the email address associated with your account, through the Client Area, or by publishing updates on our website.
