GC

These General Conditions for web hosting govern the legal relationship between Hostpoint AG (hereinafter, "Hostpoint") and its customers (hereinafter, “customers”) who make use of the web hosting services of Hostpoint.

1. Scope of applicability and conclusion of contract

1.1.
The substance of these General Conditions is the use of the services and products of Hostpoint as offered and available at the time of the customer’s initial use thereof.

1.2. Basic services
The range of services shown on the Hostpoint website is non-binding. The customer chooses the basic services to be rendered by Hostpoint from the range of services available at the time of initial use and transmits its legally binding order to Hostpoint. The contract between Hostpoint and the customer is concluded upon Hostpoint’s transmission of the applicable contractual documentation to the e-mail address the customer has indicated for purposes of receiving contract-relevant notifications. These General Conditions, as well as the contractual documentation and the Guidelines for Use supplied to the customer, constitute the basis of said contract.

2. Services and rights of Hostpoint

2.1.
For the scope of services chosen by the customer, Hostpoint makes storage space and server capacity available to the customer on Internet-linked infrastructure.

2.2.
The calculation of the specific services is based on the customer’s average use of Hostpoint’s resources. The resources provided (in particular but not limited to disk space, traffic, use of CPU/RAM) may only be used for the regular operation of customer's website. As a general rule, resource-intensive background software and downloads (sound, video, streaming, programs, games, high-resolution images and graphs, large archives of images or graphs, backups, banner ads and banner exchange, e-mail exchange, IRCs, IRC bots, etc.) are not permissible. Hostpoint reserves the right at any time and at its own discretion to establish threshold values for resource utilisation. Hostpoint also reserves the right to block the customer’s user account if its conduct in any way impairs the operational characteristics of the given service and the customer has failed to cease such conduct immediately following receipt of a one-time request from Hostpoint to do so. If available, Hostpoint may offer the customer an upgrade, which allows the customer a higher use of resources against the payment of the respective fees.

3. Rights and obligations of the customer

3.1.
The customer is entitled to make use of the rendered services in a rule-compliant manner and commits to adhering to these General Conditions, the Guidelines for Use, as well as any directives issued by Hostpoint. The customer furthermore commits to adhering to additional Terms of Use as may be declared applicable in connection with the downloading of applications and third party software through the Hostpoint Control Panel.

3.2.
In placing orders, registering domain names and making use of the rendered services, the customer shall be obligated vis-à-vis Hostpoint to provide truthful information.

3.3.
The customer commits to selecting passwords in an appropriate manner, caring for their safe custody and preventing their unauthorised use by third parties. The customer on its own shall bear full responsibility for the use of passwords. If the customer becomes aware of an abusive use of his account, he is obliged to notify Hostpoint immediately by phone.

3.4.
The customer is prohibited from making available (at a cost or free of charge) services he bought to a third party. If Hostpoint becomes aware that services are not used by the customer who bought them but by a third party, Hostpoint reserves the right to suspend the rendering of these services until proper use by the customer is fully restored. Even during such suspension, the customer shall remain obliged to fully pay for the services.

Exempt from this provision are third parties who intermediate web hosting contracts or contracts for putting up other third-parties’ Internet sites on the Hostpoint platform (see paragraph 10 of these GC) or parties who buy services vicariously or by order of a third party (e.g. ad companies). For clarity, even in these cases the subletting of accounts remains prohibited at all times.

3.5.
The customer commits to keeping the software it uses (on both the server and the client side) technically up to date, as well as to maintain said software on a regular basis and conduct periodical updates. The customer also commits to delete from the server any software that it no longer needs or uses. Furthermore, the customer commits to complying with any Hostpoint directives regarding the maintenance, updating or deletion of software.

4. Data security

4.1.
The customer shall bear sole responsibility for backing-up its databases as well as its files and e-mails. Hostpoint recommends that the customer arrange for a separate means of backup for its databases as well as its files and e-mails. Within the framework of the additional services made available by Hostpoint, the customer has the possibility, as per paragrah 1.3, of utilising the appropriate tools.

4.2.
As a supplementary measure in this regard, Hostpoint backs up on a daily basis the databases as well as the files and e-mails that the customer has saved on its allocated storage space, with the exception of e-mails that the spam filter has stored in a special memory for spam e-mail. This memory will not be backed-up, but instead deleted on a regular basis. Hostpoint assumes no responsibility whatsoever for the backing-up of data stored on its server and

5. Invoicing and payment conditions

5.1.
The payment obligation commences upon conclusion of the contract.

5.2.
As a general rule, Hostpoint invoices the customer in advance for the chosen term of the contract. The invoice is to be paid at latest by the due date indicated on the billing form.

5.3.
If the customer is in breach of the aforementioned payment conditions, Hostpoint shall be entitled to charge 8% interest in arrears and, as of the second payment reminder, charge an additional sum to cover the costs of debt collection. In addition, Hostpoint may terminate its services to the customer as per paragraph 9.3 herein. Moreover, Hostpoint shall have the

6. Warranty and liability

6.1.
Hostpoint vouches for the careful and professional rendering of its services. However, Hostpoint cannot guarantee that the customer’s website is available on the Internet without interruption, or that the customer’s data enquiries are transmitted from the Internet correctly and without time delay. Furthermore, Hostpoint provides no guarantee that the services rendered by Hostpoint and under circumstances third parties will enable the customer to fulfil its intended economic or other purpose.

6.2.
Customer failure reports concerning the basic service must be submitted via registered post and include a notice of defects that provides a comprehensible description of the purported defects. Furthermore, the customer shall afford Hostpoint a reasonable grace period of at least 30 days to remedy the specific defects indicated in the notice of defects. Should the grace period lapse without a successful remedy having been achieved, the customer shall be entitled to terminate the contract immediately. Hostpoint shall reimburse the customer on a pro rata temporis basis any prepaid fee for the period of time in which the customer does not make use of the service as a result of such termination. Any and all further compensation is excluded, subject to the terms of paragraph 6.4 of these General Conditions.

7. Confidentiality and data protection

7.1.
Hostpoint and the customer mutually commit to safeguard the confidentiality of all non-public information and data they have come to know in the preparation and execution of this contract. This obligation shall also remain in force following the termination of this contract as long as a justified interest exists.

8. Intellectual property

8.1.
For the term of the contract, the customer shall have the non-transferable, non-exclusive right for the use and application of the services.

9. Duration of contract; termination

9.1.
The contract between Hostpoint and the customer shall enter into effect upon Hostpoint’s transmission of the applicable contractual documentation to the e-mail address the customer has indicated for purposes of receiving contract-relevant notifications, and remain in force for the term specified in the customer’s order. The contract may be terminated in writing by either party via registered post or via telefax with confirmation of transmission upon observance of a 30-day notification period for effect at the end of the agreed term of the contract (6, 12 or 24 months). In the absence of a timely termination, the contract shall be automatically prolonged for a period representing the originally agreed term of the contract.

9.2.
The customer may retract its contractual declaration within 30 days of the order’s receipt without incurring any costs (30-day money-back guarantee). The day of the order’s receipt is considered Day 1. The customer, if it wishes to withdraw from the contract, must submit its withdrawal declaration to Hostpoint in writing via letter or telefax. This withdrawal right shall not apply to certificate, software (web-o-mat, eShop), vISP-server, applications and support services, in that such services are arranged according to the customer’s specifications.

10. vISP/partner programmes/wholesaler

10.1.
These General Conditions for web hosting shall also apply to third parties who intermediate hosting contracts or contracts for putting up other third-parties’ Internet sites on the Hostpoint platform (vISP, partner programmes, wholesalers) and their respective end customers.

11. Amendments to contractual conditions

11.1.
Hostpoint makes every effort to maintain its infrastructure at the latest state of the art in terms of the security requirements and technical standards customary in the industry. The customer acknowledges that new technological developments, security requirements and/or changes in the services offered by subcontractors to Hostpoint or to the OpenSource software utilised by Hostpoint can result in either a broadening or limitation of the services Hostpoint offers as well as have an influence on the pricing of such services.

12. Additional Provisions for Symantec and ePages Products

12.1.
The Customer can license Symantec (VeriSign, GeoTrust) and ePages products via Hostpoint. Upon acquisition and/or installation of such a license the Customer is requested to accept the license provisions of Symantec (VeriSign, GeoTrust) and/or ePages. These provisions also apply as an integral part of these General Terms and Conditions of Business, and the Customer undertakes to observe the currently valid license provisions in full with regard to Hostpoint.

13. Further provisions

13.1.
Notifications of relevance to the contract, in particular the announcement of price changes or amendments to these General Conditions, shall be transmitted via e-mail to the user e-mail address specified by the customer in the control panel. The customer shall bear full responsibility for ensuring that the customer’s data as compiled at the time of ordering (i.e. invoicing, administration and technical contacts) are maintained in a current, complete and correct manner in the control panel over the entire term of the contract. Hostpoint shall not be obligated to observe any other data than those indicated at the time of ordering or to make any investigations on its own in effort to correct said data.

These Guidelines for Use constitute an integral part of the Service Contract for web hosting (hereinafter referred to as “services”) concluded between the customer and Hostpoint AG (Hostpoint).

1. Use of the services

1.1.
The services may only be used in accordance with the laws valid in Switzerland and abroad. The following actions, in particular, are illegal and thus constitute a breach of these Guidelines for Use:

- The committing of a criminal offence (fraud, computer crime, money laundering, breaching of business secrets, document forging, violence or threats against public authorities and civil servants, illegal gambling, etc.), participation in a criminal offence (involvement, incitement, aiding and abetting) or making the service available such that a criminal offence can be carried out by a third party who is under the customer’s supervision, such as children, employees, and subcontractors, etc. (person under supervision).

- dissemination or the making accessible of contents that are unlawful under criminal or private law (depictions of violence, so-called soft and hard pornography, incitement to disturb the public peace, violation of the freedom of religion and freedom of worship, racial discrimination, defamation, slander, infringement of privacy, etc.) either by the customer themselves or by those under their supervision. Soft pornography may only be made accessible if the customer installs effective barriers to ensure that only persons aged 16 and above are permitted to access the corresponding contents.

- The unauthorised acquisition, storage or dissemination of proprietary contents (contents subject to copyright or to trademark, data protection, design and patent law).

1.2.
The customer undertakes to take the appropriate precautions to avoid unlawful use of the services and to notify Hostpoint without delay of anything of relevance that they establish which could serve to avoid the misuse of its services. The customer will indemnify Hostpoint for all claims made against Hostpoint in conjunction with the use of its services by the customer and by persons under the customer’s supervision.

2. Electronic mail

2.1.
The customer is responsible for the content of the messages that they send using a Hostpoint service. The customer will indemnify Hostpoint if third parties make claims against Hostpoint in conjunction with the transmission of messages by the customer.

2.2.
The dispatch of annoying e-mails, and particularly the dispatch of identical, unsolicited messages to a large number of recipients, is prohibited (spamming).

2.3.
The use of an outside mail server as a distribution station (relay station) for disseminating identical, unsolicited messages to a large number of recipients with the domain name registered with Hostpoint is prohibited.

3. Security guidelines

3.1.
Violations of the system and network security constitute contractual violations for which the customer is liable under civil law. If the requisite conditions are fulfilled, the customer shall similarly be liable under criminal law. In such cases, Hostpoint reserves the right to report the matter to the competent law enforcement authority. The following acts, in particular, constitute contractual violations on the part of the customer which are also punishable under criminal law:

- The unauthorised accessing or unauthorised use of data, systems and network elements, the checking of system vulnerability or network competence without prior agreement (scanning) or the attempt to break through security precautions and authorisation measures without having obtained the prior written consent of the person concerned for this.

- The unauthorised monitoring of data traffic without the prior written consent of the competent authorities or the network owner (sniffing).

- The impairment of the systems operated by Hostpoint and its customers, in particular through mail bombs, mass mailings or other attempts at overloading the system (flooding).

- The manipulation of control information in TCP/IP packages (package headers), e.g. the TCP/IP addresses or an item of information in the control section (e.g. the address of recipients/senders), in an electronic mail.

4. Taking action against violations

4.1.
Hostpoint can discontinue the provision of services and access to the network if any action or omission on the part of the customer is jeopardising or would seem to be jeopardising the normal functioning or the security of the network via which Hostpoint provides its services, or if the customer violates the contract (including these guidelines) with Hostpoint. The outlay incurred in investigating such violations will be charged to the customer. The customer duly notes that, in the event of a violation of these guidelines, Hostpoint may be obliged to reveal the customer’s identity to third parties (such as the law enforcement authority).

These General Conditions for Domain Names govern the legal relationship between Hostpoint AG (hereinafter, "Hostpoint") and its customers (hereinafter, “customers”) who make use of the domain name services of Hostpoint.

1. Scope of applicability and conclusion of contract

1.1.
The substance of these General Conditions is the use of the services of Hostpoint as offered and available at the time of the customer’s initial use thereof.

1.2.
The range of services shown on the Hostpoint website is non-binding. The customer chooses the services to be rendered by Hostpoint from the range of services available at the time of initial use and transmits its legally binding order to Hostpoint. The contract between Hostpoint and the customer is concluded upon Hostpoint’s transmission of the applicable

2. Services and rights of Hostpoint

2.1.
For the scope of services chosen by the customer, Hostpoint administers the customer’s domain name(s) and, at the request of the customer, arranges for the registration of domain names for the ownership of the customer, the registrar transfer of the customer’s existing domain names for the purpose of administration by Hostpoint, as well as the holder transfer of existing domain names owned by the customer and administered by Hostpoint (change of ownership).

2.2. Requests for registration
Hostpoint handles requests for registration in accordance with the principle of equal treatment. The registration of a domain name for which several valid requests have been lodged takes place according to the chronological order (first come, first served) of the receipt of such orders.

2.3. Transfer of domain names to a new holder
Hostpoint arranges for the holder transfer of a domain name upon the written request of the customer. If appropriate notarised declarations should be necessary for the holder transfer, the customer herewith commits to obtaining such at its own cost.

Moreover, Hostpoint will transfer domain names to a new holder without having received a written request if presented with an enforceable court decree or a valid contract concluded between the customer and a third party, in which Hostpoint is explicitly instructed to transfer the relevant domain name directly to a third party. The third party must provide an attestation of the enforceability of any such court decision.

Hostpoint shall be entitled to block the holder transfer of a domain name if a competent court or public authority issues a binding order to do so. Reserved in this regard are further measures that may be ordered by competent courts or public authorities. Moreover, Hostpoint may block a domain name if a third party can prove that there exists a pending court or arbitrational complaint against the current holder pertaining to the cancellation/revocation or transferability of the domain name.

3. Rights and obligations of the customer

3.1.
The customer is entitled to make use of the rendered services in a rule-compliant manner and commits to adhering to these General Conditions and any directives issued by Hostpoint.

3.2. Duty to provide truthful information
In ordering and making use of the rendered services, the customer shall be obligated vis-à-vis Hostpoint to provide truthful information. The customer shall also bear responsibility for maintaining the customer-related data provided at the time of its original order (invoicing, administrative and technical contact coordinates) in an up-to-date, complete and correct manner for the entire duration of the registration. Hostpoint shall not be obligated to observe any data other than those details provided at the time of the order or to initiate investigations regarding the correction of such data.

Should the customer’s data (invoicing, administrative and technical contact coordinates) prove to be incomplete, incorrect or not up to date, and if the customer fails to comply with the demand of Hostpoint to correct such inconsistencies within 10 calendar days, or if the identity of the customer cannot be determined, or if Hostpoint’s notifications to the invoicing contact party are not deliverable, Hostpoint shall be entitled to revoke the relevant domain names of the customer and terminate the contract.

4. Invoicing and payment conditions

4.1.
The payment obligation commences upon conclusion of the contract.

4.2.
As a general rule, Hostpoint invoices the customer in advance for the chosen term of the contract. The invoice is to be paid at latest by the due date indicated on the billing form.

5. Warranty and liability

5.1.
Hostpoint vouches for the careful and professional rendering of its services. Within the scope of its operational resources, Hostpoint strives to render its services round the clock and as fault- and interruption-free as possible.

5.2.
Any and all liability on the part of Hostpoint and/or its commissioned third parties for actions in breach of the contract is excluded in cases of minor carelessness, direct or indirect damages, extra-contractual damages, consequential damages, foregone profits, loss of earnings or productive capability or loss of data. Reserved in this regard are compulsory legal liability provisions.

5.3.
In particular, Hostpoint shall not bear liability for damages incurred as a result of the following circumstances:

6. Confidentiality and data protection

6.1.
Hostpoint and the customer mutually commit to safeguard the confidentiality of all non-public information and data they have come to know in the preparation and execution of this contract. This obligation shall also remain in force following the termination of this contract as long as a justified interest exists.

6.2.
In processing personal data, Hostpoint shall comply with the applicable legal requirements concerning data protection. Hostpoint will store only data that are necessary for providing its services and for invoicing purposes.

6.3.
Hostpoint draws the customer’s attention to the fact that, for legal reasons, the following data must be published on the Internet (Whois Service):

7. Duration of contract; termination

7.1.
The contract between Hostpoint and the customer shall enter into effect upon Hostpoint’s transmission of the applicable contractual documentation to the e-mail address the customer has indicated for purposes of receiving contract-relevant notifications, and remain in force for the term specified in the customer’s order. The contract may be terminated in writing by either party via registered post or via telefax with confirmation of transmission upon observance of a 30-day notification period for effect at the end of the agreed term of the contract. In the absence of a timely termination, the contract shall be automatically prolonged for a period representing the originally agreed term of the contract.

7.2.
If the contract is terminated prematurely, the customer shall have no claim for pro rata temporis reimbursement of the monies paid. If Hostpoint terminates the contract without notice due to the customer’s breach of the contractual provisions or because the services are being used for unlawful purposes, the customer shall owe Hostpoint the fees payable for the period up to the normal termination date of the contract, as well as reimburse Hostpoint for all additional costs it may incur in connection with the termination without notice.

7.3.
Hostpoint shall be entitled to terminate the contract without notice if the customer breaches the contractual provisions or the services are being used for unlawful purposes. In such an event, the customer shall owe Hostpoint the fees payable for the period up to the normal termination date of the contract, as well as reimburse Hostpoint for all additional costs it may incur in connection with the termination without notice.

8. vISP

8.1.
These General Conditions shall also apply to third parties that are intermediaries of Hostpoint services (vISPs).

9. Amendments to contractual conditions

9.1.
Hostpoint makes every effort to maintain its infrastructure at the latest state of the art in terms of the security requirements and technical standards customary in the industry. The customer acknowledges that new technological developments, security requirements and/or changes in the services offered by subcontractors to Hostpoint or to the OpenSource software utilised by Hostpoint can result in either a broadening or limitation of the services Hostpoint offers as well as have an influence on the pricing of such services.

10. Further provisions

10.1.
Notifications of relevance to the contract, in particular the announcement of price changes or amendments to these General Conditions, shall be transmitted via e-mail to the e-mail address specified by the customer for such purposes.

10.2.
The rights and obligations that accrue from the contract may only be transferred to a third party upon the prior written approval of the other contractual party. Exempted from this provision is the transfer of the contract by Hostpoint to a legal successor or affiliated company.