Terms & Conditions
This page was last updated on: August, 2023. Any of These Terms & Conditions may be updated at any time. Our Privacy Policy is located at https://barredowlweb.com/privacy-policy/.
You will find our billing, invoicing, and Web Hosting Policies and Terms of Service here. Below is a “Table of Contents” for our Policies:
- Financial Policies
- Invoice Terms & Finance Charges
- Sales Tax
- Hourly Rates
- Web Hosting & Development Policies
- Content & Inappropriate Use
- Uptime Guarantee
- E-Commerce Websites
- Website Migration & Managed WordPress Hosting
- Domain Name Management
- Software Licenses
- Customer Referrals
Financial Policies
Invoice Terms & Finance Charges
- All of our invoices are “Due on Receipt”
- Customers have a 30 day grace period to pay the invoice
- If an invoice is not paid in full within 30 days of the Due Date, we may assess an Annual Interest Rate Finance Charge of 18% on any unpaid amount. This Finance Charge is calculated as of the day that it is assessed, which may occur on any day after 30 days of an invoice Due Date.
- There will be a $25 fee for any returned (bounced) checks, in addition to any possible bank fees we are assessed.
Tennessee Sales Tax:
- Nonprofit organizations in Tennessee are not subject to sales tax, but must provide a Certificate of Tax Exemption provided by TN Department of Revenue.
- Nonprofit organizations in other states may or may not be subject to sales tax, depending on that particular state’s regulations.
- Sales tax will be applied to applicable invoices for businesses and individuals in the state of Tennessee. Applicable invoices include website development & graphic design services. Examples of non-taxable services include consultations, shared web web hosting, and other services that do not involve changes to an existing website.
Hourly Rates:
- Our hourly rate for businesses is $125
- Our hourly rate for nonprofits is $85
Web Hosting & Development
The above Financial Policies apply to our web hosting customers as well. Here are some additional terms specific to our web hosting customers:
- Unless otherwise noted, all invoices are sent on an annual basis, at the beginning of a 1-year period for which web hosting services are provided.
- Unless otherwise agreed upon in a contract, payments for our web hosting services are non-refundable and are not prorated
- We offer a 14 Day Money Back Guarantee for our Web Hosting services. If you are unhappy with our hosting services, simply tell us to cancel your account within 14 days of initially registering, and we will gladly refund you the full amount.
- If an invoice for our hosting service is beyond 30 days past due, we reserve the right to disable your website or web server until that invoice is paid in full. We also reserve the right to apply finance charges to any invoice that is over 30 day past due.
Below are additional policies that apply to any of our web hosting services. In the event we find you have breached any of these Web Hosting policies, we reserve the right to immediately close your account and to not issue you a refund.
Content & Inappropriate Use
Barred Owl Web provides web hosting services to our customers, but does necessarily endorse any of the content published by our customers through our web hosting infrastructure. We reserve the right to refuse to serve the website content of any existing customer who makes inappropriate or unreasonable use of our services or an applicant whose planned Web presence activities are deemed to have the potential of creating negative impact on our abilities to serve our customers. The appropriateness and reasonableness of use, and potential of negative impact to us from your materials are matters which shall be determined in our sole judgment. Examples of website content containing inappropriate or unreasonable use include:
- Racist or otherwise offensive material
- Pirated software, music and/or movies
- Using, publishing, or making content available for download that is copyrighted for which you do not have authorization
- Pornography and sex-related material of any kind
- Links to pornography
- Music or photography downloads unless you own the copyright
- MP3 archives
Uptime Guarantee
We provide a monthly up-time guarantee for customers on our Shared Hosting infrastructure. If your website, hosted on our Shared Hosting infrastructure, is down for more than 1% in a given month, you may request a credit to your account for 1 month of free web hosting. The credit may extend your existing hosting by 1 month, or reduce your next bill (your choice).
If you opt for our a VPS on our Managed Virtual Private Server (MVPS) infrastructure, and it is unavailable for more than 1% in a given month, we will also credit your account with 1 month of free web hosting. Additionally, Barred Owl Web commits to addressing critical problems with your VPS within 1 hour during business hours or within 4 hours during nights, weekends and holidays. If desired, we can provide an agreement that will include this SLA response time.
E-commerce Websites
E-commerce websites and donation forms are allowed. However, special security considerations must be taken into account. You agree to use, at minimum, 2048-bit SSL encryption on any page that processes financial data. Financial data including personal credit card numbers and bank account information may not be stored on shared servers. If you want to store this type of information on your website, you will need to purchase a Managed VPS and provide reasonable justification. Any credit card data that is stored should be stored in an encrypted format.
Website Migration & Managed WordPress Hosting
If you select our Managed WordPress Hosting option and/or you hire us to migrate your website from a different web hosting provider, you agree to grant Barred Owl Web a unique login to your WordPress website that will have administrator access to your website. You further agree to, if necessary, give us login access to your account at your previous web hosting provider so that we can successfully migrate your website (including, if possible, access to your files via SFTP and access to your database).
Domain Management
We will register a customer’s URL at the request of that customer. While the URL will be in our account and will be in our complete control, the customer retains ownership of the URL.
You have the right to request a transfer of your URL into your own Domain Registrar Account at any time, and we will honor that request, except in the following cases:
- For the first 60 days of a URL’s initial registration
- You have any outstanding invoices that are past due
You are responsible for notifying us, in writing, that you do not want us to renew your URL. In the case that your URL is about to expire and we have not been notified to cancel your URL, we will automatically renew your URL and invoice you accordingly.
We may allow your URL to expire if any of your invoices are past due at the time your URL is up for renewal.
Paid Software Subscriptions
Barred Owl Web may grant our web hosting customers the use of software subscription licenses provided by a 3rd party service or software vendor. Unless otherwise agreed upon in a contract, any licenses to 3rd party services or software vendors will remain the exclusive ownership of Barred Owl Web. Barred Owl Web grants our customers a non-transferable right to use these licenses only on websites that are hosted on our web hosting infrastructure.
If you move a website off of Barred Owl Web hosting infrastructure, you agree to immediately discontinue use of any software subscription licenses we may have provided to you. In such an event, you agree to downgrade the software installed on your website to a free version (if such a version exists) or to purchase your own license.
3rd party services and software vendors include (but are not limited to):
- Elegant Themes License for WordPress
- Gravity Forms License for WordPress
- Smash Balloon License for WordPress
Customer Referrals
If you are an existing customer, we will give you a credit for 1 month of free hosting (up to a maximum of $100 per referral).
The customer you refer must sign up for one of our web hosting services at https://barredowlweb.com/get-started/, and provide your name and email address when they sign up. That new customer must remain with us for at least 1 month.
In the event we find any of these conditions to be breached, we will immediately close your account and you will not be issued a refund. Any of These Policies and Terms may be updated at any time.