Service Terms

These Service Terms set out rules for specific services provided by Arct Technology LLC ("Arct Cloud", "we", "us", "our"). They form part of the Terms of Service and apply together with it. You accept them with the Terms of Service at sign-up, each time you confirm an Order and when you use a service they cover. Additional terms that we present at checkout or in the Console for a specific service, feature or offer also form part of these Service Terms for that service.

Terms defined in the Terms of Service have the same meaning here, including "Account", "Business Customer", "Console", "Consumer", "Customer Content", "EU/UK Consumer", "Order", "Platform", "Server" and "Services".

Section 1 applies to all Services. Each later section applies to the service it names. If a section conflicts with the Terms of Service, that section prevails for its service. A written agreement or order form signed by both parties, and the Data Processing Agreement for personal data, prevail over these Service Terms.

Prices for each service are shown on the pricing page and at checkout. Charges for snapshot storage and for outbound transfer above the allowance are collected with your next invoice or charge.

Our documentation at docs.arct.cloud explains how to use these services. You must use each service in line with its documentation and with any technical limits we publish or notify to you. If the documentation conflicts with these Service Terms, these Service Terms apply.

Nothing in these Service Terms excludes or limits a right that consumer law gives a Consumer where that right cannot be excluded or limited by contract.

1. General

1.1 Unmanaged service

The Services are unmanaged. You are responsible for the operating system, software, configuration, security, updates and data on your Servers. We are responsible for the data center facilities we use, our network and the virtualisation layer that your Servers run on.

Support covers the Platform and our infrastructure. It is available 24/7 through the ticket system in the Console. Support does not include work inside your Servers, such as installing or configuring software, migrating data or troubleshooting your applications.

1.2 Availability

We do not offer a service level agreement or an uptime guarantee. We do not promise that the Services will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or free of errors, or that they will meet your requirements.

If an outage that we cause affects your Servers, we may give you a service credit in our sole discretion. To be considered for one, report the outage through a ticket and ask for a credit. We decide whether an outage occurred, whether we caused it and the amount of any credit. A service credit:

• applies only against future charges for the Services on the same Account;
• has no cash value and is not refunded or paid out, including when your Account closes;
• cannot be transferred to another Account or person;
• may expire on the date we state when we give it; and
• is not purchased account credit under section 3.13 of the Terms of Service.

We do not give cash refunds for outages. The following are not outages we are responsible for: maintenance under section 1.3; null-routing, filtering and other mitigation under section 1.4; attacks directed at your Servers; suspension, throttling or other action we take under the Agreement; problems caused by your software, operating system, configuration or End Users; and networks, services and events outside our reasonable control.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, a service credit is a Business Customer's sole and exclusive remedy for unavailability or interruption of the Services. This does not limit any liability that section 15.1 of the Terms of Service leaves unlimited. This section does not affect the statutory rights of Consumers.

1.3 Maintenance

We maintain, patch and update the hosts, network and storage behind the Services. Some maintenance requires us to restart Servers or interrupt network access.

For planned maintenance that affects your Servers, we email you at your account email in advance where practical. We may carry out emergency maintenance without notice when it is needed to fix a security vulnerability, protect the Services or other customers, or restore service.

We may move a Server to other hardware in the same location for maintenance or capacity reasons. A move may require a restart and follows the notice rules in this section.

If we ask you to take an action needed for maintenance or a move, such as restarting a Server by a stated date, you agree to take it by that date. If you do not, we may take the action ourselves, which may restart the Server. You are responsible for configuring your software to start and reconnect correctly after a restart, a move or a network interruption.

1.4 DDoS protection and null-routing

DDoS protection is included on every plan. It is designed to filter attack traffic up to the capacity of our mitigation systems. We decide, in our sole discretion, how attacks are detected and mitigated, including the thresholds, methods and filtering rules we apply, and we may change them at any time. Mitigation can delay, filter or drop legitimate traffic together with attack traffic. We do not guarantee that DDoS protection will detect or stop every attack, or that a Server will stay reachable during an attack.

If an attack on an IP address exceeds that capacity, or threatens our network or other customers, we may null-route the IP address. A null route drops all traffic to that address, so the Server cannot be reached on it. The null route stays in place until we determine that the attack has ended or fallen below our mitigation capacity. If an address is attacked repeatedly, we may keep the null route in place for longer or change the Server's IP address under section 1.5. A null route, and any filtering or other mitigation, is not an outage for which we are liable.

DDoS protection is a network control. It does not replace the firewall, rate limiting, patching and application security on your Servers, which remain your responsibility.

If a Server sends attack traffic or other harmful traffic, including because it has been compromised, we may block that traffic or disconnect the Server from the network until the cause is fixed. The Acceptable Use Policy sets out our other enforcement steps.

1.5 IP addresses

We assign IP addresses to your Servers for use with the Services. The addresses remain ours or our providers'. You do not own them and acquire no property right in them. You receive only a limited, revocable and non-transferable right to use each address with the Server it is assigned to, for as long as it stays assigned. Your right to use an address ends when the Server it is assigned to is deleted, and we may then assign the address to another customer.

You may use only the IP addresses assigned to your Servers. You must not sell, lease, sublicense or transfer an address, announce an address or any of our address space through a routing protocol, register an address with an internet registry as your own, or send traffic with a forged source address.

We may change the IP address of a Server, for example because of network changes or to deal with abuse. We give advance notice by email, except in an emergency, such as to stop an attack or to comply with the law.

We do not control third-party blocklists, reputation services or IP geolocation databases. An assigned address may have been used before, may appear on a blocklist, or may be shown in a different country from your Server's location. We are not responsible for the reputation, history or classification of an address. We are not obliged to replace an address that is listed, although we may do so.

1.6 Service changes and retirement

We may add, change or remove features, plans, operating system images and locations. Reasons include security, changes in law or regulation, the end of support for hardware or software, changes by our suppliers, capacity and technical improvements. Where the law requires a valid reason for a change, such as for EU/UK Consumers, we make the change only for a valid reason. Removing an image stops new deployments from it. It does not delete Servers already running it.

We may retire a location, plan or feature that you pay for. We endeavour to give as much notice by email before the retirement date as is reasonably practicable, except where section 5.8 of the Terms of Service does not require advance notice. Where available, we offer a way to move to an equivalent service. You can export your data during the notice period.

We give shorter notice only where an emergency, a security risk or a legal requirement makes it necessary.

If a change has more than a minor negative effect on you as an EU/UK Consumer, we email you in advance with the change, its date and your right to end the affected service free of charge. You may end it within 30 days after that email or after the change takes effect, whichever is later.

Except where mandatory law provides otherwise, a change or retirement under this section does not give a right to a refund, credit or compensation.

1.7 Account and resource limits

We may set limits on each Account, such as the number or size of Servers, IP addresses, snapshots and other resources, the rate of API requests and the amounts you can pay or hold as account credit. Limits may be lower for new Accounts. We may change any limit at any time and may decline an Order or a request that would exceed one. A limit is not a reservation of capacity. Each Order still depends on available capacity in the location you choose.

Servers share physical hosts, storage and network capacity with other customers. Performance varies with the load on those shared resources, and we do not guarantee any level of processor, memory, disk or network performance. Section 5 of the Acceptable Use Policy sets the resource-use rules and the steps we may take, including throttling, when a Server breaches them.

1.8 Activity on your Account

You are responsible for all activity on your Account and your Servers, whether by you, your End Users or anyone else who uses your credentials or gains access to a Server, with or without your permission. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, charges that result from that activity, including outbound transfer above the allowance and snapshot storage, remain payable even if a Server or credential was compromised. Section 2.4 and section 7 of the Terms of Service set out your duties to secure your Account and Servers.

1.9 Beta and preview features

We may offer features, images, locations or services that we label as beta, preview, early access, trial or similar ("Preview Features"). You choose whether to use them. Any additional terms we show for a Preview Feature apply to it.

Preview Features may be incomplete or contain errors, may have no support, and may be changed, limited, suspended or withdrawn at any time, with or without notice. Data stored in or created with a Preview Feature may be lost or deleted, including when the Preview Feature ends. Do not use a Preview Feature for production workloads or for data you cannot afford to lose. Feedback about a Preview Feature is feedback under section 12.3 of the Terms of Service, and non-public information about it is confidential under section 19.13 of the Terms of Service.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Preview Features are provided "as is" and "as available", without any warranty. Our total liability to a Business Customer arising from a Preview Feature is limited to the amount the Business Customer paid for that Preview Feature in the month before the event giving rise to the liability. This does not limit any liability that section 15.1 of the Terms of Service leaves unlimited. If you are a Consumer, a Preview Feature you pay for remains subject to your statutory rights.

1.10 Protective measures

We may take any technical measure we reasonably consider necessary to protect the Services, our network, other customers or third parties, or to comply with the law. Such measures include filtering or rate-limiting traffic, blocking ports or protocols, limiting resources, isolating a Server from the network and changing IP addresses. We are not obliged to monitor Customer Content (section 6.5 of the Terms of Service). When a measure restricts a Server because of Customer Content or a breach of the Agreement, section 10 of the Terms of Service governs notice, statements of reasons and disputes. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we are not liable for a measure we take in good faith under this section.

1.11 Your data

You are solely responsible for the integrity, preservation and backup of Customer Content, whether or not you use backups or snapshots. We do not promise to keep any copy of Customer Content for you other than the backups and snapshots described in sections 2 and 3, while they exist. Deleted Servers, backups and snapshots cannot be recovered. Section 15.4 of the Terms of Service governs our liability for lost data.

1.12 Disclaimers and liability

Sections 14 (Disclaimers), 15 (Limitation of liability) and 16 (Indemnification) of the Terms of Service apply to every service in these Service Terms. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we give no warranty that backups, snapshots, DDoS protection, operating system images or any other service described here will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure or fit for a particular purpose. Nothing in these Service Terms limits any liability that section 15.1 of the Terms of Service leaves unlimited, or a Consumer's statutory rights.

2. Backups

2.1 The add-on

Backups are an optional add-on that you enable for each Server. They are available in the locations where the Console offers them.

The backup charge is a percentage of the Server's price, shown on the pricing page and at checkout. It is collected with the Server's charges or with your next invoice or charge.

2.2 Schedule and backup slots

When backups are on, we back up the Server once a day. Each Server has 7 backup slots. When all 7 slots are full, the next backup replaces the oldest one.

2.3 Deletion with the Server

Backups belong to their Server. When a Server is deleted, its backups are permanently deleted at the same time. This applies when you delete a Server, when a cancelled Server reaches the end of its paid billing period, and when the Servers on your Account are deleted for non-payment on day 21 after an invoice's due date (see section 3.5).

To keep a copy after a Server is deleted, create a snapshot where snapshots are available, or keep your own copy.

2.4 Encryption and storage location

Backups are stored encrypted. They are kept in backup storage that may be in a different city or country from the Server. The Subprocessors page lists our server locations.

2.5 Our care and your own copies

We run backups with reasonable care and skill. Backups are a convenience feature. They are not a guarantee and not a substitute for your own backup and disaster-recovery arrangements.

A backup can fail, be incomplete or be unusable for a restore. A backup records the Server's disk at the time it is taken. It may not include data held in memory and may not give a consistent copy of a running application, such as a database. We are not obliged to check the content or integrity of any backup. We do not guarantee that a backup will be created, that it will be kept beyond the backup slots in section 2.2, or that it will restore successfully.

You must keep your own independent copies, stored outside the Services, of any Customer Content that you cannot afford to lose, and check regularly that you can restore them. Before you restore a backup, keep a copy of any data the restore may replace.

2.6 Remedy for Business Customers

If you are a Business Customer and a backup fails, is incomplete or cannot be restored, we may give you a service credit at our discretion, up to the backup charges for the billing period in which the failure occurred. Section 1.2 applies to that credit. We do not give cash refunds for failed backups. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, this is your sole and exclusive remedy for a failed, incomplete or unrestorable backup and for any loss of data that results from it. It does not limit any liability that section 15.1 of the Terms of Service leaves unlimited.

If you are a Consumer, you keep the remedies that consumer law gives you.

3. Snapshots

3.1 What a snapshot is

A snapshot is a copy of a Server at the time you create it. You create and delete snapshots yourself in the Console. Snapshots are available for Servers running Linux images, in the locations where the Console offers them. They are not available for Servers running Windows Server.

3.2 Charges

Snapshot storage is charged per GB per month, based on the size of each snapshot, at the rate shown on the pricing page. Charges accrue from the time you create a snapshot until you delete it. They are collected with your next invoice or charge.

3.3 Retention

A snapshot is kept until you delete it. Snapshots are separate from the Server they were taken from. Deleting a Server, or the end of a cancelled Server's billing period, does not delete its snapshots. They remain in your Account and continue to be charged until you delete them, or until they are deleted for non-payment under section 3.5.

3.4 Restoring a snapshot

A snapshot cannot be restored onto the Server it was taken from. Restoring a snapshot creates a new Server, which is charged as a new Server at the price of its plan and depends on available capacity in the location.

3.5 Non-payment

If any invoice on your Account is not paid by its due date, we suspend your Account. On day 21 after the due date, we permanently delete all Servers, backups, snapshots and other data on your Account. You are responsible for paying your invoices and tracking their due dates. We are not responsible for loss of data caused by non-payment. The Terms of Service set out the full non-payment process.

3.6 Storage, care and remedy

Snapshots are stored encrypted in the same backup storage as backups (see section 2.4). Sections 2.5 and 2.6 apply to snapshots in the same way, with the charges for the affected snapshot in place of backup charges.

3.7 Snapshot limits

We may limit the number or total size of snapshots an Account can hold under section 1.7, and we may decline to create a snapshot that would exceed a limit.

4. Resizing Servers

You can resize a Server to a larger plan in the Console. Resizing to a smaller plan is not available, so a resize cannot be reversed. Disk capacity can grow during a resize. It cannot be reduced later.

A resize keeps the Server's IP addresses and data. The Server restarts to complete the resize and is unavailable during the restart. Keep a current copy of important data before you resize.

The price difference between the old and new plan, prorated for the days left in the current billing period, is charged immediately when you resize. The new plan's price applies from the next renewal.

A resize depends on available capacity on the host and in the location. We may decline or delay a resize request. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we are not responsible for loss of data or downtime during a resize that results from your software or configuration.

5. Network and outbound transfer

Each Server has a network connection of up to 25 Gbps. Network capacity is shared between customers and is not reserved for any Server. Throughput depends on traffic across our network and the other networks your traffic passes through. We do not guarantee any level of throughput.

Each plan includes a monthly outbound transfer allowance, shown on the pricing page and at checkout. Outbound transfer is traffic that your Server sends. Inbound transfer is not charged and does not count toward the allowance.

Outbound transfer above the allowance is charged per GB at the rate shown on the pricing page for the Server's location. We measure transfer with our own systems, and those measurements are used for billing. Our measurements prevail over any measurement you make, unless they contain a manifest error. Charges for transfer above the allowance are collected with your next invoice or charge. Unused outbound transfer allowance has no cash value and is not refunded.

We may apply traffic filtering, rate limits and other network controls, and we may limit the network capacity of a Server whose traffic degrades our network or other customers' services. We do not control the networks your traffic crosses outside our network, and we do not guarantee latency, routing, packet delivery or reachability from any particular network or country.

6. Email ports

Outbound connections on TCP ports 25 and 465 are blocked by default. Port 587 is open.

You may ask us to unblock ports 25 and 465 for a Server by opening a ticket. Tell us what email you plan to send and how your recipients agree to receive it. We decide each request at our discretion. We may block the ports again at any time, for example after complaints, signs of spam or abuse, or the listing of our IP addresses on a blocklist.

An unblock applies only to the Server named in your request. We may attach conditions to it, such as sending limits or authentication of your sending domains, and we may decline requests from new Accounts or Accounts without a payment history. We may also restrict other ports or protocols where needed to prevent abuse or to protect our network and the reputation of our IP addresses.

We do not guarantee that email sent from the Services will be delivered. Recipients and their mail providers may reject or filter mail from our IP addresses.

The Acceptable Use Policy sets the rules for email you send, including blocklist costs.

7. Windows Server images

7.1 Availability

Windows Server images are available on plans with 2 or more vCPU.

7.2 Unlicensed images

We do not supply Windows Server licences. Each Windows Server image deploys unlicensed. You activate Windows Server with your own valid licence, and you are responsible for complying with Microsoft's licence terms.

Windows Server that is not activated shuts down at intervals or stops working normally after a 180-day period set by Microsoft. This behaviour comes from the Microsoft software and is not a failure of the Services. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we are not responsible for interruption, data loss or other consequences of an evaluation period ending, an activation failing or being invalid, or Microsoft's activation and update services.

7.3 Bring your own licence

Your licence must be a Windows Server licence that Microsoft's terms allow you to run on shared servers operated by a third party such as us. Examples are licences with active Software Assurance and subscription licences used under Microsoft's Flexible Virtualization Benefit. Retail and OEM licences do not usually allow this use. You must also hold any other licences your use requires, such as client access licences.

You are responsible for confirming that your licence allows this use. We do not give licensing advice.

7.4 Your confirmation

Checkout, the pricing page and the Windows VPS page state that Windows Server images deploy unlicensed and need your own licence. By deploying or reinstalling a Windows Server image by any method, you warrant that you will use it only under a licence that meets section 7.3, for as long as the Server runs Windows Server.

7.5 Indemnity

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, you will defend, indemnify and hold harmless Arct Technology LLC and its members, managers, employees, contractors and agents against third-party claims, including claims and audits by Microsoft, that arise from your use of Windows Server without a valid licence or outside your licence terms. This covers the resulting licence fees, penalties, damages, settlements and reasonable legal fees. The indemnity procedure in the Terms of Service applies. If you are a Consumer, this indemnity applies only where the claim results from your own unlawful conduct or your own breach of these Service Terms.

7.6 Evidence of licence and suspension

On request, you must give us reasonable evidence of your licence. We may suspend a Server running Windows Server if it runs without a valid licence, or if we receive a licensing complaint or audit request about it and you do not give us evidence of a valid licence within the time stated in our request. We tell you before we suspend, unless the law or the urgency of the complaint requires faster action.

7.7 Audits and cooperation

You must cooperate with any licence audit or verification by Microsoft or its auditors that concerns Windows Server you run on the Services, including by giving licence evidence to them on request. You are responsible for any licence fees, true-up charges or penalties that result. If Microsoft or its auditor tells us that your use breaches its licence terms, we may act under section 7.6.

8. Operating system images

We provide operating system images that you can install on your Servers. Linux images are available on every plan.

The software in each image is made and licensed by third parties. Its own licence terms govern your use of it, including open-source licences for Linux distributions and Microsoft's terms for Windows Server. You must comply with those terms.

Images may include configuration or software that we add so that the image works with the Services. Except as an image's own licence allows, you may not copy, extract or distribute an image, or anything we add to it, for use outside the Services.

After deployment, you are responsible for updating and securing the software on your Server. We do not update the operating system or software on a Server after it is deployed. When the publisher of an operating system ends support for it, you are responsible for upgrading or replacing it, and we may stop offering its image under section 1.6.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we provide images "as is" and give no warranty for the third-party software in them. If we give you an indemnity under the Terms of Service or a signed agreement, it does not cover third-party software in images.

If the licensor of software in an image tells us that your use breaches its licence, we may suspend the affected Server or require you to stop that use. Section 10 of the Terms of Service governs notice and disputes.

9. Changes to these Service Terms

We change these Service Terms under section 18 of the Terms of Service.