Free cPanel/DirectAdmin to DirectAdmin migrations (New clients)
The first domain transfer and migration of associated data, as well as Emails is free. Clients are required to submit their migration request within 7 days after they have signed up with Serious.host to qualify for the initial free migration. Our standard fee of R250.00 (incl Vat) per migration is charged for any additional domains and data.

Quarterly charge for Personal hosting plans
Personal hosting plans are charged on a quarterly basis.  This is done to reduce the amount of administrative tasks required to allocate and receipt EFT payments.

Inode usage
These are all the files present in the hosting space for a specific hosting plan and includes website files, databases files, plugin files and Email messages and associated data, e.g. attachments.

Manual Migrations
All manual WordPress migrations (non-cPanel/DirectAdmin) are charged at R250.00 (incl Vat).  Unfortunately we do not offer assistance with migrations for custom developed applications.  We will however assist with the migration of your Email accounts.

Unmetered bandwidth
All shared packages have unmetered bandwidth.  The unmetered bandwidth usage provided by Serious.host is subject to reasonable usage.

Disk space and over usage
Once your allocated disk space has been exceeded, an over disk usage fee of R25.00 (incl VAT) per GB is charged.  This amount will be added to your next invoice as it will only be determined at the end of the previous month for monthly payments.  Over disk usage for all other billing cycles are charged on a monthly basis.  This applies to shared hosting only.

Direct Admin License
These panel licenses are charged for additionally and therefore not included in the VPS hosting.  Although this is sold as a package deal, installing the license will incur additional costs.  Please see costing structure on our SLA agreement.

30 Day money back guarantee
If you are not happy with the product, you can cancel within a 30 day period for a full refund – No questions asked!  This applies to shared hosting only.  Domain registration fees are non-refundable.

Third party vendors and applications
As a courtesy to our valued clients, we provide comprehensive installation details about how to use certain third-party products, such as Apple (IOS) and Samsung (Android), as well as Outlook and Mac, but we neither endorse, nor directly support any third-party products and therefore we are not responsible for the functionality, compatibility or reliability of these products. We are also not affiliated with, endorsed, or sponsored by any of these third party vendors. 

Free domain registrations and/or renewals
.za domains are offered free of charge upon registration thereof, when selecting annual payment for any Shared Business hosting plan (annual renewal for client’s account), while both registration and subsequent renewals are free of charge, when opting for annual payment for any Shared Business+ hosting plan.  This only applies for as long as the Business+ hosting product is active and only for the primary domain.

Please read these important notes to familiarize yourself with the migration notes:

1. Clients are required to submit their migration request within 7 days after they have signed up with Serious.host to qualify for the initial free migration.
2. Free migrations are subject to certain restrictions;
   – Web site storage does not exceed 20Gb.
   – Less than 25 Email accounts.
   – Database size does not exceed 5Gb.
3. Migration process from start to finish will complete within 2-3 business days and you will be notified should the process take longer due to unforseen reasons.
4. Please note that no migrations will take place on a Friday.
5. Hosting packages are limited to their allocated number of files allowed, which makes up all the files your content and data consists of.  This includes database files, theme and plugin files, Email messages and attachments.  Please familiarize yourself with the amount of inodes allocated to each hosting plan to ensure that all files are copied across.
6. In the event of  migrating infected files due to malicious/harmful code, these files may be quarintined as our malware software will not allowed the files to be executed.
7. You will be required to whitelist our IP prior to migration to ensure that it is not blocked by your current provider.
8. Any dynamic site, e.g online store (eCommerce) or discussion forum must be placed in maintenance mode to ensure that no sales or posts are lost during the migration.  Sites of this nature will be bumped up the  migration queue.
9. Clients are encouraged to also take a backup of the site, database and Emails, as well as any custom DNS records prior to the migration.
10. Please ensure that any redirects in your .htaccess file is copied to a safe place and should be added by your developer post-migration.
11. Kindly note that we do not make contact with the existing hosting provider in the event of a technical issue arising and clients are required to make contact with their support team in order to have any issues resolved, preventing us from performing the migration.
12. It is crucial that you leave your existing hosting account active in order for us to access the client area/host panel to run the migration.
13. Although we take great care with the migration of custom DNS records, it remains the client’s responsibility to confirm these records reflect correctly post-migration.

Full details can be found at https://serious.host/migration-process

1. Site Builder websites are specific to the Serious.host infrastructure and cannot be moved or transferred.
2. The Site Builder solution is backed up in its entirety and individual websites cannot be restored.
3. Kindly note that when creating a website of the same domain name and publishing it, any existing site will be replaced.
4. Third party plugins may require prior registration with said third party before activation is possible.
5. Always make an additional backup of any content (images, audio and video files) to ensure you will be able to make use of these files, should you wish to recreate your site(s) elsewhere.
6. Should you wish to cancel your Site Builder package, any live site(s) will no longer be accessible online. This also applies to the various plugins used.

Besides disk space (storage) and Inodes (total file system), the following resources are allocated to each hosting package;

1.   vCPU quota – % of vCPU core
2.  Memory (RAM) Max – Absolute Memory limit
3.  Memory (RAM) High – Throttle Memory above this limit
4.  Processes/Tasks – Max number of processes or tasks
5.  IO read – Max rate data kan be read from a disk (mbps)
6.  IO write – Max rate data can be written to a disk (mbps)
7.  IOPS read – Max disk read operations per second
8.  IOPS write – Max disk write operations per second

Please note the below:
Standard Hosting
Although Standard Hosting offers 2GB RAM, memory is throttled above 1Gb RAM.

Please note the following regarding the use of 3rd party plugins, themes and/or PHP scripts;

1.  Clients are encouraged to keep 3rd party plugins to a minimum as these plugins may influence the performance of your site, regardless of the hosting package selected.

2.  Any plugins recommended by Serious.host support technicians are installed and used at the client’s own risk.  We do not accept any responsibility for issues experienced or errors received, if the website was not developed through us and is also not maintained by us.

3.  Please ensure that when you search for plugins via the Softaculous dashboard, that those plugins have been recently updated, have mostly positive reviews and are compatible with the latest version of your CMS platform.

4.  Themes / Templates should be purchased from a reputable supplier to ensure that they are supported afterwards.  Certain themes/templates and plugins might not be compatible and a reputable supplier will inform you when asked about this.

5.  Please refrain from downloading themes/templates from “pirate” sites as the software might be injected with malware.  This could cause your application to crash without the possiblity of restoring to a previous working state.

6.  You are free to install and run PHP scripts (source code) that are approved,  widely accepted and used in development best practices.  Your account will be suspended should harmful code be executed on your application(s).  You are required to sign-up for custom hosting, should you wish to host your own PHP application.

7.  Serious.host will only investigate WordPress sites should your site experience technical difficulty.  The cost for investigating and/or resolving an issue is set out in our SLA.

8.  Serious.host will not be held liable for any degraded site performance due to the site being published on a hosting space with inadequate resources.  Clients can view usage from within the DirectAdmin host panel and able to upgrade/downgrade hosting plans via the billing at https://billing.serious.host

Serious.host provides a service to our customers for remuneration. Our accounting system will invoice you when services need to be paid in addition to statements in order for you to see the full financial records.

The accounting system keeps key communication fields in order to Email the financial as well as notifications to the clients. It remains the client’s responsibility to keep all relevant information up-to-date.

The administrative system (billing) enables all our clients to self-manage their services at any-time. This system is currently published at https://billing.serious.host for all DirectAdmin clients.

By logging into the billing area, the client understands and is responsible for their account details and ensuring that the credentials are kept secret. Many actions like registering a Domain Name has direct financial implications that the account owner becomes responsible for. The access to the above system is recommended only by selected responsible representatives of the company or organization.

Please ensure that your password for all our systems are strong and changed on a regular basis, in addition to not using those passwords on other locations.

In order to simplify the costing, unless otherwise stated, Serious.host has a companywide standard rate.
Standard rates will be quoted in many areas of the website, and always refer to this standard rate.
Current standard rates @ R450.00 per hour.

All pricing provided on this site includes VAT.

PAYMENT
A SeriousBilling client may pay us using EFT to our bank account, of which the details are provided on the invoice or statement.  Alternatively, should you wish to ensure the payment is cleared immediately, we recommend online payments via Payfast in the form of card payments / instant EFT.

It is your responsibility to provide the proof of payment and supply the correct reference so that we may allocate the payment correctly.  Please use your unique USER ID, e.g. r12345c as reference at all times.

All services with Serious.host is payable in advance for the month unless otherwise stated. In the case where we cannot predetermine your monthly charges like disk space over usage, we will bill this at the end of the month.

Please note the following regarding invoicing, billing and account suspension:

SeriousBilling clients 

1. Invoices are usually generated between 24th and 26th of each month (Dec 2024 invoices generated on the 20th)
2. Due date for account payments is the 2nd of the following month, in advance for the month (EFT / Online payments preferred as cash deposits will incur additional fees).
3. EFT payments are allocated once a day, in the morning, Monday through Friday.
4. SMS and/or e-Mail reminders on the 3rd, 5th and 7th (please ensure correct contact details is captured on the billing system)
5. Account suspensions take place before EOB on the 7th.
Should this fall over a weekend, the suspensions will run during the morning of the next business day.
6. Admin fee of R50 payable for manual reactivation of hosting account.  Please make online payment to avoid this additional fee.
7. Unpaid hosting spaces will be removed from a client’s account ten (10) days after an account has been suspended, while data is removed from our servers within the following 7 (seven) days.  No backup will be available after this period.
Please follow these steps to have your account reinstated;
a) Kindly settle arrears to bring account up to date and forward POP to billing@serious.host
b) Hosting plan will be added to your account and invoice generated.
c) Once the hosting invoice is settled,
d) services will be restored within 24 hours, using the latest available backup for the hosting account.
e) Restore fee of R150.00 (incl VAT) payable.
8. The invoices and reminders are sent to the same e-Mail address that you have received the account suspension notification on.
9.  Please note that billing cycles for hosting accounts may be changed without prior notice.

Should you require any assistance with the billing of your hosting account, kindly forward an e-Mail to billing@serious.host and we will advise accordingly.

Domain renewal notices:

1. The first domain renewal notice is generated 45 days prior to expiry.
2. This is followed by a subsequent reminder 30 days before expiry.
3. A third and final notice is forwarded 15 days before the domain expires.
4. Domain renewal invoices are generated after the 3rd reminder.
5. Clients then have seven (7) days to still set the domain(s) to AUTO EXPIRE should you not wish to renew the domains(s).

Important notice:
After successful registration, renewal or transfer of Global domain extensions (TLD’s), e.g .com, .net, .org, etc. the domain owner (registrant) will receive an Email to verify ownership of the domain, while confirming the Email address linked to the domain is correct.

Serious.host reserves the right to request an upgrade to a larger hosting package should the client have excessive data and/or resource usage.

Clients will be notified of such excessive usage and provided with alternatives.
Clients are responsible for their own backups and restore of data.
Serious.host provides backups of the environment (including data) in the case of disaster recovery.
The web hosting panel makes provision for backup and restore.
Additionally the client is welcome and encouraged to make an additional type of backup, as might be their requirement, including page content in their website content management system.

Hosting is provided on a month to month basis, no contracts apply. Unpaid hosting spaces will be removed from a client’s account ten (10) days after an account has been suspended, while data is removed from our servers within the next 7 (seven) days.  No backups of these spaces will be available after this. It remains the client’s responsibility to take backups before cancellation or migration away from us. Hosting is either paid and active or unpaid and data scheduled for removal.

Restore fee of R150.00 (incl VAT) is payable for restore of any data, prior to complete removal from our hosting environment.

Upon signing up for your Serious.host hosting account you can expect the following from our very user friendly, self-managed hosting service:

1. Allocated disk space, Inodes and system resources (based on the type of hosting plan selected).
2. e-Mail accounts (based on the type of hosting plan selected)
3. Unmetered bandwidth for shared hosting (amount of traffic generated by visitors accessing your site, Email data, Uploads, etc.)
4. Domains and websites (quota based on type of hosting selected)
5. Webmail interface to manage e-Mail accounts (Roundcube)
6. Direct Admin (Linux) to manage hosting features, i.e. create Email accounts, updates DNS, create databases and install free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate
7. SeriousBilling to manage hosting accounts and view invoices, upgrade/downgrade, etc.
   
   Please note:  The below form part of the self-managed service, but is not limited to:

1. Setup and configuration of your client desktop software (Windows, Mac, Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail).
2. Setup and configuration of your phone or tablet.
3. Resetting or changing your CMS passwords and those of the hosting panel accounts or e-Mail accounts.
4. Creating mail accounts, changing your mail settings, limits or out-of-office replies.
5. Registering domains, updating DNS, etc.
6. Support on demand applies to all hosting spaces, unless stated otherwise.  This includes accessing your computer via remote desktop support and is also charged at our standard rate of R150.00 (incl. VAT) per 15 minutes or part thereof.
7. Unfortunately we do not receive hosting clients at our premises.

Acceptable use policy of Serious.host is subject to the acceptable and use policies of the Data Centre and the WWW consortium in addition to other related acceptable usage as described in this document.

Kindly note that the support offered by Serious.host is directly related to the uptime of the hosting and Email services, i.e.

1. We run daily (Database / Website Files) backups (stored for 5 days)
2. Emails are stored for a maximum of 72 hours.  Should an account need to be restored, due to accidental removal, you are required to submit a written request to have the mail account(s) and data recovered, during this period.  Failing to do so, will result in the loss of the data.
3. Our hosting services are fully self-managed.  We are not allowed to create mail accounts or reset mail account and panel passwords.

Websites

• OUR RESPONSIBILITY
  The responsibility of Serious.host is to ensure that the web servers are running as expected and will inform clients of any emergency downtime or planned downtime to upgrade servers or operating systems, etc. We have published a vast number of online guides to assist you with the management of your services.
• YOUR RESPONSIBILITY
  The client’s responsibility involves the following, but is not limited to;
  a.Please ensure that you have put security measures in place, select very strong password and install brute force attack to keep unwanted visitors at bay.
  b. Do NOT use the same password for Email accounts, panel and WordPress logins.
  c. Kindly check to see that your site files are uploaded in the correct folder, i.e. “public_html”
  d. Also ensure your account is up to date to avoid any suspension of services.

Emails

• OUR RESPONSIBILITY
  The responsibility of Serious.host is to ensure that the mail servers are functioning as expected. This means that should you be able to send and receive using the webmail (Roundcube) interface, our services are active.
• YOUR RESPONSIBILITY
  The client’s responsibility involves the following, but is not limited to;
  a.  Kindly make use of a strong password of at least 8 characters, including a special character, numeric and alpha-numeric as well as capital and lower case.
  b. Stay within the daily limits of 200 mails on the standard mail server
  c. Do not send out unsolicited mails and run the risk of being blocked
  d. Kindly check our website tutorials should your Email client (Outlook/Thunderbird/Mac Mail) not be able to send and receive and you are receiving error messages.

Serious.host provides online support on our site through the Knowledge Base as well as the following channels, should you require additional assistance:

–       Support Email from your primary account
This is the preferred method of communication, to ensure that all conversations are recorded.

–    Support ticket via website form
     This usually serves as a channel, should your primary e-Mail account not function in order to send a support request.  We suggest making use of a non-domain Email account, e.g @gmail or @icloud.

–    Third party support

Third Party Support comprises of Email setup, Email troubleshooting, WordPress troubleshooting and Hosting support.
Remote Desktop Support via ANYDESK is required for Email setup and troubleshooting, while not necessarily required for WordPress troubleshooting and Hosting support.  Please view our SLA for costing related to third party support.

Remote Desktop Support Conditions
Kindly familiarize yourself with the below:

1. Our remote desktop support allows the technical support consultant to access your local machine remotely, either to setup a new mail account, troubleshoot an existing mail account or WordPress install as well as offer hosting related support, e.g. basic database or panel query.
   Some of the issues might include, but not limited to;
   ►The error code 0x80070002 may appear when you try to add or set up a new Outlook e-Mail account
   ►The error code 0x800CCC0F usually appears when an antivirus program is enabled in MS Outlook, or when its settings cause conflict or other issues
   ►e-Mail Client is attempting to sync (IMAP) continuously and sending and receiving fails for no apparent reason
   
2. The technical support consultant may in no way change any settings related to the Operating System and associated services, including but not limited to any 3rd party software and will provide feedback should the issue seem to be related to the these aforementioned services.
3. Once the relevant feedback has been provided and the issue points to the above services, the client is required to contact an IT support technician in order to have the issue resolved.  Some of these issues, may include the following:
   ►Your computer’s response time is very slow. This could be due to a virus or malware being present, corrupted updates, hardware failure, etc.
4. Kindly ensure that you have the latest backup(s) of your content available should an e-Mail account restore have to be done on your computer. Also,
   ►Provide the .pst back-up files if your e-Mail has been set-up as a POP account, if you didn’t save a copy of your received messages on the server. An IMAP account will ensure that your received and sent messages reflect on all of your devices as your devices are synced with the server.
5. The following time limits apply to these departments where applicable:
   Email setup – no limit
   Email troubleshooting – 15 minutes
   
6. Serious.host and its personnel will not be held liable for the loss of any messages and/or data that might occur as a result of accessing your e-Mail client for the purpose of confirming and/or updating the mail settings. The same applies to the WordPress install or any other functionality of installed applications on your local computer.

The Online Chat is only for pre-sales questions and requests, such as:

• Do you host WordPress sites?
• Can you host PHP and (ASP).NET?
• Where are your servers located?
• How many user accounts do you allow?
• Any technical questions (not support related).

Although Serious.host displays statistics of site visits using 3rd party tools we do not keep any statistics data for backup. As user you are responsible to manage the stats on your site. We give all web administrators access to the raw log files and encourage backup of these.

The hosting industry in South Africa is driven by bandwidth. All our packages get calculated primarily based on bandwidth. Other factors such as disk space and email usage etc. also play a smaller role. Your panel will at any time show you your totals regarding space and bandwidth.  Bandwidth on shared hosting is unmetered* while VPS bandwidth is limited to the traffic allowed on each package.

* Unmetered – bandwidth is not monitored on a day to day basis, although linked to our FUP.

Serious.host makes use of commercially licensed email software. We maintain backups of all data for 48 hours for the purpose of Disaster Recovery only. The client is responsible for their own mail. We have no control over whether you delete mails or not. If mails are removed from the mail server it is no longer available for us to recover after 48 hours.

IMAP protocol synchronizes server mail with client devices and vice versa. When using this protocol the Emails will be available if your client device is “lost”. Replacing the client device and reconfiguring the software will resynchronize your mails again.

Serious.host agrees that the all the information disclosed by the client (you) including such information disclosed in writing, orally or by inspection of client’s (your) property, relating to (without limitation) the company’s prototypes, samples, technical data, trade secrets, know-how, actual and anticipated research, developments or products, product plans, services, software, inventions, processes, discoveries, formulas, architectures, concepts, ideas, designs, drawings, personnel, customers, markets, marketing plans, distribution methods, financial information, sales or programming matter, compositions, drawings, diagrams, computer programs, studies, work in process, visual demonstrations, manufacturing plans, confidential information disclosed to the company by third parties and other data, whether oral, written, evidence is now of subsequently becomes generally known or available by publication, commercial use or otherwise, through no fault of Serious.host

Serious.host agrees to use the confidential information solely for the purpose to use all possible means to maintain the confidential information in strict confidence and at least those measures that it employs for the protection of its own confidential information, but in any event not less than a reasonable degree of care to disclose confidential information only to Serious.host employees who are required to have the information to perform their duties on behalf of the client (you)

We pride ourselves on customer service, so we would be grateful to know how we can better help our clients in future, so we would really love to know the reason(s) for you want to cancel your services…

If you prefer not to disclose your reasons(s), we understand and wish you the best in your journey forward.

The procedures to transfer away from us can be found below. Please follow these steps and you will be with your new provider before you know it!

PLEASE NOTE: Should you wish to simply transfer your domain without requiring a backup of your hosting services, such as website files, databases and Emails, you may jump to point 7 & 8.

1. NO CONTRACTS
   We have no contracts; therefore, notice is not required, however, you are required to remove your services from your Serious.host billing profile once you have migrated away. See the last point about removing your services. If you do not do this, you will keep on receiving monthly invoices, as our automated admin system will not know that your services have ended.
2. MAKE YOUR BACKUPS
   Back up all your files and databases. NB: You need to back up your website files, export any databases from your hosting panel and migrate your mail accounts across prior to initiating the domain transfer. The hosting panel details would have been sent to your primary technical Email. If you do not have these, log a request to support@netmask.host requesting this. Take note that this is not a function performed by us, it is your responsibility.
3. MIGRATE YOUR CONTENT
   Now that you have the backups, remove them from the servers and hand them to the new guys to load on your new home. The responsibility to transfer your content before terminating your services with us remains yours.
4. SET UP YOUR SITE AND MAIL ETC WITH THE NEW PROVIDER
   Your new Hosting provider needs to set up the website and database on their server along with the e-Mail accounts that you might have. e-Mails are always on the client PC or mac, even if you used IMAP, the synchronized copy is on your machine, just make sure you copy these mails to a separate file. For instance, on Microsoft Outlook, create a new datastore and just copy the mails you want to keep. It is best to get the new provider to assist you since you are migrating to a new environment that we do not manage or control. (Are you the Web Master? See below)
5. REQUEST THE DOMAIN TRANSFER
   Now that you have backups and your services are correctly set up with the new service provider, you should request them to transfer the domain.
6. ACCEPT THE DOMAIN TRANSFER TICKET
   Please note: We cannot transfer your domain away from us!
   The transfer steps are as follows:
   a. The new provider requests a transfer.
   b. The primary owner of the domain (YOU) will then receive a mail from the domain registrar requesting you to accept or decline the transfer.
   c. Accept the ticket if you want to continue to transfer away.
7. Once the domain is transferred away, all services are the responsibility of the new service provider, and they will assist you on your carefree journey forward.
8. NB: REMOVE YOUR SERVICES FROM Serious.host
   You should now remove all your services, such as hosting from our admin system as tested previously or submit a cancellation request from within the billing area at https://billing.serious.host
   Please remember: If you do not remove this, you will still be invoiced by Serious.host
9. ALL YOUR SERVICES AND DATA IS AUTOMATICALLY REMOVED FROM OUR SERVERS
   All services and databases etc. are now removed from our servers. This is automated. It is not that we are angry with you for leaving, it is that these services take up resources like disk space, bandwidth, CPU, etc.

1. As a professional Service Provider, we try our absolute best to ensure our clients’ services are always functional.
2. Please note that it is not the responsibility of Serious.host to move your “new” customer’s data or assisting in the transfer process.
3. If you do not understand how to migrate WordPress websites, Email data, SQL files etc, it is your responsibility to educate yourself.
4. Please understand it is not that we do not want to support you as Web Master / Small Business, it is just that we are focused on our current clients.
5. As a last thought, you have just gained a new client, congratulations! From this point, you carry the responsibility of all hosting-related issues.