Hosting Terms and Acceptable Use Policy

Last updated: 2 October 2026

These terms apply to web hosting, managed VPS hosting, domain names, email and related services ("Hosting Services") provided by Blink Web Ltd ("we", "us" or "our"). They apply in addition to our Services Terms and Conditions. Our Privacy Policy explains how we use your personal data.

By ordering or using a Hosting Service, you agree to these terms. If you resell or provide hosting to your own clients, you must make sure they follow the Acceptable Use Policy too, and you are responsible for their use of the service.

Part A: Hosting terms

1. Ordering and your account

1.1 You must give accurate and up-to-date contact and billing details and keep them current in our client area at clients.blinkweb.co.uk. We will use these details for important service and renewal notices.

1.2 You are responsible for keeping your client area, control panel, FTP, SSH, database and email passwords secure, and for all activity under your account. We strongly recommend using strong, unique passwords and turning on two-factor authentication where it is available.

1.3 We may ask for proof of identity or payment before activating a service, and may refuse an order at our discretion.

2. Billing, renewal and cancellation

2.1 Hosting Services are billed in advance for the billing period you choose (for example monthly or yearly) and renew automatically at the end of each period at our current price, unless you cancel.

2.2 We will send an invoice before each renewal. If it is not paid by the due date, we may suspend the service after giving you notice, and terminate it if the invoice remains unpaid 14 days after suspension.

2.3 You can cancel at any time by submitting a cancellation request in the client area. You can choose for the service to end immediately or at the end of the current billing period. Fees already paid are not refunded for unused parts of a billing period, except where required by law (see clause 11.4 of our Services Terms and Conditions for consumer cancellation rights) or where we are at fault.

2.4 When a hosting service ends, all files, databases and email in that account are deleted. We may keep data for up to 14 days in case you change your mind, after which it is permanently removed. Please take your own copy before cancelling.

2.5 We will give you at least 30 days' notice of any price increase to your plan, and you may cancel before it takes effect.

3. Domain names

3.1 We register domain names on your behalf as a reseller of registrars and registries such as Nominet (for .uk domains). Your registration is also subject to the rules of the relevant registry, which we will provide on request, and you must give accurate registrant details as they require.

3.2 Domain names are registered in your name (or the name you give us). You are the registrant and owner, subject to the registry's rules.

3.3 Domains renew automatically where you have auto-renew turned on and the invoice is paid. It is your responsibility to make sure renewals are paid on time. We are not liable for the loss of a domain name that expires because a renewal was not paid. Expired domains may only be restorable for a short time and the registry may charge a restoration fee.

3.4 You may transfer a domain away from us at any time, provided any amounts owed for that domain are paid. We will provide the authorisation code or change the IPS tag on request.

3.5 Domain registration fees are not refundable once the registration has been submitted.

4. Backups

4.1 We take regular automated backups of our shared hosting servers as part of the service. These are provided as a courtesy to help with disaster recovery and are not a replacement for your own backups.

4.2 You are responsible for keeping your own up-to-date copies of your website, databases and email. Except where backups form part of a managed service we have agreed to provide, we cannot guarantee that a backup will be available or complete, and we are not liable for any data loss.

5. Service availability

5.1 We aim to keep all Hosting Services available 24 hours a day, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted service unless a service level agreement is set out in your quotation.

5.2 We may need to carry out planned maintenance. Where this is likely to cause noticeable disruption, we will try to give advance notice and carry it out outside UK business hours. Urgent security work may need to happen without notice.

6. Resources and fair use

6.1 Each plan includes the resources described when you ordered it, such as disk space, bandwidth, CPU, memory, processes and inodes (files). Where a plan is described as "unlimited" or "unmetered", this is subject to fair use, meaning normal use for a typical business website on a shared server.

6.2 If your account uses more than its share of server resources, or affects the performance or security of the server or other customers, we may limit, restrict or suspend it. Where we can, we will contact you first and may recommend an upgrade.

7. Managed VPS

7.1 On a managed VPS, we look after the operating system, security updates and server software we have installed. You are responsible for your applications, websites and anything you install or configure yourself.

7.2 Root or administrator access is only provided by agreement. If you change the server configuration, we may not be able to support those changes and may charge for any work needed to put things right.

8. Migrations

Where we offer a free migration, we will make reasonable efforts to move your website, databases and email from your previous provider. You must give us working access to your existing account. We are not responsible for content that cannot be moved because of incompatible software or limits at your previous provider, and you should keep your old account active until you have checked the move.

9. Security and compromised accounts

9.1 You are responsible for keeping the software on your account up to date, including WordPress or other content management systems, themes and plugins, unless we manage them for you under a maintenance plan.

9.2 If your account is compromised, for example by malware or a hacked password, we may suspend it or affected parts of it immediately to protect our servers and other customers. We will tell you as soon as possible and can help clean up the account. Clean-up work is chargeable unless it is covered by your plan.

Part B: Acceptable Use Policy

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") applies to everyone who uses our Hosting Services, including your staff, clients and website visitors who upload content. It is designed to protect our customers, our network and the wider internet.

10. Prohibited uses

You must not use the Hosting Services, or allow anyone else to use them:

for any purpose that is unlawful, or to plan, promote or assist anything unlawful;
to commit fraud, or to host phishing pages, scams, fake shops or pages that imitate another organisation;
to harm, exploit or attempt to harm or exploit children in any way, including hosting or linking to child sexual abuse material, which we will report to the police and the Internet Watch Foundation;
to send unsolicited bulk email (spam), or to host websites advertised through spam;
to store, distribute or link to viruses, malware, ransomware, botnet controllers or other harmful code;
to gain, or attempt to gain, unauthorised access to any system, network or account, including by port scanning, password guessing or vulnerability scanning, unless you have written permission from the owner;
to launch or take part in denial of service attacks, or to interfere with the service of any user, host or network;
to run cryptocurrency mining, proxies, VPNs, Tor nodes, IRC servers or game servers on shared hosting;
to host or distribute content that infringes copyright, trade marks or other intellectual property rights, including pirated software, films, music or books;
to collect or process personal data in breach of the Data Protection Laws; or
in any way that breaks the terms of any software licence or third party service used with our services.

11. Shared hosting restrictions

Shared hosting is designed for websites and email. Unless your plan says otherwise, you must not:

resell or sublet shared hosting to third parties, except on a reseller plan;
use it mainly for file storage, file sharing or as a backup destination for other systems;
stream or serve large media files, downloads or archives in bulk;
run personal cloud storage applications such as Nextcloud or ownCloud; or
run long-running background processes or scripts that use excessive server resources.

We may remove backup and archive files (such as .zip, .tar.gz or .wpress files) stored in your hosting account that are more than 7 days old, as these use disk space and can be a security risk if downloaded by others.

12. Content standards

All content you host or send using our services must be lawful and must not be:

defamatory, obscene, indecent or sexually explicit;
threatening, abusive, harassing or intended to cause distress;
discriminatory or likely to stir up hatred on grounds of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability or any other protected characteristic;
misleading, or likely to deceive any person; or
promoting violence, terrorism or self-harm.

13. Email

13.1 Marketing email sent through our services must comply with the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations and the Data Protection Laws. In particular, you must have consent or another lawful basis to contact recipients, identify yourself clearly and include a working unsubscribe link.

13.2 You must not use purchased, rented or harvested email lists.

13.3 To protect our server reputation, we set hourly sending limits on shared hosting accounts. Bulk or newsletter email should be sent through a dedicated email marketing service rather than our shared mail servers.

13.4 Email accounts are subject to the storage limits of your plan. We may limit or suspend an account that is sending spam, has been compromised or is on a blocklist because of its sending.

14. Breaches of this policy

14.1 Some issues trigger automatic action to protect the platform. For example, we may automatically restrict an account whose disk usage grows abnormally fast, and suspend an account that has overdue invoices, contains malware or is sending spam or phishing email.

14.2 If we believe this AUP has been breached, we may, at our discretion and without liability to you:

give you a warning and ask you to fix the problem;
remove or disable access to the content concerned;
limit, suspend or terminate your Hosting Services, with or without notice depending on how serious the breach is;
charge you for reasonable costs we incur in dealing with the breach, including blocklist removal and clean-up;
take legal action to recover our costs; and
report the matter to the police or other authorities and share information with them where the law allows.

14.3 Where we can, we will contact you before acting, but we may act immediately where there is a risk to our systems, other customers, third parties or the law. No refund is given for services suspended or terminated because of a breach of this AUP.

15. Reporting abuse

If you believe a website or email hosted by us breaks this policy, please email hello@blinkweb.co.uk with "Abuse report" in the subject. Include the website address or email headers, and a description of the problem. We review every report and will act where appropriate. For intellectual property complaints, please include details of the work concerned and your right to it.

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these Hosting Terms and this Acceptable Use Policy from time to time, for example to deal with new threats or changes in the law. The latest version will always be on this page with the date at the top. Where changes materially affect your service, we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email, except where the change is needed urgently for security or legal reasons.