Pricing and Terms of Service – June 2018

Dear clients, until now my services were offered on an informal basis, for various reasons, I am forced to establish some structure around the services I offer.

Please take a moment to read through the content of this document to familiarise yourself with the pricing and terms of service effective on all services rendered from June 2018.

Website hosting and domain renewal:

With regards to web hosting, I use (Xneelo) Hetzner PTY limited for all my clients.

All domains are allocated the same resources as stipulated under the basic hosting package, unless agreed to otherwise.

The main differences with using Xneelo directly (or any other data centre) and going through me are:

  1. The cost, where Hetzner charges R99.00pm for the basic package, I charge R54.16pm charged at R650.00 upfront for the year.
  2. I monitor the amount of data and traffic used to prevent any surcharges, my clients are rarely billed for additional storage or data transfer unless the usage is well over the limits on crucial files and folders or the service is being abused.
  3. With lots of restrictions, Xneelo allows clients to share hosting packages with more than one domain. If you host through me, unless the content is static, each domain must have its own hosting package and allocated resources.

Email accounts: (The following is only applicable to commercial email accounts)
I will be configuring the service to delete all mail content on the server older than 2 months. This means, you have 2 months to fetch new/unread email from the server.

If you rely on the interface located at mail.yourdomain.co.za and you do not check your email within 60 day intervals, then I encourage you to start using a program like Outlook or similar, this way your email content will be archived and available to you offline.

If you are already using an email program like Outlook, Office365, G-suite or even the native email app on your smart phone (configured as POP), this won’t affect you because your mail is automatically downloaded to your device.

If you’d like to archive received email indefinitely or if your email is currently set as IMAP, I suggest you allocate a single device configured as a POP account for that purpose.

Alternatively, you can make use of services like office365 or googles G-Suite to send, receive and store your mail, this enables you to manage the disk usage on your own.

Hosting and domain name renewal fees:

As you know, all websites incur 2 basic fees to keep them running:

  1. Website hosting, so files can be served via the internet.
  2. Domain name registration, to keep the domain name active and pointed to the hosting account.

For the past few years I’ve been paying Xneelo (the data centre) and the registrar upfront before I invoice my clients. Unfortunately, I am unable to continue with this practice as Its becoming increasingly difficult to keep tab and a number of clients default their accounts because I make payment upfront, as such, their services remain active.

From now on forth I will be billing each item separately,

  • Website hosting at the end of June which is an annual fee of R650.00 (increased by R50.00)
  • Domain name renewals will be invoiced +/- 30 days before the renewal due date or within the same week that the registrar sends me a notice for the upcoming renewal.

The cost of each domain:

  • .co.za @ R100.00 per year (Increased by R21.00)
  • .com @ R200.00 per year (Increased by R31.00)

Domain name renewals are due during the same month it was originally created.

Services and fees:

  • Web development will be charged at R200 per hour or a maximum of R850.00 per day unless a formal quote has been agreed upon.
  • Re-configuring of FTP accounts and emails will be charged at R100.00 per account, this includes lost credentials or passwords. Additional charges will apply if a call out is required.
  • Manual backup of content will be charged at R200.00 plus R150.00 per GB. This content will only be stored offline for 30 days.
  • By default, all domains are allocated 5GB of disk storage, this includes web files, email accounts, attachments, web logs, databases and backups. Although I manage disk usage, certain crucial files and folders cannot be deleted, these include recent weblogs, email accounts, databases and website content. Over usage of disk space will be charged for at R5.00 per 10mb block in the event that I am not able to shuffle space around.
  • I will not be able to start on any new work until all previous invoices are settled.
  • All work quoted for that is not hosted through me must be paid in full before I commence on the project.
  • As technology progresses or your needs increase, certain aspects of a project may require maintenance, re-development or updates. In some cases, updates or upgrades require me to back up an entire website (offline) with all the files and databases so I can work locally, do the upgrades, test and redeploy, this will be charged for at web development rates or as quoted for.

Late payments:

  • Failure to settle invoices by its due date will result in the termination of hosting services and domain names, placing valuable data at risk.
  • Suspended accounts will attract an additional re-activation fee of R300.00 per domain and R100.00 per email account.
  • With the suspension, FTP and email passwords will change, email accounts and linked programs will no longer work on any of the configured devices.
  • Once an account is settled and the reactivation fee paid, the client will have to reconfigure the passwords for all the suspended email accounts. The website will be reactivated with the last available backup (if available) within 48hours of the account being settled.
  • Backups of services, web content and emails are not guaranteed on suspended accounts.

Transfers:

  • As usual, you are in control of your website, application and email accounts. You are welcome to transfer your website content and mailing server to any data center or service provider of your choosing. Transferring to a different service provider is usually free and something each client must initiate on their own. The procedure is more or less as follows:
    • You apply/purchase hosting or a service package elsewhere.
    • You download all the website content on your own using the FTP credentials of your account.
    • Your service provider sends me a transfer ticket.
    • I accept the ticket which approves the transfer.
    • You upload the files that you downloaded to the new service provider and configure the files.
  • If you want me to transfer your content to a different data centre on your behalf, the following fees may apply:
    • Backup fees at R150.00 per GB
    • Upload fees at R150.00 per GB
    • Re-configuring email accounts at R50.00 per account
    • Backup databases from R200.00
    • Re-configuring databases and website (to be agreed upon)
  • When transferring services away from me, please ensure that your new data center offers the same libraries and dependencies otherwise your content might not work after the transfer has gone through.

I understand that the above changes may cause some inconvenience for which I apologise.

If you have any questions or suggestions for me, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Need a website, consultation or customisation? Let’s speak