Legal
Terms and Conditions of Service
Comprehensive service agreement governing Australian cloud web hosting, domain name registrations, managed care plans, emergency repair services, and Australian Consumer Law guarantees.
Contents
- 1. Definitions & Master Service Agreement
- 2. Service Level Agreement (SLA) & 99.9% Uptime Commitment
- 3. Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) & Security Mandates
- 4. Australian Consumer Law (ACL) Guarantees & Statutory Rights
- 5. Domain Name Registrations & auDA Regulatory Mandates
- 6. WordPress Care Plans & Scope of Maintenance
- 7. Billing, Stripe Payments, Invoicing & Australian GST
- 8. Limitation of Liability & Indemnification
- 9. Termination, Suspension & Governing Law
- Have questions regarding our terms or corporate agreements?
1. Definitions & Master Service Agreement
This Master Service Agreement (“Agreement”) is entered into by and between Website Management Services (“WMS”, “we”, “our”, or “us”), a trading division of Next Level Creative (ABN registered in Queensland, Australia), and the entity or individual subscribing to our services (“Client”, “you”, or “your”).
By purchasing, provisioning, or utilising any web hosting services, domain name registrations, managed care plans, SSL certificates, website development, or emergency repair solutions, you agree to be legally bound by all terms set out herein.
- “Services” means all digital services delivered by WMS including high-performance cloud hosting, automated backups, proactive security patching, staging deployment environments, and custom engineering.
- “Infrastructure” means physical and virtual hardware, network transit routers, switches, enterprise NVMe storage arrays, and software located in NextDC Australian data facilities.
- “Effective Date” means the date upon which you submit an order, execute payment, or access our WHMCS client portal.
2. Service Level Agreement (SLA) & 99.9% Uptime Commitment
We commit to maintaining a 99.9% Network and Infrastructure Availability standard in every calendar month, excluding scheduled maintenance windows announced with at least 48 hours prior notice.
Service Credit Entitlement Schedule:
| Monthly Availability Percentage | Service Credit Calculation (% of Monthly Fee) |
|---|---|
| 99.0% to 99.89% | 10% service credit applied to your next billing cycle |
| 98.0% to 98.99% | 25% service credit applied to your next billing cycle |
| Less than 98.0% | 50% service credit applied to your next billing cycle |
*SLA credits are capped at 50% of the relevant month’s base hosting subscription fee and exclude downstream transit carrier fibre cuts or distributed denial-of-service events exceeding 2.5 Tbps mitigation capacity.
3. Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) & Security Mandates
Our hosting environment is engineered for legitimate commercial business use. To protect all clients sharing high-density enterprise nodes, the following activities are strictly prohibited:
- Spam & Unsolicited Bulk Email: Sending unsolicited commercial email (SPAM) via our mail transfer agents (MTA) or operating unconfirmed mailing lists violates the Australian Spam Act 2003. Accounts found sending spam will be suspended immediately without refund.
- Malicious Code & Exploits: Storing, transmitting, or executing malware, trojans, cryptominers, IRC bots, or brute-force scanning scripts.
- Phishing & Defamation: Hosting fraudulent landing pages, impersonating financial institutions, or hosting defamatory, unlawful, or infringing copyright material.
- Excessive Resource Consumption: While accounts feature generous burstable resources, persistent consumption of more than 100% of allocated vCPU or RAM limits for sustained periods exceeding 15 minutes may result in automated CloudLinux throttling to protect node stability.
4. Australian Consumer Law (ACL) Guarantees & Statutory Rights
Our goods and services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law (Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth)).
For major failures with the service, you are entitled to:
- Cancel your service contract with us; and
- A refund for the unused portion, or compensation for its reduced value.
You are also entitled to choose a refund or replacement for major failures with goods. If a failure with the goods or service does not amount to a major failure, you are entitled to have the failure rectified in a reasonable time. If this is not done, you are entitled to a refund for the goods and to cancel the contract for the service and obtain a refund of any unused portion.
Nothing in this Agreement operates to exclude, restrict, or modify the application of any implied condition or warranty, the exercise of any right or remedy, or the imposition of any liability under the Australian Consumer Law or any other applicable statutory provision that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.
5. Domain Name Registrations & auDA Regulatory Mandates
When you register or renew a .com.au, .net.au, .org.au, or direct .au domain through WMS, you explicitly agree to be bound by the published policies of the .au Domain Administration Limited (auDA), accessible at auda.org.au.
- Registrant Warranties: You warrant that all registrant details, including Australian Business Number (ABN) or Australian Company Number (ACN), are accurate, valid, and maintained throughout the registration period.
- Loss of Eligibility: If auDA or an authorized registrar determines that your entity fails the commercial connection test or that your ABN has been cancelled by the Australian Business Register, auDA reserves the right to suspend or cancel the domain licence.
- Registrar Transfers: You maintain full ownership of your domain name licence. We will never withhold domain EPP authorization codes or impede domain transfers provided all outstanding invoices for registry fees are settled in full.
6. WordPress Care Plans & Scope of Maintenance
Our WordPress Care Plans provide scheduled, preventative maintenance and proactive security management:
- Staging Regression Testing: Updates to WordPress core, active themes, and plugins are executed against staging sandboxes prior to live deployment to prevent production downtime.
- Engineering Allocation Hours: Included monthly engineering time (e.g., 30 mins, 1 hr, or 2 hrs depending on tier) applies to non-cumulative small tasks (text edits, product updates, CSS styling). Unused hours expire at the end of each monthly billing cycle and do not roll over.
- Out of Scope Work: Major custom theme development, database refactoring, custom PHP plugin programming, or third-party CRM integrations are quoted separately at our standard engineering hourly rates.
7. Billing, Stripe Payments, Invoicing & Australian GST
All fees are denominated in Australian Dollars (AUD). As an Australian entity, 10% Goods and Services Tax (GST) is calculated and explicitly detailed on all official Tax Invoices.
- Automated Recurring Charges: Recurring subscriptions are processed via Stripe using encrypted tokenized credentials on the due date of your invoice.
- Failed Payments: In the event of a failed recurring transaction, our billing engine attempts re-billing over a 7-day grace window. If payment remains outstanding after 14 days, services may be temporarily suspended.
- Reactivation Fee: Suspended accounts may be subject to a standard $35 AUD administrative restoration fee to cover provisioning overhead.
8. Limitation of Liability & Indemnification
To the maximum extent permitted by Australian law, WMS and its directors, officers, employees, and contractors shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or business opportunity arising from server downtime, third-party plugin vulnerabilities, or DNS propagation delays.
In no event shall our total aggregate liability arising under or relating to this Agreement exceed the total subscription fees paid by you to WMS in the three (3) calendar months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim.
9. Termination, Suspension & Governing Law
Either party may terminate a hosting or maintenance subscription by providing written notice via the client portal at least seven (7) days prior to the start of the next billing cycle. Upon account termination, your data will remain available for extraction for fourteen (14) days, following which container volumes will be permanently purged in accordance with our data retention schedule.
This Agreement is governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Queensland, Australia. The parties submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Queensland and the Commonwealth of Australia.
Have questions regarding our terms or corporate agreements?
Our compliance team is happy to review enterprise service agreements or custom Master Service Agreements for your organisation.
Questions about our terms and conditions?
Call us on 1300 662 492 or send us a message and we’ll help.