Terms of service, Rogue Wave Hosting

1. The agreement

These terms govern your use of the virtual private servers and related services provided by Rogue Wave Hosting, together with this website and the client portal. By creating an account or placing an order you agree to them.

Three other documents form part of the same agreement and are referenced here rather than repeated: the acceptable use policy, the service level page, and the privacy policy. Your order is also part of the agreement: it records the plan, region, term and price you actually bought, and where it addresses something these terms leave to the order, the order governs.

If any part of this agreement conflicts with another part, the order takes precedence over these terms, and these terms take precedence over the acceptable use and service level pages, except that nothing overrides the acceptable use policy where it prohibits illegal activity.

2. Accounts and eligibility

You must be able to enter a binding contract to hold an account. If you are ordering for an organisation, you confirm you are authorised to commit it.
Registration details must be accurate and current. That means a real name, a real email address you monitor, and correct billing details including the country needed to apply tax. We may suspend an account whose details are materially false, because an unreachable account holder is an operational problem the moment something goes wrong with their server.
Keep your email address up to date. Maintenance notices, security advisories and billing reminders go there, and a notice sent to the address on the account counts as given.
You are responsible for everything done through your account and for the security of your portal credentials. Tell us at support@roguewavehosting.com as soon as you suspect unauthorised access.
One person or organisation per account. Do not create additional accounts to evade a suspension or termination.

3. What the service is

A Rogue Wave Hosting instance is a virtual private server on hardware we own, in the region you select at checkout. Each instance includes:

Dedicated vCPU that is never oversubscribed
NVMe M.2 SSD storage
A dedicated IPv4 address
DDoS protection at no extra cost
Full root or administrator access
Your choice of operating system from Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Desktop, CentOS, Debian, and Windows Server 2016, 2019 or 2022

Setup is automated. Your server is ready within seconds of checkout rather than waiting in a provisioning queue.

The service is unmanaged. We run the hardware, the network, the virtualisation layer and the provisioning system. Inside the instance, you are the administrator. We do not administer your operating system, your applications or your firewall rules, and we do not need your server credentials in order to provide the service.

4. Pricing

Pricing is flat and calculated from one number: $3.00 per GB of memory per month, in US dollars. The entry plan is $6.00 per month. There is no separate charge for the dedicated vCPU, the dedicated IPv4 address or DDoS protection, and there is no setup fee.

Because the rate is per GB of memory, the price of any configuration is predictable before you build it, and it is the same whichever region you choose. Additional disk is priced at the rate shown on the configurator at the time you order.

Prices are exclusive of any tax we are required to collect, which is added at checkout based on your billing country. We may change list prices for new orders and for renewals; we will not change the price of a prepaid term you have already paid for part way through that term.

5. Billing and payment

The default billing cycle is monthly, charged in advance. Prepaid terms are charged in advance for the whole term.
Charges are taken automatically from the payment method on your account on the renewal date, and the service continues until you cancel it.
Invoices are issued to the client portal and to the email address on the account.
If a payment fails we will retry it and notify you. An account that remains unpaid is subject to suspension under section 11, and an instance suspended for non-payment may eventually be terminated along with the data on it.
You are responsible for any tax that applies to your purchase other than tax we are required to collect and remit ourselves, and for supplying a valid tax identifier where you are claiming a business exemption.
Any dispute about an invoice should be raised at support@roguewavehosting.com with the invoice reference. Raise it before initiating a chargeback: a chargeback filed without contacting us first will be treated as non-payment.

6. Prepaid terms and discounts

You can prepay for a longer term at checkout and the discount applies to the whole term, not to the first month of it:

Quarterly: 5% off
Semi-annually: 10% off
Annually: 15% off

The discount is applied to the recurring price of the configuration you ordered and is reflected in the total shown before you pay. A prepaid term renews at the same term length unless you change it in the client portal before the renewal date, at the list price and discount in effect at renewal.

If you upgrade during a prepaid term, section 7 applies and the term discount continues to apply to the upgraded configuration for the remainder of the term.

7. Upgrades and plan changes

Memory and disk are expandable after purchase. Upgrades are prorated for the remainder of the current billing period, so you pay the difference rather than a fresh full period, and no rebuild is required: your operating system, configuration and data stay where they are.

A change of region or of operating system is not an upgrade in this sense. Either one means a new instance or a reinstall, which replaces the contents of the disk. Move anything you want to keep before you ask for it.

Downgrades are not guaranteed to be possible. Shrinking a disk that already holds data is not a safe operation, and where a downgrade can be done at all it takes effect at the start of the next billing period.

8. Your responsibilities

Root access is the point of a VPS, and it comes with the obligations that go with administering a machine on a public network. You are responsible for:

Your operating system. Installing updates and security patches, and replacing an operating system release that has reached the end of its support life. We supply the image; keeping it current is yours.
Your firewall and your open ports. You open your own ports through the firewall on your VPS. Every port you open is a decision you have made, and leaving an administrative service exposed to the internet is your risk, not ours.
Your credentials. Changing the initial credentials issued at setup, choosing strong authentication, and preferring keys to passwords for remote access.
Your software and content. The applications you install, the code you run, the content you publish, and the licences for any of it. If you resell or share the instance with your own users, their conduct is your responsibility to us.
Your own DNS and email reputation. Including the records needed for mail you choose to send from the instance.
Legal compliance. Operating within the law that applies to you and to the people you serve, including data protection law where you process other people's personal data. Section 6 of the privacy policy explains that split.

A compromised instance is a problem for the whole network, so where your server is taken over and used to attack others we will act under section 11 even though you did not intend the attack.

9. Acceptable use

The acceptable use policy sets out what you must not do with an instance, in concrete terms. It is binding on you and on anyone you allow to use your instance, and breaching it is a breach of this agreement.

Report abuse originating from our network to abuse@roguewavehosting.com.

10. Backups and your data

Rogue Wave Hosting does not provide a backup or snapshot service. No copy of your instance is kept by us on your behalf. This is stated as plainly as we can state it because it is the single assumption that most often costs people their data.

Taking backups is your responsibility, and a backup that lives only on the instance it protects is not a backup. Your data can be lost through your own action, through software failure inside your instance, through hardware failure, or through termination of the service under section 11, and in none of those cases can we restore it for you.

When an instance is cancelled or terminated, its storage is released back to the platform and its contents cannot be recovered.

11. Suspension and termination

We may suspend an instance or an account, in whole or in part, where:

an invoice remains unpaid after we have notified you;
the acceptable use policy has been breached, or activity from your instance is actively harming the network or a third party;
your instance appears to be compromised and is generating attack, spam or scanning traffic;
registration details are materially false, or the account is being used to evade a previous suspension;
we are required to suspend by law or by a competent authority.

Where the circumstances allow it we give notice first and a chance to fix the problem. Where activity is causing ongoing harm we may suspend immediately and tell you afterwards, because leaving an attack running while we wait for a reply is not a reasonable option. Suspension does not stop charges accruing.

We may terminate the agreement, and the instance with it, where a suspension is not resolved, where a breach is repeated or serious, or where an account remains unpaid. Termination releases the storage and the data on it is not recoverable afterwards.

You can raise a suspension or termination decision by replying to the notice we sent or writing to support@roguewavehosting.com. If the suspension followed an abuse report, explain what has changed on the instance, because the question we have to answer is whether the activity will resume.

12. Cancelling

You can cancel an instance from the client portal. Cancellation stops the next renewal and ends the service at the end of the period you have paid for, unless you ask for it to take effect immediately.

Cancelling destroys the instance and its data at the point it takes effect. Take what you need off the machine first. Where cancellation has any effect on amounts already paid for a prepaid term, that is governed by your order.

13. Changes to the service

The platform will change over time. We may add, alter or withdraw features, change the operating system images offered, update the virtualisation and network layers, and replace or relocate hardware within a region.

We will not make a change that materially reduces the core resources you have bought, meaning your memory, your vCPU, your disk and your dedicated IPv4 address, during a term you have paid for. Where a change requires action from you, or a reboot of your instance, we will give notice to the email address on the account.

Where we discontinue an offering entirely, we will give notice to affected account holders before it takes effect.

14. Announced but unreleased offerings

Managed web hosting and a budget Intel instance tier are described on this site as coming soon. Neither is purchasable, pricing for the Intel tier is to be announced, and nothing said about either one is a commitment as to whether, when or on what terms it will launch. Do not plan a deployment around an offering you cannot currently buy.

15. Availability

The service level page defines what counts as unavailability, what is excluded from it, and how to report an incident. Any numeric availability commitment that applies to you, and any remedy attached to it, is set out in your order rather than on these pages.

16. Warranties

We will provide the service with reasonable skill and care, and we will not knowingly include malicious code in an operating system image we publish.

Beyond that, and to the extent the law permits, the service is provided as it is and we do not give implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement. In particular we do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted or error free, that it will meet a performance requirement you have not agreed with us in your order, or that any hardware benchmark figure published on this site predicts the performance of your own workload.

Nothing in this section limits a warranty or right that the law where you live gives you and does not allow us to exclude.

17. Limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by applicable law:

Neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill, anticipated savings or opportunity, whether or not it was foreseeable.
We are not liable for loss or corruption of data on your instance. Section 10 states that no backup or snapshot service is provided and that keeping your own copies is your responsibility; this exclusion follows directly from that allocation.
We are not liable for loss arising from your own configuration, including software you installed, firewall rules you set, ports you opened, credentials you failed to change, or an operating system you did not patch.
We are not liable for the acts of third parties, including attacks on your instance that are not caused by our failure to provide the service, or for the availability of networks beyond our own.
Our total liability arising out of this agreement is limited to the amount set out in your order for that purpose.
Nothing in this agreement excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence and for fraud.

Where a remedy for unavailability applies to you, it is the remedy described in your order and it is the primary remedy for that unavailability.

18. Indemnity

You will indemnify Rogue Wave Hosting against claims, losses and reasonable costs arising from the content you host, the services you operate, your breach of the acceptable use policy, and any claim brought by a user of your instance in respect of your own service to them. We will tell you promptly about any such claim and will not settle it without consulting you.

19. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top of the page shows when the current version took effect. Where a change materially affects your rights or obligations we will notify account holders by email before it takes effect, and continuing to use the service after that date means you accept the updated terms. If you do not accept them, cancel under section 12.

Changes required by law, or needed to address a security or abuse problem, may take effect immediately.

20. General

Whole agreement. This agreement, together with your order and the policies it references, is the whole agreement between us and replaces any earlier statement or representation about the service.
Severability. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.
No waiver. Not enforcing a provision on one occasion does not waive it.
Assignment. You may not assign the agreement without our consent. We may assign it in connection with a reorganisation or sale of the business.
Notices. Notices to you go to the email address on your account. Notices to us go to support@roguewavehosting.com.
Force majeure. Neither party is in breach because of an event outside its reasonable control, for as long as that event continues.
No partnership. Nothing here creates a partnership, agency or employment relationship.

21. Contact

Accounts, billing, technical support and questions about these terms: support@roguewavehosting.com
Abuse reports: abuse@roguewavehosting.com
Privacy and data protection requests: privacy@roguewavehosting.com

Ready to build one? Configure an instance on the VPS page.