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Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of the SudoHost website at sudohost.co.za, your purchase and use of our hosting services, your hosting client account at client.sudohost.co.za, and any related services we provide.

These Terms combine our website terms of use, hosting service contract, acceptable use policy, refund policy, and service level agreement into a single document so you have everything in one place.

By signing up for a SudoHost service, by placing an order through our website, or by using sudohost.co.za in any way, you accept these Terms in full. Please read them carefully before signing up.

  1. Acceptance of Terms
    • These Terms form a binding agreement between you and Pillinger and Digital (PTY) Ltd, the operator of the SudoHost brand.
    • You accept these Terms by any of the following actions:

      • Placing an order through sudohost.co.za or client.sudohost.co.za;
      • Creating an account at client.sudohost.co.za;
      • Using any SudoHost service.
    • If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use our website or services.
    • You must be at least 18 years old and have legal capacity to enter into binding agreements under South African law.
    • These Terms work alongside our Privacy & Cookie Policy and, if you participate in the affiliate programme, our Affiliate Programme Terms.
  1. Definitions

    • For the purposes of these Terms:

      • “SudoHost”, “we”, “us”, “our” means Pillinger and Digital (PTY) Ltd, trading as SudoHost. “You”, “Client”, “Customer” means the person or legal entity entering into these Terms with us. “Services” means the hosting, domain registration, email, and related services we provide. “Account” means your SudoHost client account at client.sudohost.co.za. “Content” means data, files, websites, applications, databases, emails, and any other material that you upload to, host on, or transmit through our Services. “Hosting Package” means the specific hosting plan you have ordered (such as Standard Basic, Managed Business, WordPress Professional, AI Pro, and so on). “AUP” means the Acceptable Use Policy set out in Section 9. “SLA” means the Service Level Agreement set out in Section 8. “Subscription Period” means the billing cycle of your Services (monthly or annual).
  1. Description of Services

    • SudoHost provides shared web hosting, managed hosting, WordPress hosting, AI website builder services, and related products including domain registration.
    • Specific service features, resource limits, and pricing for each Hosting Package are published on sudohost.co.za. We may amend feature lists and resource limits from time to time, with reasonable notice.
    • SudoHost services are operated on infrastructure provided by Absolute Hosting (Pty) Ltd. We are responsible to you for service delivery regardless of any underlying provider arrangements.
    • Domain registrations are facilitated through Domains.co.za (or other registrars). The registration of a domain creates a separate contractual relationship between you and the relevant registry; we administer the registration on your behalf.
    • We do not guarantee that any specific software, version, control panel, or third-party tool will remain available. We may add, remove, or substitute software and tools to maintain security, performance, or compliance.
  1. Account Registration and Security

    • To purchase Services, you must create an Account and provide accurate, complete, and current information including your full name, email address, phone number, and physical address.
    • You are responsible for keeping your Account credentials confidential. You must not share your password with any third party. Any activity on your Account is your responsibility.
    • You must notify us immediately at support@sudohost.co.za if you suspect that your Account has been compromised or accessed by an unauthorised party.
    • We may require email verification, identity verification, or other reasonable checks before activating your Account or processing an order, in particular where a transaction shows signs of fraud.
    • You may not transfer your Account to a third party without our prior written consent.
    • One person or legal entity may only hold one set of Accounts unless we agree otherwise in writing.
  1. Fees, Payment, and Billing

    • Service fees are published on sudohost.co.za and shown in your Account at the time of ordering. All prices are in South African Rand (ZAR).
    • SudoHost is not currently a registered VAT vendor. Prices shown do not include VAT, and no VAT is charged or recoverable.
    • We accept payment via:

      • PayFast. Card, EFT, and other PayFast-supported methods. Payments are processed in real time and your Service is activated automatically once payment is confirmed.
      • Manual Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). Direct bank transfer to our FNB account (details supplied on the invoice). Proof of payment must be sent to accounts@sudohost.co.za. Manual EFT payments are reconciled by an administrator before Service activation.
      • Invoices are generated automatically 14 days before the due date. Reminders are sent 7 days before, 1 day after, 3 days after, and 7 days after the due date.
      • You are responsible for ensuring that the payment method on your Account remains valid and funded.
      • If payment fails or is not received by the due date, the consequences in Section 6 apply.
      • We may amend our fees from time to time. Changes apply at your next renewal and will be communicated at least 30 days in advance.
  1. Auto-Renewal, Cancellation, and Non-Payment

    • Auto-renewal. Hosting Packages renew automatically at the end of each Subscription Period unless cancelled. By signing up, you authorise automatic renewal billing.
    • Cancellation. You may cancel a Service at any time via your client area at client.sudohost.co.za. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current Subscription Period unless you choose immediate cancellation.
    • Domain registrations are subject to registrar policies and may not be cancellable mid-term.
    • Auto-suspension. If an invoice remains unpaid 30 days after the due date, your Service is automatically suspended. While suspended, your website and email will not function, but your data remains intact.
    • Auto-termination. If an invoice remains unpaid 60 days after the due date, your Service is automatically terminated and your data is permanently deleted from our servers. We are not obliged to retain or recover terminated data.
    • You remain liable for fees accrued before cancellation or termination.
  1. Refunds and Money-Back Guarantee

    • 14-day money-back guarantee on new hosting. New hosting customers may request a full refund of their first invoice within 14 calendar days of activation, for any reason. The refund covers the hosting plan fee only.
    • Refunds do NOT apply to:

      • Domain registrations (registrar fees are non-refundable to SudoHost);
      • SSL certificates beyond the free included certificate;
      • Add-on services, setup fees, or one-off purchases;
      • Renewal invoices after the first 14 days;
      • Services terminated under Section 10 (suspension or termination for breach);
      • Services for which you have requested an upgrade and used additional resources beyond the original plan.
    • How to request a refund. Send a refund request to accounts@sudohost.co.za with your account email and invoice number. We will process eligible refunds within 14 business days of confirmation, via the same method used for the original payment.
    • No partial refunds. We do not pro-rate refunds for mid-cycle cancellations after the 14-day window has passed.
  1. Service Level Agreement (SLA)

    • Uptime target. SudoHost targets a monthly uptime of 99.9% for hosting services, measured on a calendar month basis.
    • Service credit for SLA breach. If monthly uptime falls below 95.0% in a given calendar month, you may request a service credit calculated as follows:

      • Uptime 95.0% to 90.0%: credit of 10% of that month’s hosting fee
      • Uptime 89.0% to 85.0%: credit of 25% of that month’s hosting fee
      • Uptime below 80.0%: credit of 50% of that month’s hosting fee
    • How to claim a credit.

      • Submit a written claim to support@sudohost.co.za within 30 days of the end of the affected month.
      • Include the dates and durations of the outages, and any monitoring data (third-party or your own) supporting the claim.
      • Approved credits are applied to your next invoice. Credits are not paid in cash.
    • Exclusions. The SLA does not apply to downtime caused by:

      • Scheduled maintenance, announced at least 48 hours in advance;
      • Emergency maintenance required to address a security vulnerability or imminent threat;
      • Force majeure events (Section 16);
      • Failures of third-party services beyond our reasonable control (including but not limited to upsteam hosting infrastructure outages, internet backbone failures, DNS provider outages, and South African power or telecommunications infrastructure failures);
      • Client-caused issues (misconfiguration, exceeding resource limits, AUP violations, your own software or code);
      • Issues resulting from your domain registrar or DNS configuration that we do not directly control;
      • Service degradation due to a DDoS attack or similar malicious traffic;
      • Suspension or termination under Section 10.
      • Maximum credit. Total service credits in any month may not exceed 50% of that month’s hosting fee for the affected service. Service credits are your sole and exclusive remedy for SLA breaches.
      • Support response times (targets, not guarantees):

        • Billing & accounts queries: within 1 business day
        • Technical support queries: within 1 business day
        • Critical incidents (site down, security incident): within 4 business hours, 7 days a week, where possible
  1. Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

    • You agree to use SudoHost services lawfully and responsibly. The following activities and content types are prohibited.
    • Illegal content and activities. You may not host, transmit, or facilitate any content or activity that violates South African law, including but not limited to:

      • Child sexual abuse material;
      • Content infringing copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights;
      • Defamatory, libellous, or unlawfully threatening material; 
      • Material that incites violence, hatred, or discrimination based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic;
      • Content that violates POPIA, the Consumer Protection Act, or any other applicable South African law.
    • Security threats and abuse. You may not host, transmit, or originate:

      • Malware, viruses, trojans, worms, rootkits, or any malicious code;
      • Phishing pages, fraudulent forms, or sites impersonating other businesses;
      • Tools intended for unauthorised access to computer systems;
      • DDoS attack tools, botnets, or any infrastructure used to conduct network attacks;
      • Open mail relays, open proxies, or anonymisation services;
      • IRC bots, mining bots, or similar automated abuse tools.
    • Spam and unsolicited communication.

      • You may not send bulk unsolicited email (spam) from our infrastructure.
      • Marketing emails must comply with POPIA and require lawful consent or a legitimate business basis.
      • Email sending is subject to the rate limits described in your hosting package documentation. Exceeding these limits without prior arrangement may result in temporary suspension of outbound email. 
      • You may not use SudoHost to send transactional messages on behalf of third parties for commercial gain without our prior written consent.
    • Resource abuse. You may not:

      • Use shared hosting resources in a way that materially degrades performance for other clients;
      • Run cryptocurrency miners, distributed computing clients, or other persistent high-load processes;
      • Operate file-sharing networks, public-facing torrent trackers, or commercial CDN nodes;
      • Bypass or circumvent CloudLinux LVE resource limits.
    • Adult content. Lawful adult content may be permitted on SudoHost shared hosting subject to prior written consent. Contact support@sudohost.co.za before launching adult content sites. Unlawful adult content is prohibited absolutely.
    • Reseller and resale restrictions. You may not resell SudoHost hosting services to third parties without our prior written consent. SudoHost offers a separate reseller programme for this purpose (contact us for details).
    • Consequences of AUP breach.

      • Minor breach: written warning, with a reasonable period to remedy.
      • Material breach: immediate suspension of the affected Service.
      • Serious or repeated breach: termination of the Service and the Account.
      • Illegal activity: immediate termination and, where required, reporting to law enforcement.
      • No refund is payable on services terminated for AUP breach.
    • Imunify360 and automated suspension. Our infrastructure runs Imunify360, which automatically detects and may quarantine or remove malware found on hosting accounts. We may suspend any account hosting malware, regardless of whether you placed the malware there, until the issue is remediated.
  1. Suspension and Termination

    • We may suspend or terminate your Service immediately, with or without notice, if:

      • You materially breach these Terms (including the AUP);
      • Your account is overdue beyond the periods in Section 6;
      • Your activity threatens the security, stability, or reputation of our infrastructure or other clients;
      • We are required to do so by law, regulation, or court order;
      • Your business relationship with us is, in our reasonable opinion, no longer viable.
      • We will use reasonable efforts to give you notice before suspension or termination where it is practical to do so.
    • On termination:

      • All Service fees become immediately due and payable;
      • Your Content may be permanently deleted at our discretion after the 60-day non-payment window (Section 6.5) or immediately for AUP-related terminations;
      • We are not liable for any loss arising from termination or the deletion of Content held in terminated accounts.
    • You may terminate your Service at any time per Section 6.2. Refund eligibility is governed by Section 7
  2. Data, Backups, and Loss
    • Daily backups. We perform daily backups to off-site storage (Wasabi, UK region) on a 30-day rolling basis as a courtesy. Backups are intended for disaster recovery, not as a replacement for your own backup arrangements.
    • Your responsibility. You remain responsible for maintaining your own backups of Content hosted on SudoHost. We strongly recommend that you do not rely solely on our backups for business-critical data.
    • Restore requests. Restores from our backup system are provided as a best-effort courtesy. We will charge a reasonable administrative fee for restore requests that result from client-caused data loss.
    • No guarantee of backup integrity. Backups may fail, be incomplete, or be corrupted. We do not guarantee that any specific backup will be available or usable.
    • Data loss. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for loss of data, lost revenue, or business interruption arising from data loss, corruption, or unavailability.
  1. Intellectual Property

    • Our IP. The SudoHost name, brand, logo, website design, and all content on sudohost.co.za are owned by Pillinger and Digital (PTY) Ltd or our licensors and are protected by intellectual property law.
    • Your IP. You retain all rights, title, and interest in the Content you host on our infrastructure. By using our Services, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, transmit, copy, and back up your Content as necessary to provide the Services.
    • Third-party software. Our infrastructure includes third-party software (cPanel/WHM, CloudLinux, LiteSpeed, Imunify360, JetBackup, WordPress, and others). Your use of this software is subject to the relevant third-party licences in addition to these Terms.
  1. Third-Party Services

    • Our Services may include or link to third-party products and services. We are not responsible for the content, policies, or practices of third parties.
    • Third-party services we currently rely on include PayFast (payments), Domains.co.za (domain registration), InterServer / MailBaby (email relay), Wasabi (backups), Absolute Hosting (infrastructure), Cloudflare (where applicable), and Google reCAPTCHA (bot protection).
    • Failures, downtime, or changes by these third parties may affect our Services. We will use reasonable efforts to maintain continuity, but we are not liable for issues caused by third-party providers.
  1. Limitation of Liability

    • To the maximum extent permitted by South African law, our total aggregate liability to you arising out of or in connection with these Terms is limited to the total Service fees paid by you to SudoHost in the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim.
    • We are not liable for: (a) Loss of profits, revenue, business, or anticipated savings; (b) Loss of data or Content; (c) Loss of goodwill or reputation; (d) Any indirect, consequential, incidental, or special damages; (e) Any damages caused by a third party, force majeure event, or your own breach of these Terms.
    • Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under South African law, including liability for gross negligence, fraud, or wilful misconduct.
  1. Indemnification

    • You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Pillinger and Digital (PTY) Ltd, its directors, employees, and contractors from and against any claims, losses, damages, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to:
      • Your use of the Services;
      • Your Content;
      • Your breach of these Terms or the AUP;
      • Your violation of any law or any third-party rights.
  1. Force Majeure

    • Neither party is liable for any failure or delay in performing its obligations to the extent caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including but not limited to: acts of God, war, civil unrest, government action, load-shedding or other electricity disruption, telecommunications failure, natural disaster, pandemic, fire, flood, or third-party infrastructure failure.
    • The affected party will use reasonable efforts to mitigate the impact and resume normal performance as soon as practical.
  1. Privacy and Personal Information

    • Our processing of your personal information is governed by our Privacy & Cookie Policy, which forms part of these Terms.
    • We process personal information in accordance with POPIA. You have the rights set out in our Privacy & Cookie Policy, including the right to access, correct, and request deletion of your personal information.
  1. Changes to These Terms

    • We may modify these Terms from time to time.
    • Material changes will be communicated to active Clients by email or via the client area at least 14 days before they take effect.
    • Continued use of the Services after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the modified Terms.
    • If you do not agree to a modification, you must cancel your Service before the modification takes effect. The cancellation provisions of Section 6 apply.
  1. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

    • These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa.
    • Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the South African courts.
    • The Consumer Protection Act, 2008 may apply to certain transactions. Nothing in these Terms limits rights you have under the CPA where it applies.
  1. Contact