Terms of Service

The service

Rack4 sells virtual private servers (VPS): Linux virtual machines on KVM with NVMe storage, full root access, an IPv4 address and an IPv6 address, managed from our customer panel at my.rack4.io, its API and the rack4 command-line tool. Each plan's resources (vCPU, memory, disk and monthly transfer) are listed on the plans page and on your order.

You run your server yourself. We keep the hardware, the network and the panel working; what you install on the server, how you configure and secure it, and what it does are up to you. One-click apps and operating system images are installed for you from their projects' official sources and are provided under their own licences.

Your account

• You must be at least 18, or the age of majority where you live, and able to enter into a contract. If you sign up for an organisation, you confirm you may bind it to these terms.
• Give us a working email address and keep it up to date: invoices, reminders and notices about your servers go there. You need to verify it before you can order.
• You're responsible for everything done with your account, its sessions and its API tokens. Keep your password and tokens secret; we recommend turning on two-factor authentication.
• One account per person or organisation, unless we agree otherwise.

Acceptable use

Use your server for anything lawful that the Acceptable Use Policy doesn't forbid. It forbids, among other things, spam, attacks on other networks, malware, phishing, illegal content, cryptocurrency mining, open proxies and Tor exit nodes. Outbound port 25 is blocked on new servers; we open it for a real mail server after a review.

You're responsible for what your server does, including when someone else breaks into it. Keep its software up to date.

Prices, billing and payment

• Service is prepaid. Prices are in US dollars and shown on the plans page and on the order before you pay. There is no setup fee.
• You pay in Bitcoin, through a BTCPay Server we operate, or with PayPal, which processes PayPal payments under its own terms. An invoice counts as paid when BTCPay confirms the Bitcoin payment, or when PayPal completes the PayPal payment.
• An order makes an invoice. Your server is built when that invoice is paid, and your paid period starts when the server is ready. Unpaid order invoices lapse after 7 days.
• Monthly billing: each renewal pays for the next month. Yearly billing, where offered: you prepay 12 months, and it renews for another 12 months.
• We issue each renewal invoice 7 days before your paid period ends and send reminders before it is due. Account credit pays invoices first.
• If a renewal is still unpaid 3 days after it was due, the server is suspended (stopped). Paying the invoice starts it again. If it is still unpaid 14 days after it was due, the server and its data, snapshots included, are deleted for good.
• Money that arrives after a checkout expired, or more than an invoice asked for, becomes account credit. Account credit can be used for any Rack4 invoice; it isn't paid out.
• We may change prices. A new price applies to a server from its next renewal, never to a period you've already paid for, and we'll email you before it does.

14-day money-back guarantee

If Rack4 isn't right for you, email hello@rack4.io or open a support ticket within 14 days of paying for your first order, and we'll refund it. The guarantee covers one order per customer, your first paid one, whether it was monthly or yearly.

• We refund the invoice's US dollar value. The part you paid in Bitcoin comes back in Bitcoin, through a claim link where you enter your own address, worked out at the exchange rate when you claim it; the part you paid with PayPal goes back to the PayPal account you paid with; or either comes back as account credit if you prefer. Any account credit used on the order comes back as account credit, and so does a refund for a server that hadn't been built yet.
• The server is deleted when the refund is made.
• A first order that we cancelled and credited (for example, because it couldn't be built) still counts as your first order.
• Accounts suspended or flagged for breaking the Acceptable Use Policy are not eligible.
• Outside the guarantee, payments are not refunded, including the unused part of a month or a year.

Cancelling

You can cancel a server at any time in the panel. Cancelling at the end of the period keeps the server running until its paid period ends, then erases it, and no further invoices are issued. Deleting a server yourself (in the panel, the API or the CLI) stops it and its billing straight away; its open renewal invoice is cancelled, and credit applied to that invoice comes back to your account. Neither gives a refund for the time left, except under the money-back guarantee.

A server you delete yourself goes to the recycle bin first: its disk, snapshots and IP addresses are kept for 7 days, and you can restore it during that time as a new order at the prices of the day. After 7 days, or at once if you choose "Delete forever", it is erased. Servers removed for an unpaid renewal, at the end of a cancelled period, for a money-back refund, for breaking the Acceptable Use Policy, or by us for another reason in these terms don't go to the recycle bin: they are erased at once.

To close your account, delete your servers and pay or cancel any open invoices, then choose "delete my account" on the account page in the panel (or email hello@rack4.io from the address on the account). The account is deleted 7 days later; any account credit left on it is given up.

Referrals

Each account has a referral link. If someone opens it and signs up within 30 days (the first referral link they opened counts), and their first invoice is then paid with Bitcoin or PayPal, we add account credit to both accounts: the amounts are shown on your referral page in the panel (at launch, $10 for you and $5 for them).

• The credit is added 14 days after that payment, once the money-back period has passed. An order that is refunded earns nothing.
• Invoices paid only with account credit don't count, and nor do invoices we mark as paid for payments made another way.
• Referring yourself, or another account you control, doesn't count. We compare email addresses, the networks accounts use and payment details to check this.
• One referrer can earn a limited amount of referral credit per calendar month (shown on the referral page); credit over it is added the next month.
• Referral credit is account credit: it pays Rack4 invoices, isn't paid out and can't be transferred.
• We may void a referral that breaks these terms, and take back the credit it earned that hasn't been spent. We may change or end the program; credit already added stays.

Your data and backups

What's on your server belongs to you, and we don't look at the files on its disk. Keeping copies of it is your job: run your own backups to somewhere other than the server. Backups you should run shows how.

Snapshots are not backups. They live on the same machine as the server, so a disk or host failure can take them with it, and they are deleted with the server.

Where it's offered, the off-site backups add-on copies a server's whole disk once a day to storage run by another company (Off-site backups). We don't promise that every backup succeeds or that each one restores, so keep your own copies of anything you can't lose. After the add-on ends, or after the server is erased, its backups are kept for 14 days and then deleted for good.

Once a server is erased (when its time in the recycle bin ends, or at once as described under Cancelling), its disk and snapshots are gone and can't be recovered, by you or by us.

Suspension and termination

We may suspend a server if it breaks these terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, if we receive a credible abuse report about it, or if it puts our network or other customers at risk. Usually we warn you first and give you time to fix the problem. Attacks, illegal content and anything harming our network are suspended immediately. Abuse reports go to abuse@rack4.io.

For serious or repeated breaches we may close the account and delete its servers without a refund. If we ever have to end your service for a reason that is not your fault, we'll tell you as early as we can and refund the unused part of your paid period.

IP addresses

The IPv4 and IPv6 addresses we assign to your server stay ours: you may use them while the server exists, and they return to us when it is deleted. You can't move them to another provider. Reverse DNS names you set must point back to the address (we check). In rare cases, such as a network change, we may have to change a server's address; we'll give you notice first unless an emergency makes that impossible.

Monthly transfer

Each plan includes a monthly transfer allowance. Traffic in and out both count, measured per calendar month in UTC; your server page shows the running total. There are no overage fees. If a server goes over its allowance, we'll email you and ask you to add a transfer pack or move to a larger plan; we won't slow down or suspend a server for its transfer without contacting you first and giving you at least 7 days to respond.

Availability and changes to the service

We work to keep servers running and the network fast, and we tell you in advance about planned maintenance that affects your server. We don't promise uninterrupted service, and outages don't earn refunds or credit unless we say so for a particular incident.

We may change the service, for example by adding features, retiring an operating system image or changing a one-click app. Servers you already have keep running.

Liability

We provide the service as it is. We're not liable for indirect or consequential losses, such as lost profits, lost revenue or lost data, or for losses caused by your own software, configuration, or a break-in to your server.

Our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the 3 months before the event that caused it.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law doesn't allow to be limited, or any rights you have as a consumer that can't be waived.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top shows the latest version. If a change matters to existing customers, we'll email you at least 14 days before it takes effect. Using the service after that means you accept the new terms; if you don't, you can cancel before they apply.

Contact

Questions about these terms: hello@rack4.io. Abuse reports: abuse@rack4.io.