Last Updated 25th February 2024
This terms of service is an agreement between you, the customer, (including you, and any agents or representatives authorized by you), which may heretofore be referred to as “you”, “your”, “customer” or “user”, which may heretofore be referred to as “we”, “us”, “our”, “1stCache” or “FirstCache”. This agreement covers the services offered by 1stCache and used by or purchased by you. The services generally fall in the category of website server hosting, and may be referred to interchangeably as virtual private servers, dedicated servers, dedicated hosting, server hosting, website hosting, network connectivity, internet bandwidth, internet traffic, server management, or other applicable or similar terms.
1. Changes to the TOS
These terms of service may be changed by 1stCache from time to time, with or without notice.
2. Billing terms
Money Back Guarantee
All normal VPS services rendered by 1stCache are eligible for a limited refund. Refund covers the Virtual Private Server plan itself, and does not include control panel add-on services such as cPanel or DirectAdmin. Refunds are only offered within 7 days of account registration, and only applies to the first service of a new client. Bitcoin payments are NON REFUNDABLE. Additional orders are not eligible for a refund. Services that are suspended or terminated due to non-compliance of the AUP and TOS are not eligible for refunds. Services that have utilized 10% or more of their allocated bandwidth are not eligible for refunds. Services which have been upgraded are not eligible for refunds. Customer is responsible for cancelling ALL recurring payment profiles.
Due to the nature of our industry, we do not offer refunds for dedicated servers and proxies.
Note: Special discounted/promo plans during flash sales or any sales events (Black Friday, Holiday Sales...etc) are not eligible for a refund.
Billing Methodology and Information
1stCache invoices for all services 14 days prior to the due date. You are responsible for arranging payment by the due date. Accounts that become past due will be subject to a 10% (ten percent) late fee after 2 days of being overdue. 1stCache may, at its sole discretion, add additional late penalty fees to repeat offenders. This late fee is non-negotiable and will be automatically added to any overdue invoices. After an invoice becomes 1 day past due, all services affiliated with the invoice are subject to immediate suspension and will be terminated after 3 days past due.. Invoices that have been paid more than once with multiple PayPal/Credit Card Subscriptions can only be added as credit towards the account and cannot be refunded via PayPal/Credit Card. If you require assistance with this provision, please contact [email protected].
Fraud
In the event fraud is discovered, the fraudulent customer is subject to immediate suspension/termination at the sole discretion of 1stCache. All information available to 1stCache about the fraudulent account/server will be submitted to both local authorities, as well any financial institutions involved. All fraud orders are investigated, and all fraudulent customers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, whether it is within the United States, or abroad.
Disputes and Chargebacks
The Customer acknowledges that any attempt to dispute or initiate a chargeback with Paypal or their Credit Card issuer will result in a suspension or termination of all services. A chargeback imposed under false pretenses is considered Fraudulent and will be treated as such.
Cancellation notice
Users may cancel their service at any time during the month, or schedule with us a specific time when service should be discontinued. In order to avoid being charged for service you do not want, be sure to cancel any automatic payments you may have set up, and provide us as much notice as possible prior to cancellation.
Cancellations must be done in via the cancellation form provided in the client area. To get to this area please follow these directions: Client Area > Services > My Services > Click on the service you would like to cancel > Request Cancellation
Cancellation request does not imply automatically a refund. In case you have cancelled your VPS, but not eligible for a refund, the cancelled/terminated VPS service can be recreated with a fee of $5. The VPS will not be recreated in case of repeated cancellation requests not eligible for a refund from the same account.
Affiliate Program
We offer 10% one-time account credit for any VPS order you refer to us. You must have an active account in order to be an affiliate. You may expect the credit added to your active account only after the referred VPS has been active for a month. It is not possible to withdraw the credit balance to your personal bank account/PayPal.
Currently there is no affiliate program for dedicated servers, High RAM VPS, SuperSaving Budget VPS, Flash Sale VPS & proxies. The commission rate can be different on some special packages (special annually discount, etc).
3. Prices
Price Changes:
1stCache reserves the right to change prices for services at the start of a customers next billing cycle for that service. Due to the historically declining prices of bandwidth and computer hardware, we anticipate that price increases generally will not be necessary. However, events outside of our control, such as prices charged to us for software licenses, power, space, or labor, or due to changes in regulations, taxes, fees, or other costs of doing business, are unpredictable in nature and may at some point require raising rates unexpectedly.
Currency and rates:
Currently, all services are priced in US dollars. 1stCache reserves the right to re-price some or all services in a different currency after giving notice of this change to the affected customers.
Prices valid for new orders only:
Our pricing regularly varies due to our stock on hand and these prices are adjusted on a regular basis as necessary to clear excess inventory or to intentionally slow sales as stock levels dictate. Because of this, any prices listed on our website, in special offers, or given as quotes to specific customers, are valid for new server orders only and may not be applied to existing orders.
Special Offers:
Special promotional pricing may be offered to specific existing or potential customers, or specific groups of potential or existing customers, from time to time, on a case by case basis, taking into account the economics of the particular situation and our business goals at that time. As such, offers made to specific customers, specific potential customers, or specific groups of customers or potential customers, are only valid for those customers the offer is made to, and may not be applied to existing or new orders by any other person or group. Special offers are not eligible for transfer to other plans or location changes.
Additional services:
- The fee to change VPS location is $3/one-time fee.
- The fee to change the IP address in all locations is $2/one-time. Furthermore, we do not guarantee the accessibility of provided datacenter IPs in China (due to GFW), to Netflix, Disney+, dating sites nor any website that might potentially ban datacenter IPs such as etsy.com and etc.
- For Chinese users: Customers who receive a VPS service with a blocked IP by GFW since the setup can request an IP change free of charge once and only by opening a ticket within 03 hours of the VPS delivery. In other cases, the fee to have an IP blocked by GFW changed is $2/one-time for all locations.
- Additional bandwidth for KVM VPS: For 1Gbps port $3/TB/mo in the US/EU and $15/TB/mo in APAC. For 10Gbps port: $4/TB/mo.
- Additional services are not refundable.
- Bandwidth Reset: Customers who consumed all allocated bandwidth can place an order for “Bandwidth Reset”. For example: you are allocated 2TB Bandwidth and consumed all, but do not want to purchase additional bandwidth, can purchase one-time bandwidth reset of 2TB – which can be calculated by the rate above.
- Additional storage for Storage KVM VPS: you can add up to 20TB additional storage with the price of $10/TB/mo.
- Additional IPs for KVM VPS: $2/IP/mo in the US, $3/IP/mo in EU/APAC. Maximum 5 additional IPs/VPS.
Account and Service Transfers:
- 1stCache prohibits reselling/transferring accounts to other customers. We do not support changing account emails for such purposes. If we detect such an action, the account and all related VPS services will be permanently terminated.
- 1stCache does allow transferring services to other customers. It’s free of charge for the first request only, any additional transfer requests will cost $10/one-time fee. Each transfer request is counted per one VPS service. Special discounted and promo plans can be transferred only after being active for at least one month on the owner account.
4. Support
As our services are unmanaged, 1stCache provides hardware support related to customers server functioning. 1stCache does not offer software support outside of the installation of items chosen from the order form. 1stCache only guarantees the default installation of any software, and in no way assumes liability for the configuration of any software. 1stCache is not responsible for any downtime associated with mis-configuration of Operating Systems. KVM/OpenVZ VPS customers may reinstall their Operating System from within their control panel interface. 1stCache does not provide any type of Support to the Customers of our Customers (Third Party Customers). We will only provide support directly to Customers of 1stCache.
5. Backups and Data Loss
Your use of the service is at your sole risk. 1stCache is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on 1stCache’s servers.
6. Abuse Policies
Account use:
Accounts, passwords, and other private information are provided for customer’s use only. The customer is responsible for any use of their services or accounts, and is therefore responsible for maintaining the security of their accounts and passwords. 1stCache will only ask for a user’s password in response to a support ticket submitted via our secured ticketing system. At no other time should you give your username or password to anybody. We do not allow multiple accounts on 1stCache.
Reselling:
1stCache allows and encourages our customers to sell / resell hosting services using the services that we provide to you. The only stipulation is, that you or your employees or agents are responsible for first level technical support and billing for your customers. Any issues that require interaction with our technical support team must be raised in our help desk by yourself or your employees, and not directly by your customers. Even when reselling service to others, resellers are responsible for the actions taken on the services they are paying for, including bandwidth overages, or violations of the terms of service. We can provide some flexibility for resellers, insofar as cancellation of one service for abuse may not require us to cancel the reseller’s other services, as would normally be required for regular customers.
Denial of Service Attacks:
In no case may 1stCache’s services be used to conduct an attack on other networks or hosts, in any capacity. Doing so may result in permanent service suspension without refund. If DoS attacks are made against a customer’s services, our first priority is to take steps to mitigate the impact to other customers, which may include null routing the affected ip address(es), or otherwise suspending the service being attacked. In the case that an attack does not affect other customers or the 1stCache network, the service being attacked will normally not be taken offline or suspended. Customers who are the target of frequent or repeated denial of service attacks, if those attacks negatively impact the 1stCache network or its customers, may have the services affected by these attacks permanently suspended. 1stCache reserves the right to disallow the usage of internet services that are frequent targets of DDoS attacks, such as IRC.
Spam:
Sending of bulk unsolicited commercial email (spam), is not allowed and will not be tolerated. Customers using the 1stCache network may not send, or allow to be sent, via open relay or other means, unsolicited commercial email. Running a legitimate opt-in mailing list, or emailing existing customers, is of course, allowed. Although we may provide some opportunity to rectify spam problems that are not intentional on the part of the customer, ultimately, every customer is responsible for the activity that occurs via the services that they are paying for. Thus, customers who receive an occasional spam complaint but who do not appear to be knowingly sending spam, may be given notice to correct the issue, but repeated offenses may be grounds for service suspension. During any notice period given (if any), steps may be taken by 1stCache as necessary to stop spam from being sent by the customer’s services, including temporarily suspending service, firewalling certain traffic, or other appropriate means. Customers who are, as determined by 1stCache, knowingly sending spam may have their service permanently suspended without refund. Operating websites or services on the 1stCache network, that are being or have been advertised in spam, are also not allowed, and are subject to the same policies as applied to services used to send spam. If customer’s improper actions or inactions are the cause of 1stCache IP space being listed in any spam blacklist or database, that customer may be permanently suspended without refund, at the sole discretion of 1stCache.
Phishing:
Running websites that attempt to steal a user’s login information or other personal data (phishing sites) is strictly prohibited. Users who unknowingly host these sites must take them down immediately, and their service may be temporarily suspended until action is taken to rectify the situation. Users who repeatedly host phishing sites, risk having their service permanently suspended. Users who, as determined by 1stCache, intentionally host phishing sites using 1stCache services may have their service permanently suspended without refund, at our sole discretion.
Legal Use:
1stCache services may only be used for legally permissible purposes under applicable law. Violations of this rule may lead to temporary or permanent suspension of service, with or without refund, and / or notification of appropriate law enforcement, at 1stCache’s sole discretion. Uses that are not allowed include, but are not limited to:
- Illegally defaming or slandering another person or group.
- Violating applicable copyright law.
- Distributing child pornography.
- Transmitting threatening messages.
- Violating applicable trademark or patent law.
- Using the service to commit denial of service attacks.
- Attempting to hack into or otherwise attempt to disrupt any network or system not belonging to you.
- Committing any action which incurs legal liability for 1stCache.
- Acting in any other way not consistent with applicable law.
- Communications.
- Foul, explicit, rude, or abusive language will not be tolerated and may result in immediate account termination without refund.
Operating systems
Our VPS plans have different virtualization platforms which work best for the specified OS and with the agreements with Microsoft, it’s not allowed to install Linux on our Windows VPS and install Windows on Linux VPS. Violations of this rule may lead to temporary or permanent suspension of service without refund, and / or notification of appropriate law enforcement, at 1stCache’s sole discretion.
For MAC OS VPS, the Apple Developer sign in is not supported.
7. Content Policies
Content Monitoring:
The content and type of usage of the service is not regularly monitored for violation of these terms or of applicable law. In the course of performing other duties related to operating 1stCache, we may become aware of activities that are in violation of this agreement or applicable law. Upon noticing or being informed of these violations, we may take appropriate action, which, depending on the nature of the infraction, may include a warning, temporary or permanent service suspension, or, in cases of exploitation of children or other serious crimes, notification to the proper authorities. Even if we become aware of a specific violation, this does not obligate us to regularly monitor for future violations by the same customer or any other customer, as we do not have the resources nor the authority to regularly monitor customers in this way. We may, however, monitor the quantity of resources used, such as bandwidth, ram, cpu time, disk space, disk i/o and other statistical information, to ensure proper billing, capacity planning, and service reliability.
Bit Torrent:
Legal usage of bittorrent is allowed, including running trackers, clients, or websites for non-copyright-infringing material. Laws regarding copyright infringement will apply, according to applicable US law. Frequent or unresolved DMCA complaints regarding bittorrent usage may be grounds for service suspension. Because of resources limitations. Torrents are allowed only on Windows VPS, KVM Storage VPS and Dedicated Servers.
IRC:
Because IRC usage attracts a disproportional amount of denial of service attacks, 1stCache does not allow usage of IRC clients, servers, bots, or other IRC technology. Customers who are found to be running IRC servers, clients, or bots, may have their service suspended, temporarily or permanently, at the discretion of 1stCache. Customers who knowingly run IRC servers, clients, or bots, which are targeted by DoS attacks, may have their service permanently suspended without refund, at the sole discretion of 1stCache.
Proxies:
Proxies which are not the cause of frequent or unresolved abuse issues are allowed. Customers who operate proxies which are subject to repeated and disproportionate levels of abuse may have their service suspended. Proxy usage is not an acceptable justification for providing more than our normal maximum allocation of ip addresses (8 per dedicated server), nor will 1stCache “rotate” or otherwise frequently change ip addresses on request for proxy operators.
Bandwidth Usage
You are allocated a monthly bandwidth allowance. This allowance varies depending on the hosting package you purchase. Should your account pass the allocated amount we reserve the right to suspend the account until the start of the next allocation, suspend the account until more bandwidth is purchased at an additional fee, suspend the account until you upgrade to a higher level of package, terminate the account and/or charge you an additional fee for the overages. Unused transfer in one month cannot be carried over to the next month
The network port is fair-shared so constantly use high amount of bandwidth is not allowed. This includes constantly consume more than 100mbps over 6 hours or burst to the full port (1Gbps or 10Gbps) frequently. It can be different in several locations especially in Asia.
International bandwidth on Vietnam VPS: Bandwidth from Vietnam to International is limited. We have 1Gbps local bandwidth in Vietnam and 50mbps bandwidth to International, so constantly consuming more than 5mbps international bandwidth over 1 hour is NOT allowed.
Direct China Bandwidth on Hong Kong VPS: We only offer 10mbps fair-shared direct bandwidth to China in Hong Kong DC1. It’s best-effort in Hong Kong DC2.
CPU Usage
CPU cores on KVM VPS are shared among multiple VPSs. If your VPS is consistently maxing out one full core or more and impacting the performance of other client servers sharing the same host node, we may ask you to reduce your usage. Disruptive load may result in a reboot, shutdown, and/or suspension of the VPS regardless of the time lapse involved. 30% Average Usage should be fine. You can burst up to 100% for 10 minutes, every 24 hours.
Resource Usage
Any user may not:
a) Use 100% or more of system resources for longer than 10 minutes.
b) Run any gaming servers such as counter-strike, half-life, battlefield1942, etc
c) Run TOR in any shape
d) Streaming/Live Streaming
We reserve the right to terminate any account without warning or notice if any of the above restrictions are violated and to examine the contents of any account at any time.
