This Reseller Programme Policy (the "Policy") applies to every account that has been approved for the HOSTI GUARD LLC reseller programme. It is additional to, and does not replace, our Terms of Service, Refund Policy, Privacy Policy and Acceptable Use Policy, all of which continue to apply to you in full.
By submitting a reseller application you confirm that you have read and accepted this Policy. If you do not accept it, do not apply and do not use a reseller account.
1. Eligibility and application
The reseller programme is open to businesses and to individuals trading professionally. You must hold an active HOSTI GUARD LLC account in good standing, with no unpaid invoices and no open abuse case.
You apply through your client area. We may ask for your trading name, website, country, telephone number, type of business and expected monthly volume. The information you give must be accurate and kept up to date; an application containing false or misleading information may be refused, and an account opened on the strength of it may be closed.
Approval is at our discretion. We are not obliged to give a reason for refusing an application, although we will normally tell you the reason so that you can correct it and apply again.
2. Activation fee and deposit
Where an activation fee or deposit is shown during the application, your reseller account is activated only once that amount has been received. The amount, and whether it is required at all, is published on the application screen before you commit, and may change for future applicants without affecting an account that is already active.
The activation amount may be paid from your account credit or through any payment method we offer at checkout. Where it is described as a deposit it is held against your account and is not a prepayment for services; it is not interest-bearing.
The activation fee is refundable only as stated in our Refund Policy. If we refuse your application, any amount you have paid for activation is returned in full. If you close the account yourself, or if we close it because you broke this Policy, the activation amount is not refunded.
3. Your relationship with us
You act as an independent business. Nothing in this Policy creates a partnership, joint venture, franchise, agency or employment relationship between you and HOSTI GUARD LLC, and you must not describe yourself as our agent, our branch or our representative.
You contract with your own customers in your own name and on your own terms. We have no contract with them. You may not make any promise, warranty or service-level commitment on our behalf, and you are solely responsible for any commitment you make that goes beyond what we provide to you.
You remain our customer for everything you buy through the programme. Your obligations to us do not change because your customer has not paid you.
4. Pricing, billing and payment
Reseller prices are set by us and are shown in your client area. They may be changed at any time; a change takes effect for new purchases and for renewals that fall due after the change, and never retroactively for a period you have already paid.
You are free to set your own retail prices to your customers. You may not represent your retail price as our price, and you may not advertise our wholesale prices publicly.
Invoices are due on the date shown. An unpaid invoice may lead to suspension of the services it covers, including services your customers are using. We are not responsible to you or to your customers for any loss caused by a suspension that follows your own non-payment.
5. Your customers are your responsibility
You are responsible for everything your customers do with the services you resell, exactly as if you had done it yourself. You must impose on them terms that are at least as strict as our Terms of Service and our Acceptable Use Policy.
You must verify who your customers are to a reasonable standard, keep records that allow you to identify them, and be able to act on an abuse report quickly. You must give us the contact details of an end customer when we are required to obtain them, for example by a registry, a certificate authority or a lawful request.
You are the first line of support for your customers. They must contact you, not us. We may refuse to deal directly with your customers, and if we do deal with one in an emergency it does not transfer any responsibility to us.
6. Prohibited use — grounds for closing the account
Our Acceptable Use Policy applies to you and to every customer under your account. In addition, and because a reseller account carries wider access than an ordinary account, we will close a reseller account where the account, or any customer under it, is used for any of the following:
Sending unsolicited bulk e-mail or SMS, operating a snowshoe or hit-and-run spam operation, or supplying hosting, proxies, name servers or certificates to anyone who does; phishing, fake login pages, brand impersonation, carding, fraudulent stores, or any site built to deceive a visitor about who they are dealing with; distributing malware, ransomware, exploit kits, stealers, botnet controllers or remote-access trojans; operating services for stalkerware, credential stuffing, mass scanning, denial-of-service, or the rental of infrastructure for attacks.
Child sexual abuse material, content sexualising a minor, or any material whose possession is a criminal offence; content that incites violence or terrorism, or that is used to evade sanctions or export controls; large-scale infringement of copyright or trade marks after notice.
Reselling to a person or entity that we have already terminated for abuse; creating accounts to circumvent a suspension or a payment dispute; deliberately concealing the identity of an end customer in order to defeat an abuse investigation; chargeback abuse, payment fraud, or using stolen payment details anywhere in the chain.
Misrepresenting your relationship with us, using our name, logo or marks in a way this Policy does not permit, publishing our wholesale prices, or reselling access to our API, our control panel or our staff.
Where the conduct is unlawful, where it puts other customers or our network at risk, or where an upstream provider, registry, registrar or certificate authority requires it, we close the account immediately and without notice. In every other case we give you notice and a reasonable opportunity to fix the problem before we close the account.
7. Suspension, closure and what happens to the services
We may suspend a reseller account, or any service under it, while we investigate a suspected breach, where an invoice is overdue, or where we are required to do so. A suspension is normally notified to you with its reason; where the law or an urgent risk prevents that, we tell you as soon as we can.
On closure for breach, access to the reseller area, to reseller pricing and to the API ends immediately. Services already provisioned may be suspended or terminated. Domain names remain subject to the rules of their registry and may be transferred away by their registrant.
We will, where we lawfully can and where no abuse case prevents it, allow a reasonable period for you or your customers to migrate. This is a courtesy and not an entitlement, and it is not offered where the closure follows the conduct described in section 6.
Closing the account does not cancel what you already owe us, and does not entitle you to a refund of the activation amount or of any unused period, except where our Refund Policy says otherwise.
8. Our name, our marks and your marketing
You may state truthfully that your services run on HOSTI GUARD LLC infrastructure. You may not use our name, logo, domain or marks in your own company name, trading name, domain name, app name, social media handle or advertising keywords, and you may not register anything confusingly similar.
You must not copy our website, our control panel screens or our written material, and you must not present our documentation as your own.
Your marketing must be accurate. You must not advertise capacity, uptime, locations, speeds or guarantees that we do not actually provide to you.
9. API and automation
Where the programme gives you API keys, those keys identify your account and everything done with them is treated as done by you. Keep them secret, store them encrypted, rotate them if they may have been exposed, and tell us at once if they are lost or stolen.
Test keys must be used for testing only. Automated traffic must stay within any published rate limit; traffic that destabilises the platform may be throttled or blocked without notice.
You may not resell, share or expose raw API access to your customers or to any third party.
10. Data protection and confidentiality
You must handle your customers' personal data lawfully and must have your own privacy notice. Where you pass personal data to us, you confirm that you are entitled to do so and that your customers have been told that a sub-processor is involved.
Wholesale prices, margins, roadmaps and any non-public information we give you under the programme are confidential. You may use them to operate your reseller business and for nothing else.
Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle the personal data you give us.
11. Changes to the programme
We may change this Policy, the reseller prices, the services included, the activation amount and the programme benefits. The current version is always published at hostiguard.com/reseller-policy with its "last updated" date, and material changes are announced on the website or by e-mail to the address on your account.
If you do not accept a change, your remedy is to stop using the reseller account and close it. Continuing to use it after a change takes effect means that you accept it.
Questions about the reseller programme, and abuse reports concerning a reseller account: billing@hostiguard.com. HOSTI GUARD LLC, 8206 LOUISIANA BLVD NE.
