By accessing or using any services provided through GFI Group, including Gfi-group1.com, the customer agrees to comply with these Terms of Service.

1. General Use of Services

The user agrees to use all services in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations. If an account is used in violation of any applicable law, including local, state, national, or international law, GFI Group reserves the right to cooperate with law enforcement authorities and regulatory bodies.

The user also agrees to comply with the acceptable use policies of any network, system, or service connected to through GFI Group.

Neither GFI Group nor its information providers shall be liable for any loss, damage, or liability arising from the user’s use of, or inability to use, any GFI Group service.

The user further agrees that any material submitted, published, transmitted, or stored through the service shall not infringe any copyright, trademark, patent, statutory, common law, or other proprietary rights of any third party, and shall not contain unlawful, obscene, defamatory, or libelous material.

Hardcore adult content and pornographic websites are strictly prohibited on shared and reseller hosting servers. Software or content intended to facilitate violations of intellectual property or other legal rights may not be stored or hosted on GFI Group systems.

2. Prohibited Conduct and Netiquette Violations

The following conduct constitutes grounds for immediate suspension pending investigation. It may result in termination of the relevant account if the investigation confirms the violation:

• Posting a single article, or substantially similar articles, to an excessive number of newsgroups, including 20 or more groups, or repeatedly posting off-topic material that generates complaints.
• Sending unsolicited mass emails to more than 25 recipients, where such communications provoke complaints.
• Engaging in the above conduct through another provider, using a GFI Group account as a response mailbox, or advertising a website hosted by GFI Group.
• Continuing to harass other individuals on the internet after being asked to stop by those individuals or by GFI Group.
• Impersonating another user or falsifying identity information in email, Usenet postings, IRC, or any other internet service.
• Using IRC and associated programs, including psyBNC, bots, abuse scripts, attack tools, flooding tools, threatening or obscene content, or unauthenticated proxies, including open mail proxies and anonymous web proxies.

Users whose accounts are terminated for the above violations may also be charged reasonable labor costs incurred by GFI Group in investigating, cleaning up, and responding to complaints.

3. General Server Limits

Users must not consume excessive system resources. Any violation may result in corrective action, including termination of processes, disabling of services, or suspension of the account, to protect server stability.

The following limits apply unless otherwise approved in writing:

• No process may run longer than 30 CPU seconds.
• No process may consume more than 128 MB of PHP memory.
• Databases are limited to 25 concurrent user connections.
• Cron jobs must not run more than once every 30 minutes unless otherwise authorized by the script provider or approved by GFI Group.
• Each cPanel account may not send more than 300 emails per hour.

If an account is found to be overusing shared system resources, GFI Group may temporarily suspend the account to protect other customers and the server environment. If the account is deemed unsuitable for a shared or reseller hosting environment, the customer may be advised to move to a more appropriate service, such as Semi-Dedicated Hosting, Dedicated Servers, or Premium Hosting.

GFI Group shall be the sole arbiter of what constitutes excessive resource usage and reserves the right to amend these limits at its sole discretion.

4. Backups

GFI Group performs daily and weekly backups of client databases and periodic backups of other files on applicable hosting servers. Backups are generally available only for accounts under 50 GB in size and under 250,000 inodes.

For reseller plans, these backup limits apply to each cPanel account individually.

Backups are provided as a courtesy only and are not guaranteed. Customers are strongly advised to maintain their own separate backups at all times. In the event of data loss, GFI Group may use reasonable efforts to restore data from available backups, but does not guarantee recovery and shall not be liable for any loss of data, time, revenue, business, or other resources arising from missing, incomplete, failed, or unavailable backups, or from hardware failure.

Because no backup system is fail-safe, GFI Group makes no warranties regarding the availability of backups or the success of restorations.

Inode Limits

• Accounts using more than 240,000 inodes may receive an automatic warning.
• Accounts with 250,000 inodes or more may experience service interruptions, account restrictions, or suspensions if corrective action is not taken.
• VPS services have a server-wide inode limit of 5 million, with no per-cPanel user inode limit.
• Resellers with more than 100 cPanel accounts may be subject to a reseller-wide inode limit of 1 million, in addition to per-user limits, where excessive usage affects server performance.
• Budget reseller plans are limited to 50,000 inodes per user and 250,000 reseller-wide inodes.

Where inode usage causes service degradation or poses a risk to the server, GFI Group may require the customer to reduce inode usage, upgrade services, or take corrective action within a reasonable time, failing which the account may be suspended.

Every file stored on an account, including webpages, images, emails, and documents, counts as one inode.

5. Free Services Prohibited on Reseller Accounts

Customers may not use reseller hosting accounts to offer free services of any kind, including but not limited to:

• Free web hosting
• Free email services
• Free blogging services
• Free home pages
• Free image hosting
• Free trial hosting accounts

These services are prohibited because they are commonly abused, difficult to trace to reliable account holders, and may expose servers and networks to spam, malware, phishing, hacking, excessive resource consumption, and other unlawful or harmful activity.

If this prohibition is violated, GFI Group may suspend the account immediately, with or without notice, as deemed necessary.

6. File Hosting and Storage Restrictions

File hosting and file storage of any type are strictly prohibited on shared, reseller, and similar hosting servers. Hosting services are provided solely for website hosting.

This restriction does not prohibit normal downloadable files that are reasonably related to a website. However, customers may not operate websites whose primary purpose is file distribution or file storage, including sites similar to download portals or repositories, nor may they use hosting accounts as storage for MP3s, games, videos, photos, audio archives, backup repositories, or similar bulk storage content.

7. Abuse of Staff or Support Personnel

GFI Group is committed to treating all customers with professionalism, respect, and courtesy. Customers are expected to treat GFI Group staff in the same manner.

If a customer engages in abusive, threatening, insulting, harassing, discriminatory, or demeaning conduct toward staff, the relevant account may be suspended or terminated. In cases of termination for abusive conduct, five days’ notice will ordinarily be given, and any refund will be limited to the unused portion of prepaid service, where applicable.

Abusive conduct includes, but is not limited to:

• Repeatedly addressing staff in a rude, hostile, or demeaning manner.
• Using profanity in oral or written communications
• Yelling or shouting at staff
• Deliberately using all capital letters in written communications to intimidate or harass.
• Insulting staff based on personal characteristics, race, ethnicity, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, religion, housing status, or economic status
• Deliberately providing false information to waste staff time or harass personnel.

8. Billing and Payment

The user agrees to pay all charges for use of the account in accordance with the rates and pricing in effect at the time of purchase or renewal. Charges may be applied to the user’s selected payment method when due.

GFI Group reserves the right to suspend service in the event of an indication of credit risk, a delinquent or rejected payment.

If the customer chooses to pay by credit card, the customer authorizes GFI Group to charge the designated card on each due date for recurring services. The customer agrees not to dispute valid hosting-related recurring charges that were properly authorized under this agreement.

9. Non-Payment

• Overdue payments not settled within 4 days may be subject to a 15% late fee.
• Reseller, Shared, and SEO Hosting payments are due in full on the monthly anniversary date.
• Failure to remit payment by the due date constitutes a violation of these Terms of Service.
• Failure to remit payment within 3 consecutive days after the due date may result in suspension of services.
• Failure to remit payment within 4 consecutive days after the due date may result in termination of access to the service and reclamation of services.

Any customer data remaining after prolonged non-payment may be deleted for security and privacy reasons. Once an account has been terminated for non-payment, reconnection and restoration fees may apply. Restoration of terminated accounts is subject to the availability of backups.

10. Payment Reminders

Approved payment processors, including Payfast, may handle recurring payment processing. It is the customer’s sole responsibility to ensure that sufficient funds are available and that the email address on file is valid and able to receive billing notices.

A payment reminder sent by GFI Group shall be deemed valid once dispatched, regardless of whether it is received, filtered, delayed, or blocked due to spam filtering, email misconfiguration, or network issues.

Payment reminders may be issued on the first, second, and third day following the due date. From the fourth day, services may be temporarily suspended for non-payment.

11. Cancellations and Transfers

Customers may cancel their account at any time by submitting a cancellation request through the client area at:

https://clientzone.gfi-group1.com/

GFI Group requires 30 days’ notice before the anniversary billing date for cancellations, downgrades, or transfers. Failure to provide the required notice may result in one additional full billing cycle being charged.

All outstanding amounts must be paid in full before cancellation or transfer can be completed.

Unless otherwise stated under an applicable money-back guarantee, all fees paid are non-refundable.

Cancellation requests are accepted only through the official client area. Cancellation requests sent by email, phone, help desk, or postal mail are not valid.

If a recurring payment is canceled directly through a third-party payment provider, GFI Group may treat that action as a request to terminate the associated service. It may terminate the account without prior notice.

12. Public Feedback

Customers are encouraged to raise complaints directly with GFI Group through the appropriate support or complaints channel before posting public criticism.

GFI Group reserves the right to protect its reputation and staff from false, malicious, defamatory, or abusive public statements. However, nothing in this policy prevents a customer from exercising lawful rights to fair and honest public review.

If a customer publicly discloses confidential or private engagement details, GFI Group may treat such disclosure as a waiver of confidentiality to the extent reasonably necessary to respond or protect its legitimate interests, subject always to applicable law.

13. Refund Policy

GFI Group operates under a strict no-refund policy unless expressly stated otherwise in writing.

All sales are final. No refunds shall be issued for any of the following, including but not limited to:

• Change of mind
• Dissatisfaction with a product or service
• Accidental or duplicate purchase
• Compatibility issues
• Delivery delays
• Perceived shortcomings in service performance

If a purchased service cannot be delivered, no monetary refund shall be provided. However, at GFI Group’s discretion, the customer may request substitution with another available service of equal or lesser value, provided the request is made within 90 days of the original service date, and the substitute service is available.

By purchasing from GFI Group, the customer confirms acceptance of this refund policy in full.

14. Changes to These Terms

GFI Group may modify these Terms of Service at any time by publishing an updated version online. Continued use of the services after such publication constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.

15. Automatic Renewal

Unless canceled in accordance with these Terms, services, accounts, contracts, and billing arrangements may renew automatically on the applicable renewal date.

Privacy Policy

16. Commitment to Privacy

GFI Group is committed to protecting the privacy of visitors and customers. Basic visitor information, such as IP address, browser type, device information, and access times, may be collected to analyze website traffic, improve services, and support security and system administration.

Cookies may also be used to improve user experience, remember preferences, and support website functionality.

Once a visitor becomes a customer by submitting an order form or activating an account, additional personal information may be collected and processed to deliver services, process transactions, respond to requests, and manage the account relationship.

17. Information We Collect

When registering, ordering, or using the website, customers may be asked to provide information such as:

• Full name
• Email address
• Mailing address
• Telephone number
• Billing information
• Payment details
• Other information necessary to process orders or provide services

Information may also be collected when a user:

• Registers on the site
• Places an order
• Subscribes to communications
• Responds to surveys
• Completes forms
• Interacts with website features

18. How We Use Personal Information

Personal information may be used to:

• Personalize user experience
• Improve the website and services
• Respond to support requests
• Process transactions
• Administer promotions, surveys, or site features
• Send service-related communications
• Send billing and account notices
• Provide marketing communications where permitted by law

19. Protection of Personal Information

GFI Group uses reasonable technical and organizational safeguards to protect personal information.

Sensitive payment information is processed through secure payment gateways and is not ordinarily stored on GFI Group servers. Personal information is stored on secure systems accessible only to authorized personnel who are required to maintain confidentiality.

The website may also be scanned regularly for vulnerabilities and security risks.

20. Use of Cookies

Cookies are used to remember shopping cart items, save preferences, improve user experience, measure site traffic, and support advertising and analytics.

Users can turn off cookies in their browser settings. However, some website features may not function properly if cookies are disabled.

Cookies may be used to:

• Process shopping cart items
• Remember preferences
• Track advertisements
• Compile aggregate website usage statistics
• Improve future site experiences

Trusted third-party services may also assist with analytics and tracking on GFI Group’s behalf.

21. Third-Party Disclosure

GFI Group does not sell or trade personally identifiable information to outside parties.

Information may be shared with trusted third parties who assist in operating the website, conducting business, processing payments, delivering services, or supporting customers, provided that such parties agree to keep the information confidential and process it lawfully.

Information may also be disclosed where required by law or where reasonably necessary to protect rights, property, safety, or enforce company policies.

Non-personally identifiable information may be used or shared for analytics, marketing, or advertising purposes.

22. Third-Party Links

The website may include links to third-party websites, products, or services. These third-party sites operate under their own privacy policies, and GFI Group is not responsible for their content, policies, or activities.

23. Contact

If customers have any questions regarding these Terms of Service or the Privacy Policy, they may contact GFI Group using the contact details provided on the website.