Service levels and support

1. About this statement

1. 1.1

   This statement describes the service levels and support that come with NewHost plans. It forms part of our Terms of Service. It is not a service-level agreement with financial guarantees: those exist only if we sign one with you separately.

2. Availability

1. 2.1

   We run the platform with care and work to keep your websites, apps, e-mail and the dashboard available, secure and fast. We do not guarantee a specific uptime percentage, and we do not promise that the services will be uninterrupted or error-free.

2. 2.2

   Interruptions can be caused by maintenance, faults in hardware, software or networks, attacks, load-shedding or other power problems, and by providers we depend on, such as data centres, connectivity providers, Cloudflare, domain registries and our payments platform.

3. 2.3

   Servers you own. For servers you connect to NewHost (including servers we create for you at a cloud provider with your token), availability depends on your server and your provider. We manage software on them through your connection, but we do not operate their hardware or network.

4. 2.4

   No service credits or compensation are paid for downtime, except where the Consumer Protection Act entitles you to a remedy for a defective service, or where we agree otherwise in writing.

3. Maintenance

1. 3.1

   Planned maintenance: where planned work is likely to cause a noticeable interruption, we try to give you notice in advance by e-mail or in the dashboard and to schedule it outside South African business hours.

2. 3.2

   Emergency maintenance: we may carry out urgent work without notice to fix security vulnerabilities, stop an attack or abuse, or prevent data loss. We keep such interruptions as short as practical.

4. Backups and restores

Backups depend on the service:

• Automatic backups run between 01:00 and 05:00 (South African time) and only while the service is active; they stop while a plan is past due, suspended or cancelled. Within your plan's limits you choose how often they run and how long they are kept (by default 14 days unless the plan says otherwise), or turn them off.
• Backups are stored on the hosting server's own backup storage, not at a separate location, so on their own they protect against mistakes and damaged files, not against the loss of the server itself. Add your own S3-compatible, FTP or SFTP storage in the dashboard to have copies kept there as well; that storage is your own and under your contract with its provider.
• The account owner and team admins restore backups themselves in the dashboard, after typing the site or database name to confirm; a restore replaces the current files or data. Where a backup can only be restored by our team (for example a website backup kept only on your own storage), ask support and we restore it.
• Backups are a convenience, not a guarantee. Keep your own copies of important code and data (for example in Git and regular database exports), as the Terms of Service require.

5. Support

1. 5.1

   You can reach our support team through:

   • support tickets in the dashboard (under Support), or on our support portal at support.globalsoftwareservices.co.za;
   • e-mail to use our contact form;
   • the contact form for sales and general enquiries.
2. 5.2

   Support covers the NewHost platform and services: your account, billing, domains, hosting, deployments, e-mail, backups and restores, and problems with the platform. It does not include writing or debugging your own code, designing your website, or managing software we did not install, although we will point you in the right direction where we can.

3. 5.3

   We answer support requests on a best-effort basis, as soon as we reasonably can, normally on South African business days. We do not commit to fixed response or resolution times unless we agree them with you in writing.

4. 5.4

   Priority support is included with the plans that list it on our pricing page (currently the Business and Agency app hosting plans). When our team is busy, tickets from these plans are handled before other tickets.

5. 5.5

   Access to your systems. Our staff can reach a server you own only while you have granted support access in the dashboard (for 1 to 72 hours), and every use is recorded. You can withdraw the access at any time.

6. Incidents and security

1. 6.1

   If an incident affects your services, we work to restore them as quickly as we reasonably can and tell affected customers what happened.

2. 6.2

   If a security compromise affects personal information, we notify you (and, where we are the responsible party, the Information Regulator) as described in our Privacy Policy.

3. 6.3

   To report a security vulnerability in the NewHost platform, e-mail use our contact form. Please don't test the platform without our written permission (see the Acceptable Use Policy).