Terms of service

1. Who we are

AD-MEN ("AD-MEN", "we", "us") provides managed hosting, infrastructure operations, software engineering and growth marketing services as described on ad-men.org. You can reach us at contact@ad-men.org. By ordering a plan, using the services or submitting a form on this site, you ("the client", "you") agree to these terms.

2. The services

We offer three plans, Core, Scale and Ecosystem, described on the plans page, plus add-ons and quoted work. The plans page, the hosting specification and the service level agreement ("SLA") form part of these terms. Where a plan description and these terms conflict, the plan description governs for the feature in question.

Each plan is a managed infrastructure service first. The website build, engineering hours and growth services are delivered on infrastructure we operate under the same plan; we do not provide marketing services on infrastructure we do not operate unless agreed in writing.

3. Your account

You must be at least 18 and authorised to bind the business you name on the order. You are responsible for keeping the credentials we give you secure, for the actions of users you authorise, and for telling us promptly if you believe an account has been compromised. We may suspend access to protect the service or other clients while we investigate.

4. Plans, billing and renewal

Prices. Prices are in US dollars and exclude VAT and other taxes, which are added where we are required to collect them. The prices on the plans page at the time of your order apply to your first term.

Payment. After you submit an order request we confirm scope and send a secure checkout link or an invoice. The plan starts when payment clears. Monthly plans are charged in advance each month; annual plans are charged in advance for twelve months at ten times the monthly price.

Renewal. Plans renew automatically for the same term unless cancelled before the renewal date (section 13). We give at least 30 days' notice by email before any price change takes effect at renewal.

Upgrades and downgrades. Upgrades take effect immediately and are pro-rated to your billing date. Downgrades take effect at the next renewal.

Late payment. If a renewal payment fails we notify you and retry. If payment is not received within 14 days we may suspend the services, and after 30 days terminate them under section 13, in each case after notice. Suspension does not stop charges from accruing.

5. Pass-through costs

Some costs are charged by third parties per unit and are passed through to you at the provider's price with no mark-up. They are listed on the plans page and include: domain registrations and renewals beyond the included domain(s); advertising spend; premium software seats or tiers beyond what the plan includes; SMS and similar credits; and usage beyond the plan's storage or transfer allocation. Pass-through costs appear as separate invoice lines or are billed directly to your account with the provider. We will tell you before incurring a pass-through cost above USD 100 that is not already part of your plan.

6. Included work and hours

Each plan includes an initial build or migration as described on the plans page, and a monthly allocation of engineering hours. Hours are tracked and reported monthly. Unused Core and Scale hours do not roll over; Ecosystem hours roll over for up to one quarter. Work beyond the allocation is billed at the add-on rate on the plans page or quoted in writing before it starts. The included build is scoped in writing at onboarding; scope changes may be delivered from engineering hours or quoted separately.

7. Your responsibilities

You agree to: provide accurate information and timely access, content and decisions needed to deliver the services; hold the rights to all content, code, trademarks and data you give us; comply with the laws that apply to your business and your users, including data protection and consumer law; and maintain 2FA and reasonable security on accounts in your control. Delays caused by missing input from you do not extend our obligations or entitle you to credits.

8. Acceptable use

You may not use the services to host, send or facilitate: unlawful content or activity; malware, phishing or fraud; unsolicited bulk email; content that infringes others' intellectual property; material that sexualises minors; or anything that attacks, overloads or interferes with networks, systems or other clients. You may not resell the services without a written agreement. We may remove content or suspend services that breach this section, after notice where it is practical to give one, and will cooperate with lawful requests from authorities.

9. Ownership

Your accounts. Hosting, registrar, DNS, CDN, email, analytics and advertising accounts are opened in your name wherever the provider allows it. We hold delegated access that you may revoke at any time. Where a provider does not allow delegated access, we hold the account on your behalf and transfer it to you on request or at offboarding.

Your content and data. You own all content, data and materials you provide, and all data generated by your users. You grant us a licence to use them only as needed to provide the services.

Deliverables. On payment, you own the custom code, designs and content we create specifically for you under a plan. We retain ownership of our pre-existing tools, templates, scripts, configurations and know-how ("AD-MEN materials") and grant you a perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use any AD-MEN materials embedded in your deliverables. Open-source components remain under their own licences.

10. Data, backups and access

We back up your sites and data on the schedule stated for your plan and test restores as described on the hosting page. Backups are encrypted and stored off-site. Retention periods are those stated for your plan; data outside the retention window cannot be recovered. You are responsible for keeping your own copy of anything you cannot afford to lose beyond those windows.

Where we process personal data on your behalf we act as a processor under your instructions; the privacy policy describes this and a data processing agreement is available on request. We access your systems only to provide the services, keep access logs, and remove our access at offboarding.

11. Third-party services

The services rely on third-party providers listed on the stack page. Their terms apply to your use of their products. We select providers on fit, and where a provider operates a partner or affiliate programme we may participate in it; our affiliate disclosure explains this. We are not responsible for a third party's outage, price change or discontinuation, but we will treat it as an incident under the SLA where it affects your service and will migrate you to an alternative where one exists.

12. Service levels

Uptime commitments, response targets, exclusions and service credits are set out in the SLA, which forms part of these terms. Service credits are your sole remedy for a failure to meet the SLA.

13. Term, cancellation and offboarding

Term. Each plan runs for its billing period and renews under section 4.

Cancellation by you. You may cancel at any time by email to contact@ad-men.org. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. The refund policy sets out when payments are refundable, including the 14-day money-back guarantee on a first payment.

Termination by us. We may terminate for non-payment (section 4), for a material breach of section 8 that is not remedied within 7 days of notice, or on 60 days' notice for any reason, in which case we refund any pre-paid period after the termination date.

Offboarding. Whatever the reason for ending the services, we will: keep your environment available for 30 days after the end date; hand over a current credential vault, an infrastructure document and a full export of sites, databases and files; transfer any account we hold on your behalf; and then remove our access and delete our copies of your data within 60 days, except where the law requires us to keep them. There is no exit fee.

14. Warranties and liability

We will provide the services with reasonable skill and care and in line with the plan descriptions and the SLA. Except for that, the services are provided "as is" and we exclude all other warranties to the extent the law allows. We do not guarantee any particular marketing result, ranking, traffic level or revenue.

Neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, revenue, data (beyond our backup obligations) or goodwill. Our total liability to you under or in connection with these terms in any twelve-month period is limited to the fees you paid us for the services in that period. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

You will indemnify us against claims arising from content or data you provide, your breach of section 7 or 8, or your use of the services in breach of law.

15. General

Changes. We may update these terms. Material changes are notified by email at least 30 days before they take effect, and continued use after that date is acceptance. The current version is always at ad-men.org/terms.html.

Confidentiality. Each party keeps the other's non-public information confidential and uses it only for the services.

Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control, provided it tells the other promptly and works to minimise the effect.

Assignment. You may not assign these terms without our consent, which we will not unreasonably withhold. We may assign them to a successor of our business on notice.

Entire agreement. These terms, the plan descriptions, the SLA, the refund policy and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between us and replace any earlier discussion. Written statements of work for quoted projects form part of the agreement when signed.

Governing law. These terms are governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which AD-MEN is registered, and the courts of that jurisdiction have exclusive jurisdiction, without prejudice to consumer rights that apply where you live.

Contact. Questions about these terms: contact@ad-men.org.