General Terms of Service

All services provided by Accountants Web Design Inc. (hereinafter referred to as AWD) may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any Canadian federal or provincial law is prohibited. This includes but is not limited to, copyrighted material, any material we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secrets and other statutes. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless AWD from any claims resulting from the use of AWD’s services that damage the subscriber or any other party.

Prohibited are content or links to websites that promote illegal activity or present content that may be damaging to AWD's web and mail servers or any other server on the Internet.

Examples of unacceptable content or links include (but are not limited to):

• pornographic content
• racially motivated content
• counterfeit and/or pirated content
• hacker programs or archives
• Warez websites

IF YOUR ACCOUNT IS FOUND TO CONTAIN ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, ILLEGAL MP3 FILES, PIRATED SOFTWARE, HACKER PROGRAMS, WAREZ PROGRAMS, OR ANY OTHER ILLEGAL FILES, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE TERMINATED IMMEDIATELY WITHOUT NOTICE, AND A CANCELLATION FEE WILL APPLY. ADDITIONALLY, ACCOUNTANTS WEB DESIGN INC. WILL NOTIFY THE APPROPRIATE LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITIES OF YOUR ACTIONS.

Traffic Usage

All account subscriptions feature unlimited traffic (bandwidth) allowance subject to a fair use policy. AWD monitors all accounts and may adjust the bandwidth limit to accommodate your usage. At our sole discretion, AWD will consult with you to remedy any issues that cause unfair use causing an inordinate amount of bandwidth by your account. In extreme cases, AWD, in agreement with you, may find it necessary to invoice your account for each gigabyte of bandwidth deemed to exceed a fair use amount.

Server Abuse

Any attempt to undermine or cause harm to a server or another customer of AWD is prohibited. Should you violate the Terms of Services outlined within, your account will be cancelled without compensation.

Refusal of Service

We reserve the right to refuse, cancel or suspend service at our sole discretion.

Zero Tolerance Abuse Policy

AWD will treat everyone with courtesy and ask the same in return. We ask that you treat all staff courteously – without violence, abuse, or harassment. Our staff have the right to work without fear of being abused. Any behaviour verbal or physical which causes staff to feel uncomfortable, embarrassed, or threatened is unacceptable. Our Zero Tolerance Policy includes aggression or threats made in person, over the telephone or in written communication. Zero Tolerance applies to all forms of communication regardless of where it takes place.

We consider inappropriate and non-acceptable behaviour to be:

Verbal Abuse:  any verbal abuse issued with the intent of creating distress, fear or intimidation to another individual, or group of individuals. The use of aggressive, threatening, or abusive language (including the raising of the voice, swearing, cursing, shouting) which threatens or intimidates staff.

Physical Abuse:  any intentional movement of the body which may include touching, gesturing, pushing, striking, stalking, spitting, any unwanted intrusion of “reasonable space” of an employee or an intentional use of any object towards an individual.

Creating a Hostile Working Environment:  any intentional non-physical action that can be considered intimidating or harassing or which involves the explicit or implicit challenge to the safety, well-being or health of an individual.

Hate Crime: any criminal offence, perceived by the victim or any other person, as being motivated by hostility or prejudice based upon the victim’s disability, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or gender identity. This could include verbal abuse, physical assault, damage to property, threats, intimidation, or harassment. If no criminal offence is committed, it will be recorded as a hate incident.

An instance or threat of physical abuse will be reported to the police in the offender's jurisdiction. If the offender presents themselves physically, the police will be contacted to arrange for removal from the premises, after which, any future communication will be limited to postal letters.

Instances of abusive behaviour will be recorded and retained in a file named for the abuser.

In the event of abusive behaviour, all services supplied by AWD to the abuser’s account will be terminated immediately, without compensation or refund. AWD will make the best effort to retain data stored by AWD but makes no guarantee to protect the abuser’s data stored on AWD’s servers.

30 Day Free Trial Period

We offer a 30 Day trial period at no charge, and you do not need to provide a credit card to start.

Your 30 Day trial will begin on the 15th day after you submit your Sign Up request. The two-week period will give you and your design manager ample time to develop a fully functioning website, to the point where it can go live online (if you choose), and start representing you and/or your firm.

We will develop your website using a generic domain name owned and managed by Accountants Web Design Inc. The domain name will not bear any relationship to you or your firm's name. You are not allowed use of the domain once the 30 Day trial has ended. Google will not be allowed to crawl or index the domain or the content of the website during the trial period.

You would maintain your existing email services, wherever they might be hosted.

You are under no obligation to subscribe to our services at the end of the 30 Day Trial.

At the end of 30 days:

If you own a domain name:

If you already own a domain name and choose to subscribe to our services:

We will create space on our web server for your domain name and transfer the newly developed website to that space for use with your domain name. The site will be opened up to Google and its crawl and index search process. 

 

You can maintain your existing email service (i.e., Microsoft 365 Exchange or Gmail) or, if you prefer, we will create as many domain-based email accounts as is practical for your use – i.e. your.name@your_domain_name.com. While we don’t limit the number of email addresses you may have, all accounts will contribute to your total account quota.

If your website is ready before the end of the 30 day period, and you choose to go live with it, we will create space on our web server for your domain name and transfer the newly developed website to that space for use with your domain name. The site will be opened up to Google and its crawl and index search process.

There will be no charge for the remaining days of your 30-day trial.

We will instruct you on how to point your domain name to our servers. Any website that you had previously may be deleted and not recoverable.

You may ask AWD to transfer your domain name to AWD's registrar. With this option, AWD will assume responsibilities for your domain management. You will be required to provide your credit card and you will be charged the cost of the transfer.

If you do not own a domain name and choose to subscribe to our services:

You will need to purchase a domain name in order for us to take your site live. We can provide instructions on how to make your purchase and how to point your new domain to our servers so your website becomes visible.

Alternatively, you can ask us to purchase your domain name on your behalf. With this option, AWD will assume responsibilities for your domain management. You will be required to provide your credit card and you will be charged the annual cost of your domain.

If AWD purchases your domain on your behalf, you will be the domain name owner. AWD will be the Administrative, Technical and Billing contact.

You may ask AWD to transfer your domain name to AWD's registrar and have AWD assume responsibility for its management. You will be required to provide your credit card and you will be charged for the cost of the transfer and the subsequent annual cost associated with owning a domain.

If you choose to subscribe, and you wish to continue to self-manage your domain, AWD will provide instructions on how to point your domain to our servers.

If you choose to subscribe:

You agree to provide credit card details for payment of our subscription fees, which are current at the time, and any other charges that may apply.

You acknowledge that all prices listed anywhere on our website or discussed with you do not include applicable taxes. GST or HST will be applied to your account based on your location.

If you choose to cancel:

The website will be removed from our server at the end of your 30-day trial. If you asked us to initiate email services using your domain name (i.e. your.name@your_domain_name.com), your email services will cease and all email on our servers will be deleted.

Both the website and email files will not be made available to you.

Your domain name if you cancel:

You will always own your domain name.

If you did not transfer your domain to AWD’s registrar, if you wish, we will attempt to instruct you on how to point your domain name back to your original servers, however, we do not guarantee that we will have the details you will require. AWD assumes no responsibility for your former website. Under no circumstance will your former website be restored by AWD.

If you did transfer your domain name to AWD's registrar, or AWD purchased your domain name on your behalf, AWD will transfer the domain to a registrar of your choice after the 60-day Registrar Lock period.

Registrar Lock

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) requires domain providers to lock domains for 60 days after registration. When your domain is locked, we cannot transfer it to a different provider. We cannot unlock the domain during this 60 day period. Once the Lock period expires, we will enable the transfer of the domain to your provider. Any cost for transferring the domain will be your responsibility.

Any questions regarding our 30 Day Trial period should be directed to our accounts department.

Cancellation

While we would be saddened by your decision to cancel your subscription, we shall not ask any questions regarding your decision. You are under no contractual obligation to Accountants Web Design Inc. for any of our services. Subject to our refund policy below, you may cancel at any time.

Cancellation AFTER the first 9 months of a PAID subscription

• All content related to your domain will be backed up and subsequently deleted from our servers
• It is your responsibility to ensure that all Email held on our servers has been downloaded to your local computer for permanent storage 
• We will email you a copy of the database record and associated web files
  • All licensed and proprietary component software that we use in building your website, and related data, will be removed prior to forwarding the website content to you
  • Licensed component software includes, but is not limited to:
    • Website forms
    • Blogs
    • Security
    • Email communications
    • Web Editors
    • All images other than your logo and any images supplied by you for which you have demonstrated ownership or the right to use
      • NOTE:
        IMAGES IN USE ON YOUR WEBSITE ARE LICENSED TO AWD FOR USE BY AWD WHILE YOU ARE UNDER A SUBSCRIPTION WITH AWD
        THEY ARE NOT PART OF THE WEBSITE CONTENT THAT IS OWNED BY THE WEBSITE OWNER AND, SUBSEQUENTLY, WILL NOT BE TRANSFERRED TO YOU AS PART OF YOUR WEBSITE CONTENT
• We will work with you to transfer your domain name to another domain name registrar of your choice. The cost of transferring the domain(s) (if any) will be your responsibility.
• We will not assist in recreating your website on a new server outside of AWD's control.

Cancellation BEFORE the first 9 months of a PAID subscription

• All content related to your domain, including email held on our servers, will be deleted from our servers
• You are not entitled to a copy of the database record and associated web files
• Should you wish to retain ownership of your domain, we will work with you to transfer your domain name to another domain name registrar. The cost of transferring the domain(s) (if any) will be your responsibility

QuickTools Resource Menu and Content

• At no time will the QuickTools Resource menu nor its contents, links, and files be available for transfer to a service other than that hosted by Accountants Web Design Inc.

AWD will not be held responsible for domain names that expire for not having been transferred to another registrar

Refunds

There is no pro-rata refund for accounts cancelled once the subscription has commenced. Your account remains active for the duration of the current paid term.

Account Renewal

Accounts are automatically renewed, so there is no action needed on your part if you wish to continue your subscription.

Accounts whose payments are not approved or otherwise dishonoured may be given a minimum 48-hour grace period, at the sole discretion of Accountants Web Design Inc. before being deactivated. A deactivated account will discontinue all website and email services.

Accountants Web Design Inc. shall not be held liable for email that may become lost or not received due to the delinquency or deactivation of your account

Account Deactivation

Deactivated subscriptions that wish to renew after being terminated may be subject to a reactivation fee of $100 in addition to the subscription fee

Failed Payments

A Failed Payment Fee may apply to your account whenever a credit card payment is declined, for whatever reason. However, we understand that payments can be declined by a credit card provider for many reasons, sometimes beyond your control. Whenever a payment fails, we will work with our customers through any delinquency, as long as you maintain a line of communication with AWD.

Whenever a payment is declined, we will notify you within 12 hours of the failure. If you submit a manual payment either by e-transfer or by providing a replacement credit card within 48 hours of the initial failure, or contact our office with an explanation as to why it failed, a Failed Payment Fee will be waived.

If you do not complete the payment within 48 hours nor make any attempt to respond to our communications, the account may be suspended and a charge of $25 may be levied on the account once it is made whole again.

Should you fail to contact us or respond to our communications after a period of 7 days, the account will be suspended. Should you fail to respond beyond 15 days from our initial attempt to contact you, your account will be terminated. See Account Deactivation above.

Should your card be compromised, even through no fault of your own, you must notify us immediately to avoid a failed payment. You are still responsible for the timely payment of your account. Failing to contact us may result in the application of a Failed Payment Fee unless the account is resolved within 48 hours.

Limitation of Liability

AWD shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental and consequential damages, which may arise from AWD servers going offline or being unavailable for any reason whatsoever. Furthermore, AWD shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental or consequential damages, resulting from the corruption or deletion of any website from one of AWD's servers. All damages shall be limited to the immediate termination of service and pro-rata refund.

Violations

Violations of these Acceptable Use Policies should be referred to AWD's Administration Department. All complaints will be investigated promptly. Failure to follow any term or condition will be grounds for immediate account deactivation.

Disclaimer

AWD cannot be held liable for system downtime, crashes or data loss. We cannot be held liable for any predicated estimate of profits that a client would have gained if their site were functioning. Certain services provided by AWD are contracted; thus, certain equipment, routing, software and programming used by AWD are not directly owned or written by AWD. Moreover, AWD holds no responsibility for the use of our clients' accounts. Failure to comply with any terms or conditions will result in the automatic deactivation of the account in question. We reserve the right to remove any account without advance notice for any reason without restitution as AWD sees fit.

Account Activation

By activating your account with AWD, you agree to the above policies and disclaimer. Upon requesting activation of an account, you are required to accept these policies, guidelines, and disclaimers.

NOTICE: If you sign up for an account and fail to comply with these terms, no refunds will be given. We will, however, advise you by e-mail prior to taking any action to provide you with an opportunity to correct the problem.

Server Uptime Guarantee

AWD guarantees 99.9% service (HTTPS, FTP, POP, IMAP, SMTP) uptime on all plans. Should we fail to deliver this for any given calendar month, your account will be credited a pro-rated amount for the duration of excessive downtime.

Access

You may not share any password or access to any area of the Website granted to you by AWD with any other person except your designated alternate. You must inform AWD by email as to who you appoint as an alternate.

You must keep your username and password and any other information needed to log in to the website confidential and secure. AWD is not responsible for any unauthorized access to your account or profile by other Website visitors and any ramifications of such access. However, under confirmed unauthorized use circumstances, AWD may take reasonable efforts, with reasonable speed, to disable, lock or otherwise address your situation. In the event that you would like to report a breach, please contact your Design Team Manager with the term “Account Breach Notice” in the subject line.

Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

As a provider of website hosting and other Internet-related services, AWD offers its customer (also known as "Subscribers") and their customers and users the means to acquire and disseminate a wealth of public, private, commercial and non-commercial information. AWD respects that the Internet provides a forum for free and open discussion and dissemination of information. However, when there are competing interests at issue, AWD reserves the right to take certain preventive or corrective actions. In order to protect these competing interests, AWD has developed an Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP"), which supplements and explains certain terms of each customer's respective service agreement. It is intended as a guide to the customer's rights and obligations when using AWD's services. This AUP may be revised from time to time.

One important aspect of the Internet is that no one party owns or controls it. This fact accounts for much of the Internet's openness and value. Still, it also places a high premium on the judgment and responsibility of those who use it, both in the information they acquire and in the information they disseminate to others. When subscribers obtain information through the Internet, they must keep in mind that AWD cannot monitor, verify, warrant or vouch for the accuracy and quality of the information they acquire. For this reason, the subscriber must exercise his or her own best judgment in relying on information obtained from the Internet, and also should be aware that some material posted to the Internet may be offensive. Because AWD cannot monitor or censor the Internet and will not attempt to do so, AWD cannot accept any responsibility for injury to its subscribers resulting from inaccurate, unsuitable, offensive or illegal Internet communications.

When subscribers disseminate information from the Internet, they must keep in mind that AWD does not review, edit, censor, or take responsibility for any information its subscribers may create. When users place information on the Internet, they have the same liability as other authors for copyright infringement, defamation, and other harmful speech. Also, because the information created is carried over AWD's network and may reach a large number of people, including both subscribers and non-subscribers of AWD, subscribers' postings to the Internet may affect other subscribers and may affect AWD's goodwill, business, reputation or operations. For these reasons, subscribers violate AWD policy and the Service Agreement when they, their customers, affiliates or subsidiaries engage in the following prohibited activities:

• Spamming: Sending unsolicited bulk and/or commercial information over the Internet. It is not only harmful because of its negative impact on consumer attitudes toward AWD but also because it can overload AWD's network and disrupt service to AWD's subscribers. Maintaining an open SMTP relay is prohibited. When a complaint is received, AWD will investigate and shut down the account that is Spamming. A $250 charge for violating this policy will be charged to the person initiating the SPAM. Furthermore, AWD reserves the right to prosecute for this violation. A $1.00 charge will be assessed PER EMAIL sent should AWD choose to pursue and prosecute.
• Audio/Video Streaming: Audio/Video Streaming is not hosting-friendly. As such, AWD does not allow any streaming of audio or video content. Offending accounts will be suspended without noticed or terminated. Connecting to an acceptable publicly available video source such as YouTube is permissible under certain strict conditions. Contact your Design Team Member for details.
• Adult-Oriented Content: AWD does not allow adult content and will suspend/terminate any offending account.

File Policy

AWD and your website service are not to be used for file hosting and distribution - as such, customers may not host any files larger than 10MB in size that is observed to be available for the sole purpose of download. Such files include but are not limited to .iso, audio/video files or .exe files. If you are unsure whether your file is against this policy, please e-mail AWD's Administration Department.

The following terms of service are not exhaustive. There may be other issues not covered by this document that AWD may have to take action on at the time of infringement. Your usage of our services cannot contain or undertake:

• Obscene Speech or Materials: Using AWD's network to advertise, transmit, store, post, display, or otherwise make available child pornography or obscene speech or material is prohibited. AWD is required by law to notify law enforcement agencies when it becomes aware of the presence of child pornography on or being transmitted through its network.
• Defamatory or Abusive Language: Using AWD's network as a means to transmit or post negative, defamatory, harassing, abusive or threatening language is strictly prohibited
• Forging of Headers: Forging or misrepresenting message headers, whether in whole or in part, to mask the originator of the message
• Illegal or Unauthorized Access to Other Computers or Networks: Accessing, illegally or without authorization, computers, accounts or networks belonging to another party or attempting to penetrate security measures of another individual's system (often known as "hacking"). Also, any activity that may be used as a precursor to an attempted system penetration (i.e., port scan, stealth scan or other information-gathering activity).
• Distribution of Internet Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses or Other Destructive Activities: Distributing information regarding the creation of and sending Internet viruses, worms, Trojan horses, pinging, flooding, mail bombing or denial of service attacks. Also, activities that disrupt the use of or interfere with the ability of others to effectively use the network or any connected network, system, service or equipment.
• Facilitation of a Violation of this AUP: Advertising, transmitting or otherwise making available any software, program, product or service that is designed to violate this AUP, which includes the facilitation of the means to spam, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail-bombing, denial of service attacks and piracy of software.
• Export Control Violations: Exporting encryption software over the Internet or otherwise to points outside Canada or the United States.
• Usenet Groups: AWD reserves the right not to accept postings from newsgroups where we have actual knowledge that the content of the newsgroup violates the AUP.
• Other Illegal Activities: Engaging in activities that are determined to be illegal, including, but not limited to, advertising, transmitting or otherwise making available Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, fraudulently charging credit cards and pirating software.
• Other Activities: Engaging in activities, whether lawful or unlawful, that AWD determines to be harmful to its subscribers, operations, reputation, goodwill or customer relations.
• Hosted material that you do not own the rights to. This material may include but is not limited to images or documents. AWD will not be held liable to any party for files that are deemed not to be legally licensed for use by you.
• We typically do not limit our client’s email space on our servers, but in order to balance the space on our servers, under a fair use policy, we reserve the right to limit the total mail stored.

 As we have pointed out, the responsibility for avoiding harmful activities just described rests primarily with the subscriber. AWD will not monitor the communications of its subscribers to ensure that they comply with AWD's policy or applicable law. However, when AWD becomes aware of harmful activities, it may take any action to stop the harmful activity, including, but not limited to, removal of information, shutting down a website, implementing screening software designed to block offending transmissions, denying access to the Internet or any other action deemed appropriate by AWD.

AWD does not nor will it monitor private electronic mail messages sent or received by its subscribers unless required to do so by law, governmental authority or when public safety is at stake. AWD may monitor the amount of bandwidth used by POP email on our servers in order to manage the efficient operation of said servers proactively. Also, AWD may disclose information, including but not limited to information concerning a subscriber, a transmission made using our network, or a website, in order to comply with a court order, subpoena, summons, discovery request, warrant, statute, regulation or governmental request. AWD assumes no obligation to inform the subscriber that subscriber information has been provided and, in some cases, may be prohibited by law from giving such notice. Finally, AWD may disclose subscriber information or information transmitted over its network where necessary to protect AWD and others from harm or, where such disclosure is necessary, to the proper operation of the system. AWD will never sell information to other services or outside companies.

Finally, AWD wishes to emphasize that, in accepting the Service Agreement, subscribers indemnify AWD for any violation of the Service Agreement, law or AWD policy resulting in a loss to AWD or the bringing of any claim against AWD by any third party. This means that if AWD is sued because of a subscriber's or customer of a subscriber's activity, the subscriber will be responsible for payment of any damages awarded against AWD, plus costs and reasonable legal fees.

We hope this AUP is helpful in clarifying the obligations of Internet users, including AWD and its subscribers, as responsible members of the Internet. Any complaints about a subscriber's violation of this AUP should be sent to the AWD Administration Department

Fair Use Policy

Our hosted website subscription plans employ server storage and fair use policy as follows:

Server Storage

• Server space on your account has an upper limit of 3 Gigabytes of data
• Data includes:
  • all files related to your website, including all software required to render your website online
  • all email data stored on our servers
  • all other data that AWD deems necessary for the ongoing management and security of your account

Email Accounts

• You may have as many email accounts as is practical for your use
• Total email storage is limited to the total server space for your account, less the space required by the data to present and secure your actual website as described above under Server Storage 

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is unlimited as long as:

• it is used as an integral part of your website
• you are not intentionally abusing the service by using excessive bandwidth
• you are not violating our terms and conditions
• you are not impeding our capability to provide other users with our subscription service

We intend that, as long as all subscribers are fair, you should not have to worry about bandwidth limits. If, however, you are distributing large files or streaming video or hosting torrents or similar, then we must take steps to see that you cease doing so. Should you wish to discuss options outside of this policy, please contact us.

AWD CMS Software

AWD uses Joomla®, an Open Source Content Management System Software program to build, maintain and otherwise manage its websites under the subscription to its customers. AWD does not charge you for the base Joomla® software program to create the appearance and functionality of the website. Please refer to Joomla! Trademark & Licensing if you have further questions on the use of the software.

Third-Party Add-On Software and Programming Code and Open-Source Elements

AWD may, from time to time, provide, install and maintain Templates, Components, Modules, and Plugins developed specifically for use in the Joomla® CMS. In general, AWD will not charge you for the use or maintenance of such software. AWD does not grant you an exclusive license to any of the Templates, Components, Modules, Plugins or software used in your website. AWD may reuse the software within other AWD subscribers' websites without notice to you. 

If you decide to cancel your subscription with AWD, the Templates, Components, Modules, Plugins or software used in your website that may be sent to you under the Cancellation Terms above may include any open-source elements that were originally made freely available to AWD and therefore would be freely available to anyone. Open Source is defined as software for which the source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source does not include software for which a subscription is required, which AWD pays for, to use on your website. 

If you, as a subscriber, request the installation of any software or programming code that would be unique to your purposes, and that AWD finds to be compatible with your website, at its sole discretion, AWD may charge you for the purchase, installation, and maintenance of such software. AWD will work with 3rd party vendors to ensure the software runs as expected, however, you agree that AWD cannot be held responsible for the performance of such requested software or programming code. AWD reserves the right to remove such software or programming code without warning or compensation if found to be detrimental to the ongoing performance and security of AWD's web servers.

Website Content and Images

To initially build your website, AWD may contribute content as a template to allow you to create content that is specific to your own practice. While we strongly encourage you to personalize the content, it is not a requirement. If you choose to use the content, you are granted the non-exclusive right to use it without alteration. We do not provide any warranty as to the accuracy of the content as it may relate to your own practice and policies.

AWD may use images within your website to enhance the presentation of your website, illustrate articles and provide visual interest. Images supplied by AWD are licensed by AWD for AWD's own use. At no time does AWD sub-license, rent, lend, assign, gift or otherwise transfer the rights of any images we supply to you under any circumstance. Your subscription does not include the display of any images supplied by AWD beyond your paid subscription with AWD. If you decide to cancel your subscription with AWD, the content of the website that may be sent to you under the Cancellation Terms above does not include any images licensed to AWD in the development and maintenance of your website. 

Change

AWD reserves the right to amend any or all of the above policies, guidelines, and disclaimers without notification. We also retain the right to increase any pricing and make changes to our account plans without notification.

 Updated January 16, 2024