Acceptable Use Policy

This document was last modified on November 10, 2022.

1. General

Mainstream Marketing Incorporated (hereinafter “MAINSTREAM“) employs an Acceptable Use Policy (hereinafter “AUP“) to maintain the integrity and performance of its equipment. In a shared web hosting environment, several clients must share limited infrastructure resources. As such, it is important not to use your hosting account in a way that may negatively affect other MAINSTREAM clients. Our AUP describes what is and is not allowed on our servers. By using any of our services, you agree to comply with our AUP. Failure to comply with the AUP may result in account suspension or termination without prior notice. MAINSTREAM will remain the sole arbiter in what constitutes a breach of our AUP.

2. Illegal Activities

You may not use any of MAINSTREAM’s services for illegal purposes. You agree to comply with any applicable local, provincial, federal and international laws, government rules or requirements. You agree you will not be entitled to a refund of any fees paid to MAINSTREAM if, for any reason, MAINSTREAM takes corrective action with respect to your improper or illegal use of its services.

MAINSTREAM reserves the right at all times to disclose any information as MAINSTREAM deems necessary to satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, or to edit, refuse to post or to remove any information or materials, in whole or in part, in MAINSTREAM’s sole discretion. For our complete privacy policy, please consult at https://Mainstreammarketing.ca/legal/privacy-policy.

3. Spam Policy

MAINSTREAM has a zero-tolerance spam policy. It is forbidden to send unsolicited mail from or to our servers under any circumstance. Penalties amounting to a minimum of $250.00, plus taxes, can be charged for a first offence, and penalties double for repeat offenders.

4. Email Delivery

(a) Shared Web Hosting

Shared web hosting accounts are not designed to be used to send out large quantities of emails simultaneously. There is a limit of how many emails you can send per hour, per account. The number of emails per hour varies based on your hosting plan. Emails sent beyond the authorized limit will not be delivered. Mailing lists can have a maximum of 500 recipients. If you do send more than 25 emails at any given time, you must request us to activate a “throttling” feature in your mailing application when sending, so that every delivery is delayed by a minimum of 10 seconds so as not to overcharge the server. You may not attempt to circumvent this limit by linking multiple hosting accounts together. If you would like to send larger quantities of legitimate commercial emails, please inquire with our team about our commercial Email Marketing service.

You may not send emails with attachments greater than 20 MB from Shared hosting accounts. If you need to share larger files, you are encouraged to upload your files to an external file transfer service.

Each mailbox must not exceed 2GB in total size. Clients are encouraged to download or archive their emails on a regular basis using software such as Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, or Thunderbird using the POP3 protocol, and deleting read emails from the server.

(b) Dedicated Servers and VPS

There is no fixed email delivery limit; however, a $275 administrative fee will be charged to your account if your public IP address gets listed in a public “blacklist” and we need to actively intervene in order to get it de-listed.

5. Backups

Shared or Dedicated Web Hosting Accounts

Shared web hosting accounts may not use their disk space for backup storage, or storage of any files not directly linked from their web sites. We will only store a maximum of 1 backup of your web hosting account on the server at any given time, and for a period not exceeding 7-days.

MAINSTREAM regularly backs up most Shared hosting accounts on its servers, as described on the MAINSTREAM Web Site. Due to the resource-intensive nature of the backup process, MAINSTREAM cannot guarantee the regular and consistent back up and/or restore of accounts that exceed 20 giga-bytes (“GB”) of total data or more than 200,000 files (including emails, databases, regular files, statistics, and configuration files). Accounts that store more than 20 GB of data or more than 200,000 files risk no longer being backed up automatically. Manual backups will still be possible in most situations.

6. Resource Usage

(a) Shared Web Hosting

In order to guarantee reliable service, Shared Hosting Accounts may not use more resources than what would be required by a regular web site in the course of its regular activities. Accounts may not use more than 5% of the total MAINSTREAM system resources for a period longer than 60 seconds. This includes CPU cycles, RAM usage, disk space, and bandwidth. Accounts found to be exceeding the allowed resource usage may be suspended without prior notice in order to prevent serious service degradation. MAINSTREAM will attempt to notify the client whenever possible and work with them to resolve any resource usage problem. Often, these types of problems may be resolved by repairing a faulty script, disabling a resource-intensive application, or banning malicious IP addresses from your account. Clients consistently using excessive resources may be required to transfer their account on a separate dedicated or private server, where resource usage limits are not imposed.

MAINSTREAM server resources cannot be used for any other purpose than to serve data from your web sites. Under no circumstance can the server resources be resold or used for data processing outside of the context of serving web pages or other web-accessible content to your site’s visitors.

Please note that a shared hosting environment is not intended for extremely resource-intensive sites. In these cases, custom dedicated server solutions or virtual private servers are recommended.

(b) Dedicated Servers and VPS

Dedicated servers are permitted to use the full resources available on their machine.

7. Disk Space Usage

(a) Shared Web Hosting

While we don’t impose fixed disk space limits, in order to protect our clients from users consuming an excessive amount of resources, we have established the following rules concerning the use of disk space on Shared Hosting accounts:

• • You may not use your web hosting space to store files that are not directly related to your web site, and that are not linked to directly from at least one section of your web site.
  • You may not store more than 5,000 immediate files in any given folder (or directory), or more than the total files (inodes) allowed by your hosting account.
  • You may not sell or offer free disk storage on our servers to third parties.

(b) Dedicated Servers

Clients are permitted to use the full hard drive space available on their machine.

(c) Cloud Servers

Cloud servers can not contain more than 1,000,000 inodes in order to ensure system stability and performance. If you require more than 1,000,000 inodes, a Dedicated Server will be required.

8. Processes

(a) Shared Web Hosting

All processes invoked by the web server, cron, shell or other should not exceed the following limits:

• • Open more than 64 files simultaneously;
  • Create core dumps;
  • Be executed continuously as a background process;
  • Execute more than 5 threads or sub-processes simultaneously;
  • Execute more than 5 consecutive URL rewrite rules.
  • Be executed for a period longer than 60 consecutive seconds

(b) Dedicated Servers

Dedicated are not limited by the number of simultaneous processes they can run.

(c) Cloud Servers

May not use more than 30% of total system resources for longer than 60 continuous seconds to avoid serious service degradation.

9. Databases

(a) Shared Web Hosting

• • Database users are limited to 30 simultaneous connections.
  • Databases are limited to a maximum size of 1 GB and 1,000,000 records each.
  • The total number of database requests should not exceed 5,000 per hour.
  • Remote database access is only allowed for administrative purposes. It is forbidden to use databases hosted on MAINSTREAM servers in conjunction with scripts hosted elsewhere.

(b) Dedicated Servers and VPS

There are no database limitations on Dedicated and VPS clients.

10. Allowed Software and Scripts

All software and scripts installed on your account must be free of vulnerabilities, viruses, and malware. Any software having vulnerabilities documented on the Internet is strictly forbidden on our servers. On Shared Web Hosting servers, MAINSTREAM provides automatic installation tools that can also handle automatic software updates shortly after updates are released by the vendors.

Popular web applications such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, phpBB, along with their plug-ins, modules, and add-ons, are particularly vulnerable to exploits due to their popularity, so additional vigilance must be used to ensure the software is safe and up-to-date.

Insecure scripts and software may be disabled by MAINSTREAM at any time without prior notice to prevent issues with the server’s security.

11. Unlawful Conduct or Improper Use

You agree not to use MAINSTREAM systems for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by this AUP, and you agree to comply with any applicable local, provincial, federal and international laws, government rules or requirements.

MAINSTREAM reserves the right to terminate services, in its sole discretion, if you are using the services, in association with spam or morally objectionable activities including, but not limited to:

1. Activities designed to defame, embarrass, harm, abuse, threaten, slander or harass third parties;
2. Transmission, distribution or storage of any material in violation of any applicable law or regulation, including Warez and any pirated content or tools;
3. Transmission, distribution or storage of any material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property right without proper authorization, and material that is obscene, defamatory, an invasion of privacy or constitutes an illegal threat, or is otherwise illegal;
4. Misrepresenting or fraudulently representing products/services;
5. Impersonating the identity of a third party;
6. Illegal access to other computers or network (i.e. hacking) and distribution of Internet viruses or similar destructive activities;
7. Violating Canadian or American export control laws for software or technical information;
8. Facilitating, aiding, or encouraging any of the above activities, whether using MAINSTREAM’s network or service by itself or via a third party’s network or service;
9. Interference with a third party’s use of MAINSTREAM’s network or service, or ability to connect to the Internet or provide services to Internet users.

The following uses of our servers are strictly forbidden:

1. Proxy servers;
2. Auto-surf sites;
3. IRC Servers.

12. Adult Content

Explicit or pornographic content is strictly forbidden from Shared Hosting Accounts. Legal adult content is not permitted on Dedicated or VPS servers.

13. Downloads

You may not offer downloads of third-party software (i.e. software, games, or tools that were not directly created by you or for which you do not have an exclusive distribution agreement) from your hosting account. These are commonly referred to as “mirror” download sites. Instead, you are encouraged to link to the vendor’s original download site.

14. Chat Software

Due to the resource-intensive nature of these programs, you may not install and use real-time chat software on Shared Hosting Accounts, unless this software was provided by us.

15. Violation

MAINSTREAM will, at its own discretion, determine what action will be taken in case of a violation of the AUP. MAINSTREAM reserves the right to suspend or terminate any account found to be violating the AUP without notice and without refund of any pre-paid fees. Violation of this AUP could also subject you to criminal or civil liability.

16. Rights Reserve

MAINSTREAM reserves the right to modify this AUP at any time without providing prior notice. You are responsible for all use of the MAINSTREAM services by yourself, your employees, agents, contractors, invitees and customers, whether such use is with or without your consent.

17.Questions and Concerns

If you would like more information about MAINSTREAM’s Acceptable Use Policy, please contact us at info@mainstreammarketing.ca. We will deploy our best efforts to assist you.

18. How to Report Abuse

Please contact info@Mainstreammarketing.ca.  Please ensure you include as much information as you can to assist our investigations. Complaints will be investigated within 2 business days of receipt and we may follow up to obtain additional information. Unless we require additional information, you will not receive a reply or update from us.

19. Severability

Should any provision of these Terms and Conditions be contrary to law, void, enforceable or illegal for any reason, such provision shall be deemed severable from the Terms and Conditions and shall not affect the validity or the enforceability of the remaining provisions.

20. Applicable Law and Jurisdiction

This Agreement and its interpretation are subject to the laws of the province of Ontario and the laws of Canada applicable therein, without giving effect to any principles of conflicts of laws. The Parties must irrevocably submit all disputes arising out of this Agreement to the courts of Ontario, including disputes regarding the Agreement’s interpretation and its effects.