Terms of Use and Service

The short version

These terms cover two things: using this website, and buying hosting or related services from Hartzer Consulting, LLC, which operates Mabank.net from 100 Kings Fort Parkway, Suite 105-334, Kaufman, TX 75142.

They are written to be read. If a paragraph here is unclear, call 214.236.4378 or email agency@hartzer.com and ask, before you sign up rather than afterward. A signed agreement, a written quote or an order form for a specific engagement takes precedence over this page where the two differ.

Using this site means accepting the terms on this page. Opening an account means accepting them as they apply to the service.

Using this website

The guides, service pages and area pages on this site are published for general information. You are welcome to read them, print them, and quote a reasonable extract with attribution and a link. You may not republish substantial portions as your own, scrape the site wholesale, or use its content to train a product you sell without our written permission.

The text, layout and design of this site belong to Hartzer Consulting, LLC. Trademarks and product names mentioned belong to their owners, and mentioning a product is neither an endorsement by us nor an affiliation with it.

Do not attempt to gain unauthorized access to this site or its servers, probe it for vulnerabilities without permission, or interfere with its availability. If you find a genuine security problem, tell us — that is a favor and it will be treated as one.

Acceptable use, and what gets an account suspended

Hosting is a shared environment. One account's behavior affects the others on the same server, which is the only reason this section needs to exist.

Not permitted:

• Anything illegal under Texas or United States law.
• Unsolicited bulk email, whether sent from our servers or advertising a site hosted here. This is the fastest way to damage mail delivery for every other customer on the machine.
• Distributing malware, running phishing pages, or hosting content designed to deceive people into giving up credentials.
• Content that infringes somebody else's copyright or trademark.
• Attacking, scanning or attempting to gain unauthorized access to any other system.
• Processes that consume shared resources far beyond what a small business site uses — runaway scripts, cryptocurrency mining, or using the account primarily as bulk file storage.

How suspension works. For most problems we contact you first and give you a reasonable chance to fix it. For active harm — an account sending spam, a compromised site distributing malware, a phishing page, or something taking the server down for everyone — we may suspend immediately and tell you why, because waiting makes it worse for people who did nothing wrong. Suspension for a compromise is not a penalty; it is containment, and we will help you clean up and get back online. Repeated or deliberate violations end the account.

Nonpayment leads to suspension after notice, and eventually to termination and deletion of account data. Do not let a card expire quietly.

Your content, your domain, and backups

You own your content. Your text, images, code, databases and mail are yours. We claim no ownership of them, and we do not use them for any purpose beyond operating your service. Where we create work for you under a paid engagement — a design, page content, a template — ownership of that deliverable passes to you on full payment, other than any third-party component licensed to you by its own vendor.

You are responsible for having the right to publish what you publish, including images and text supplied to us for a build.

You own your domain. Domains we register on your behalf are registered in your name as registrant, with your contact details. You may transfer a domain away without our permission, subject only to the standard registry rules that apply to everybody — including the lock period following a transfer or a change of registrant. We will provide the transfer authorization code on request from the account holder. We do not hold domains hostage, and a provider that does is telling you what kind of provider it is.

Backups are ours and yours. We take daily backups and will restore from them, and we make a genuine effort to make sure they are usable. That said: the ultimate responsibility for having a copy of your own data is yours. Backup systems fail, restores can be incomplete, and a problem discovered months later may fall outside the retention cycle. Keep an independent copy of anything you could not stand to lose. Every experienced provider says this, and the ones that do not are the ones you should worry about.

Payment, renewal and cancellation

Hosting is billed in advance, monthly or annually, at the rates published on this site. Project work is billed as set out in its written quote, commonly part in advance and the balance on completion.

Renewal. Hosting renews automatically at the end of each billing period unless canceled, so the service does not lapse and take your site down. You will be notified before an annual renewal. Domain names renew on their own registry schedule, which is not the same date as your hosting.

Cancellation. There is no minimum term and no early termination charge. Cancel by contacting us in writing from the address on the account; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period. Ask for your files before the account closes and we will provide a complete copy. Annual prepayments are for the period purchased.

Price changes. Published prices may change. Existing customers get advance notice before a change applies to them, and it never applies retroactively to a period already paid for. Domain renewal pricing is set by the registry for the extension and is outside our control.

Overdue accounts. If an invoice goes unpaid we will contact you. Continued nonpayment leads to suspension and then termination, at which point data may be deleted. If money is tight, tell us — that is a solvable conversation and silence is not.

Warranties, liability and governing law

What we do not promise. We do not guarantee that any website will achieve a particular ranking, a particular level of traffic, or a particular amount of revenue. No provider can, because search engines do not sell placement in organic results and change how they work continuously. We do not promise that a service will be uninterrupted or error-free; hardware fails, networks fail, and software has defects. We commit to competent operation, prompt response, and honesty about what happened.

Services are otherwise provided as-is, without warranties beyond those that cannot be excluded under Texas law.

Limitation of liability. To the extent the law allows, our total liability arising out of the service is limited to the amount you paid us for that service during the billing period in which the problem occurred. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses — lost profits, lost business, lost data beyond restoring from available backups, or reputational harm. This allocation is part of why the service costs what it costs.

Your responsibilities. You are responsible for your account credentials, for the content you publish, for keeping software you control updated where you have chosen to manage it yourself, and for keeping your billing and contact details current.

Governing law. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute belongs in the state or federal courts serving Kaufman County, Texas, and both sides agree to that venue.

Changes. We may update these terms; the current version is always on this page with its effective date, and material changes affecting customers are sent by email. If any provision here is held unenforceable, the rest stands.