These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Mothersoft Technologies, 6, A.M. Jain College Staff Colony, Nanganallur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India – 600061 ("Motherhost", "we", "us" or "our"). They apply to the Motherhost website (www.motherhost.com), the client area (my.motherhost.com), our mobile apps, and every service you order from us (together, the "Services").

By creating an account, placing an order or using the Services, you agree to these Terms and to the following policies, which form part of them:

1. Your Account

1.1 Eligibility and accurate information

You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter a binding contract to use the Services. You agree to give us accurate, current and complete information, including your name, email address, mobile number, postal address and, if applicable, company name and GSTIN, and to keep it up to date in your account. Providing false information may lead to suspension or termination of your account.

1.2 Email address and mobile number

We send invoices, renewal notices, security codes and abuse notices to the email address and mobile number on your account. Use an email address that is not on a domain hosted or registered with your Motherhost account, so that you can still receive our emails if that domain or service stops working. We may ask you to verify your email address and mobile number before you can use the Services.

1.3 Account security

You're responsible for keeping your login details safe and for all activity under your account.

  • Use a strong password that you don't use anywhere else. We recommend turning on two-factor authentication.
  • We may ask for a one-time code when you log in from a new location.
  • Never share your password, one-time codes, or hosting, server or domain credentials with anyone. Motherhost staff will never ask for them, by phone, email, SMS or chat.
  • Tell us immediately at support@motherhost.com if you suspect unauthorized access to your account.

1.4 Delegates

The account owner can invite other people (delegates) to access the account, with the permissions the owner chooses. The account owner is responsible for everything that delegates do on the account, including orders, payments and cancellations they make. Only the account owner can change billing details, manage delegates or close the account.

1.5 Identity verification

We may screen orders for fraud. For high-risk transactions or certain services, we may ask for government-issued identification or other proof before activating an order. If you can't provide it, we may decline or cancel the order. For .IN and .Bharat domains, the registry (NIXI) requires eKYC verification of the registrant, and domains that aren't verified within the registry's deadline may be suspended.

2. Orders and Activation

  • Services are set up after your payment has been received and the order has passed our checks.
  • We may refuse any order or service at our discretion.
  • We won't activate new orders while your account has overdue unpaid invoices, unless we agree otherwise in writing.
  • The price shown at the final step of checkout is the price you pay for that order.

Website migration

When you sign up for a hosting plan, our team will help move your existing website to Motherhost free of charge within 30 days of sign-up. Migration is a courtesy service. Hosting providers store data in different ways, so we can't guarantee that every site or all data can be moved, or how long it will take.

3. Billing and Payments

3.1 Payment in advance and automatic renewal

Services are billed in advance for the billing cycle you choose (monthly, or 1 to 5 years, where offered). Services renew automatically for the same cycle until you cancel them (see section 5). Usage-based charges, such as overage or pay-as-you-go usage, are billed as described on the plan, and may be billed after the usage period (in arrears).

3.2 Invoices and taxes

  • We generate renewal invoices before the due date: currently about 10 days before for monthly services, and about 30 days before for yearly services and domains.
  • We send reminders before the due date and after it if the invoice is still unpaid.
  • Prices are shown in Indian Rupees (INR) or US Dollars (USD), depending on your account currency. Your account currency can't be mixed within one invoice.
  • For customers in India, GST is added as required by law. An unpaid invoice is a proforma invoice, and a GST tax invoice is issued when it's paid. If you provide your GSTIN, it's shown on your tax invoices.
  • TDS: if you deduct TDS from a payment, send us the TDS certificate so that we can credit the deducted amount to your account.

3.3 How you can pay

You can pay invoices online through our payment partner Razorpay (cards, UPI, net banking and wallets), with Motherhost Wallet credit, or by bank transfer where we offer it. It's your responsibility to pay invoices on time and keep your payment details up to date.

3.4 Wallet credit

You can add funds to your Motherhost Wallet and use them to pay invoices. Credit may also be added for refunds or adjustments. Wallet credit is held in your account currency and can only be used toward Motherhost invoices.

3.5 Overdue invoices and suspension

If an invoice isn't paid by its due date, the related service may be suspended a few days after the due date (currently 3 days), until the invoice is paid in full. Domains that aren't renewed before they expire go through the registry's expiry process (see section 4). If a suspended service remains unpaid, we may terminate it and delete its data. Services that we don't suspend automatically may be suspended or terminated by our team.

Invoices for services that have been cancelled or terminated, or for domains that have expired or been transferred away, may be cancelled.

3.6 Price changes

We may change our prices and plan resources. Price changes for an existing service apply from its next renewal, and we'll give you notice before they take effect. Prices for software licenses and third-party products may change when the vendor changes its prices or because of currency exchange rates. If a license price changes during a paid period, we may raise an invoice for the difference, and if it isn't paid, the license may be suspended.

3.7 Promotional codes and discounts

Promotional codes are subject to the terms of each offer: the products, billing cycles and domain extensions it applies to, its expiry date and its usage limit. Unless the offer says otherwise, discounts apply only to the first billing period, and services renew at the regular renewal price. Free domain or free hosting offers apply only to the qualifying plans and extensions in the offer. We may cancel discounts obtained through abuse, for example creating multiple accounts, and invoice the full price.

4. Domains

  • Registrar: for .IN domains (including .co.in and other .in extensions), the registrar is Mothersoft Technologies, accredited by NIXI. Motherhost is Mothersoft Technologies' brand. For all other extensions, Motherhost is a reseller of ResellerClub, and the registrar of record is PDR Ltd. d/b/a PublicDomainRegistry.com.
  • Domain registrations are also governed by our Domain Registration Agreement and the rules of each domain's registry, which can change.
  • Keep the registrant contact details for your domains accurate. Your account profile details are used as the registrant contact. False or outdated details can lead to suspension or loss of a domain.
  • We send renewal reminders before a domain expires (currently 45, 35, 25, 15 and 5 days before). These are courtesy reminders. Renewing your domains on time is your responsibility. We're not liable for a domain that expires because a renewal wasn't paid.
  • After expiry, a domain may go through a grace period and then a redemption period, as set by its registry. Restoring a domain in redemption costs an extra registry fee. After that, the domain may be released for anyone to register.
  • Domain privacy protection is offered where the registry allows it.
  • Free DNS hosting, where offered, is available only while the related domain stays active with us, and may be removed if the domain expires or moves away.

5. Cancellation and Termination

5.1 Cancelling a service

You can cancel a service at any time from your account: open the service and click Cancellation Request. Choose Immediate to cancel as soon as our team processes it, or End of Billing Period to keep the service until its next due date. For domains, open a support ticket and we'll turn off auto-renewal. Cancellation requests must be made by the account owner or a delegate with permission to place orders. Full details are in our Cancellation Policy.

When a service is cancelled or terminated, its data, including website files, databases and emails, is deleted and can't be recovered. Back up your data before you cancel.

5.2 Closing your account

The account owner can ask to close the account from My Profile → Delete Account once every service and domain has been cancelled. We review each request and confirm by email. See Close my Motherhost account.

5.3 Our right to suspend or terminate

We may suspend, restrict or terminate any service or account, with or without notice, if:

  • you breach these Terms or any policy that forms part of them
  • invoices remain unpaid
  • your use of a service threatens the security, stability or reputation of our network or other customers
  • we're required to by law, a court order, or a domain registry
  • our staff are subjected to abuse in any form

5.4 Refunds

Refunds are covered by our Refund Policy.

6. Acceptable Use

6.1 Lawful use

The Services may only be used for lawful purposes. You're responsible for all content and activity on your services, including content uploaded by your own customers or website users. You must not use the Services to:

  • infringe anyone's copyright, trademark or other rights, or sell counterfeit goods
  • host or link to child sexual abuse material. We will suspend such services immediately, without notice, and report them to law enforcement.
  • host pornography or other adult content
  • send spam or host sites advertised by spam
  • distribute malware, phishing pages or fraudulent sites, or carry out scams
  • attack, scan or access any network or system without authorization, including brute-force attacks, IP scanning and denial-of-service attacks
  • promote violence, hatred, harassment or illegal activities

6.2 Content not allowed on shared hosting

The following aren't allowed on shared hosting plans, because they harm other customers on the same server:

  • pirated software, warez, and nulled scripts or themes
  • proxy scripts and anonymizers
  • IRC servers, bots and scripts, and real-time chat applications
  • file-sharing, torrent, file-dump and mirror sites
  • image-hosting services and commercial audio or video streaming
  • autosurf, PTC, PTS and PPC sites, and commercial banner-ad rotation services
  • gaming servers
  • high-yield investment programs (HYIP), Ponzi or pyramid schemes, and unauthorized investment, forex or lottery sites
  • using hosting space as a backup, storage or archive system (see 6.4)

If you're not sure whether your site is allowed, email support@motherhost.com before you upload it.

6.3 Zero-tolerance spam policy

We don't tolerate unsolicited bulk email. Purchased, rented or "safe" mailing lists are treated as spam. Any account that sends spam, or causes our IP addresses to be blacklisted, may be suspended or terminated without notice. Organizations listed on the Spamhaus ROKSO list may not be hosted with us.

6.4 Resource usage on shared hosting

Shared hosting resources are shared fairly between customers. Unless your plan says otherwise, you must not:

  • use more than 20% of a server's resources for longer than 90 seconds
  • run background processes or daemons that keep running
  • run web spiders or crawlers
  • run cron jobs more often than every 15 minutes
  • use more than 50,000 inodes (files and folders, including emails)
  • store backups, file archives, media collections or email archives that aren't part of your website. You may keep one backup of your own account for up to 3 days.

Each plan's disk space, bandwidth, mailbox and database limits are shown on the plan. If you exceed them, we may ask you to reduce usage or upgrade, bill overage where the plan provides for it, or suspend the service until usage is back within limits. Unused allowances don't carry over to the next month.

6.5 Security of your website

Keep the software, plugins and scripts on your website up to date and securely configured. Websites running outdated software that's being actively exploited may be disabled without notice to protect the server. Use spam protection, such as CAPTCHA, on forms and comments.

6.6 Reselling

You may host websites for your own clients only on plans that allow it. You're responsible for supporting your clients and for all content and actions under your account. We provide support only to you, not to your clients.

6.7 Monitoring and abuse reports

We may monitor our systems for lawful purposes, such as security, abuse prevention and system management. If we receive an abuse report about your service, we'll contact you by email or support ticket. If you don't respond within 24 hours, we may suspend the service. To report abuse or copyright infringement, email support@motherhost.com with full details.

7. Backups and Your Data

Backups for shared hosting are described in our Hosting Service Backup Policy. Our backups are provided as a courtesy and are not guaranteed. You're responsible for keeping your own up-to-date backups of all your data. Cloud servers are not backed up by us unless you order a backup add-on. We're not liable for any loss of data.

8. Cloud Servers

  • Unmanaged cloud servers give you full administrative (root) access, and you're responsible for their software, security, updates and backups.
  • For managed cloud servers, we manage the services described in the plan, but you remain responsible for your content and applications.
  • Cloud servers must not be used for any activity prohibited in section 6.1, or for sending bulk email.
  • We may take action, including suspension, if a server is compromised or is harming our network or others.

9. Service Availability

We aim for 99.9% uptime on our shared hosting servers, excluding scheduled maintenance and events outside our control. If a shared hosting server's uptime falls below this in a month because of a fault on our side, you may ask for a service credit by emailing support@motherhost.com within 30 days. Credits are given at our discretion, up to one month's fee for the affected service, as Wallet credit. Uptime is measured by our own monitoring, not by third-party monitors.

10. Support

Support is available by support ticket from your account, and by email at support@motherhost.com. To protect your account, we may ask you to confirm your identity with your Customer ID or Support PIN. We will never ask for your password, one-time codes, or hosting or domain credentials.

11. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Mothersoft Technologies, its owners, employees and agents from all claims, losses, liabilities and costs, including reasonable legal fees, arising from your use of the Services, your content, your breach of these Terms, or any infringement of a third party's rights by you or your users.

12. Disclaimer and Limitation of Liability

The Services are provided "as is" and "as available". We make no warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose. We're not liable for any indirect, incidental or consequential loss, including loss of business, profits or data, or for service interruptions, however caused.

13. Disclosure to Law Enforcement

We may disclose account information to law enforcement or government authorities when legally required, without further notice to you. See our Privacy Policy.

14. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of India. Any dispute is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

15. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We'll post the updated Terms on this page with a new "Last updated" date, and notify you by email or in the client area of significant changes. Continuing to use the Services after the changes take effect means you accept them.

16. Contact Us

Email support@motherhost.com, or write to Mothersoft Technologies, 6, A.M. Jain College Staff Colony, Nanganallur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India – 600061.