Hosting Acceptable Use Policy

Effective Date: 24 October 2026
Website: https://www.ipweb.com.au
Business: IPWeb
Location: Western Australia, Australia

1. Introduction

IPWeb (“we”, “us”, “our”) provides website hosting, managed WordPress hosting, email hosting and related internet services.

This Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”) establishes the rules and conditions governing the use of our hosting services, servers, networks and associated infrastructure.

Our objective is to provide reliable, secure and high-performance hosting services while protecting our customers, infrastructure and other internet users from misuse.

This policy forms part of our Terms of Service and applies to all customers using hosting services provided or managed by IPWeb.

By ordering, accessing or using our hosting services, you agree to comply with this AUP.

This policy applies to activities undertaken through your hosting account, including those performed by users, applications or third parties that you authorise.

Customers are responsible for taking reasonable steps to ensure their websites, applications and authorised account users comply with this policy.

Nothing in this policy excludes, restricts or modifies rights or remedies that cannot lawfully be excluded under Australian law.

2. Lawful Use of Services

All IPWeb services must be used for lawful purposes.

Customers must comply with applicable Australian Commonwealth, State and Territory laws, together with laws applicable to the location of their services and activities.

Our services must not be used to host, transmit, distribute or facilitate unlawful material or activities.

Prohibited activities include, but are not limited to:

Fraud, scams, phishing and identity theft.
Distribution of malware, viruses, ransomware or other malicious software.
Unauthorised access to computers, networks or online accounts.
Hosting or distributing unlawfully obtained personal information.
Distribution of illegal or exploitative sexual content, including child sexual abuse material.
Infringement of copyright, trademarks or other intellectual property rights.
Operating unlawful gambling, financial or investment schemes.
Activities involving threats of violence, unlawful harassment or intimidation.
Operating websites intended to deceive, impersonate or defraud visitors.
Hosting or distributing content prohibited under applicable Australian law.

IPWeb may investigate reports of unlawful activity and take reasonable action, including restricting access, removing offending material or suspending affected services where necessary.

We may cooperate with law enforcement agencies and relevant regulatory authorities where required or permitted by law.

3. Spam and Unsolicited Communications

IPWeb maintains a strict policy against spam and the misuse of email or messaging services.

Customers must comply with the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) and other applicable laws governing electronic communications, including relevant international anti-spam legislation where applicable.

The following activities are prohibited:

Sending unsolicited bulk commercial emails.
Sending marketing communications without the legally required consent.
Sending email using forged or misleading sender information.
Operating unauthorised bulk email distribution services.
Sending email through compromised accounts, websites or scripts.
Operating open mail relays or other systems that facilitate unauthorised email transmission.
Hosting websites primarily used to promote products or services through unsolicited spam.
Using third-party networks or services to distribute spam promoting websites hosted by IPWeb.
Sending repeated unwanted communications through website forms, messaging systems or automated scripts.
Operating email, SMS or message bombing systems.

3.1 Mailing lists and newsletters

Customers operating legitimate mailing lists or newsletters must:

Obtain legally valid consent before sending commercial marketing communications.
Maintain appropriate records demonstrating the required consent.
Clearly identify the sender where required by law.
Provide a functional and accessible unsubscribe mechanism.
Process unsubscribe requests within the legally required timeframe.
Remove recipients who have withdrawn consent.
Protect subscriber information from unauthorised access or disclosure.

IPWeb may request reasonable evidence of subscriber consent where necessary to investigate suspected spam.

Hosting plans are intended primarily for ordinary business and website-related email.

Bulk marketing email services and high-volume mailing systems are not permitted without prior written approval, even where recipients have opted in.

Customers requiring large-scale email delivery should use a suitable specialist email marketing or transactional email provider.

3.2 Email sending limits

Outgoing email from standard cPanel hosting accounts is subject to technical sending limits.

The maximum permitted volume is ordinarily 500 outgoing emails per hour per cPanel account, including emails generated by websites, mailing lists, PHP scripts and other applications.

Lower limits, rate controls or additional restrictions may apply to individual services, accounts or email delivery systems.

This maximum is a technical ceiling, not an entitlement to send unsolicited email or operate mass-mailing services.

Sending limits may be modified where reasonably necessary to maintain deliverability, prevent abuse or protect server performance.

3.3 Email blacklisting

Where customer activity causes hosting infrastructure, IP addresses or domains to become listed on recognised spam or abuse blacklists, we may temporarily restrict outgoing email services while investigating and resolving the issue.

Customers may be required to correct the underlying cause before email access is restored.

4. Prohibited Hosting Activities

The following activities are not permitted on IPWeb hosting services unless expressly authorised in writing and technically supported by the relevant service.

4.1 Network abuse

Denial-of-service (DoS) or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Operating booter, stresser or attack-for-hire services.
Unauthorised port scanning or vulnerability scanning.
Password cracking, credential stuffing or brute-force attacks.
IP address spoofing or falsifying network identity.
Operating botnets, malicious command-and-control infrastructure or unauthorised remote access systems.
Operating open proxies, unrestricted proxy servers or open DNS resolvers.
Operating Tor exit nodes.
Unauthorised network tunnelling or packet forwarding.
Activities designed to interfere with the security, availability or performance of third-party systems.

4.2 Malicious software and activities

Hosting or distributing viruses, spyware, ransomware or malware.
Hosting phishing pages or fraudulent login forms.
Distributing unlawfully obtained usernames, passwords or access credentials.
Operating software intended to exploit security vulnerabilities without appropriate authorisation.
Hosting tools, services or systems whose primary purpose is unauthorised access, fraud or disruption.

4.3 Prohibited applications and services

Unless expressly approved, customers must not operate:

Cryptocurrency mining or related computational mining processes.
Distributed computing projects or resource-intensive background processing.
Artificial traffic generation systems, traffic exchanges or automated visitor manipulation software.
High-yield investment programme (HYIP) websites or unlawful investment schemes.
Unauthorised game servers or private game-server platforms.
Television or subscription card-sharing services.
Unauthorised proxy networks or anonymous relay services.
Public file-sharing, cyberlocker or file-download services.
Unauthorised Usenet or similar distribution services.
Persistent social media crawlers, large-scale scraping systems or automated data harvesting operations.
Video streaming servers or high-bandwidth media distribution services.
Content delivery network (CDN) services operated from the hosting account.
Applications primarily designed for network attacks, credential harvesting or abusive automation.

A normal business website embedding video from a specialist video platform is not prohibited merely because it contains embedded video.

Likewise, ordinary website caching and the use of an approved external CDN are permitted where they comply with the hosting plan.

IPWeb reserves the right to restrict applications that materially compromise the stability, security or performance of its services.

5. Fair Usage and Hosting Resources

IPWeb hosting plans are intended for websites and applications operating within the reasonable resource requirements of their selected hosting package.

Hosting resources may include:

CPU processing.
RAM and memory allocation.
Disk space and storage.
Disk input/output (I/O).
Network bandwidth.
Concurrent processes.
Database connections.
Email sending and storage.
File and inode limits.

These resources may be shared with other customers on the same infrastructure.

Resource limits are designed to maintain fair access and prevent one account from negatively affecting other customers.

5.1 Unlimited and unmetered services

Where a hosting package is described as “unlimited” or “unmetered”, this does not mean that infinite resources are available.

Such services remain subject to:

Physical hardware limitations.
Software and operating system limits.
Reasonable and legitimate website usage.
Applicable resource allocation controls.
The conditions of this AUP.

Unlimited or unmetered hosting does not authorise resource-intensive activities unrelated to normal website operation.

5.2 Excessive resource usage

Examples of excessive usage may include:

Websites repeatedly exhausting available CPU or memory.
Scripts generating unusually high server loads.
Excessively large or inefficient database queries.
Continuous background tasks or resource-intensive cron jobs.
Large-scale automated scraping or crawling.
Applications generating excessive disk activity.
Hosting services causing repeated disruption to other customers.

If your website consistently exceeds its resource allocation, we may contact you to discuss optimisation, reducing resource consumption or upgrading to a more appropriate hosting service.

Where an account presents an immediate and substantial risk to server stability, we may temporarily restrict or suspend the affected service to prevent wider disruption.

6. File Storage and Backup Restrictions

Hosting storage is provided primarily for files directly associated with the normal operation of your website, application or email service.

Standard hosting accounts must not be used primarily as general-purpose file storage, personal backup storage or online file distribution platforms.

Prohibited or restricted storage activities include:

Maintaining large personal photo, music or video libraries unrelated to the hosted website.
Operating public file lockers or download repositories.
Using hosting space as a replacement for commercial cloud storage.
Storing large archives of unrelated personal or business files.
Hosting large media collections primarily intended for streaming or downloading.
Maintaining excessive duplicate website backups or database archives.

6.1 Locally stored backups

Customers should avoid retaining large numbers of backup archives within their hosting account.

This includes backups produced by WordPress plugins, website management tools, control panel software and other applications.

Where excessive locally stored backups create storage, security or performance problems, IPWeb may request that customers remove unnecessary files.

We may remove clearly identified temporary backup files, obsolete logs or prohibited storage material where reasonably necessary to maintain server security or stability.

Where practicable, we will provide notice before doing so.

Customers should download any important backup archives to independent storage.

6.2 Hosting backup services

Where a hosting plan includes scheduled or off-site backups, those backups are provided according to the features and retention arrangements of the purchased service.

Although reasonable care is taken, successful completion and restoration of every backup cannot be guaranteed.

Customers are encouraged to maintain their own independent backups of important website files, databases and business information.

This section should be read alongside the backup provisions in our Terms of Service.

7. Website and Application Security

Customers must take reasonable steps to maintain the security of websites, software and applications under their control.

This includes:

Keeping independently managed website software updated.
Using reputable WordPress themes and plugins.
Removing unused or unsupported plugins and applications.
Protecting account credentials.
Using strong passwords and multifactor authentication where available.
Avoiding the installation of pirated or unlicensed software.
Restricting administrative access to authorised users.
Promptly investigating suspected account compromises.

7.1 Vulnerable software

IPWeb may temporarily restrict or disable vulnerable applications that present a serious security threat.

Where practical, customers will be notified and provided with an opportunity to resolve the issue.

7.2 Compromised websites

If a website becomes infected with malware, compromised or used for malicious activity, IPWeb may:

Restrict access to affected files or applications.
Temporarily suspend the affected website.
Quarantine malicious files.
Request that the customer take corrective action.
Assist with recovery where included in the customer’s service plan or separately agreed.

Normal access will be restored when the security risk has been adequately addressed.

Depending on the hosting plan, substantial malware removal or recovery work may incur additional charges, which will be disclosed before chargeable work is undertaken.

8. WordPress Hosting Requirements

Customers using WordPress hosting must ensure that their websites are used for legitimate purposes and that independently managed themes, plugins and applications are reasonably maintained.

The following practices are prohibited:

Installing malicious or intentionally compromised WordPress plugins or themes.
Running software designed to bypass server security protections.
Using plugins for mass spamming or abusive automated activity.
Operating persistent cryptocurrency mining scripts.
Using WordPress to distribute malware or unlawfully obtained software.
Deliberately disabling or circumventing security restrictions imposed to protect shared infrastructure.

Legitimate WordPress backup, caching, security, ecommerce and SEO plugins are generally permitted, provided their operation complies with resource and security requirements.

Where a plugin or application creates serious compatibility or performance problems, customers may be requested to disable, replace or reconfigure it.

9. Email and Server Reputation

Customers must not engage in activities likely to damage the reputation of IPWeb’s hosting services, mail systems, IP addresses or infrastructure.

This includes:

Sending spam or fraudulent messages.
Hosting phishing or scam websites.
Distributing malicious downloads.
Operating compromised email accounts.
Deliberately bypassing spam filters or email sending restrictions.
Using hosting infrastructure to support abusive activities on other networks.

We may impose reasonable restrictions on services involved in activities that create material security, deliverability or reputation risks.

10. Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attacks

IPWeb may use network protection and security systems to reduce the impact of malicious attacks.

However, protection against all forms and volumes of DDoS attacks cannot be guaranteed.

If a website is targeted by repeated or unusually large attacks that materially affect shared infrastructure or other customers, we may take protective action.

This may include:

Applying traffic filtering or temporary restrictions.
Temporarily limiting network access.
Requesting changes to website configuration.
Recommending additional protection or a more suitable hosting solution.
Temporarily suspending or isolating the affected service where necessary.

Where practical, we will notify affected customers and work towards restoring normal access.

A customer will not automatically be treated as having breached this policy merely because their website is the victim of an attack.

11. Network Ports and Access Restrictions

Certain network ports, protocols and services may be restricted or blocked to protect hosting infrastructure from abuse and security vulnerabilities.

Customers must not attempt to bypass restrictions that are reasonably imposed for security or network management purposes.

IPWeb may adjust network access restrictions where reasonably necessary to address security threats, technical limitations or infrastructure requirements.

If you require a particular network service or port for a legitimate business purpose, please contact us to discuss availability and compatibility with your hosting plan.

12. Intellectual Property and Copyright

Customers are responsible for ensuring that content hosted through their accounts does not unlawfully infringe the intellectual property rights of others.

The following activities are prohibited:

Hosting or distributing pirated software.
Unlawfully distributing copyrighted films, music, books or other protected material.
Operating websites primarily intended to facilitate copyright infringement.
Distributing software licence keys or access credentials without authorisation.
Hosting material that unlawfully infringes trademarks, copyright or other protected rights.

IPWeb may investigate credible infringement complaints and take appropriate action consistent with applicable law.

Customers may be requested to provide evidence that they have permission to use disputed material.

13. Reselling and Third-Party Access

Customers may not resell, redistribute or provide hosting services to third parties unless their purchased plan expressly permits those activities.

Customers using an authorised reseller or agency arrangement remain responsible for ensuring that users operating through their accounts comply with this AUP.

We may request reasonable cooperation from account holders when investigating misuse involving third-party users.

14. Monitoring and Investigation

IPWeb may monitor technical indicators of hosting activity to the extent reasonably necessary for security, performance, service delivery and compliance with this policy.

This may include reviewing:

Resource consumption.
Server and network logs.
Email delivery activity and abuse reports.
Malware or security alerts.
Excessive bandwidth or unusual traffic patterns.
Reported security incidents.
Credible complaints of unlawful or abusive content.

Any access to customer information or website content will be limited to what is reasonably necessary and permitted by law, and handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

We are not under a general obligation to proactively inspect every item of customer content.

15. Policy Violations and Enforcement

IPWeb aims to resolve acceptable use issues fairly and proportionately.

Where a potential violation is identified, we may:

Investigate the activity or reported issue.
Contact the customer and request an explanation.
Issue a warning or corrective action request.
Provide a reasonable opportunity to resolve the issue where appropriate.
Temporarily restrict an affected application or service.
Suspend or terminate services for serious or repeated breaches.

15.1 Immediate action

We may act without prior notice where reasonably necessary to:

Prevent serious security threats.
Stop active malware distribution or phishing attacks.
Prevent ongoing fraud or unlawful activity.
Protect other customers from significant disruption.
Comply with lawful directions or regulatory requirements.
Prevent substantial damage to hosting infrastructure.

Any restriction will be proportionate to the risk where reasonably practicable.

15.2 Repeated violations

Repeated or deliberate violations of this policy may result in termination of the affected service in accordance with our Terms of Service.

Any refund, outstanding payment or data retrieval rights will be determined under the applicable service agreement and Australian law.

15.3 Restoration of services

Where a service has been suspended, IPWeb may require the customer to remedy the relevant problem and provide reasonable assurance that the issue has been resolved before access is restored.

16. Customer Responsibilities

Customers agree to:

Use hosting services only for lawful and permitted purposes.
Maintain appropriate account and website security.
Cooperate reasonably with security investigations.
Respond to serious abuse notifications within a reasonable timeframe.
Avoid activities that adversely affect other customers.
Maintain independent copies of critical website data.
Ensure authorised account users comply with this policy.
Notify IPWeb promptly of suspected compromises or malicious activity.

Customers are responsible for their own content and applications, subject to any obligations IPWeb has agreed to perform as part of a managed service.

17. Liability and Customer Claims

This AUP should be read in conjunction with the limitation of liability and indemnification provisions of our Terms of Service.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, IPWeb is not responsible for losses arising solely from a customer’s unlawful or prohibited activities, where IPWeb has otherwise complied with its own legal and contractual obligations.

Customers may be responsible for reasonable losses and third-party claims directly caused by their unlawful conduct or material breach of this policy, subject to applicable law and the limitations set out in our Terms of Service.

Nothing in this policy excludes consumer guarantees or other statutory rights and remedies that cannot lawfully be excluded.

18. Changes to This Policy

IPWeb may amend this policy to reflect changes in security requirements, hosting technologies, infrastructure restrictions, applicable laws or operational practices.

Where changes materially affect customers, we will ordinarily provide at least 30 days’ advance notice.

Urgent changes required to address security threats, unlawful activity or critical operational risks may take effect sooner, with notification provided as soon as reasonably practicable.

Material changes affecting existing customers will be handled consistently with our Terms of Service and applicable Australian law.

The current policy will be made available on the IPWeb website.

19. Governing Law

This policy is governed by the laws of Western Australia and applicable Commonwealth laws of Australia.

Any disputes arising from this policy will be managed in accordance with the dispute resolution provisions of our Terms of Service and applicable law.