Acceptable Use Policy
1. Definitions
“AUP” means this Acceptable Use Policy.
“CloudLinux” means server side software that monitors and enforces per account resource limits including CPU core allocation, RAM, I/O usage, process count, and inode count on shared hosting environments.
“Customer” means the person or entity who has ordered and accepted services provided by Spin Design Pty Ltd.
“Legacy Service” means any Economy, Premium, or other service added from time to time that is not currently offered for purchase by new or existing customers through any of Spin Design’s service procurement channels.
“Service” or “Services” means any product or service the Customer has signed up to use, including any Legacy Services, shared cPanel web hosting, email hosting, VPS, domain name registration, transfer or renewal, SSL certificates, and SMS services.
“Spin Design” means Spin Design Pty Ltd (ACN 95 094 058 698).
“VPS” means Virtual Private Server, a virtualised server environment with dedicated allocated resources within a larger physical server infrastructure.
2. Acceptance and Responsibility
The Customer accepted the terms of this AUP, together with Spin Design’s General Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, Customer Service Policy, Website Hosting Terms and Conditions, and any applicable Registrant Agreement, when they submitted their order for Services and that order was accepted by Spin Design. The Customer acknowledges that they are solely responsible for ensuring that all Services are used in full compliance with this AUP at all times, and that they are solely responsible for all files, content, code, scripts, and applications that have been uploaded to or executed from their Service.
3. Prohibited Content
The Customer must not publish, transmit, distribute, or store any content or material on Spin Design’s servers or network that Spin Design reasonably believes:
- constitutes child sexual abuse material or any other content that sexualises, exploits, or endangers minors;
- is excessively violent or incites, threatens, or implies violence against any person or group;
- contains hate speech or material that vilifies, discriminates against, or dehumanises any person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or national origin;
- is unfair, deceptive, or misleading under the Australian Consumer Law or any relevant Fair Trading or Consumer Affairs legislation;
- is defamatory, invades a person’s privacy, or harasses any individual;
- creates a risk to a person’s safety, health, or security, or facilitates stalking, surveillance, or doxxing;
- compromises national security or interferes with a law enforcement investigation;
- improperly discloses trade secrets or confidential or proprietary information of another person or entity;
- is intended to assist others in defeating technical copyright protection, including through illegal file sharing, torrent hosting, or the distribution of circumvention tools;
- infringes any trade mark, patent, copyright, or other intellectual property right of any person or entity;
- promotes illegal drugs, controlled substances, or violates import or export laws;
- relates to illegal gambling, unlicensed firearms trafficking, or the supply of weapons;
- constitutes ransomware, malware, spyware, phishing infrastructure, or any other malicious code or content;
- facilitates or promotes AI generated disinformation, deepfake content intended to deceive, or synthetic media used to impersonate a real individual without their consent; or
- is otherwise illegal under laws applicable to the Customer or to Spin Design, or solicits or facilitates conduct that is illegal.
4. Prohibited Uses
4.1 All Shared cPanel Web Hosting Services
Shared cPanel web hosting Services must not be used for storage of backup archives or any data that is not directly related to and accessible through the hosted website itself.
4.2 Legacy Services
In addition to clause 4.1, Legacy Services including shared cPanel web hosting must not be used for storage of email data exceeding 5 GB in total per cPanel Service. This limit applies across all email inboxes, additional directories, and the default catchall email account within the cPanel Service.
4.3 All Services Including Shared Hosting, Dedicated Email Hosting, and VPS
All Services must not be used for any of the following activities:
- IRC scripts, bots, or relay services;
- proxy scripts, anonymising services, or virtual private network relay services;
- image hosting, file hosting, or media distribution services similar to Photobucket, Rapidshare, Mega, or equivalent platforms;
- IP scanning, network mapping, or port scanning tools;
- pirated software, warez sites, or any other platform for distributing unlicensed software;
- banner advertisement serving networks;
- pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes, or unlicensed financial services;
- hacker focused sites, exploit archives, or tools designed to compromise third party systems;
- sale of any controlled substance without having the appropriate government issued permits and licences;
- sites that promote, facilitate, or glorify illegal activities;
- game servers of any kind, including but not limited to Counter Strike, Half Life, or Minecraft servers;
- VoIP services primarily associated with game server communities, including TeamSpeak; or
- any other purpose that Spin Design determines, in its reasonable discretion, to be unacceptable, harmful, or contrary to the integrity of its hosting infrastructure.
5. Security Obligations
5.1 All Customers
The Customer is solely responsible for all content hosted and all activity occurring within their Service. The Customer must:
- keep all PHP, WordPress, Shopify, CMS, CGI, and other scripts and applications updated to the latest stable version as directed by the relevant publisher or developer, as outdated software is a primary source of hosting security vulnerabilities;
- keep all file and folder permissions correctly configured; where unsure of correct permission settings, the Customer should raise a Support Ticket for guidance;
- keep all Service usernames, passwords, API keys, and access credentials in a secure location at all times, and must not use dictionary words, common phrases, or consecutive character strings as passwords; and
- enable two factor authentication on their hosting control panel and CMS administrator accounts where these features are available.
5.2 VPS Customers
In addition to the obligations above, Customers with VPS Services must:
- secure the VPS immediately following provisioning by Spin Design;
- install and maintain firewall software (Spin Design recommends CSF for Linux VPS environments);
- perform security audits and apply operating system and application software updates on a regular basis;
- change the root password on a regular basis and not use weak or predictable credentials; and
- perform all other maintenance required to keep the VPS environment secure and performant.
5.3 Reporting Security Incidents
The Customer must notify Spin Design promptly upon becoming aware of any security incident, suspected compromise, malware infection, or unauthorised access to their Service by submitting a Support Ticket at www.spindesign.com.au/support-ticket/. Where an incident may constitute a criminal offence, the Customer is encouraged to report it to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) at www.cyber.gov.au.
6. Excessive Resource Usage
6.1 Shared Hosting — CloudLinux Limits
CloudLinux CPU core, RAM, I/O usage, process count, and inode count limits apply to all shared cPanel web hosting Services, including Legacy Services. Any Service that exceeds its assigned limits will automatically display a “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable” message to all visitors until resource usage falls below the threshold. Where the Resource Supercharger add on has been purchased, the Customer will have access to additional CPU and RAM allocations as defined by that product.
6.2 Shared Hosting — Prohibited Resource Behaviours
For all shared cPanel web hosting Services and Legacy Services, the Customer must not:
- perform any task that unreasonably consumes server resources and causes degradation of the shared hosting environment for other Customers;
- consistently utilise CloudLinux resource allocations at or near complete utilisation for any single resource type for a sustained period;
- perform any task that generates excessive I/O load or consumes large amounts of system memory;
- consume more inodes than the limit assigned to the Service (where one file equals one inode);
- execute any script that takes longer than one hundred and eighty (180) seconds to complete; or
- use PHP includes that call the full URL of a remote resource instead of a local file path.
6.3 VPS — Resource Limits
For all VPS Services, the Customer must not:
- use more than seventy five percent (75%) total utilisation of all available vCPU cores for a sustained period of more than three hundred (300) seconds;
- sustain read or write disk speeds of more than 1,000 KB/s over any three hundred (300) second period; or
- sustain network throughput (inbound or outbound) of more than 10 Mbit/s over any three hundred (300) second period.
VPS Customers should ensure they have sufficient physical memory allocated to run all applications without continuously relying on swap space, which causes high I/O consumption and degrades VPS performance.
6.4 Excessive Resource Suspension
Spin Design reserves the right to suspend any Service utilising excessive resources without prior notice where the resource consumption is causing or is likely to cause disruption to the shared hosting environment or to other Customers. Spin Design will endeavour to notify the Customer at the time of suspension but notification is not guaranteed. Exemptions to specific elements of this excessive resource usage policy may be considered on a case by case basis by contacting Spin Design’s technical support team.
7. Backups
7.1 Legacy Service Backup Limit
Any Legacy Service that exceeds 10 GB in total size per cPanel Service will be automatically excluded from all Spin Design backup routines and rotations. In this case, Spin Design will notify the Customer by email and offer the following options:
- the Customer may remove unnecessary data to bring the total storage below 10 GB, at which point the Service will be re introduced to the backup rotation;
- the Customer may purchase the Extended cPanel Backup add on for a nominal monthly fee, which raises the backup threshold to 20 GB per cPanel Service; or
- the Customer may continue without Spin Design taking backups and rely solely on their own backup arrangements for all disaster recovery scenarios.
7.2 VPS Backup Responsibility
Where a VPS Service has the backup space add-on, it is the Customer’s sole responsibility to ensure that the backup space has been correctly mounted and formatted, and that backups are actively being taken on a regular schedule. This responsibility applies even if Spin Design staff completed the initial setup and configuration of the VPS backup environment.
7.3 Customer Backup Obligation
The Customer warrants that they will maintain a local or off site backup of their Service data at all times, independent of any backup services provided by Spin Design. As stated in the Website Hosting Terms and Conditions and the General Terms and Conditions, Spin Design will not be held liable for data loss under any circumstances, to the extent permitted by law, and it is the Customer’s sole responsibility to ensure that a tested and restorable backup of all data exists at all times.
8. Spam and Bulk Email
The Customer warrants that they will comply with all of the following obligations in relation to email sent from or through their Service:
- the Customer will not use the Service to send any unsolicited commercial electronic messages (spam), unsolicited bulk email, phishing emails, or fraudulent communications of any kind;
- the Customer will not use any purchased, rented, or harvested email list for individual or bulk email sending;
- all email recipients must have provided affirmative opt in consent to receive communications from the Customer;
- all commercial emails must include a clearly visible and functional opt out mechanism, and any recipient who exercises their opt out right must be promptly removed from the list;
- mailing lists used through the Service must not contain more than four thousand (4,000) individual email addresses per domain;
- all email sent from the Service must comply with the Spam Act 2003 (Cth), the United States CAN SPAM Act 2003, and any other applicable anti spam legislation; and
- the Customer must not attempt to send more than the per domain, per hour email limit assigned by Spin Design. Emails in excess of this limit will be discarded and an undeliverable notification will be issued for up to one hour after the limit is reached.
9. AI Generated Content Hosted on Spin Design Infrastructure
Where the Customer hosts AI generated content on Spin Design’s infrastructure, the Customer warrants that:
- all AI generated content hosted complies with the prohibited content provisions in clause 3 of this AUP;
- the Customer does not host AI generated deepfake content, synthetic media, or AI generated imagery that has been created to impersonate a real individual without that individual’s informed written consent;
- the Customer does not use Spin Design’s hosting infrastructure as the processing environment for any AI model training, large scale generative AI inference, or AI data pipeline without Spin Design’s prior written consent; and
- where the Customer’s hosted website uses AI generated text or imagery in connection with services marketed to vulnerable persons, including NDIS participants, the Customer ensures that all AI generated content has been reviewed by a human professional prior to publication.
10. Non Compliance and Remedies
10.1 Breach Without Known Disruption
Where a Service is found to be in breach of this AUP but the breach has not caused known disruption to other Customers, Spin Design will send an email notification to the Customer’s registered email address requesting that corrective action be taken. The Customer must acknowledge receipt of the notification and advise Spin Design of the steps taken to remedy the breach. Failure to respond or remedy within the specified timeframe may result in suspension without further notice.
10.2 Breach Causing Disruption
Where a breach has caused or is causing disruption to other Customers or to Spin Design’s infrastructure, the affected Service will be immediately suspended. An email notification will be sent to the Customer requesting corrective action. The Service will only be reinstated once the Customer has acknowledged the breach, confirmed that it has been remedied, and paid any applicable Reinstatement Fee.
10.3 Repeated Breach
Where a Service records a prior breach within three (3) months of a new breach of the same or similar nature, the Service will be immediately suspended and the Customer will be required to acknowledge the breach, remedy it, and pay the Reinstatement Fee before reinstatement is considered. Where a Service records two (2) prior breaches within three (3) months of a new breach, Spin Design may terminate the Service and notify the Customer that the Service must be moved to another provider immediately. Spin Design will supply a backup archive of files if available. Termination of the Service and all associated backup data will occur within seven (7) days of the termination notice.
10.4 Suspension Notifications
Suspension notifications will be sent to the Customer’s nominated account email address. The Customer must ensure that this address is kept current at all times. Spin Design recommends the use of an externally hosted email address (not hosted on the suspended Service) to ensure continued delivery of important service notices.
10.5 Third Party Unblocking Costs
The Customer will be solely liable for any fees charged by third party providers to Spin Design for the unblocking of any restrictions they have placed on Spin Design’s network or IP addresses due to the Customer’s breach of this AUP.
10.6 No Refund on Breach
As set out in the Website Hosting Terms and Conditions and General Terms and Conditions, no refund will be issued for any unused hosting period where a Service has been suspended or terminated as a result of a breach of this AUP or any other Spin Design policy.
11. Amendments
Spin Design may amend this AUP at any time. Material amendments will be published on the Spin Design website with the effective date and version number displayed and, where they affect Customers with active Services, will be notified by email at least thirty (30) days before they take effect. Continued use of any Spin Design Service after the effective date of an amendment constitutes acceptance of the amended AUP.
12. Related Documents
This AUP forms part of the Spin Design legal document suite. All of the following documents apply in conjunction with this AUP and are available at www.spindesign.com.au/terms-conditions/:
- General Terms and Conditions (Version 2.0, 2026)
- Website Hosting Terms and Conditions (Version 2.0, 2026)
- Privacy Policy (Version 1.0, 2026)
- Customer Service Policy (Version 2.0, 2026)
- Service Level Agreement (Version 2.0, 2026)
- ICANN Registrant Rights and Responsibilities
1. Definitions
2. Acceptance
3. Unacceptable Content and Material
g. Compromises national security or interferes with an investigation by any law
enforcement agency;
h. Improperly exposes trade secrets or any other confidential or proprietary information of another person or business;
i. Is intended to assist others in defeating technical copyright protection, which includes illegal file sharing and torrents;
j. Clearly infringes on another person or businesses trademark, patent or property;
k. Promotes illegal drugs or violates import or export laws;
l. Relates to illegal gambling or firearms trafficking;
m. Is otherwise illegal or solicits conduct that is illegal under laws applicable to the Customer or to Spin Design;
n. Is otherwise malicious, fraudulent, or may result in retaliation against Spin Design by offended viewers.
4. Prohibited Use
4.1. Shared cPanel web hosting Services may not be used for the following purposes:
a. For storage of backup archives nor any data which is not directly related to and accessible through the website itself.
4.2. Legacy Services, including but not limited to shared cPanel web hosting may not be used for the following purposes:
a. For storage of backup archives nor any data which is not directly related to and accessible through the website itself.
b. For storage of email data exceeding 5GB in total per service; this total encompasses all email inboxes, additional directories within the cPanel service including the default catchall email account.
4.4. Services, including but not limited to shared cPanel web hosting Services, Dedicated Email hosting Services and Virtual Private Servers (VPS), may not be used for any of the following activities:
a. IRC scripts or bots;
b. Proxy scripts or anonymous browsing utilities;
c. Image or file hosting scripts (similar to Photobucket, Rapidshare, etc);
d. IP scanners;
e. Pirated software or “warez” sites;
f. Banner advertisement services;
g. Lotteries, banking or investment sites (such as Pyramid or Ponzi schemes);
h. Hacker focussed sites, archives or programs;
i. Sale of any controlled substance without having the appropriate permits;
j. Sites promoting illegal activities;
k. Any game servers (such as Counter Strike, Half Life, etc);
l. Any VoIP service primarily associated with game server communities (such as
TeamSpeak);
m. Any other purpose that Spin Design has deemed as unacceptable.
5. Security
5.1. The Customer acknowledges that they are solely responsible for what is hosted from and stored in the Service and/or Legacy Service.
5.2. The Customer agrees to keep all PHP and CGI scripts up to date with the latest release or stable versions as directed by the publisher or developer. Failure to do this may result in security vulnerabilities leading to your Service being compromised, defaced or destroyed.
5.3. The Customer warrants that their Service usernames and passwords will be kept in a safe and secure location at all times, and that they will not use dictionary words or consecutive strings as a password.
5.4. The Customer agrees to keep all file and folder permissions set correctly. If you are unsure of what permissions should be set, please login to VIPControl and use the Permission Fixer.
5.5. Customers with VPS Services are required to:
a. Ensure the VPS is secured as soon as the Service has been provisioned by Spin Design;
b. Install firewall software (we recommend CSF);
c. Perform security audits and updates of system software on a regular basis;
d. Change the root password on a regular basis;
e. Perform any other maintenance that is required on the VPS Service on a regular basis.
g. Operate a script which does not close MySQL connections upon completion;
h. Run any server-side or stand-alone processes or daemons;
i. Run cron entries with intervals of less than 15 minutes;
j. Use PHP includes that call the full URL instead of a local file (eg.
include(http://domainname.com/file.php) instead of using include(“file.php”)
6. Excessive Resource Usage
6.1. CloudLinux CPU core, RAM allocations, I/O usage, Processes and inodes count limits apply to all shared cPanel web hosting Services, including Legacy Services. Any Service which exceeds these limits will automatically display a “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable” message to all visitors until the resource usage falls below the assigned limits.
6.2. Where the Resource Supercharger addon has been purchased, the Customer will have access to additional CPU and RAM allocations within the CloudLinux system as defined by the product add-on.
6.2. For all shared cPanel web hosting Services and Legacy Services, the Customer may not:
a. Perform any task which unreasonably consumes server resources leading to
degradation of the shared hosting server environment for other Customers;
b. Consistently utilise the resource allocations as set within CloudLinux to a level at or near to complete utilisation for any singular resource type;
c. Perform any task which generates excessive IO load;
d. Consume large amounts of system memory;
e. Consume more than the allocated inode limit assigned to the Service, where 1 file equals 1 inode;
f. Execute a script which takes longer than 180 seconds to complete;
6.3. For all VPS Services, the Customer:
a. May not use more than 75% total utilisation of all available vCPU cores for more than 300 seconds;
b. May not have a sustained read or write speed of more than 1,000Kb/s over a 300 second period;
c. May not have a sustained network throughput (in or out) of more than 10Mbit/s over 300 seconds;
d. Should ensure that they have sufficient physical memory to run all applications and do not continuously use swap space, which causes high IO consumption.
7. Backups
7.1. Any Legacy Service that exceeds 10GB in size per cPanel Service will be automatically excluded from all backup routines and rotations. In this case, Spin Design may notify the Customer via email and give them the option to:
a. Remove any data that is not needed and bring the total storage back to being under
the 10GB limit, allowing the Service to be re-introduced to the backup routine and rotation;
b. Purchase the Extended cPanel Backup add-on for a nominal monthly fee which raises the limit to 20GB per cPanel Service;
c. Continue without Spin Design taking backups and rely solely on their own backups for all disaster recovery scenarios.
7.2. The Customer acknowledges if a VPS Service has the backup space add-on it is their sole responsibility to ensure that the backup space has been correctly mounted, formatted and that backups are actively being taken, even if Spin Design staff completed the initial setup and configuration of the VPS.
7.3. The Customer warrants they will maintain a local or off-site backup of their Service data at all times.
7.4. As per the Terms of Service, Spin Design will not be held liable for data loss under any circumstances and it is the Customer’s sole responsibility to ensure that they have a backup of all data.
8. Spam and Bulk Email
8.1. The Customer warrants that they will not knowingly use the Service for sending any unsolicited email or any unsolicited bulk email (commonly known as spam).
8.2. The Customer may not use any purchased email list for individual or bulk email sending.
8.3. Spin Design assigns a limit to outbound emails per domain, per hour on all Service(s). Any Customer who attempts to send more than the allowed and allocated amount will receive an undeliverable message for up to one (1) hour after the limit has been reached. All email over the limit will be discarded.
8.4. The Customer agrees that all mailing list applications, including but not limited to Mailman, will have no more than 4,000 individual email addresses per list per domain.
8.5. The Customer warrants that all mailing lists used are “opt-in” by the recipient, and all recipients in the list have consented to be on the list.
8.6. The Customer warrants that all commercial emails sent contain an appropriate mechanism for the recipient to “opt-out” of the list.
8.7. The Customer warrants that all email sent, either individually or bulk, complies with the Australian Spam Act 2003, the United States CAN-SPAM Act 2003 and any other relevant Spam-related legislation that may be created or amended from time to time.
9. Non-compliance and Remedy
9.1. Any Service(s) that are found to be in breach of this policy but have not caused any known inconvenience to other Customers will result in an email notification being sent to the Customer asking for changes to be made in order to comply with this policy. The Customer is required to acknowledge this email and advise Spin Design what actions have been taken to remedy the breach. Failure to comply may result in the Service(s) being suspended without additional warning.
9.2. Any Service(s) that are found to be in breach of this policy that has caused issues and/or degradation of service for other Customers will result in immediate suspension followed by an email notification requesting changes be made in order to comply with this policy. The Service(s) will only be unsuspended once the Customer has acknowledged the breach and agreed to remedy the breach.
9.3. Any Service(s) that are found to be in breach of this policy and have recorded a prior breach within three (3) months of the new breach will result in immediate suspension followed by an email notification requesting changes be made in order to comply with this policy. The Service(s) will only be unsuspended once the Customer has acknowledged the breach and agreed to remedy the breach, and a re-activation fee has been paid in full.
9.4. Any Service(s) that are found to be in breach of this policy and have recorded two (2) prior breaches within three (3) months of the new breach will result in immediate suspension followed by an email notification advising that the Service(s) must be moved to another provider immediately. Spin Design will supply the Customer with a backup archive of their files if available, and termination of the service and all backup data will occur within seven (7) days. If the Customer does not respond to this notice, the Service(s) may be terminated without further notification.
9.5. Suspension notification emails (as detailed in 9.1 to 9.4) will be sent to the nominated account holder email address, and the Customer warrants that, in line with the Terms of Service, this address will be kept current and up to date. We recommend using an externally hosted email address to ensure the continued delivery of important service information and notifications.
9.6. The Customer will be solely liable for any fees or charges that are paid by Spin Design to third-party providers for the unblocking of any restrictions they have placed due to Service(s) operated by the Customer breaching this policy.
9.7. As per the Terms of Service, the Customer will not be entitled to a refund if any of Spin Design Terms, Policies and Agreements have been breached.
9.8. The Customer has read this far and is eligible for a discount for reading the Acceptable Use Policy.
10. Changes
10.1. Spin Design may amend our Acceptable Use Policy at any time. Changes to this agreement will become effective upon their publication to our website.
10.2. Continued use of the Service(s) constitutes acceptance of the amended terms. If you do not wish to accept the amended terms, you may request cancellation of your Services) in-line with our cancellation policy found within our Terms of Service.
If you have any questions about this agreement please contact our Customer Care team via email at info@spindesign.com.au