Domain & Hosting Terms

Last updated: 10 April 2025 · Questions: support@neelnetworks.com · Governing law: Mumbai, India

These terms govern every domain registration, web hosting, email hosting, SSL and related service we provide, whether it is included free with a project, purchased separately, or managed for you on an ongoing basis.

By engaging us for a website project, or by using domain and hosting services provided by us, you accept these terms. They should be read alongside our Terms of Service and Refund Policy.

Every qualifying website package includes a complimentary one-year domain registration and hosting on our managed server, at no additional cost beyond your project fee. Specifically, you receive:

• One domain name for one year on a standard extension — .com, .net, .org or .in. The domain is registered in your name and belongs to you.
• Shared web hosting for one year on our managed server, which is well suited to small and medium business websites, blogs, portfolios and standard eCommerce stores.
• Complete setup and configuration — DNS pointing, CMS installation, security essentials, performance configuration and a staging environment where applicable.
• An SSL certificate, installed and configured so that your site loads over HTTPS from the first day.
• Basic email configuration for addresses at your own domain, where this forms part of your plan.
• Technical support for domain and hosting matters throughout the first year, within our standard response times.

For convenience, the domain and hosting are initially held within our business registrar account so that everything can be managed centrally. The domain nonetheless remains your legal property throughout; we simply act on your behalf, and ownership can be moved into your own account whenever you ask.

The following fall outside the free offer and are quoted separately if you need them:

• Premium domain names — high-demand or auction-priced domains costing more than standard registration
• Specialty extensions such as .co.uk, .com.au, .io, .ai, .store, .tech, .agency, .design or .shop
• Additional domains. The offer covers one domain for each qualifying project
• Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 professional email, which are paid services billed by those providers
• VPS or dedicated server hosting. The free offer is on shared hosting; higher tiers are available separately
• Domain privacy or WHOIS masking, where the registrar charges for it
• Paid CDN services beyond the free tier
• High-volume transactional email services such as SendGrid, Mailgun or Amazon SES
• The second year onwards. Renewal of both domain and hosting after the first free year is your responsibility, billed at the rates prevailing at the time

This is perhaps the most important section on this page, so we will be very clear: your domain is yours, always. We do not own, sell, lease or hold any claim over a domain registered for a client.

• Registered in your name. We use your name and business details as the registrant, so you are the legal owner from the first day.
• Held in our account for convenience. During the service period the domain sits within our registrar account so that DNS and hosting can be managed together. This is ordinary industry practice, in much the same way that an accountant manages your books without owning your money.
• Transferable at any time. You may ask for the domain to be moved to your own registrar account whenever you wish, and we will provide the EPP authorisation code and all transfer details within 5 business days of your written request.
• No lock-in. We do not lock domains or withhold them. If you choose to work with another agency or to manage hosting yourself, your domain goes with you.
• If ownership is ever questioned, our records — your project agreement, payment history and the registration date — establish your ownership.

We have registered and managed domains for more than 550 clients since 2012, and not one has ever been withheld or disputed.

The free offer runs for exactly twelve months from the date of registration. After that, renewal is your responsibility, and this is how we handle it.

1. A reminder 30 days in advance. We email you at least 30 days before expiry with renewal options and current pricing, and send a second reminder at 14 days if we have not heard from you.
2. You confirm and pay. Renewal charges vary a little by extension, prevailing market rates and your hosting plan. We always share the exact amount before anything is processed. You are never charged automatically.
3. We renew on your behalf for a further year, with no interruption to your website or email.
4. If the renewal is not paid in time, your website goes offline and email stops working. Registrars usually allow a grace period of 15 to 30 days for recovery, but this varies and cannot be guaranteed, and recovery may carry additional fees.

Please do keep your contact email up to date with us, as reminders go to the address on file. If we cannot reach you and the services lapse, we are not able to accept responsibility for the missed reminder.

Where a client does not respond to renewal reminders, we allow the services to lapse rather than continue paying for them indefinitely. Once a domain passes the registrar's grace period it may become available for anyone to register, and recovery is then no longer possible.

You are free to move to another provider at any time, and we will always co-operate fully.

A standard transfer, more than 60 days before renewal

1. Tell us in writing. Email support@neelnetworks.com with your domain name, the receiving registrar or host, and your preferred timing.
2. We prepare and release everything within 5 business days — we unlock the domain and provide the EPP authorisation code, a DNS records export, a backup of your hosting files and a database export, and we will guide you through the steps if that helps.
3. Your new provider completes the transfer, which normally takes 5 to 7 days. We keep your existing hosting live throughout so that there is no downtime during the migration.
4. You confirm, and we close the old account. Please test everything thoroughly before confirming.

A transfer requested within 60 days of renewal

If the renewal date is less than 60 days away, the domain and hosting must first be renewed for a further twelve months through us before the transfer can proceed, and that renewal must be paid before we release the EPP code. This is standard across the industry, and it exists to prevent the domain expiring mid-transfer, which can result in its permanent loss.

Please do not begin a transfer at the registrar without speaking to us first. An uncoordinated transfer can cause DNS conflicts, email disruption and website downtime. A short message to us beforehand avoids all of it.

Once a domain or hosting account has moved away from our management, responsibility for configuration, downtime, content migration and email passes to your new provider.

Hosting is not all the same, and understanding the difference helps you choose well as your website grows.

Shared hosting

Several websites share one physical server and its resources. It is the most affordable option and is entirely sufficient for small business websites, blogs, portfolios and lower-traffic eCommerce. Performance can be affected by other sites on the same server at peak times, and there is limited control over server configuration. This is what we provide free in the first year.

Virtual private server (VPS)

A physical server is divided into isolated virtual servers, so you have dedicated memory and processing power that neighbours cannot affect. It offers root access and more control, and suits medium-traffic websites, growing eCommerce, SaaS platforms and custom applications. It requires more technical management, or a managed plan, and costs more than shared hosting.

Dedicated server

An entire physical server used only by you. It gives maximum performance, the highest level of isolation and full control, and is appropriate for very high-traffic sites, large eCommerce operations, enterprise platforms and data-sensitive applications. It requires real technical expertise to run, or a fully managed plan, and is the most expensive option.

When to consider moving up

We will tell you honestly when an upgrade is genuinely needed, and equally when it is not.

While your website is hosted with us, the following are included:

• Uptime monitoring. We monitor server availability and respond to downtime alerts, targeting 99.5% or better.
• Server-level security — firewalls, malware scanning, DDoS mitigation and regular patching.
• Regular server backups, with frequency and retention depending on your plan.
• Server software updates — PHP, MySQL and web server software, applied in step with your website's compatibility requirements.
• DNS management. We maintain your records and make requested changes within one business day.
• SSL management — installation, configuration and renewal.
• Technical support for server errors, hosting configuration and email delivery issues.
• Migration assistance if you decide to move, including your full backup and database export.

We manage the server infrastructure. The following rest with you, whether or not you have back-end access:

• Your content. You are responsible for everything published on your website. Unlawful content, material that infringes copyright, and spam may lead to immediate suspension.
• Plugins and themes you install. If you have administrator access and add plugins or themes yourself, keeping them updated and dealing with any conflict or vulnerability they introduce is your responsibility. Please see our Credential Handover Disclaimer.
• Password security on your CMS administrator account, hosting control panel and email. A compromise arising from exposed credentials is not covered by the hosting service.
• Email usage. Hosting email accounts may not be used for unsolicited bulk email. Doing so can have your domain blacklisted and your hosting suspended.
• Staying within your plan's resources. Sustained heavy use of processing, memory or disk space may require a move to a higher tier.
• Keeping your contact details current, since renewal reminders and critical alerts go to your registered email.
• Your own independent backup. We maintain server backups for disaster recovery, but we would strongly encourage you to keep your own copy of files and database in a separate, secure place.

The free first-year hosting includes basic email at your own domain.

What is covered

• Email accounts at your domain, the number depending on your plan
• Webmail access through the browser
• IMAP, POP3 and SMTP configuration for Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird and similar
• Basic spam filtering at server level

Its limitations

• It is not built for volume. Newsletters, campaigns and high-volume transactional email should go through a dedicated service such as Mailchimp, SendGrid or Mailgun.
• Storage quotas apply. A mailbox that exceeds its quota stops receiving new mail.
• Deliverability cannot be guaranteed. Mail from a shared server occasionally meets a recipient's spam filter, which is a limitation of shared hosting rather than something we can control.
• It is not Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Those are separate services purchased from Google or Microsoft.

For professional business email with stronger deliverability and collaboration tools, we usually suggest Google Workspace, billed directly by Google. We are glad to help you set it up.

Every website we host is secured with an SSL certificate, so that traffic between your visitors and your website is encrypted.

• Free SSL is included on all hosted websites and renews automatically.
• It covers your main domain and its www version. Additional subdomains may need their own certificate.
• Wildcard SSL, covering all subdomains, is available as a paid upgrade.
• Extended validation certificates are available at additional cost for regulated industries such as finance, healthcare and legal services.

It is worth understanding what SSL does and does not do. It encrypts traffic between the browser and the server; it does not protect against hacking, malware or vulnerabilities in your website's code or plugins.

If you move your hosting elsewhere, the certificate does not travel with it. Your new provider will need to install one, and without it browsers will show a “not secure” warning that can harm both visitor confidence and search rankings.

We make every reasonable effort to keep your website available at all hours. No hosting provider anywhere can promise 100% uptime, so here is our position honestly stated.

We target a minimum of 99.5% uptime each month on our shared infrastructure, which allows for roughly 3.6 hours of downtime. In practice, both planned and unplanned downtime is usually far less.

Within our control

• Server hardware failures, to which we respond immediately
• Planned maintenance, scheduled during quiet hours, typically 2 am to 5 am IST, and announced in advance
• Server software updates, applied during those windows

Outside our control

• Outages at the upstream network provider
• DDoS attacks directed at the server
• Natural disasters, power failures or other events affecting the data centre
• Downtime caused by your own plugins, code or database load
• Outages at third-party services such as payment gateways, APIs and CDNs

If your website is down, please write to support@neelnetworks.com. A site that is completely unavailable is our highest priority and we respond within 4 to 8 business hours.

We may suspend or terminate hosting in the following circumstances:

• Renewal not paid. Hosting not renewed by the expiry date is suspended and the website goes offline. A 7-day grace period applies before files are removed.
• Unlawful content, including pirated software or media, adult content without proper age verification, material promoting violence or terrorism, or defamatory content.
• Spam or abuse — using the server or email accounts to send unsolicited bulk mail or phishing messages, which can also damage your domain's reputation permanently.
• Resource abuse — sustained use of server resources at a level that affects other clients, without moving to a suitable plan.
• Security threats. If a website is compromised and is serving malware or attacking other servers, we may suspend it immediately to protect the wider infrastructure.
• A material breach of these terms or of our Terms of Service.

Other than in cases of immediate security risk, we give at least 48 hours' written notice by email before suspending anything, so that you have a chance to put matters right. Where the risk is immediate, suspension may come first and an explanation immediately afterwards. Once the issue is resolved, hosting is restored within 4 business hours.

We are not able to accept liability for loss, damage, loss of data or revenue, or business interruption arising from:

• Downtime caused by circumstances outside our control, including upstream outages, DDoS attacks, natural disasters, power failures and other force majeure events
• A domain expiring because renewal reminders were not acted upon, or because the contact email on file was out of date
• Data loss following server failure. We maintain backups, but no provider can guarantee zero data loss in every circumstance, which is why an independent backup of your own matters
• Email deliverability, which depends on recipient spam filters, domain reputation and settings at the receiving end
• Failures at third-party services such as payment gateways, APIs, CDNs and Google services
• Security incidents arising from weak or shared passwords, or from vulnerable plugins installed by you
• Anything occurring after a domain or hosting account has been transferred away from us
• The loss of a domain whose registration was allowed to lapse and which has since become publicly available

Where we are found liable for a hosting matter arising from our own error, our total liability is limited to the amount paid for hosting in the 6 months before the claim.

Nothing here excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded under Indian law.

These terms are governed by the laws of India, and any dispute concerning domain registration or hosting is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Mumbai, Maharashtra.

We may update these terms from time to time, and the current version is always published here. Material changes are communicated to active clients at least 14 days before they take effect.

We reply to hosting queries within one business day.