Terms of Service

1. About These Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Sapling Hosting (ABN 67 258 304 892) ("Sapling", "we", "us"), based in New South Wales, Australia. They govern your access to and use of the Sapling game-server hosting platform, the control panel, our websites, and everything we provide with them (together, the "Service").

By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

If you are agreeing on behalf of a business or other organisation, you confirm you are authorised to bind it, and "you" means that organisation.

2. Definitions

• Account — your Sapling login and the settings, servers and billing attached to it.
• Server — a game server instance you create and run through the Service.
• Content — anything you or your Players upload, create or store through the Service: world saves, configuration, mods, plugins, and similar.
• Player — a person who connects to a Server you run. Players do not have an Account with us and are not party to these Terms.
• Acceptable Use Policy or AUP — the rules in section 9.

3. Eligibility and Your Account

• You must be at least 13 years old to hold an Account. If you are under 18, a parent or guardian must agree to these Terms on your behalf and is responsible for your use of the Service.
• You are responsible for everything that happens under your Account and on Servers you own or co-administer.
• Keep your login credentials secure and tell us promptly if you believe they have been compromised. We offer two-factor authentication and recommend you enable it.
• One Account per person. To let someone help run a Server, add them as a co-administrator rather than sharing your login — they get their own Account and their own audit trail.
• You must give accurate account information and keep it up to date.

4. The Service We Provide

We provide a game server, the control panel around it, and the automation described on our site — including nightly backups, game updates, scheduled restarts, and the monitoring behind them. Your Server runs on hardware we own and operate in Australia.

Pilot phase. While the Service is in its pilot, it is provided free of charge and on an "as is" basis while we continue to develop it. Features may change, and availability is not guaranteed during this phase. We will give you clear notice by email before the pilot ends and paid plans begin.

We may add, change, or remove features of the Service over time. We will not make a change that materially reduces the core functionality of a paid plan you are on without letting you know.

5. Plans, Fees and Payment

• Paid plans are billed monthly in advance. There is no annual term.
• You authorise us to charge your nominated payment method at each renewal until you cancel.
• Payments are processed by our payment provider (Stripe). Card details are handled entirely by them and do not reach our systems.
• We may change our prices. We will give you at least 30 days' notice before a price change affects your plan, and a change never applies retrospectively to a period you have already paid for.
• If you think a charge is wrong, contact us within seven days and we will investigate and put right any error.
• We do not pro-rate refunds for cancelling part-way through a monthly period on a monthly plan, except where the Australian Consumer Law or another law requires otherwise (see section 17).
• If you dispute a charge with your bank or card provider rather than contacting us first, we may suspend your Account while the dispute is resolved.
• While the Service is in its pilot, nothing is charged and no payment method is required.

6. If a Payment Fails

We chase a failed payment before we act on it, and the timeline is deliberately public so there are no surprises:

• Days 1, 3 and 6 — we email you. Your Server keeps running.
• Day 7 — the Server is suspended. It stops, but nothing is deleted: your files, worlds and backups are all still there and it returns as soon as payment succeeds.
• Day 30 — a reminder that the Account still needs attention.
• After that, a person reviews the Account. Nothing is terminated automatically by a timer.

We will not destroy a suspended Server without a verified off-site copy of it existing first. If that copy cannot be made, nothing is destroyed and a person decides what happens.

7. Your Content

Your Content remains yours. You grant us only the licence we need to operate the Service: to host, store, copy, transmit, back up, and display your Content for the purpose of providing the Service to you.

You are responsible for your Content and for having the rights to use it. We do not monitor or inspect what is on your Server except where we must to operate the Service, enforce these Terms, or comply with the law.

Backups are a safety net, not a guarantee (see section 15). Keep your own copies of anything you could not bear to lose.

8. Your Players Are Your Responsibility

When you rent a Server, you decide who plays on it and what happens there. Players have no Account with us and have not agreed to anything with us — so telling them what is recorded on your Server is your responsibility, not ours.

In particular: on some games (for example Rust) in-game chat is logged and visible to you for a period, and player names, platform IDs and session history are recorded so you can moderate. Section 6 of our Privacy Policy sets out exactly what is held. If you run a Server here, you agree to make this clear to your Players — in your server rules, your community channels, or wherever they would look.

You also agree to moderate your own community. We do not police what happens in your game, but the AUP applies to your Server regardless of who broke it.

9. Acceptable Use Policy

You agree not to use the Service, and not to allow anyone using your Server to:

• Host content or conduct activities that are illegal in Australia or wherever you or your Players operate from.
• Attack, scan, probe, overload, or otherwise interfere with our infrastructure, another customer's Server, or any third party.
• Run cryptocurrency miners, botnets, proxies, spam operations, or anything unrelated to game hosting on our infrastructure.
• Host or distribute malware, phishing pages, pirated software, or child sexual abuse material. This is grounds for immediate termination, and we will report it and cooperate with law enforcement.
• Infringe anyone's intellectual property, privacy, or other rights.
• Resell or white-label the Service without our written permission.
• Circumvent, disable, or interfere with security or access-control features of the Service.

10. Mods, Plugins and Third-Party Content

The Service makes it straightforward to install mods and plugins — for example Minecraft mods from Modrinth and CurseForge, or Oxide/Carbon plugins on Rust. We do not write or own these, and we are not responsible for how they behave. Check that anything you install permits the way you are using it, particularly on a monetised or public Server.

We do not install third-party plugin code on your behalf. Where the Service offers settings for a plugin, it edits the configuration of a plugin you chose to install; the plugin itself is yours to manage, and its own licence applies.

11. Third-Party Services

The Service relies on third parties to work — including our payment provider, our network and storage provider, game platforms such as Steam, and the publishers of the games you run. Your use of those games and platforms is also subject to their own terms. We are not responsible for third-party services, and an outage or change on their side may affect the Service.

12. Our Intellectual Property

The Service, the Sapling name and branding, the control panel, and all software and materials we provide (other than your Content and third-party content) are owned by us or our licensors. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service in accordance with these Terms.

You must not copy, modify, reverse engineer, scrape, or create derivative works of the Service except to the extent the law expressly permits despite this restriction, and you must not use our branding without our written permission.

13. Suspension and Termination

We may suspend or terminate your Account or a Server if you:

• Breach the AUP or these Terms;
• Leave an invoice unpaid after the process in section 6; or
• Put our infrastructure or other customers at risk.

Except where the law or an immediate risk requires otherwise, we will tell you before we act and give you a chance to put it right. Where the risk is serious or immediate (for example the AUP breaches in section 9 involving illegal content or attacks), we may act first and explain afterwards.

You may stop using the Service at any time by deleting your Servers and closing your Account (section 14).

14. Deleting a Server, and Closing Your Account

You can delete a Server yourself from its settings. Doing so stops it and stops billing immediately, but the Server is not destroyed for seven days — you can undo it from the same place at any point in that window. After the window closes, the Server is destroyed once a verified archive of it exists.

You can close your whole Account yourself from your Account page, once every Server you own is deleted or scheduled for deletion. Closing takes effect after seven days, during which you can reverse it from the same page. We then delete your personal information other than records we are legally required to keep, such as invoices. You can also ask us to close your Account using the contact details in section 23.

15. Service Availability and Backups

We aim for high availability but do not promise the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free. Planned maintenance is announced in advance on our status page; unplanned outages are posted there once confirmed. We do not offer service credits for short outages except where the law requires it.

Backups are taken nightly and kept for the retention period shown on your Server's Backups tab. They are a safety net, not a guarantee, and you can download them yourself. Keep your own copy of anything critical.

16. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, and subject to section 17, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", and we exclude all warranties, representations and guarantees that are not expressly set out in these Terms.

Nothing in this section limits the guarantees, rights and remedies you have under the Australian Consumer Law, which cannot be excluded (see section 17).

17. Australian Consumer Law and Liability

Our goods and services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, right or remedy you have under that law or any other law where it would be unlawful to do so.

If we fail to meet a consumer guarantee, you may be entitled to a remedy — including a replacement or refund for a major failure, and compensation for other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage. Where the law allows us to limit our liability for a failure relating to goods or services that are not of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use, we limit it, at our option, to resupplying the service or paying the cost of having it resupplied.

Subject to the above, and to the maximum extent permitted by law:

• Our total liability for all claims arising out of or in connection with the Service is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim (and, during the free pilot, to AUD $100).
• We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profits, revenue, goodwill, or data beyond what a backup can restore.

18. Your Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify us against claims, losses and costs (including reasonable legal costs) arising from your Content, your Players' conduct on your Server, your breach of these Terms or the AUP, or your breach of any law or third-party right. We will tell you promptly of any such claim and not settle it in a way that admits fault on your part without your consent (not to be unreasonably withheld).

19. Privacy

We handle personal information in accordance with our Privacy Policy, which forms part of your agreement with us.

20. Changes to These Terms

We update these Terms when we need to. When a change is material, we will tell you and ask you to agree to the updated Terms before you keep using the Service, giving you a reasonable period to review them first. Minor corrections take effect when posted, and the "last updated" date at the top always reflects the current version. If you do not agree to a material change, you may close your Account, and we will help you export your data and wind down without penalty.

21. General

• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms without our consent. We may transfer ours to a related entity or in connection with a sale of our business, on no less favourable terms.
• Severability. If any part of these Terms is unenforceable, the rest continues in force.
• Waiver. If we do not enforce a right, that is not a waiver of it.
• Force majeure. Neither party is liable for a failure caused by something genuinely beyond its reasonable control, to the extent the law permits.
• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between us about the Service and replace any earlier understanding.
• Notices. We give notices by email to your Account address or by posting in the Service; you give notices to us using the details in section 23.

22. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia. If something goes wrong, please contact us first — most issues are sorted out quickly that way. If we cannot resolve it, the courts of New South Wales have jurisdiction, unless consumer protection law where you live requires otherwise.

23. Contact

Questions, notices or complaints: support@saplinghosting.net.