Terms of Service

Effective Date: April 24, 2026

Bennett Helton, DBA Kraken Hosting ("we," "us," or "our"), provides Minecraft hosting, VPS, custom bot, and related services. By using our services or accessing our website (https://krakenhosting.net), you agree to these Terms of Service.

1. Eligibility

You must meet your region's minimum legal age requirement or obtain verified parental consent to create an account. Users at or above their jurisdiction's age of majority may enter into agreements independently.

2. Services Offered

Kraken Hosting provides Minecraft Java hosting, VPS, and custom bots. We allow user customization including third-party plugins, mods, and server software.

Permitted workloads and use cases are defined in Section 4 (Acceptable Use).

Free Migration. We offer one free server migration per account for new customers transferring from another host, subject to reasonable effort and technical feasibility. Additional migrations beyond the first are available at our discretion and may incur a fee or require prior approval.

3. Payments, Billing Agreements & Refunds

Payments are processed securely through Stripe.

Billing Agreements

Saved payment methods ("Billing Agreements") are fully opt-in and require user consent at checkout. Recurring subscriptions can be enabled via checkbox at purchase and canceled at any time from your dashboard.

Failed Payments on Billing Agreements

If a scheduled subscription payment fails:

  • After 1 day: the service is suspended. During suspension, the server is offline but data is preserved.

  • After 7 days: at midnight Central Time on the seventh day, the service and all associated data are permanently deleted. Backups are not retained or guaranteed after this point.

We recommend updating your payment method promptly upon any failed-payment notice to avoid data loss.

Plans

Monthly, quarterly, and annual billing options may be available depending on prior arrangements.

Refunds

Refunds are available within 7 days of the billing cycle.

  • Default: Refunds are issued as account credit.

  • Direct refund to original payment method: Available upon request and subject to our discretion. If approved, we may deduct a processing fee to recover costs incurred through our payment processor.

    • The fee is capped at Stripe's non-refundable processing fees for the original transaction, plus a $1 administrative charge. Stripe's fees are typically no more than approximately 5% of the transaction, per their standard payment method terms.

    • Example: On a $10 refund, a typical deduction might be approximately $0.59 (Stripe fees) + $1.00 (admin) = $1.59, with the remaining $8.41 returned to your original payment method.

Account credits themselves are non-refundable and non-transferable. Refund requests may be denied at our discretion in cases of abuse, policy violations, or suspected fraud.

Chargebacks

Initiating a chargeback without first contacting support to resolve the dispute is prohibited. Chargebacks may result in account termination, IP blocking, and permanent denial of future service.

If a chargeback is ruled in our favor by the issuing bank and the dispute is determined to be fraudulent or in bad faith, we may recover related costs by charging the affected account up to $30 plus the original chargeback amount.

Please contact support first. Users who reach out to support with a billing concern are significantly more likely to receive a full or near-full refund, and typically receive it in a much more timely manner than pursuing a chargeback. Chargebacks involve lengthy bank investigations and can freeze your account during the dispute period, while a support ticket is usually resolved within a few business days. We would much rather work with you directly than go through your bank.

4. Acceptable Use

Scope of Permitted Workloads

Users may host any workload their plan is specifically purchased for. If a plan's description explicitly includes a workload type (e.g., standalone web hosting, application hosting), or if such a workload is approved in writing via an accepted quote, it is permitted — even if it would otherwise fall outside the default scope of game hosting.

If you need a non-standard workload and don't see it offered publicly, please contact us for a quote. Once accepted, the approved use case is considered permitted under your agreement.

Prohibited Activities

The following are prohibited on all plans unless explicitly approved:

  • Excessive or abusive resource usage

  • Hosting workloads outside the scope of your plan (e.g., running Docker containers, standalone web servers, or other non-gaming workloads on a game hosting plan that was not sold for that purpose)

  • Cryptocurrency mining

  • DDoS attacks or similar network abuse

  • Any form of outbound email sending, unless explicitly approved

  • Pornographic or adult material

  • Any illegal content or activity under U.S. law or the user's local laws

If you are unsure whether a specific workload is permitted under your current plan, please contact support before deploying it.

5. Uptime & Service Level Agreement (SLA)

We offer separate uptime guarantees for our infrastructure and our management panel.

Guarantees

  • Node uptime (game servers & VPS): 99.99% monthly uptime guarantee. Any uptime below this threshold qualifies for SLA credit (see below).

  • Panel uptime (management interface): 99.9% monthly uptime guarantee. Panel downtime means your management interface is unreachable — your hosted services themselves continue running unaffected. Panel uptime below 99.9% qualifies for SLA credit under the same structure as node uptime.

In short, the ~43 minutes of panel downtime tolerance is the threshold for the 99.9% panel guarantee — once exceeded, you are eligible for the $2 base credit. Similarly for nodes, any drop below 99.99% qualifies.

SLA Credit Structure

If uptime falls below the applicable guarantee (99.99% for nodes, 99.9% for the panel) within a billing cycle, and the downtime is not excluded (see below):

  • Base credit: $2 account credit for any qualifying incident where uptime drops below the guaranteed threshold but remains at or above 99.5%.

  • Extended credit: For every full 1% of downtime below 99.5%, an additional 10% of your affected plan's monthly cost is issued as account credit, in addition to the $2 base credit.

Example: If you are on a $10/month plan and your monthly node uptime is 97.5% (2.5% total downtime, of which 2% is below the 99.5% threshold):

  • Base credit: $2.00

  • Extended credit: 2% × 10% × $10 = $2.00

  • Total credit issued: $4.00

Credits are issued to your Kraken Hosting account and are non-transferable. Cash refunds in lieu of SLA credit are not offered.

How to Claim SLA Credit

To claim SLA credit, you must:

  1. Open a support ticket after the incident has concluded.

  2. Reference the downtime on our public status page, monitored by HetrixTools, as recorded in its monthly SLA calculator for the affected billing window.

  3. The downtime must be unplanned — pre-announced maintenance, scheduled upgrades, and similar planned windows do not count toward SLA calculations.

Credits will not be issued automatically; a ticket is required for each claim.

Exclusions

The SLA does not cover downtime caused by:

  • Scheduled or pre-announced maintenance

  • Actions taken by the user (e.g., misconfigured mods, excessive resource usage, self-initiated restarts)

  • Upstream provider failures, force majeure events, or DDoS attacks exceeding our mitigation capacity (see Section 12)

  • Account suspension for policy violations or failed payments

6. Suspension, Termination & Data Retention

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts or IP addresses for violations of these Terms or applicable law.

Data Retention After Termination

After account termination or deletion, we retain no user data except:

  • IP logs: Retained in anonymized form for the sole purpose of tracking and mitigating web traffic abuse (e.g., scraping, brute-force login attempts, and similar security threats). Anonymized IP logs are not automatically purged on a fixed schedule, but are typically cleared within approximately 6 months as part of routine maintenance. They are not used to identify individuals and are not linked to user accounts after anonymization.

  • Email logs: Retained for up to 3 years for legal compliance and chargeback defense.

  • Backups: May be stored for up to 6 months following termination, but are not guaranteed and should not be relied upon. We strongly recommend exporting your server data before cancelling.

Account Deletion & Data Downloads

Users may request account deletion or a copy of their stored personal data at any time by submitting a logged-in request.

  • Standard turnaround: We aim to review and process verified requests within a reasonable timeframe.

  • Legally required turnaround: For users covered by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA), or any other applicable data protection law that mandates a processing deadline, verified requests will be processed within 7 days, or sooner if legally required.

Upon deletion, personal data is anonymized and access permanently revoked. Data downloads are provided in a commonly used, machine-readable format where feasible.

7. User Content

All user-uploaded content remains the property of the user. Kraken Hosting provides the hosting environment only. Users are responsible for ensuring compliance with all applicable copyright laws.

Note: Some hosted content may include or rely on intellectual property from Mojang, Discord, or other companies. Use of such software is subject to their respective terms and conditions.

8. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Kraken Hosting's total liability for any claim shall not exceed the amount paid by the user under their most recent invoice.

We are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, including loss of data or profits.

9. Dispute Resolution & Governing Law

These Terms are governed by and construed under the laws of Texas, USA. Any disputes shall be resolved through binding arbitration in Texas, conducted in English, under the rules of the American Arbitration Association.

10. DMCA Policy

We respect intellectual property rights and comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). If you believe your copyrighted material has been infringed:

  • Provide a written notice with your contact details, identification of the material, and a statement of good faith belief.

  • Submit to our designated DMCA Agent:

We will review and act upon legitimate DMCA notices in accordance with the law.

11. Modifications

We may update these Terms at any time. Material changes will be communicated via our website or user dashboard.

12. Force Majeure

We are not liable for any failure or delay in performance caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including but not limited to: natural disasters, acts of war or terrorism, civil unrest, labor disputes, governmental actions, internet or telecommunications outages, upstream data center or ISP failures, widespread cyberattacks, and pandemics. Downtime resulting from such events is excluded from SLA calculations (see Section 5).

13. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found to be invalid, unlawful, or unenforceable by a court or arbitrator of competent jurisdiction, that provision will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, or severed if modification is not possible. All remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect.

14. Contact

Kraken Hosting (Bennett Helton, DBA)
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://krakenhosting.net

By using our services, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to these Terms of Service.