Terms of service

Who you are dealing with

ClosetServer is operated by Opaque Research LLC. When billing is live, payment is handled by Paddle as merchant of record, and their terms apply to the transaction itself.

What we provide

A hostname under one of our domains, pointed at an address you control and updated when that address changes. Plus monitoring of whether your updater is still checking in.

What we do not provide is a guarantee of uptime. We run this carefully and we watch it, but we are a small operation and you should not put something life-critical behind it. If we ever offer a service level, it will be written here as a number.

What you agree not to do

The short version: do not use a hostname here to hurt people.

• › No phishing, malware distribution, or command and control
• › No impersonating another organisation in a hostname
• › No bulk registration of names you have no use for
• › Nothing illegal where you are or where we operate

Your hostname shares a domain with other customers. When a name is misused, the whole domain's reputation suffers — mail filters and blocklists judge the domain, not the account. That is why this section exists and why we enforce it.

What happens if you do

Our first step is to stop the name resolving. Your account, your other hostnames and your data are untouched, and if we have made a mistake it takes seconds to undo — tell us at abuse@closetserver.com.

For clear and repeated misuse we may suspend the account, and we may report what we observed to the network operator responsible for the address involved. See the abuse policy for how that works.

Ending it

You can stop at any time. If a payment fails, nothing changes for 60 days: your hostnames keep resolving and you can keep editing them. After that they stop resolving, but nothing is deleted — they are held for you for a further 60 days, and renewing at any point brings them back exactly as they were. If you have not renewed 120 days after the payment failed, the hostnames are released so the names return to other customers. We email you when they stop resolving, and again 30 days, 7 days and 1 day before they are released, and we do not release them until those warnings have been sent.

A trial works the same way on a shorter clock: when it ends unpaid your hostnames stop resolving and are held for 30 days, then released. We email you before it ends, when it ends, and a week before release.

What you are responsible for

You point your hostname at a machine. We do not run that machine, cannot see what it serves, and have no way to vet it — so if what you point a name at causes someone else harm, that is between you and them. If a claim is brought against us because of your breach of these terms or because of what your hostname pointed at, you agree to cover the cost of it.

This is deliberately narrow. It covers your breach and your content, and nothing else. It is not a general promise to pay our legal bills, and it does not apply where the problem is ours.

Where disputes are settled

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Ohio, USA, and any dispute goes to the state or federal courts sitting in Ohio.

There is no arbitration clause here and no class-action waiver. Several providers in this market require both; we would rather not take away your right to a court as a condition of using a hostname.

Talk to us first. Almost everything that looks like a dispute is a misunderstanding about why a name stopped resolving, and legal@closetserver.com reaches a person.

Changes

If we change these terms in a way that matters, we will email you. Not a banner you might miss.

Questions about these terms: legal@closetserver.com