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Terms of Service

Last updated: August 25, 2026

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#Introduction

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are a legal agreement between HostCore Limited, a limited liability company incorporated in New Zealand (“HostCore”, “we”, “us”), and the business or individual accepting them (“Tenant”, “you”). By creating an account or using the Services, you agree to these Terms.

#Definitions

  • “Services” means the HostCore hosted billing, provisioning, and store-management platform, including the tenant dashboard, storefronts, APIs, connector modules, and migration tools.
  • “Store” means a storefront you operate through the Services, whether on a HostCore subdomain (e.g. yourstore.myhostcore.com) or your own custom domain.
  • “End Customer” means any person who purchases from, registers with, or otherwise interacts with your Store. End Customers are your customers, not ours.
  • “Tenant Data” means all data you or your End Customers submit to the Services, including End Customer personal information, invoices, and order records.
  • “Gateway Credentials” means the payment-provider credentials (e.g. Stripe restricted API keys, PayPal API credentials) you supply to enable payment processing on your Store.
  • “Founding Access” means the free early-access tier described in Section 3.

#Eligibility and Accounts

  1. The Services are supplied for business purposes only and are acquired in trade within the meaning of the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 and the Fair Trading Act 1986. You must not use the Services for personal, domestic, or household purposes.
  2. You must be at least 18 years old and authorized to bind the business you register.
  3. You must provide accurate registration information and keep it current. You are responsible for all activity under your account, including by your staff and contractors, and for keeping your login credentials confidential.
  4. International use
    The Services are operated from New Zealand and offered to business users globally. You are solely responsible for compliance with the laws of the jurisdiction(s) in which you operate and sell, including local consumer, e-commerce, tax, and data-protection laws applicable to you and your Stores. We make no representation that the Services are appropriate or lawful for use in any particular jurisdiction.
  5. Sanctions and export controls
    You represent that neither you nor any beneficial owner of your business is: (a) located in, or organized under the laws of, a jurisdiction subject to comprehensive sanctions; or (b) designated on any applicable sanctions list (including those administered by New Zealand, the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, or the United Kingdom). We may suspend or terminate immediately if this representation is or becomes untrue.

#Founding Access Program

  1. Founding Access is provided free of charge for a limited early-access period. The Services are in active development and are provided as an early-access (beta) offering. Founding Access is intended for tenants willing to use the Services in real conditions and to report bugs and feedback (Section 10.4 applies to feedback).
  2. Duration
    The Founding Access period is expected to last approximately three to five months. We will announce its end date with at least 30 days’ notice by email or dashboard notice.
  3. Indicative plan selection
    At sign-up you select the paid plan you expect will suit your usage. This selection is indicative only: it does not bind you, does not require a payment method, and does not lock in any pricing displayed at sign-up.
  4. Conversion to paid plans
    When the Founding Access period ends, continued use of the Services requires an active subscription to a then-current paid plan at then-current pricing. You will never be charged unless you actively subscribe and provide a payment method. If you have not subscribed within 14 days after the Founding Access period ends, we may suspend your account and Stores, and thereafter terminate under Section 12; the data-export window in Section 8.5 runs from termination.
  5. No founding-tier benefits apply beyond free access during the Founding Access period, unless we announce a benefit separately in writing.
  6. Because Founding Access is free and pre-release, features may change, break, or be removed without notice, and data-loss risk is higher than in a general-availability product. You should maintain independent backups of business-critical records.

#The Services

  1. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and use the Services for your internal business purposes during the term of these Terms.
  2. We may modify, suspend, or discontinue any feature of the Services. Where a change materially reduces core functionality you actively use, we will use reasonable efforts to give prior notice.
  3. We may impose reasonable usage limits (storage, API rate limits, store counts) and will publish or notify these where practical.

#Acceptable Use

You must not, and must not permit anyone (including End Customers) to:

  • use the Services in breach of any law, or to sell or bill for goods or services that are illegal, fraudulent, or deceptive, or that do not exist;
  • use the Services for card testing, money laundering, or any activity prohibited by your payment provider’s terms;
  • infringe any third party’s intellectual property, privacy, or other rights;
  • probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Services, circumvent authentication, or access data belonging to another tenant;
  • resell or white-label the Services themselves (as distinct from selling your own hosting services through a Store) without our written agreement;
  • upload malware or interfere with the operation of the Services or other tenants’ use of them; or
  • use the Services to send spam or unsolicited communications in breach of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 or equivalent laws.

We may investigate suspected violations and may suspend or terminate under Section 12. We may also disclose information to authorities where required by law.

#Payment Gateway Credentials

  1. Bring-your-own model
    Payments on your Store are processed through your own payment-provider accounts (e.g. Stripe, PayPal) using Gateway Credentials you supply. We are not a party to any payment between you and an End Customer, we are not the merchant of record, and we do not receive, hold, or transmit End Customer funds.
  2. Least-privilege credentials required
    You must supply Gateway Credentials of the type and permission scope specified in our documentation (for Stripe, a restricted API key with the documented permissions; unrestricted secret keys are not permitted). We may reject, or revoke our acceptance of, any credential that exceeds the documented scope or fails validation.
  3. Your warranties
    You represent and warrant that: (a) you are authorized to supply the Gateway Credentials to us; (b) supplying them and our use of them to provide the Services complies with your payment provider’s terms; and (c) your payment-provider accounts are in good standing.
  4. Our custody obligations
    We will: (a) store Gateway Credentials encrypted at rest; (b) use them solely to provide the Services to you; (c) not disclose them to any third party except our infrastructure subprocessors as needed to operate the Services; and (d) delete them from active systems within 30 days of termination of your account.
  5. Your provider relationship is yours
    You are solely responsible for: your standing with your payment provider; all fees, fines, holds, reserves, or account actions imposed by your provider (including any fees relating to the credential type you use); chargebacks, disputes, and refunds owed to End Customers; and compliance with card-network rules and PCI-DSS obligations applicable to you.
  6. Rotation
    You should rotate or expire Gateway Credentials on your provider’s side promptly upon terminating your account. Notify us immediately at admin@hostcore.co if you believe any credential supplied to us has been compromised.

#Stores and End Customers

  1. All sales through your Store are contracts between you and your End Customer. You are solely responsible for: your Store’s content, pricing, and product descriptions; delivering the services you sell; your own terms of service, refund policy, and privacy policy for End Customers; and your compliance with consumer, tax, and e-commerce laws in every jurisdiction you sell into.
  2. You must display your own legal terms and privacy policy to End Customers. We may provide template documents as a convenience; if we do, they are provided as-is, are not legal advice, and you use them at your own risk.
  3. You are responsible for determining, collecting, and remitting all taxes on sales through your Store.
  4. If you use a custom domain, you are responsible for your rights to that domain and its DNS configuration.

#Data, Privacy, and Security

  1. Your account data.
    Our collection and use of information about you is described in our Privacy Policy (hostcore.co/legal/privacy), which forms part of these Terms.
  2. End Customer data.
    As between the parties, you are the party responsible for End Customer personal information under the Privacy Act 2020 and, where overseas privacy laws apply to you, the controller (or equivalent) under those laws — including the EU/UK GDPR. We act as your processor (or equivalent), processing End Customer data only on your documented instructions as needed to provide the Services. Where the GDPR or a similar law applies to your use of the Services, our Data Processing Addendum (hostcore.co/legal/data-processing) applies and forms part of these Terms. You warrant that you have all rights, consents, and lawful bases needed for us to process Tenant Data as contemplated by these Terms.
  3. Security.
    We implement reasonable technical and organizational measures appropriate to an early-access service, including encryption of Gateway Credentials at rest and encrypted transport. No system is perfectly secure, and, Founding Access being free and pre-release, we do not warrant that the Services will be free of vulnerabilities.
  4. Breach notification.
    If we become aware of unauthorized access to Tenant Data or Gateway Credentials, we will notify you without undue delay and provide information reasonably needed for you to meet your own notification obligations.
  5. Data export.
    You may export Tenant Data in the formats provided by the Services at any time during your subscription and for 30 days after termination (except termination for serious Acceptable Use violations involving illegality, where we may withhold access to the extent the law permits or requires). After the export window, we may delete Tenant Data without further notice, subject to residual copies in backups deleted on our normal cycle.
  6. Aggregated data.
    We may use data that is aggregated and de-identified (so that neither you nor any End Customer is identifiable) to operate and improve the Services.
  7. Data location and subprocessors.
    The Services run on infrastructure located in Australia, the United States, and the European Union, and Tenant Data may be stored or processed in any of those regions. Tenant Data may also be accessed from New Zealand for administration and support. Our infrastructure subprocessors are listed in the Data Processing Addendum (hostcore.co/legal/data-processing). If your local law restricts where End Customer data may be processed, you are responsible for determining whether the Services’ data locations are compatible with your obligations.

#Migration Tools

  1. Migration tools are provided as-is as a convenience. Migration accuracy depends on the state of your source data, which we do not control.
  2. You must verify migrated data — including invoices, balances, credentials, and renewal dates — before relying on it in production. You are solely responsible for losses arising from unverified migrated data, and running your prior system in parallel during verification is strongly recommended.

#Intellectual Property

  1. We own the Services, the HostCore software, and all related intellectual property. No rights are granted except as expressly stated.
  2. You own your Tenant Data, your Store branding, and your content. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive licence to host, copy, transmit, and display them solely as needed to provide the Services.
  3. Modules or integrations you build with our SDKs are yours, subject to the SDK’s licence terms.
  4. If you give us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without restriction or compensation.
  5. You permit us to identify you as a HostCore user (name and logo) in customer lists and marketing unless you opt out by written notice.

#Third-Party Services

The Services interoperate with third-party services we do not control, including payment providers, domain registrars, control panels, and DNS providers. We are not responsible for their availability, performance, security, terms, or pricing, or for changes to their APIs that affect the Services. Your use of a third-party service is governed by its own terms.

#Suspension and Termination

  1. By you.
    You may close your account at any time from the dashboard or by written notice.
  2. Suspension by us.
    We may suspend your account or any Store immediately if: (a) we reasonably believe you have materially breached Section 5 (Acceptable Use) or Section 6 (Gateway Credentials); (b) suspension is necessary to protect the Services, other tenants, or End Customers from security risk or unlawful activity; or (c) we are required to by law or by a payment provider. During suspension, your Stores may be taken offline; where reasonably practicable we will preserve your dashboard access for data export.
  3. Termination by us
    We may terminate: (a) immediately for material breach that is not remedied within 14 days of notice (or immediately, without a remedy period, for breaches involving illegality, fraud, or security risk); or (b) for convenience during the Founding Access period on 30 days’ written notice, including if we discontinue the Founding Access program.
  4. Discontinuation of the Services
    We may cease providing the Services generally. If we do, we will terminate these Terms and all accounts by notice to your registered email address and by dashboard notice, giving at least 60 days’ notice. During the notice period: (a) your Stores and dashboard will remain operational, except where we suspend earlier under Section 13.2; (b) on the discontinuation date your Stores will go offline and we will cease providing the Services generally, but read-only dashboard and export access will remain available for 30 days after that date, and the export window in Section 9.5 runs for that period; (c) we will refund on a pro-rata basis any fees you have prepaid for the period after the discontinuation date; and (d) no renewal falling due after the notice will be charged. You are responsible for migrating your Stores and End Customers to an alternative platform before the discontinuation date, and for notifying your End Customers. Section 7.4 governs deletion of Gateway Credentials; you should rotate them on your provider’s side. Subject to Section 15.3, we are not liable for loss arising from discontinuation under this clause.
  5. Source availability
    If we discontinue the Services, we may at our sole discretion release some or all of the HostCore software under a licence of our choosing, so that it may be self-hosted. We are under no obligation to do so and may decide not to, or withdraw or vary any release. We give no undertaking as to scope, timing, licence terms, completeness, documentation, or suitability for self-hosting, and any release is made as-is, without support, and subject to third-party licence terms and rights we do not control. Nothing in this clause extends the export window in Section 8.5 or creates any other obligation under these Terms.
  6. Effect
    On termination: your licence ends; Section 8.5’s export window applies; we delete Gateway Credentials under Section 6.4; and Sections 6.3, 6.5, 7, 9.2, 10, and 13-19 survive.

#Disclaimers

  1. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Services are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including any warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, or uninterrupted or error-free operation.
  2. We do not warrant any uptime level and offer no service-level agreement during Founding Access. We do not warrant that migrated data is complete or accurate, that third-party integrations will remain functional, or that the Services meet your regulatory obligations.
  3. Nothing we or our staff say outside these Terms creates a warranty.

#Limitation of Liability

  1. To the maximum extent permitted by law, neither party is liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or exemplary damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, goodwill, business opportunity, or data, however caused and under any theory of liability, even if advised of the possibility.
  2. To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Services or these Terms is limited to the greater of (a) the amounts you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to liability, and (b) NZD $100.
  3. The exclusions and limits in this Section 14 do not apply to liability that cannot be excluded by law, including liability for fraud. Each element of this Section is severable and survives termination.
  4. You acknowledge that the limitations in Sections 13 and 14 are a fair allocation of risk given that Founding Access is provided free of charge, and that we would not provide the Services free without them.

#Indemnity

You will defend and indemnify us against third-party claims, and reimburse our resulting losses (including reasonable legal costs), to the extent arising from: (a) your Stores, content, or the goods or services you sell; (b) your dealings with End Customers, including refunds, chargebacks, and consumer-law claims; (c) your breach of Section 5, 6.3, or 8.2; or (d) your violation of law. We will notify you promptly of any claim and allow you to control the defence, provided you do not settle in a way that imposes obligations on us without our consent.

#Consumer Guarantees Act and Fair Trading Act

  1. You confirm you are acquiring the Services in trade for business purposes. To the extent New Zealand law applies to the supply, the parties agree that: (a) the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 does not apply to the Services; and (b) they contract out of sections 9, 12A, and 13 of the Fair Trading Act 1986 to the maximum extent permitted, and that it is fair and reasonable to do so given the parties are in trade, the Services are supplied free of charge during Founding Access, and the allocation of risk in these Terms.
  2. Mandatory local law
    Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts, or modifies any right or remedy you have under a mandatory law of your jurisdiction that cannot lawfully be excluded, restricted, or modified by agreement. To the extent such a law applies, these Terms are read subject to it, and our liability (where permitted) is limited to re-supplying the Services or the cost of re-supply.

#Changes to These Terms

  1. We may update these Terms. For material changes we will give at least 30 days’ notice by email or dashboard notice before the change takes effect; continued use after the effective date is acceptance. If you do not accept a material change, you may terminate before it takes effect and Section 8.5 applies.
  2. Non-material changes (clarifications, new feature terms) take effect when posted with the updated date above.

#Governing Law and Disputes

  1. These Terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand, and the parties submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New Zealand.
  2. Before starting proceedings, the parties will attempt in good faith to resolve any dispute by negotiation for at least 30 days after written notice of the dispute. Nothing prevents either party seeking urgent injunctive relief.

#General

  1. Assignment
    You may not assign these Terms without our written consent (not to be unreasonably withheld for a sale of your business). We may assign to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
  2. Force majeure
    Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control (excluding your payment obligations, if any).
  3. Notices
    We may notify you via your registered email or the dashboard. Legal notices to us go to legal@hostcore.co.
  4. Entire agreement
    These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and any documentation they reference are the entire agreement and supersede prior discussions.
  5. Severability; waiver
    If a provision is unenforceable, it is modified to the minimum extent necessary or severed, and the rest remains in force. A failure to enforce is not a waiver.
  6. No partnership
    Nothing creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, or employment relationship.
  7. Contact
    support@hostcore.co.
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