Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the Terms) are a binding legal agreement between Digitel Africa (operated by CYPERACE GROUP UGANDA LIMITED, a private limited company incorporated under the laws of the Republic of Uganda; referred to as the Company, we, us or our), and the business or organisation that opens an account, subscribes to, or uses our services (you or the Customer). Where services are contracted or delivered through affiliated operational entities in other jurisdictions, such services are provided in coordination with the Company.

By registering for an account, purchasing a plan, or otherwise using any part of the Services, you accept these Terms. If you are entering into these Terms on behalf of a company or other legal entity, you confirm that you have the authority to bind that entity.

Our Services are intended for commercial, business and organisational customers rather than consumers. Where mandatory statutory protections under the Electronic Transactions Act, 2011 (Uganda), applicable consumer protection law, or the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 2002 (South Africa, where applicable) apply to a transaction despite this, nothing in these Terms is intended to limit or exclude rights that cannot lawfully be disclaimed by contract.

Services

The products and services we make available, including business email, DNS, web hosting, our cloud and application platform, managed PostgreSQL databases, domain registration, SSL certificates and VPN, together with our professional services such as DevOps, support, managed infrastructure, monitoring, software development, security, consulting and training.

Customer

The business or organisation that holds an Account and is responsible for its use, and each authorised user acting on its behalf.

Customer Content

All data, code, files, websites, databases, email, domain records and other material that you or your users upload to, create on, store in, or transmit through the Services.

Account

The registered account through which you access and manage the Services, including its credentials, settings and billing configuration.

Fees

The subscription, usage, one-off and professional-services charges payable for the Services, as set out in your chosen plan and at our pricing page.

SLA

A Service Level Agreement that sets out the availability commitment and any service credits for a specific product or plan, where one is offered.

To use the Services you must be a business, organisation, or an individual acting for business purposes, and you must be able to enter into a binding contract. You must provide accurate, current and complete information when you register and keep it up to date.

Account security

• You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your Account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your Account.
• You must enable available security controls, such as strong passwords and multi-factor authentication, where we offer them.
• You must notify us promptly at [email protected] or through our support channels if you suspect any unauthorised access or security breach affecting your Account.
• You are responsible for the acts and omissions of anyone you allow to use your Account, including your staff, contractors and end users.

You may not share, sell or transfer your Account to another party without our prior written consent, except as part of a permitted change of control of your business.

We provide a range of self-serve digital infrastructure products together with human-delivered services. The specific features, resource limits and support levels available to you depend on the plan you select.

Products

• Business email, DNS and web hosting
• Cloud and application platform
• Managed PostgreSQL databases
• Domain registration and SSL certificates
• VPN

Services

• DevOps, managed infrastructure and monitoring
• Support and security services
• Software development, consulting and training

Plan inclusions, resource allocations and prices are described at our pricing page. Professional services may be governed by an additional statement of work or order form, which forms part of these Terms for that engagement. Where a statement of work conflicts with these Terms, the statement of work prevails for that engagement only.

Beta and preview products

Certain infrastructure products, modules, or features may be designated as "Beta", "Preview", or "Coming Soon". Where early access to such services is provided, they are made available solely for evaluation purposes on an "as is" and "as available" basis, without warranty or SLA commitments, and may be modified or withdrawn at any time.

You agree to pay the Fees for the plan and services you select, as published at our pricing page or set out in an order form. Subscription Fees are billed in advance for each billing period. Usage-based and professional-services Fees are billed in arrears unless we tell you otherwise.

Renewals and plan changes

• Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period at the then-current price for that plan, unless you cancel before the renewal date.
• If you upgrade, the change and any additional Fees take effect immediately and may be pro-rated.
• If you downgrade, the change usually takes effect at the start of your next billing period, and reduced resources may result in loss of data or functionality that exceeds the lower plan's limits.
• We may change our prices, and will give you reasonable advance notice before a change applies to your renewal.

Payment channels and currency

Fees may be billed in USD, UGX, or other local currencies as stated on your invoice or order form. We accept electronic bank transfers, supported payment cards, and authorized mobile money channels (including MTN Mobile Money and Airtel Money). Payments made via mobile money or bank transfer are credited once irreversibly confirmed by the recipient payment gateway.

Taxes and late payment

Unless stated otherwise, Fees are exclusive of value-added tax (VAT), statutory duties, and other applicable levies, which we will add where required by law. You are responsible for any withholding taxes, bank charges, or mobile money transaction fees. Where withholding taxes are deducted pursuant to local law, you must provide valid withholding tax certificates issued by the relevant revenue authority (such as the Uganda Revenue Authority) within 30 days of payment.

If a payment is overdue, we may charge interest at the maximum rate permitted by law, suspend the Services after reasonable notice, and recover reasonable costs of collection. Domain registrations and certificates that lapse due to non-payment may expire and become unavailable.

Refunds

Except where mandatory applicable law requires otherwise, Fees are non-refundable and there are no refunds or credits for partial billing periods, unused resources, or Services cancelled part-way through a period. Amounts paid to third parties, such as domain registries and certificate authorities, are non-refundable once the third party has processed them.

You must use the Services lawfully and responsibly. You must not, and must not permit anyone else to, use the Services to:

• Store, publish or transmit content that is illegal, or that facilitates illegal activity, under South African or other applicable law.
• Send spam or unsolicited commercial email (UCE), or operate mailing practices that breach anti-spam laws or the policies of email providers.
• Distribute malware, ransomware, viruses or other malicious code, or run phishing, credential-harvesting or other fraudulent operations.
• Engage in network abuse, including denial-of-service attacks, port scanning, unauthorised access attempts, spoofing, or interfering with the integrity or performance of any system or network.
• Carry out cryptocurrency mining or similar resource-intensive proof-of-work workloads where the applicable plan or product prohibits them.
• Infringe the intellectual property, privacy, publicity or other rights of any third party.
• Abuse shared resources, including exceeding fair-use limits, monopolising compute, storage, bandwidth or database capacity, or degrading the experience of other customers.
• Circumvent or attempt to circumvent usage limits, quotas, security controls, authentication, or billing measures.

As between you and us, you own all Customer Content and all rights in it. We do not claim ownership of it.

You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide licence to host, store, copy, transmit, display and process Customer Content solely to the extent necessary to provide, secure, maintain and support the Services, and as you instruct through your use of the Services. This licence ends when the Customer Content is deleted, subject to reasonable backup retention and any legal obligations.

Your responsibilities

• You are solely responsible for Customer Content, including its legality, accuracy and the rights needed to store and process it.
• You are responsible for obtaining any consents and providing any notices required for personal information you process using the Services.
• You are responsible for maintaining your own backups where the relevant plan does not provide them or where you require additional retention.

Where we process personal data on your behalf, we act as a Data Processor pursuant to Section 3 of Uganda's Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019 (and as an operator under South Africa's POPIA or processor under the GDPR where applicable). Our data protection obligations and customer rights are set out in our Privacy Policy, and technical safeguards are detailed in our Security Policy.

We work to keep the Services available and performant. Where a product or plan includes an SLA, the availability commitment and any service credits are set out in that SLA, which forms part of these Terms for that product or plan.

Availability commitments and service credits, where offered, are your sole and exclusive remedy for failure to meet the stated uptime target.

Maintenance

• We schedule planned maintenance where possible and give reasonable advance notice, aiming for low-impact windows.
• We may perform emergency maintenance without notice where needed to protect the security, integrity or stability of the Services.
• Downtime caused by factors outside our reasonable control, by your configuration or content, or by third-party services, is excluded from availability calculations.

Force majeure and network dependencies

Digitel Africa shall not be liable or deemed in default for delays, service interruptions, or performance failures resulting from causes beyond its reasonable control, including but not limited to: power grid disruptions, upstream telecommunications carrier or transit outages, terrestrial or subsea fiber cuts, mobile money payment gateway downtime, government-directed communications restrictions, civil commotions, or distributed denial-of-service attacks.

The Services, including our software, platform, infrastructure designs, documentation, and the Digitel Africa name, logos and other brand elements, are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by intellectual property laws. Nothing in these Terms transfers any of those rights to you.

We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and use the Services during your subscription, solely for your internal business purposes and in accordance with these Terms. You must not copy, modify, reverse-engineer, resell or create derivative works from the Services except to the extent the law expressly permits despite this restriction.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, you allow us to use them freely to improve the Services, without obligation to you.

The Services may integrate with or depend on third-party providers, such as domain registries, certificate authorities, payment processors and upstream network operators. Your use of those elements may be subject to the third party's own terms, which you agree to comply with.

Domains, DNS and certificates

• Domain registration is subject to the rules of the relevant registry and, for generic top-level domains, to ICANN policies, including registration, renewal, transfer, dispute and redemption rules.
• You are responsible for renewing domains on time; expired domains may be suspended, redeemed or released by the registry according to its policies.
• SSL certificates are issued subject to the requirements of the issuing certificate authority, which may validate, revoke or refuse certificates under its own rules.

We are not responsible for third-party services, and their availability, terms or actions are outside our control. Where a third party changes or withdraws a service, we will make reasonable efforts to limit the impact on you.

Termination by you

You may cancel your subscription at any time through your Account or by contacting us. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period unless stated otherwise, and does not entitle you to a refund of Fees already paid except where the law requires one.

Suspension or termination by us

We may suspend or terminate all or part of the Services if you materially breach these Terms, including the Acceptable Use Policy, if you fail to pay Fees when due, if required by law, or if your use poses a security, legal or operational risk. Where practical and appropriate, we will give notice and an opportunity to fix the problem before terminating.

Effect of termination and data export

• On termination, your right to access and use the Services ends and outstanding Fees become payable.
• For a limited period after termination, typically 30 days unless we state otherwise or the law requires longer, you may export your Customer Content, subject to your Account being in good standing.
• After that export window, we may permanently delete Customer Content, and backups will age out in the ordinary course. Deletion may be irreversible, so export your data promptly.

We will provide the Services with reasonable skill and care. Except for that commitment and any warranties that cannot be excluded by law, the Services are provided "as is" and "as available", and we disclaim all other warranties, whether express, implied or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free, or completely secure, that they will meet your specific requirements, or that data loss will never occur. You are responsible for evaluating whether the Services are suitable for your intended use and for maintaining appropriate backups and contingency arrangements.

Nothing in this section limits mandatory statutory rights under the Electronic Transactions Act, 2011 (Uganda), the Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019 (Uganda), or other applicable mandatory consumer or electronic commerce legislation to the extent such rights cannot lawfully be excluded.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, neither party is liable to the other for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, goodwill, anticipated savings, or loss or corruption of data, arising out of or relating to the Services or these Terms, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

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 total Fees you paid to us for the affected Service in the twelve (12) months immediately before the event giving rise to the claim.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Digitel Africa and its directors, employees and agents from and against reasonable claims, damages, losses and costs (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to:

• your Customer Content, including any claim that it is unlawful or infringes a third party's rights;
• your use of the Services in breach of these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy;
• your breach of applicable law, including data-protection, consumer or anti-spam law; and
• acts or omissions of your users and anyone accessing the Services through your Account.

We will notify you of a claim covered by this section, allow you to control the defence with counsel reasonable to us, and cooperate at your expense. You may not settle a claim in a way that imposes obligations on us without our consent.

We continually improve the Services and may add, change, or discontinue features. Where we plan to discontinue a material feature or product that you rely on, we will give you reasonable advance notice where practical.

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make a material change, we will give reasonable notice, for example by email or through your Account or our website, before it takes effect. The updated date at the top of these Terms shows when they were last changed.

Your continued use of the Services after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms. If you do not agree to a material change, you may cancel before it takes effect as described in the suspension and termination section.

These Terms and any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or in connection with them (including non-contractual disputes) are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Uganda. The courts of Uganda shall have jurisdiction over any legal dispute, without prejudice to mandatory statutory protections that cannot be waived under applicable local laws.

If a dispute arises, the parties agree to first attempt to resolve it informally and in good faith through executive consultation for a period of not less than thirty (30) days from written notice before initiating formal court proceedings.

If any provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest remain in force. Our failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them as part of a reorganisation, merger, or sale of our business, on notice to you.

How to contact us

For any questions about these Terms, or to raise a legal or compliance matter, contact our legal team at [email protected]. You can review our data practices at our Privacy Policy and our safeguards at our Security overview.