If a service is suspended

There are two reasons

Non-payment

An invoice has gone unpaid past its due date and the reminders. This is the common one and it is entirely avoidable by talking to us.

Acceptable use

Something on the machine breaches the AUP, or traffic is leaving it that is damaging others. See the AUP in plain English.

Non-payment: you get warnings

The invoice arrives before the period it covers. If it is not paid you get reminders, and services are not switched off the moment one is late. We would far rather hear that this month is awkward than find out by suspending a machine.

Tell us before the due date and something can almost always be arranged. The formal position is in the terms; the practical one is that a customer who communicates is in a completely different position from one who goes quiet. See invoices and payment.

Acceptable use: usually a deadline, sometimes not

For most complaints we forward the detail to you with a deadline and nothing happens while you are dealing with it. Answering quickly is almost always enough.

We act first and tell you immediately afterwards only when something is active and damaging: an outbound flood, a live phishing page, a compromised machine sending spam. That is to protect the network and other customers, not a judgement about you — and the usual next step is a compromised server rather than a dispute.

Content that is manifestly illegal is a different matter and is dealt with on its own terms.

What happens to your data

A suspension stops the service. It does not wipe the disks. Your data stays where it is while the matter is resolved, and you can ask for access to retrieve it — we will find a way to do that even where the service itself cannot be restored.

Data is destroyed only after the service is actually terminated and the period in leaving has passed. That is a separate step with its own notice, never a surprise consequence of a suspension.

Getting back online

1. Non-payment: settle the invoice and tell support. Reactivation is usually within the hour.
2. Abuse: fix the cause, then reply with what you found and what you changed. A diagnosis moves this along far faster than a request.
3. A null-routed address: see null routes and blackholing.

How to make it never happen

• Keep a billing contact that someone reads — see who may act on your account. The commonest cause of a payment suspension is an invoice sent to a mailbox nobody opens.
• Hold account credit if you order often; it is applied automatically to new invoices.
• Alert on unusual outbound traffic, which catches a compromise before an abuse report does — see understanding your traffic.
• If you host for others, be able to remove one item without taking everything down.

And if something is going wrong, mail support@novogara.com before it becomes a problem. That is the whole trick.

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Still stuck? Mail support@novogara.com — an engineer answers, at any hour. Back to the knowledge base