Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some frequently asked questions potential members (and the public) often have about NearlyFreeSpeech.NET and our services. If you wish to restrict the list of FAQs to only those containing certain keywords, enter them below. Otherwise, all public FAQs will be displayed. (Our members have a much more detailed FAQ accessible via the member interface. Non-members can peek at that here.)

Search Keywords:

12 questions matched your search.

General Answers

Do you register domain names?
Yes we do.

See this page for full information about our integrated domain name registration services.
Are your domain registration services intended for general-purpose usage?
No, our domain registrations services are provided on a cost-recovery basis as a service to our hosting members, and are not intended to be used as a standalone product. We are not, nor do we have any interest in being, a general-purpose domain registration provider.

Consequently, while we do not impose any restrictions on the use of our domain registration and RespectMyPrivacy.COM services, our system is specially designed to facilitate use of registered domains with our hosting services. If you wish to use these services for other purposes, you are welcome to do so, with the following caveats:
- it may require additional effort on your part to set up,
- our prepaid balance model is not optimized for domain-only usage, and
- we will not be able to provide technical support for usage of domains in conjunction with third-party services.

Policy Answers

What is your refund policy?
A member may easily request cancelation of their service at any time from the Profile tab in our member interface.

When a membership is canceled, we will return the prepaid balance remaining in your account—all of it.* Since we provide a pay-as-you-go service (for almost everything but domain registration and privacy), you're only responsible for the cost of services we have already provided. There's no "OK, but your cancellation won't be effective until the beginning of the next billing cycle." or "OK, we'll cancel you right now, but you agreed to pay for a zillion years of hosting in advance, so you don't get a refund." We'll process your cancellation request as soon as possible and (in most cases) refund your remaining balance at that point.

If you try our service and figure out the same day (by 9 PM US Eastern time) that it is not right for you, let us know immediately. Sometimes, but not always, we can void your transaction so that it will be as if you were never even charged. We can't promise that, but if you let us know fast enough, we will do our best for you.

There are rare cases where funds may be nonrefundable:
- Payments were made by a third party. (We are not a money transfer service!)
- Payments were transferred to your account from another member. (But you're welcome to transfer them back, with their permission.)
- We close your membership for certain particularly egregious violations of our Terms & Conditions of Service.
We cannot issue a partial refund of your prepaid balance. We can only issue a refund in conjunction with the close of your membership, and it will be for the full remaining balance unless you specify otherwise.

Also, ICANN does not allow registered domains to be abandoned. If you have any domains registered through us, you must transfer them to another person or registrar before requesting cancellation. (Fees paid for domain registration are typically nonrefundable.)

*If we have to mail you a check, there will be a small charge deducted from your balance first, and we won't issue a refund by check for a balance less than the charge.

This is intended to be a thorough summary, but please see our Terms and Conditions of Service for complete details.
What happens if my account runs completely out of funds?
Your services will be automatically disabled. As soon as you add more, it'll come back, but that can take a few minutes and that often feels like the longest few minutes of your life, so we recommend using and customizing the account balance warning system (which supports both email and SMS) to keep track of things before they go that far.

If you don't add more funds right away, things will hang around for at least 30 days. You can add more funds at any point during that period and get it all back.

If you haven't added funds after the 30 days, we'll start cleaning things up. Services paid for by that account, including all hosted content, will be removed. If you don't have any registered domains on that account, the account will be removed a few days later.

If 30 days is not a long enough grace period, we offer a feature called "suspended animation" that can help you extend the retention of your content when your balance runs low. That setting can be enabled and managed from the "Suspended Animation Threshold " line of the Account Information box on the page for your account under the Accounts tab.

If you do have one or more registered domains, they will persist until they complete the expiration/deletion process or are transferred elsewhere. That will keep the relevant account and your membership open so that you can continue to manage them.

You can also view (and configure) how long your membership is retained after your last account expires in the "Retention Time" line of the "Details" box on the Profile tab. As long as your membership continues to exist, you can request that we attempt to recover deleted content. (A fee applies for this service.) Recoveries of this type are generally successful if requested within several months of deletion.

Once your membership is deleted, however, that's it.
What's the difference between an 'account' and a 'membership?'
A "membership" represents you as an individual person (not a company, group, club, or organization). It's how you identify yourself to us, and how you access our services. If you're a US worker, it's like your social security number except, you know, less social and more secure. And, in most cases, less number-y.

An "account" is how you pay for our services. It contains the funds that you use to purchase hosting. You'll need at least one. You may create more, if you want, but you don't have to. Accounts also hold hosting-related assets, like web sites, domains, and database processes. Just as one membership can have several accounts, one account can fund several different assets.

Accounts also contain contact information about their owners, which may or may not be the member who manages the account. A web designer managing an account for a client would be a good example of a case where the member who manages the account is not the owner. Similarly, a company might own an account, even though it's managed from the company's webmaster's membership. Keep in mind that from our perspective, regardless of account ownership, the member is the only representative of the owner authorized to access the account. (There's no point in having any other policy, since the member can change the account's contact information at any time.)

People use accounts to group related stuff together, to separate business and personal expenses, or to keep track of multiple clients. All sorts of reasons. Other people are perfectly happy to jam everything into one account and have only one balance to keep track of.

It's a little like a bank. You are one person, but you might have two savings accounts: one for college, and one for "rainy days." The bank (if they know you at all these days) knows that you are just one person, and you have your social security number (membership) to prove it.

Unlike accounts, you may not have more than one membership. That would be like opening an account at your bank, then going out to your car, putting on a fake moustache, and going back in to open a second account.* Even if you could, why? Likewise, you cannot go into the bank, give them someone else's social security number, and open an account in their name.** So please don't open memberships for other people here.

*At least, we assume it's like that, but we've never actually tried it. Our bank has a pretty good sense of humor, but why push our luck?

**Sense of humor or not, we're pretty sure that's a felony.
How do I sign up for my company/club/organization?
Memberships represent individual people. (The law calls this "a natural person." At NearlyFreeSpeech.NET at least, corporations are not people.) A company, club, or organization (we'll go with "company" for the rest of this FAQ entry, but it applies just as well to clubs, organizations, or other types of groups) has no arms, fingers, and eyes and cannot read our Terms and Conditions of Service or complete our signup form.

If you're signing up to host stuff for any kind of organization in which you're not the sole participant, you still have to create your membership as yourself, at which point you, personally, agree to adhere to our Terms and Conditions of Service. This is not too different from opening a company bank account; you still have to give them your own ID and sign the signature card and checks with your own name, not "President" or "Company Name, Inc."

It is very important to understand that once you create a membership for yourself, it's yours. (To reiterate the above, your membership represents you as an individual.) Although you can cancel your membership, or it can expire if you don't have any accounts or services for awhile, you can never give it away, nor ever let anyone else access it, just like you can't give away your personhood, nor allow other people to pretend to be you. This means we do not allow multiple people to simultaneously manage one membership. We are simply not equipped to handle disputes where multiple people are claiming to be in charge and giving us conflicting instructions. There must always be one person with the final say, and that is the person who, in the event of a dispute, can produce photo ID matching the name on the membership.

After you create your membership, using your own name, you will then have the opportunity to create an account. (Actually you can use your membership to create as many accounts as you want, just like you can have multiple accounts at the same bank.) This is the step where, as the representative of a company, you should be very cautious. You should fill out the account contact information to reflect that of the company, not yourself. This indicates that while you manage the account, the company owns it.

After you fund the company's account, you will be able to set up whatever funds, sites, domains, and other services we offer that the company needs. All of those things attach to the account to make up a neat little package of related stuff. That becomes important if you ever need to transfer control to someone else, because it makes that very easy.

If you need to share responsibility for services here with other people from your company, that is also easily done. Other people from the company can set up memberships of their own. Then, you can share access to a single site or a whole account with them.

If/when the day comes that you need to hand over management of the company's stuff to someone else, it's a very straightforward process. The person taking over simply creates a membership for themselves (again, as an individual, in their own name), at which point they read and agree to our Terms and Conditions of Service. (That part is really, really important.) Then, the company's account has a 12-digit account number like A1B2-C3D4E5F6 you can use to identify it. Give the other person that number, and then each of you should send a free assistance request to us through the member interface asking to move the company's account from the old manager's membership to the new one. The account, and all the sites/domains/databases it contains get moved over in one easy step. It's very easy to do, and can be handled in a few minutes without any downtime or interruption of service. If you have other stuff hosted in a separate account on the same membership, it won't be affected.
What will you do if I send you email instructing you to do something to my membership?
Nothing.

We cannot process any instructions with respect to a membership via email. This includes, but is not limited to, requests to cancel, to accept payments, to register, renew, or transfer domains, to disable content, or to remove anything.

Email is not secure. Anyone who knows your email address can send an email that appears to be from you. Some people don't even bother using your email address when pretending to be you. We routinely receive emailed requests to do stuff that clearly aren't from the member. But the scary ones are the ones that look like they are from the member but turn out not to be.

Even when we're pretty sure you're you and we believe there would be little risk in doing so, we cannot process an email request. After all, we could be wrong. And even if we're not, we also need to take reasonable steps to protect not only you, but also ourselves.

So, on our system, the way you prove you're you is to log in with your member login name and password (and, optionally, a two-factor device).

If you need help logging on, check out the Login section of our FAQ.

If you need our help with something else, the best way to obtain it is via the support tab of our member site.

If you have a subscription membership, you can submit requests via email if you want, but you'll still have to click a link, log in, and confirm that the message really came from you. (Which basically copies it into our support system as if you had submitted it from our site.) That does introduce delays, so you'll generally get faster response if you send such requests directly from the support tab. Please note the option for individual email-based support is only available to subscription members. Baseline members should check the support tab for community support and self-support options.
Is anything recoverable from a membership that has been closed?
No. Once a membership has been closed, nothing can be recovered.

The permanent deletion of services, content, and account information is an important part of the implementation of our privacy policy, designed to let former customers be confident that they haven't left hidden copies of their data behind.

Closing a membership also entails removing enough of your personal information that even if recovery were possible, we would have no way of proving you are the right person to recover it for.

As such, once a membership is closed it is permanently gone and any associated information, content, domains, or other services cannot be recovered. (You are, of course, welcome and encouraged to re-create things from your own backups if you choose to set up a new membership with us.)

This applies regardless of whether the membership was closed by request, due to running out of funds for an extended period of time, or for violation of our Terms & Conditions of Service.

Technology Answers

Does 'NearlyFreeSpeech.NET DNS' support subdomains?
Yes. Our NearlyFreeSpeech.NET DNS service allows unlimited subdomains under a single domain name at no additional charge.

Please be aware, however, that we do not use the subdomain-is-subdirectory hack (unfortunately) made popular by a certain brand of web hosting control panel software. You can use our service to create multiple independent sites and then assign or remove names from one or more NearlyFreeSpeech.NET DNS domains at your discretion. There is no connection between a site and a domain name or subdomain other than what you create, and there is no correlation at all between subdirectories of a site and subdomains of a domain.

Subdomains can be associated with sites we host by adding them as aliases. If you're a member, see this member FAQ entry for more information.

Non-Member Answers

One of your members hosts something for me (or my/our organization). Will you give me access to it?
No.

We encounter a variety of situations where people contact us claiming to be the rightful owner of a web site or domain managed through our service. Such claims are typically accompanied by demands to allow the person to take over, transfer services, or take something down.

Our policies are extremely strict and are designed to provide maximum security to our members. At NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, memberships are held by individuals. The individual person we have on record as the holder of a membership is the only person authorized to access that membership or direct us to take any action related to services we provide under that membership

This puts people wanting access to a membership into two categories:

First, the person whose name is on the membership. Occasionally, a member will mislay their login credentials and be unable to access the system. We are able and happy to assist with a variety of such matters; they have their own FAQ entry with the specifics.

Second, everyone else. This includes customers, vendors, employees, employers, contractors, co-workers, relatives, friends of members, and current or former members with adjunct access, not just the general public. We apologize, but we are not able to assist you under any circumstances, unless expressly authorized to do so in advance by the relevant member, and even then only under a very limited set of circumstances (such as allowing a predesignated party to make deposits or renew domains in case of emergency). Any concern or conflict you have with the member hosting the services with us, including problems contacting them, must be resolved directly with that member or via channels other than us (e.g. the court system). There are absolutely no exceptions.

We apologize to anyone negatively affected by our hardline stance on protecting the privacy and security of our members. While this often seems harsh to people already having some other major problem not caused by this policy, we ask them to please keep in mind the absolute chaos that would result if we handed over web sites and domains to anyone who asked for them via email based on their say-so. Thank you for your understanding.

Note: If you contact us about accessing hosted services on a membership and you receive a link to this FAQ entry in response, then it is applicable to your inquiry, and that is the end of the discussion.

This is the case even if you believe (or wish) otherwise. It is not unusual for people who receive such a link to think that they or their circumstances are special and therefore this entry does not apply to them. That is not the case.

If you want to obtain services hosted by a member of our service, and you are not that member, then you have several options:
1. Obtaining the member's assistance is always the first and best choice.
2. All disputes involving domain names must follow the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).
3. If you know who the member is, sue him or her in a court of competent jurisdiction, win, and obtain a court order requiring the transfer of the assets of interest to you.
4. If you do not know who the member is, file an in rem lawsuit against the content itself in a court of competent jurisdiction, make sure we are notified of the proceedings so we can attempt to notify the member, win, and obtain a court order requiring the transfer of the relevant assets to you.
Absent the above, contacting us asking for access to someone else's stuff is a complete waste of your time.
How do I take over responsibility for something hosted by one of your members?
We support four types of transfers:
- Transferring everything on a membership from one person to another.
- Transferring an account from one member to another.
- Transferring individual assets from one member's account to another member's account.
- Transferring funds from one member's account to another member's account. (Although such transfers become nonrefundable; we're not a money transfer service.)
The current member can set up any of those for you with minimal effort. It takes less than five minutes. For all of the options except transferring everything, you'll need to have a membership of your own first.

The only thing we don't allow is for them to just hand over their username and password and book it. If they try that, they may or may not realize that they are setting you up for serious problems (and potentially a $50 fee) down the road. Don't let them!

That's pretty much it. If you need it, here's more background about how our system works.

At NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, responsibility is divided into two distinct pieces: a membership and an account. A membership represents an individual person. A person can only have one membership, which has their real/legal name on it. Memberships cannot be shared or transferred.
An account is a separate piece under the membership that contains money, sites, domains, everything related to hosting for a specific entity (which might be the same person, or it might be a company, club, or organization.).

Usually, one membership has one account. But a web developer may have a bunch of accounts on their membership, one for each customer. And big projects may have a bunch of memberships sharing access to one account. We support all of those things.

Here are some takeover tips:
- Make sure our service is a good fit for you. If it isn't, it's best to find that out beforehand.
- Create your own membership in your own name. Never access a membership created by someone else.
- Establish with the other person exactly what you are taking over. This could range from a whole account full of services down to a single site or domain name. The important thing is that you both agree on exactly what is to be transferred.
- If you are receiving individual assets (sites, domains, databases), you'll have to create and fund an account first. (Otherwise they would immediately stop working!)
If I think services you host are currently unavailable due to lack of funds; is there anything I can do?
Requests to manage hosted services or renew domains will not be honored unless they have been properly verified according to the authentication methods previously established by the membership owner. Generally, this means that the individual member logs in to our system to take the appropriate action. However, there is one exception to this policy.

Transfers between member accounts that consist only of funds may be made with only the approval of the sending member. In other words, anyone with a funded NearlyFreeSpeech.NET membership can transfer funds to any other member's account if (and only if) they know the recipient's account number.

This means that the following conditions (and only these conditions) can be resolved by anyone:
- A site hosted here is unavailable and the only reason it is unavailable is a lack of funds.
- A registered domain that meets all of the following criteria.
  - The domain is currently registered through us.
  - The domain is currently within the auto-renew period (from about ten days before expiration to about 30 days after expiration).
  - The domain was previously set to auto-renew by the member.
  - The only reason the domain has not auto-renewed is the lack of funds.
Please note that our system does send out-of-funds and domain auto-renewal failure notifications to the member's contact email address but that our privacy policy strictly prohibits us from discussing or disclosing information about the applicability of these conditions to any particular situation in the absence of a properly-verified request from the member. In other words, we cannot tell you whether or not the unavailability of services obtained through us results from a lack of funds.

If you believe you are in this situation, you can take the following steps:
1. Create a new NearlyFreeSpeech.NET membership.
2. Make a payment sufficient to cover the expected costs.
3. Use the "Transfer Funds Between Accounts" action on the Accounts tab.
4. Enter the recipient member's account number as the Destination Account.
5. Select the "To another member's account" transfer type.
6. Enter a transfer amount sufficient to cover the expected costs.
7. Select the "Transfer Funds" button.
Please keep in mind that although hosted services typically come back online within a few minutes if lack of funds was the problem, domain registrations can take 24-48 hours to start working again if they were expired at the time of renewal.

If you do not know the member's 12-digit account number, you will not be able to use the process above.

The following additional information applies only to individuals who cannot access their membership.

Under ordinary circumstances, our Terms & Conditions of Service impose a strict limitation of one membership per individual, for good reasons. Under ordinary circumstances, completing the appropriate recovery process to regain access to your membership is strongly preferable. We provide extensive recovery options for a lost username or password, a lost email address, or a lost two-factor device. But under ordinary circumstances, a member logs in to our site and does whatever they need to do, and they do not wind up reading this.

If extraordinary (but temporary) circumstances exist — like if a member is temporarily unable to log in to their regular membership because they are traveling and don't have needed info to access or recover it — where violating the letter of the one-membership-per-person policy by creating a second membership for the sole purpose of depositing funds into the first will mitigate larger harm, we allow it.

However, the "temporary" qualification of those extraordinary circumstances is significant. Taking this action is only a good idea if "temporary" applies. In other situations, taking this action may not mitigate larger harm; it may make things worse.

Although it is extremely rare and our system takes many precautions to prevent it, it is remotely possible for a member to, through a sufficiently large combination of consecutive instances of bad judgment or dishonesty, engineer a situation where they have set security protocols to verify their identity that they subsequently they have no way to meet. In such cases, it is very likely to be preferable to allow services to be deleted and then pursue recreating them once they are removed from the inaccessible membership. Adding funds through this process may only increase the delay before that happens.

Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

Policy Questions

Technology Questions

Non-Member Questions

General Answers

Policy Answers

Technology Answers

Non-Member Answers