Terms of Service

We rent virtual machines running Microsoft Windows Server, hosted on cloud infrastructure that we operate in the eastern United States. You reach them over an encrypted remote-desktop session.

Your instances accept no inbound connections except remote desktop, and only from the single network address you connected from, for as long as the machine is running. We take that address from your connection itself, never from anything your browser sends us, and the permission is withdrawn when the machine stops.

The service is offered to customers in the United States. The compute is provisioned in one US region, which is what makes it useful for the latency-sensitive work our customers do; we do not target or market it elsewhere, and we do not undertake to meet the consumer or data-protection requirements of other countries.

You must be 18 or older and provide a working email address. You are responsible for everything done through your account, including by anyone you give access to. Keep your password and two-factor codes to yourself, and tell us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed by someone else.

The service is prepaid. Funds you add become account balance at face value, with no purchase fee. Rates are shown before you launch.

Purchased balance is balance you paid for. Promotional balance is balance we granted without payment — referral rewards, credits from a promotion, and goodwill adjustments. Your balance is a single figure and both kinds are spent the same way, on the same terms. They differ in refunds, under section 7, and a particular promotion may carry its own conditions, which we will tell you when we offer it.

Balance is credit toward compute and storage on this service. It is not money held on deposit, earns no interest, cannot be transferred to another account or used to pay anyone but us, and has no cash value outside the service except where section 7 or the law requires us to return it.

How a session is charged. A session starts when a machine starts and ends when it stops. You are charged for the longer of ten minutes or the time the machine actually ran, at the published hourly rate for its type, prorated for the actual elapsed time. Nothing is rounded up to a block and nothing is rounded down: a session of thirteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds is charged for thirteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds. So a three-minute session is charged ten minutes; a thirteen-minute session is charged thirteen; a seventeen-minute session is charged seventeen.

The ten-minute minimum is charged when the machine starts, so it applies even if you stop the machine immediately. Starting a machine you previously stopped begins a new session, and so a new minimum. Storage is charged separately and continues while a disk is kept, including while the machine is stopped and while your account is suspended — see sections 5 and 7.

Adding balance is a one-off purchase. It does not recur, and no further charge is made to your payment method unless you switch on automatic top-up yourself in Settings, which you can switch off at any time.

Your balance is held and shown in US dollars whatever you paid with. Where we accept cryptocurrency, the payment is handled by a third-party processor on its own site — we never hold a wallet, address, or key for you. You choose a dollar amount, the processor quotes the cryptocurrency needed to cover it at its own rate, and that dollar amount is credited once it confirms the payment in full. A payment that confirms short of the amount invoiced is not credited. We do not track the value of any cryptocurrency afterwards, and your balance does not rise or fall with it.

Buying balance does not fix the price of compute. Rates may change under section 9; balance is spent at the rate published when a machine runs, not the rate published when the balance was bought.

Some limits exist to protect us from runaway cost and cannot be switched off, whatever your balance:

• Twelve-hour running limit. No instance runs longer than twelve hours at a stretch, and at that point it is stopped. If its disk is saved (persistence, on by default) the disk is kept and you can start the instance again, which begins a new twelve-hour period; if not, the instance is terminated and its disk destroyed. The twelve-hour cap on a single run is absolute.
• Zero balance. Instances are stopped on the first metering check that finds your balance at or below zero. Those checks run every five minutes, so a few minutes of running time may be charged after you reach zero and your balance can end slightly negative. If that happens, the next funds you add are applied to the shortfall first and the remainder becomes available balance. We do not pursue a small negative balance as a debt, and we will not charge a payment method to clear it unless you have switched on automatic top-up.
• Cost alerts. If total spend on our infrastructure breaches a threshold, we may freeze new launches and stop running instances across the platform.
• Concurrency. You may run two instances at once.
• Request limits. Launching, connecting, stopping and adding funds are rate-limited per account. You may hit a limit and be asked to wait.
• Limits on adding funds. New accounts have a ceiling on a first card payment and on the total added in the first week. Exceeding it may pause your ability to launch while we look at the account.

Two limits only ever spend your own balance, so they are yours to control in Settings.

• Idle auto-stop is off by default. Switch it on and we will stop a machine that looks idle, to save you money.
• Daily and weekly usage caps. By default, reaching a cap stops your running machines. You may switch that off, in which case a machine already running keeps running past the cap. Either way, once you are past a cap we will not start a new machine until the period rolls over — that part is not adjustable.

Your disk is saved between sessions by default. When an instance stops — including at the twelve-hour limit — the disk is kept, and starting the instance again brings your data back. Storage is charged to your balance for as long as a disk is kept.

We take no backups. A saved disk is a single copy, and we cannot recover it if it is lost. A disk is deleted from the service and cannot be restored by us — treat it as gone — in each of these cases:

• when you terminate the instance;
• when an instance with persistence switched off reaches its twelve-hour limit, at which point it is terminated rather than stopped;
• when your balance stays empty and storage cannot be charged for fourteen days, which we warn you about by email each day beforehand.

Switching persistence off does not delete anything by itself — it means the disk will not survive the instance's next twelve-hour limit. Keep a copy of anything you cannot afford to lose somewhere other than the instance.

You may not use an instance, or let anyone else use it, to:

• break any applicable law, or help someone else to
• scan, probe, brute-force, overload, or attempt to gain access to any network or system you do not own or have written permission to test
• take part in a denial-of-service attack, or operate botnet command and control, malware distribution, or phishing infrastructure
• send unsolicited bulk email, or anything else commonly called spam
• mine cryptocurrency or run equivalent proof-of-work or unattended compute-maximising workloads
• handle credentials, personal data, or payment card data obtained without authorisation, including credential-stuffing lists
• store or distribute child sexual abuse material, ever, under any framing
• infringe someone else's copyright, trademark, or other rights
• defeat, evade, or interfere with the metering, guardrails, or account limits described in these terms
• resell, sublicense, or provide access to the instances as a service to third parties

Instances run licensed Microsoft software. You must comply with Microsoft's licence terms for Windows Server, and you may not extract, redistribute, or re-license that software.

Third-party websites and services. What you connect to from your instance is your business and your responsibility. Nothing in these terms is permission from us to access, automate, scrape, crawl, sign up to, or transact with any third-party website or service, and we do not represent that any such use is permitted by that third party. You are solely responsible for complying with the terms, policies, and applicable law of every service you reach from an instance, and for any claim arising from it.

Our own suppliers. The service runs on infrastructure we obtain from third parties, whose acceptable-use policies apply to everything running on it. You must not use an instance in a way that breaches them. Where a supplier requires us to suspend or terminate an instance or an account, we will do so, and section 7 governs what happens to your balance.

If we reasonably believe you have breached section 6, or that your use threatens the security, cost, or lawful operation of the service, we may suspend your account, stop or terminate your instances, and freeze further launches. Where the risk is immediate we will act first and tell you afterwards. Otherwise we will tell you what happened and why.

Suspension and termination are different. While your account is suspended you cannot launch machines, your running machines are stopped, and any disk you have chosen to keep is retained and continues to be charged storage from your balance. Terminating your account closes it: you can no longer launch or start anything, your running machines are stopped, and we refund your unspent balance as described below. Any disk you kept is not destroyed at that moment — it stops being charged once your balance reaches zero, and is deleted automatically within fourteen days. If you want it erased sooner, ask us. Terminating a single instance destroys only that instance and, unless you have kept its disk, its data.

Compute and storage you have already used are not refundable, including where an instance is terminated for breaching these terms.

Your unspent balance is treated differently. If we terminate your account, we will refund the balance you have not yet spent, whether the termination is for breaching these terms or for any other reason. We do not keep unspent funds as a penalty. You may also close your account at any time and be refunded on the same basis.

What we refund is limited to what you paid. Promotional balance, as defined in section 3, has no cash value and is not refundable; a refund is never more than the total you have paid us and not already had returned. If your remaining balance is smaller than that, we refund the remaining balance.

How we return it. To the original payment method where we can. Where we cannot — because too much time has passed for the payment provider to reverse it, or because the method has expired or closed — we will agree another method with you. We do not refund to a different person, or to a different payment method than the one that paid, except where we cannot use the original.

Cryptocurrency refunds. Paying in cryptocurrency requires a refund address on your account first, because we cannot reverse the payment and need somewhere to send it. We refund to the address the payment came from wherever the processor tells us what that was. Where your registered address is different from the one the payment came from, the refund is held for a fraud check before it is sent. Refunds are sent less the network fee, and we cannot recover funds sent to an address you gave us incorrectly, which is why you enter it twice. A newly changed address cannot receive a refund for twenty-four hours.

We do not process a refund on a payment while a chargeback or dispute is open on it, because the payment provider is already deciding where that money goes and we would otherwise return it twice.

Some balance was never really ours to return: amounts credited in error, or through a payment that was fraudulent, reversed, or charged back. We may reverse those, including where doing so leaves your balance negative, and we may withhold a refund where we reasonably suspect the funds are the proceeds of fraud, for as long as it takes to establish that.

We may ask you to verify your identity or your ownership of a payment method before we release a refund, or before allowing further top-ups, where we reasonably suspect fraud or unauthorised use of a payment method.

We run two separate reward programmes. They share the same referral link, and being in one does not put you in the other.

Referral credit is open to every account. Share your link, and when someone who signed up through it makes their first qualifying top-up, we add a fixed credit bonus to your balance. The bonus and the minimum top-up that qualifies are shown on your referral page. One bonus per referred account, ever. You cannot refer yourself, and accounts that exist mainly to refer one another do not qualify.

A referral bonus is promotional balance under section 3. It is spent like any other balance, and it is not returned as cash under section 7.

Affiliate commission is a different arrangement and is by invitation only. We choose who joins. An affiliate earns a percentage of what the customers they referred actually pay us for usage, paid in cash rather than as balance. We may also give you a custom link; links remain ours, and we may change or withdraw one.

How the rate works. We set a percentage for each product line separately, and we can switch any line on or off. A rate applies from the moment we set it and to usage from that moment onward. Changing a rate never re-prices usage that has already happened, and switching a line off stops further commission without removing commission already earned. Commission is earned only on a referred customer's usage from the date the referral was recorded, never on anything before it.

Commission follows the money. It is calculated on payments that settle. If a payment behind that usage is later refunded, reversed, or charged back, the commission on it is reversed too — we may set that against commission we owe you or, where none is owed, ask you to return it. We may hold a payout until the payments behind it are past the period in which they can still be disputed.

Payouts. We pay by hand, to the method you give us, and we may ask you to confirm your identity and to provide the tax information the law requires of us before we pay. Commission is your income; any tax on it is yours to declare and pay. Nothing here makes you our employee, agent, or partner.

How you may promote us. Make clear that you earn from the link whenever you share it. You may not:

• send unsolicited bulk messages, or anything else commonly called spam
• post your link anywhere you have no right to post it
• bid on our name or our product names in paid search
• present yourself as Kiln, as speaking for Kiln, or as providing support on our behalf
• promise anything about the service that we have not published

If a programme is abused we may cancel unpaid commission, reverse rewards already granted, and remove you from the programme, in addition to anything in section 7. Abuse includes:

• referring yourself, or accounts created mainly to generate rewards
• rewards arising from payments that turn out to be fraudulent, reversed, or charged back
• promoting us in any of the ways ruled out above

Where we end your participation for any other reason, commission you have already earned and not yet been paid is still paid.

We may change or end either programme. A change applies from when we make it, on the same basis as a rate change under section 9.

We do not promise the service will be uninterrupted or available at any particular time, and we offer no uptime guarantee. We may change, suspend, or withdraw any part of it, including instance types and pricing.

The rate for a machine is always shown before you launch it, and that is the rate it is billed at. A rate change never applies to a session already running. Where we change a published rate we will also email the address on your account before the new rate takes effect.

The service is provided as is, without warranties of any kind to the fullest extent the law allows. We are not liable for lost profits, lost data, or indirect or consequential loss. Our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the three months before the claim arose.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

Every version of these terms carries the version identifier and date shown at the top of this page, and that identifier is recorded against your account each time you accept them — at sign-up and at each payment — so it is always possible to establish which exact document you agreed to.

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects your rights we will email the address on your account before it takes effect, and the new version is shown for acceptance at your next payment. Continuing to use the service after a change takes effect means you accept the updated terms. If you would rather not, you may close your account under section 7 and be refunded your unspent purchased balance. We keep previous versions and will provide the one you accepted on request.

You will cover us for any claim, demand, loss, or cost — including reasonable legal fees — brought by someone else and arising from your use of the service, from anything you run or store on an instance, from your breach of these terms, or from your dealings with any third-party service you reach from an instance. We will tell you promptly about any such claim and will not settle it without asking you first.

You may not use the service if you are located in, ordinarily resident in, or acting on behalf of anyone in a country or region subject to comprehensive trade sanctions, or if you appear on a restricted-party list maintained by the United States or another applicable authority. You may not use the service in breach of any export-control law, and you confirm you are not prohibited from receiving it.

These terms, and any dispute arising out of them or the service, are governed by the laws of the State of Texas and of the United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. The courts located in Texas have exclusive jurisdiction, and you and we each consent to their jurisdiction and venue. Either of us may still bring an individual claim in a small-claims court with jurisdiction, and either of us may seek an injunction from any court to stop unauthorised use of the service or infringement of intellectual property.

Nothing in these terms removes any right or protection given to you by the mandatory law of the country you live in that cannot be excluded by agreement, or requires you to bring a claim somewhere that law does not allow.

Notices and electronic communication. We communicate with you by email at the address on your account, and where you have connected a Discord account, by direct message. You agree to receive notices, disclosures, and changes to these terms electronically, and it is your responsibility to keep your email address current and able to receive our mail.

If part of these terms fails. If any provision is held unenforceable, it is limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest stays in force. If we do not enforce a provision, that is not a waiver of it, and no waiver is effective unless we give it in writing.

Transfer. You may not transfer or assign your account or these terms without our written consent. We may assign them to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of the business, on notice to you.

Events outside our control. Neither of us is liable for failing to perform because of something beyond our reasonable control, including failure of a supplier we depend on, network or power failure, natural events, or government action. This does not excuse you from paying for what you have already used.

Whole agreement, and what survives. These terms, with the privacy notice, are the entire agreement between us about the service and replace anything said before. Sections 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, and 14 continue to apply after your account ends, as far as they need to.

Legal notices, privacy requests, refund disputes and abuse reports should be sent to legal@kilnservers.com, so that there is a durable record on both sides.

Day-to-day support is also on our Discord, and is usually the fastest route for anything that is not a formal notice.