Refund and Cancellation Policy

The short version

If HostCrafter is not for you, ask within 7 days of your first hosting order and we refund what you paid for the hosting. One refund per customer, ever. Domains are never refundable, because we cannot un-buy them.

You can cancel at any time whether or not a refund applies. Cancelling and refunding are two different things and they are both below.

Who can claim

The refund is for first-time customers only. It applies to the first hosting plan you buy from us and to nothing after it.
One refund per person or business, for good. If you have been refunded before, a later order is not refundable — including an order placed under a different email address, company name, phone number or payment method.
Renewals are not refundable. The 7 days run from your first purchase, not from each invoice.
Upgrades, downgrades and additional plans on an existing account are not refundable.

How we know whether this is your first refund

A one-refund rule only means something if we can tell that a second claim is a second claim. So we keep a short record of every refund we make, and we keep it after the account is closed — otherwise closing the account would reset the counter and the rule would protect nothing.

The record holds only what is needed to recognise a repeat claim, and it is deliberately small:

the email address and phone number on the account;
the domain names that were hosted;
an identifier for the payment instrument the money came from and went back to — the UPI handle, or a reference for the card or bank account. We never hold your full card number;
the billing name, country and the IP address the order was placed from;
the date of the refund and the amount.

We store most of those as one-way fingerprints rather than as readable details. A fingerprint can answer “have we seen this before?” and cannot be turned back into your personal information, which is the smallest thing that does the job.

This is why a new email address and a new payment method do not produce a second first-time refund. If we believe an order is a repeat claim in a new coat, we may decline the refund, and we may decline the order. We will tell you which, and why.

The privacy policy covers this record too, including how to ask what we hold.

What is never refundable

Domain names. A registration is paid to the registry the moment it is made and cannot be reversed. This is true everywhere, not just here — the domain registration terms explain the rest.
Any renewal invoice.
Accounts suspended or closed for breaking the terms of service or the acceptable use policy.
Orders older than 7 days. We do not make exceptions, because an exception for one person is unfair to everyone who was told no.
Any fee a payment provider charged us and will not return — rare, and we will show you the figure if it happens.

How to claim, and how long it takes

Open live chat or email [email protected] from the address on the account and say you want a refund. You do not have to give a reason, and nobody will try to talk you out of it. We will confirm within one working day.

We start the refund within 3 working days of confirming it. The money then takes as long as your bank or card issuer takes — usually 5 to 10 working days after that, and that part is out of our hands.

If we cannot refund the way you paid

The money goes back the way it came whenever that is possible, because that is the fastest route and the one your bank understands. Sometimes it is not possible: a payment method may not accept reversals at all, a UPI handle or card may have been closed since you paid, or the window the provider allows for a reversal may have passed.

When that happens we still refund you. We will agree another route with you and use it:

In India — UPI, or a direct bank transfer to an account in your name.
Outside India — PayPal, or an international bank transfer where PayPal is not available to you.

Two honest caveats. A refund sent this way is done by hand, so it takes longer than an automatic reversal — allow up to 14 working days. And we will have to ask you for the account details to send it to, and to check they belong to the person who paid; we cannot send a refund to a third party.

The amount does not change. If a bank on the route charges a transfer fee, we tell you the figure before we send it.

Cancelling, with or without a refund

You can cancel any plan from the panel, or by asking us. Cancelling stops the next renewal — it does not by itself refund the term you are in unless this policy applies.

You can choose to cancel immediately or at the end of the paid term. End of term is the default and it is almost always the right one: you keep what you have paid for.

After a plan ends we keep your site for 14 days in case you change your mind. Bringing it back is free — there is no restoration fee — but it depends on an automatic backup still existing, and each of those expires 14 days after it was taken on WordPress Starter and 30 days on every other plan. Take your own copy from the panel before you go; it costs nothing and it is yours.

Before you ask

If something is broken or slow, tell us first. Most refund requests we see are a problem we could have fixed in ten minutes. You keep the right to a refund either way — asking us to look does not use it up, and the 7 days do not pause while we do.

Chargebacks

If you raise a chargeback instead of asking us, the account is suspended while the bank decides, and we will not restore it afterwards. Ask us. We do not argue about refunds.

Refund and cancellation policy