Effective Monday, September 14, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Tarheel Media is changing how we provide content assistance, troubleshooting, research, and other professional services to customers with hosting-only accounts.
This change does not reduce or remove anyone’s website hosting. It establishes a clear distinction between website hosting and the professional labor required to modify, investigate, or manage a website.
Why This Change Is Necessary
Tarheel Media has historically provided a substantial amount of content assistance, troubleshooting, research, and other professional labor to customers who pay only for website hosting.
These requests have grown to more than 50 hours of unpaid labor each week. That is no longer sustainable while maintaining affordable hosting prices and providing dependable service to customers with active support agreements.
Hosting fees pay for the systems and infrastructure required to keep a website available. They do not include unlimited content changes, research, troubleshooting, configuration, design, or development unless those services are included in a separate written agreement.
Who Is Affected?
This change generally affects customers who:
- Pay only for monthly or annual website hosting
- Do not have an active website, labor, maintenance, or support contract
- Commonly pay less than $20 per month or less than $300 per year
If you are paying less than these amounts, your account is generally a hosting-only account. Your written agreement and active services ultimately determine your coverage.
Who Is Not Affected?
Customers who are still making scheduled payments under an active website contract are not affected by this change.
Services for those customers will continue according to the scope and terms of their written agreements. Customers with an active support, labor, or maintenance agreement will also continue receiving the services covered by that agreement.
How Non-Hosting Support Will Work
Beginning after the effective time, customers without active support coverage must prepay for one hour of labor for each non-hosting support request.
Work will begin after the initial hour has been purchased. If the request requires more than one hour, additional time will be billed at the current rates published on our website.
When the scope can reasonably be determined before an investigation begins, we may provide an estimate. Some technical problems cannot be accurately estimated until they have been examined.
Examples of billable support include:
- Writing, changing, formatting, or uploading website content
- Replacing images, documents, buttons, menus, or page elements
- Design, layout, navigation, or functionality changes
- Plugin, theme, application, or account configuration
- Investigating website behavior or reproducing a reported problem
- Troubleshooting third-party software, services, devices, or integrations
- SEO, analytics, performance, or marketing research
- Testing, implementation, development, training, or administrative assistance
What Hosting Continues to Cover
This policy does not remove the hosting service you purchase. Features specifically included in your hosting plan will continue normally.
If a verified problem originates from Tarheel Media’s hosting infrastructure or another covered hosting system, we will investigate and correct that hosting-related problem according to your service terms.
A hosting failure is different from a request to modify content, investigate third-party software, configure a service, or diagnose a problem that does not originate from the hosting infrastructure.
General Recommendations Remain Available
We remain happy to provide brief general recommendations when they can be offered without research, account access, investigation, testing, or implementation.
When answering a question requires us to examine a particular website, account, configuration, data set, or reported problem, it becomes a support request.
Adding a Support Contract
Customers who regularly need content assistance, troubleshooting, research, maintenance, or other professional services can purchase a customized labor contract.
A support contract provides planned coverage without requiring a separate prepaid hour for every covered request.
Purchase a Customized Labor Contract
Keeping Hosting Affordable and Support Sustainable
We value every customer who entrusts a website to Tarheel Media. This change allows us to continue offering affordable hosting while ensuring that professional support work is properly scheduled and compensated.
If you are uncertain whether your account includes support coverage, contact us before submitting work. We will confirm your current coverage without charge.