From reviewing your logs, what percentage of your customers read your TOS before signing up for a hosting account with you?

Thanks in advance,
Gary

I saw most of them never read it. :(

I saw most of them never read it. :(

Would your estimate be that only one person out of 200 reads it, or would it be even less that that?

Thanks for your response,
Gary

Depends really.
As a customer I read CirtexHosting's TOS.
Because it was put in a manner where I could understand the words.

I didn't read Dreamhost tho.

while the most popular article in the site has around 3000 views,
the TOS in my site has around 300 views.

Would your estimate be that only one person out of 200 reads it, or would it be even less that that?

Thanks for your response,
Gary

About 10% of customers read the ToS, but it depends on the kind of customers. Most bad customers didn't care to read, and quality customers will read the ToS because they're serious on their business/server.

I read it to them and make them sign it. Nevertheless, I still have people who think that blasting copies of their 10MB résumé to 20,000 invalid email addresses they purchased from a "marketing guy" will be somehow exempt from my very explicit zero spam policy and are absolutely baffled when I pull the plug on them.

Well about 2-3% of my customers read the tos... some don't even know what it is.
The ones who read usually never break it.

Using Google Analytics, I saw that our TOS and AUP had the lowest amount of hits out of all of our pages, so I say that maybe 5% of the users who sign up with us read it. The rest, well I am not too sure.

Using Google Analytics, I saw that our TOS and AUP had the lowest amount of hits out of all of our pages, so I say that maybe 5% of the users who sign up with us read it. The rest, well I am not too sure.

Does the Google Analytics list the times between page views, so you can see how much time elapsed before they clicked on the next page they viewed?

Maybe the customers have read the TOS some days before they signup (this is why maybe there is no matching of the order/tos view) - this is what I do :)

There is also the people who open the page and then only read the first few lines...

As one of the Support Techs with over active 650 clients in our company we usually have ticket a day somewhere it said "I didn't know that" and it was clearly stated in the TOS and Privacy Policy.

I think it depends on the amount of money that the customer is paying. If a customer is, for instance, paying only $5 per month for their hosting, they are not very likely to spend time reading a huge TOS. Whereas, if a company is renting a server, I think they are more likely to read the TOS as it's in their best interest considering the amount of money they are investing. Personally, I print off TOS and read them at a later time whilst considering my options when it comes to a decision that involves a substantial amount. One day, I think hosting companies may become tiresome of the hassle caused by customers not reading through the TOS thoroughly and may think of an alternative. Engelmacher seems to have a good approach to this by reading the TOS to the customer and making them sign, but this may not be an option for larger companies receiving many signups. But I reckon there are alternatives to the way TOS are handled if you think about it properly. What's going to save you more time in the long run? That's a good point actually, how can you MAKE your customers read the TOS? I'm momentarily thinking a mass of tricky check boxes but that would be off putting, I think.

I doubt any of mine have even though they are free customers they still broke the ToS and uploaded proxy when it clearly said, at several places during sign up "No Proxies Allowed" lol

Anyway i think it doesnt really matter if they read it or not, as they automatically agree to it when they sign up and they are more than likely going to know about it, if they infringe the ToS and get their account suspended/deleted and they havent read the ToS then it's their own fault.

Funny thing is NOBODY read TOS, only "problematic" customers - who either will load your shared server with crazy mysql loads from forum OR abuse in some other way - like a launch download site with 400+ GB in downloads a day :)

They may read it, but just the top part, because to be honest, its just 'legal' terms really complicated, so they may not understand a thing.

Of the really small number of people who read it, there is just a smaller number that really understands it.

its even worse if you write your own ToS like I have, you spend the time and effort making sure it's sound and 5% of customers read it.

osphere, they only read the top part bacause the text box ToS is usually in starts at the top lol, but they might read the bottom part too if you make them scroll down before they can click I agree :P

so mayb you should put the most important parts at the top and bottom of the ToS :P

We find that about 1/2 of our business clients at least go to the main page, but as for personal clients, less than 5%.