English Web Version / AGB Translation
This page provides an English web version of the German OpenDucks IT AGB for IT services, hosting, cloud, mail, VPN, storage, support, software and managed services. Individual agreements, offers, service descriptions, data processing agreements and service-specific terms take precedence where they contain different provisions.
If this English web version differs from the German AGB PDF, the German version takes precedence unless an individually signed agreement expressly states otherwise.
The German AGB PDF contains the German version for IT services, hosting, cloud, managed services, payment, default interest, abuse handling and related contractual rules.
Version 1.1
· 2026-05-02
Superseded AGB draft before broader coverage and removal of review notice.
These General Terms and Conditions apply to contracts between OpenDucks IT, Barrantes Quispe & Böhnke-Avan GbR, Friedrichstraße 232, 10969 Berlin, Germany, and the respective customers for IT services, hosting, cloud, mail, VPN, storage, support, consulting, software and managed-service offerings.
They apply to businesses within the meaning of Section 14 of the German Civil Code, legal entities under public law and special funds under public law. For consumers, these terms apply only insofar as mandatory consumer protection law does not conflict with them.
Individual agreements, offers, service descriptions, service-specific terms, data processing agreements, service level agreements and separate price or project agreements take precedence over these terms where they contain different provisions. Customer terms become part of the contract only if OpenDucks IT expressly agrees to them in text form.
Offers by OpenDucks IT are non-binding unless expressly designated as binding. A contract may be formed in particular by acceptance of an offer, ordering through a shop or portal, signature, electronic confirmation, payment, activation or the start of service provision.
Communication may take place by email, portal, ticket system, telephone, video conference or other electronic channels. The customer must ensure that stored contact, billing and emergency addresses are reachable and that changes are communicated without undue delay.
OpenDucks IT may reject orders or request additional evidence where legal, technical, security-related, reputational or economic reasons conflict with the order.
The type, scope, technical parameters, terms, prices, response times, storage locations, limits and other service characteristics are determined by the offer, contract, order, product page, SLA, service description or service-specific terms. Services not expressly agreed are not owed.
Service descriptions may distinguish between provisioning services, managed services, work products, support contingents, project work, software licensing, hosting, cloud storage, mail services, VPN access and consulting services. The agreed service is decisive.
OpenDucks IT provides services according to the state of the art and with reasonable care. A specific quality, commercial success, search engine ranking, permanent availability or compatibility is owed only if expressly promised.
Changes or extensions to the scope of services require an agreement. Customer change requests may affect effort, deadlines, dependencies, risks and remuneration.
OpenDucks IT may make reasonable technical changes where they are acceptable to the customer and concern security, stability, compatibility, scalability, abuse prevention, legal requirements or further development of the services.
Migrations, platform changes, version changes, third-party changes or interface changes may require maintenance windows, tests, customer cooperation and customer-side adjustments.
The customer provides in good time all information, access, contacts, content, data, decisions, approvals, licenses, permissions and technical requirements necessary for service provision. Delays caused by missing cooperation extend deadlines appropriately.
The customer is responsible for the lawfulness of its content, data, domains, applications, users, configurations, credentials and processing operations initiated by the customer. Credentials must be treated confidentially and protected appropriately.
Self-managed systems, applications, plugins, scripts, forms, mail accounts, DNS records and access points must be kept current and secure by the customer unless a different managed-service scope has been agreed.
The customer must hold all required rights to content, trademarks, domains, data, media, software, texts, images, fonts and materials provided by the customer or processed through the services.
The customer must not use services to store, publish, transmit or process unlawful, abusive, harmful or third-party-rights-infringing content. The customer is responsible for users, subaccounts, end customers and other persons to whom it grants access.
The customer indemnifies OpenDucks IT against third-party claims arising from a culpable breach of these duties by the customer, including reasonable legal defense costs, to the extent permitted by law.
Consulting, conception, integration, development, migration, documentation and project services are provided as services or work products depending on the agreed subject matter.
For work products, acceptance takes place once the agreed service has been provided in all material respects in accordance with the contract. Immaterial defects do not entitle the customer to refuse acceptance. If no justified defect notice is given within a reasonable period, the work is deemed accepted to the extent permitted by law.
Estimates, roadmaps, milestones and technical recommendations are based on the information known at the relevant time. New findings, third-party dependencies or changed customer requirements may require adjustments.
Managed services, monitoring, patch management, backup support, administration, helpdesk and maintenance are provided only within the agreed scope. Work not agreed, emergency work, special requests, data cleanup, security incidents or third-party problems may be charged separately.
Support is provided through the agreed channels and during the agreed times. Response times are initial response times and not resolution times unless expressly agreed otherwise. Prioritization is based on impact, urgency, security relevance, service plan and available information.
The customer remains responsible for business decisions, internal processes, user management, permissions, approvals and checking whether services are suitable for its purposes.
For hosting, cloud, mail, VPN and storage services, the agreed resources, limits, fair-use rules, storage locations, backup options, traffic rules and technical restrictions apply. Exceeding limits may lead to throttling, additional charges, upgrade requirements or restrictions.
Mail services must not be used for spam, list abuse, phishing, forged senders, malware distribution or unsolicited bulk communication. The customer is responsible for the security of forms, scripts, mail accounts and sending permissions.
VPN and remote access may be used only by authorized persons and for the agreed purpose. The customer protects end devices, credentials and internal systems against unauthorized use.
Where OpenDucks IT brokers, integrates or manages domains, SSL/TLS certificates, DNS services, payment services, infrastructure, licenses, SaaS services or other third-party services, the terms of those providers apply in addition.
OpenDucks IT is not liable for outages, changes, rejections, suspensions, price changes or policy decisions by third-party providers where these are outside the control of OpenDucks IT.
The customer is responsible for correct registration data, trademark and naming rights, domain releases, auth codes, renewal decisions and timely cooperation during provider transfers.
Software, scripts, configurations, documentation, templates, plugins, interfaces and work results may be used only within the agreed scope. Until full payment, OpenDucks IT remains entitled to withhold usage rights to the extent legally permitted.
Open-source components may be part of solutions. Their license terms apply directly and may contain specific obligations, such as notices, copyleft rules, source-code provision or redistribution conditions.
Source code, deployment access, build processes, administrative rights, repository access or exclusive rights are transferred only if expressly agreed.
A specific availability is owed only if an SLA or product description expressly provides for it. Otherwise, OpenDucks IT uses reasonable efforts to provide appropriate availability within technical and economic possibilities.
Maintenance may be announced or, in urgent cases, carried out at short notice, especially for security, troubleshooting, stabilization, migration or capacity adjustment. Planned maintenance is carried out outside common peak usage periods where possible.
Backups exist only if agreed or included in the product. Backup scope, retention period, recovery times and responsibilities are determined by the respective service. The customer keeps appropriate independent backups for particularly critical data unless OpenDucks IT has expressly assumed full backup responsibility.
Prices are determined by the offer, contract, shop, portal, price list or invoice. Unless stated otherwise, all prices are exclusive of statutory VAT. Invoices are provided electronically and must be paid without deduction within the stated payment period.
Depending on the service, payments may be made by bank transfer, PayPal, Stripe, credit or debit card or other offered payment methods. Payment providers may apply their own terms, checks, fees and privacy information.
Recurring services may be billed monthly, annually or according to another agreed billing period. Usage-based services, additional work and limit overages may be billed afterwards.
The customer enters payment default after a reminder following due date. A reminder is not required in particular if payment is scheduled by calendar date, the customer seriously and finally refuses payment or default occurs by law without a reminder.
Payment claims enter default no later than 30 days after due date and receipt of the invoice or equivalent payment statement; for consumers this applies only if the invoice specifically refers to this consequence.
During default, a monetary debt bears interest. The default interest rate is five percentage points above the base rate for consumers. For legal transactions not involving a consumer, the default interest rate for payment claims is nine percentage points above the base rate. OpenDucks IT may also claim the statutory EUR 40.00 default lump sum from non-consumers.
In case of payment default, OpenDucks IT may, after appropriate notice, suspend services, withhold services, refrain from renewing domains, restrict data access or terminate the contract where the outstanding amount is substantial or recurring. Immediate measures for acute risks, abuse or other important reasons remain unaffected.
OpenDucks IT may adjust prices for ongoing services with reasonable advance notice if costs for personnel, energy, data centers, licenses, third-party providers, hardware, financing, taxes, charges, currency, security measures or regulatory requirements change materially.
In case of material price increases, the customer has a special termination right as of the effective date of the change unless statutory or contractual rules provide otherwise. If the customer does not object or terminate in due time, the changed remuneration may apply for the future where validly agreed.
Contract terms and notice periods are determined by the offer, contract, product description or order. If no rule exists, ongoing monthly services may be terminated with one month's notice to the end of the month.
The right to extraordinary termination for good cause remains unaffected. Good cause exists in particular in cases of serious abuse, repeated payment arrears, material breaches of contract, security risks, unlawful use or unreasonable continuation of the contract.
After the contract ends, OpenDucks IT may delete customer data after reasonable periods unless statutory retention duties or different agreements exist. The customer is responsible for timely exports, backups, domain transfers and handovers.
In case of abuse reports, security incidents, authority requests, legal violations, concrete risks or violations of acceptable-use rules, OpenDucks IT may take reasonable measures. These include contacting the customer, setting deadlines, password reset, traffic filtering, quarantine, suspension, content removal, termination or reporting to competent authorities.
OpenDucks IT considers proportionality, urgency, risk of recurrence, protection of third parties, evidence preservation, technical feasibility and legal duties. In case of acute danger, attacks, malware, phishing, spam, fraud or substantial disruptions, measures may be taken without prior notice.
The customer supports investigation, provides relevant information, fixes causes and prevents recurrence. Costs for culpably caused emergency measures, restoration or abuse handling may be charged separately to the extent permitted by law.
The customer must report defects or disruptions clearly and without undue delay, including error messages, times, affected systems, log excerpts, screenshots and reproduction steps where possible.
For justified defects, OpenDucks IT provides supplementary performance at its choice by repair or replacement. If supplementary performance fails, statutory rights apply subject to the contractual liability rules.
No defect exists where a disruption is caused by customer configuration, third-party providers, missing cooperation, improper use, systems not agreed, customer-installed software, insufficient resources or external attacks.
OpenDucks IT is liable without limitation in cases of intent, gross negligence, injury to life, body or health and under mandatory statutory provisions.
For slightly negligent breach of material contractual duties, OpenDucks IT is liable only up to the typical, foreseeable damage. Material contractual duties are duties whose fulfillment enables proper performance of the contract and on whose compliance the customer may regularly rely.
Otherwise, liability is excluded to the extent permitted by law. For data loss, OpenDucks IT is liable only up to the effort that would have been required to restore the data if proper and regular backups had been made, unless OpenDucks IT expressly assumed backup responsibility.
OpenDucks IT processes personal data in accordance with data protection laws, the privacy policy and, where required, a data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR. The DPA, TOMs and subprocessors overview may apply in addition depending on the service.
The customer remains controller for personal data processed through the services unless a different role allocation is expressly agreed. The customer ensures that a legal basis for processing exists and that data subjects are properly informed.
Both parties keep confidential information secret and protect it appropriately against unauthorized access. This duty continues after the contract ends. Information that is lawfully public or must be disclosed due to legal duty is excluded.
OpenDucks IT may name the customer as a reference only with the customer's consent unless another agreement exists. Publicly available feedback may be used within the legally permitted scope.
Security-relevant, confidential or personal information is not published without authorization. Public relations, case studies or joint announcements take place only after coordination.
For consumers, statutory information and withdrawal rights apply in addition. Details are set out in the separate shop terms, withdrawal information and model withdrawal form where a consumer contract exists.
For digital content, services or individually configured services, the withdrawal right may expire or be excluded in accordance with statutory rules if the legal requirements are met.
These terms apply to consumers only insofar as they do not conflict with mandatory consumer rights.
Neither party is liable for delays or outages to the extent caused by events outside its reasonable control. These may include natural events, war, terrorism, strikes, energy outages, large-scale network outages, authority measures, pandemics, attacks on infrastructure or outages of material third-party providers.
The affected party informs the other party where possible about material effects and takes reasonable mitigation measures. Performance duties are extended appropriately for the duration of the impediment.
The laws of the Federal Republic of Germany apply, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, unless mandatory consumer protection provisions conflict.
The place of jurisdiction for merchants, legal entities under public law and special funds under public law is Berlin to the extent permitted by law.
If individual provisions are or become invalid, the validity of the remaining provisions remains unaffected. The parties will agree on a valid provision that comes as close as possible to the economic purpose.
Questions about these terms can be sent to legal@openducks.org. Abuse reports should go to abuse@openducks.org or through the abuse page. This page is the English web version of the German AGB PDF for the OpenDucks IT legal section.
Last updated: 2026-05-02 · Version 1.2