Managed ICP

Product description

ICP Overview

An ICP (Internet Content Provider) Filing certifies a publicly accessible website to be hosted lawfully on a public internet IP address on a server located in Mainland China. If you do not meet all three of those underlined requirements, you do not need an ICP License. It is often found too challenging for most foreign companies to directly obtain and manage the necessary ICP License, which is why Elabify has created a service to obtain and manage one on a client’s behalf.

Managed ICP

Elabify provides a monthly Managed ICP service to enable your server to host a website in mainland China by obtaining a Commercial ICP license and a new China domain name in China. Elabify will obtain a new Commercial ICP license, China domain name, server(s), and monitor your website to follow the rules and regulations of operating in mainland China.

The ICP License application process can take 1-6 months to complete. Having a managed service is the fastest, easiest, and most secure way to establish a website presence in mainland China. Using a Virtual Private Server in mainland China can greatly reduce latency to your Chinese users while improving overall stability in sharing content globally.

Process

1. Purchase a Managed ICP for each domain name you intend to cover
2. Within one business day, [email protected] will contact you to complete the Managed ICP Application and answer any questions you may have.
3. Within one business day, [email protected] will provide a response and may request additional details. If we cannot process your ICP license, we will provide a full refund of your Managed ICP costs (Virtual Cloud Servers are never refundable)
4. You must next purchase any Virtual Private Server from Elabify hosted in any region of mainland China. We recommend using a monthly Nano sized server as the process can take up to 6 months, and your server can be safely upgraded at a later time for no additional cost. Notify [email protected] when you have received your server with your server hostname and Managed ICP registration number.
5. Within one business day of purchasing the server, Elabify will configure your firewall to run in a “demo mode” by opening alternate ports (8080 and 8443) until the license is obtained, but port 80 and 443 will not be reliably accessible.
6. Elabify will purchase your domain name and configure the root and www records to point to your server. This process can take up to 5 business days to complete in China, and [email protected] will email you when it is completed.
7. Your company will need to deploy a minimal version of your website on your server on both the demo mode ports 8080/8443 and port 80/443 (although, these ports will not be reliably accessible except locally). You will need to notify [email protected] with your Managed ICP Registration number, a screenshot of your website working on your domain, and provide root level access instructions for our team to perform a read-only inspection of the server. We can only provide basic assistance to your team with this effort, but we do have a Cloud Team if you need help.
8. Within one business day, Elabify will review your website and server configuration and will notify you by email of any issues that need to be corrected, or confirmation that the application documentation is beginning.
9. Within five business days, Elabify will submit documents to apply for the Commercial ICP BeiAn and provide email confirmation of submission.
10. Subsequent reviews of your website and Elabify’s application at a provincial and national level will commence. This has taken as little as one week to several months to complete.
11. Once complete, within one business day Elabify will email you the Commercial ICP BeiAn number associated with your Managed ICP application. The ICP BeiAn registration number must always be prominently included on the landing page of your domains footer in order to avoid being banned in China. If your ICP BeiAn website is banned for any reason by China, Elabify will take best efforts to restore the ICP BeiAn.
12. Elabify will conduct regular scans of your website and ensure your domain name remains registered. If any prohibited activity is detected, we will immediately suspend your website and work with you to determine cause. While we will take best efforts on any accidents, we have a zero tolerance policy on any prohibited activities.

Details

• The license is per domain name and valid for a single IP address. If you need to cover multiple domains (such as yourcompany.cn and yourcompany-test.cn), you will need to purchase multiple licenses.
• If you need to cover multiple servers on a single domain we recommend contacting us for a load balancer.
• If you fail to renew your ICP license and associated servers each month, you will need to apply for a new license from the beginning as your IP address will change and the license will no longer be valid.

A new China specific domain name such as “yourcompany.cn” is required and this domain must be owned and operated by Elabify. As the process can take time to complete, we strongly recommend purchasing a Nano server (cheapest) as China requires to have a representative website running during the review process. The server IP address and domain name can never change as they are bound to this license. Once the license is obtained, you may safely upgrade to a more powerful server and we will ensure your IP address and domain name remains the same with no migration of data required.

Customers are forbidden from hosting:

• Anything that portrays any country negatively
• Pornographic, adult content, or overtly sexual images of any kind
• Gambling of any kind
• Any forum, news, chat, or social media site
• Any hate speech, racial discrimination, or content which supports controversial groups
• Any direct payment handling such as a receiving credit card numbers or checking accounts (using a third party such as Paypal, Swipe, Alipay, Wechat QR codes is permitted)
• Any violation of international laws including copyrighted file sharing
• Any content or service illegal or controversial in China (we reserve the right to ban anything)

If you plan to resell a solution which may expose your website to third party content, you must obtain permission from Elabify.

There are no warnings, refunds, or second chances – please ask [email protected] if you have any questions regarding your specific use case or content. We are here to help. We do appreciate your understanding.

You do NOT need an ICP if you do not plan to open a website on the public internet in mainland China. We strongly recommend using our Corporate Gateway product where possible to reduce risk, cost, and regulatory complexity while still providing excellent mainland China performance. Using a Corporate Gateway does not require an ICP license and websites can be configured to run through this instead of on the public internet. Alternatively, you may wish to host your website on the public internet in Hong Kong or other nearby countries.

Your ICP license will be owned by Elabify and will not be transferred to another party. If you discontinue hosting with Elabify we will assist in transferring your domain name at no additional cost to your new hosting provider and discontinue your existing ICP license.