Hosting Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Updated August 31, 2020

Doing business as “The Fastest WordPress Hosting” (TFWPH), InterCultural Communications Incorporated (ICC) provides this Service Level Agreement (SLA) so that customers understand the superior service terms they can expect from us. 

99.9% Uptime Hosting SLA

The Fastest WordPress Hosting guarantees the customer’s website will be available 99.9%, excluding server maintenance defined below. 

This SLA is hereby incorporated into the Terms of Service, and made a part of it. Terms not defined in this SLA have the definitions set out in our Terms of Service. The remedies set out in this SLA are Client’s sole and exclusive remedy for issues covered by the SLA.

We reserve the right to make changes to this SLA at any time at our sole discretion. If we make changes to this SLA, we will provide notice of such changes by revising the date at the top of this SLA. Your continued use of our Services following notification of changes will constitute your acceptance of such changes. You should periodically review this SLA and check for any updates.

Definitions

“Necessary Services” are portions of the Service that must be operational for any Client Website hosted on our platform to be accessible over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Necessary Services do not include any systems or services external to TFWPH, which includes  our control panel, support system, website, SSH / SFTP / phpMyAdmin access. 

“Signup Date” is the date you subscribed to a hosting plan.

“Monthly Renewal Date” is the same numerical date as the Signup Date each month after the Signup Date, eg. if the Signup Date is February 1, then the next Monthly Renewal Date will be March 1.

“Monthly Billing Period” is the time from the Signup Date until the day before the Monthly Renewal Date and then from the Monthly Renewal Date until the day before the next Monthly Renewal Date, eg. if the Signup Date is February 1, then the Monthly Billing Period is February 1 through March 1, and the next Monthly Billing Period is March 1 through April 1 and so on.

“Downtime” is any period  in which the Necessary Services are unavailable to the Client.

“Network Downtime” means the total duration of Downtime occuring in a Monthly Billing Period. For example:

  • A Client hosting 3 Websites on a single Client Account experiences 30 minutes of Downtime on Website #1 records Network Downtime of 30 minutes.
  • A Client hosting 3 websites on a single Client Account experiences 30 minutes of Downtime on all 3 websites simultaneously records Network Downtime of 30 minutes – not 90 minutes.
  • A Client hosting 3 websites on a single Client Account experiences 30 minutes of Downtime on website #1 on day 1 and 15 minutes of downtime on website #2 on day 2, that Client records 45 minutes of Network Downtime. 

“Maintenance Period” is 2 am to 5 pm Monday through Sunday in the server’s time zone.

“Effective Plan” is a hosting plan active during Downtime.

“Monthly Plan Value” depends on the billing cycle:

  1. Clients on a monthly billing cycle the Fee is what was paid for the Effective Plan
  2. Clients on an annual billing cycle the Fee the fee is what was paid for the Effective Plan divided by 12

The Monthly Plan Value excludes all other fees, including but not limited to paid add-ons, overages, maintenance fees, etc.

“Uptime Guarantee” promises that Necessary Services will be available more than 99.9% of each Monthly Billing Period.

“SLA Credit” is credit added to a Client Account and applied to subsequent invoices because we did not meet our Uptime Guarantee.

Calculating SLA Credits

As a normal 30-day period is 43,200 minutes, Network Downtime shall not exceed 43 minutes (0.1% of the amount of time in a normal 30-day period). If Network Downtime is 44 minutes or more, then Uptime Guarantee was not met.

In the event that the Uptime Guarantee has not been met, we will provide SLA Credits equal to five percent (5%) of your Monthly Plan Value for each half hour (30 minutes) of Network Downtime above and beyond 43 minutes upon request. This will be determined based upon our monitoring of Network Downtime.

For example:

  • If the Network Downtime is 59 minutes, you will not receive any SLA Credit.
  • If the Network Downtime is 113 minutes, then you will receive SLA Credit equal to 5% of your Monthly Plan Value on your next invoice.
  • If the Network Downtime is 143 minutes, then you will receive SLA Credit equal to 10% of your Monthly Plan Value on your next invoice.

For clients who have switched hosting plans during the Monthly Billing Period, the Monthly Plan Value is calculated based on the amount of time spent on each of the two plans during the Monthly Billing Period, eg. when Monthly Billing Period consisting of 30 days, if you spent 10 days on a plan costing $35 per month and 20 days on a plan costing $79 per month, the Monthly Plan Value would be $50 ( [$35 / 30 x 10] + [$79 / 30 x 20] ) and SLA credits would be issued based on the adjusted Monthly Plan Value of $50.

How to Request SLA Credits

To receive SLA Credits, Client must submit a ticket requesting SLA Credits via the support system before the end of Monthly Billing Period following the Monthly Billing Period during which the Uptime Guarantee was not met. The SLA Credits will then be applied to future invoices. SLA Credits are not redeemable in cash. If you terminate your Account or Agreement before the SLA Credit is applied, you will not receive the SLA Credit. SLA Credits cannot exceed the Monthly Plan Value of any single month and cannot be applied to multiple month invoices.

Limitations on SLA Credit

Network Downtime caused by the following circumstances is not eligible for SLA Credit (we determine application at our sole discretion):

  • Scheduled outage.
  • Maintenance performed during the Maintenance Period.
  • Force majeure events, including but not limited to
    • Acts of Nature (fire, flood, earthquake, storm, or other natural disaster)
    • Acts of War (invasion, hostilities, rebellion, revolution, insurrection, terrorist activities, and other hostile activities), 
    • Actions Taken by Governments (sanction, blockage, embargo, and other governmental action), 
    • Labour Disputes (strike, lockout, or any similar dispute)
    • Power Failure, external service provider outage or any other event which we cannot reasonably control, anticipate, prevent or avoid.
  • Emergency maintenance.
  • Traffic exceeding the capabilities of the Client Website, hosting plan, or Services.
  • Client breach of the Terms of Service, SLA or any other policies, rules or agreements.
  • Client machine access issues.
  • Client-authored code issues.
  • Changes to the Service by parties other than TFWPH & ICC.