Website Hosting Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Last Updated 01/07/2020
Objectives
This service level agreement applies to website and email hosting services provided by Conetix Pty Ltd. For the purposes of this document Conetix Pty Ltd shall be referred to as ‘Conetix’.
Service Level Guarantee
This agreement sets out the minimum level of service that Conetix is required to meet and the corresponding penalties for not meeting such levels. Our objective is to provide a continuously operating service that is beyond the minimum levels specified.
The service level guarantee will be measured by Conetix and is based on the up- time of the hosting server. If Conetix determines that primary services were unavailable for period exceeding the maximum allowable time (that being 0.01%), Conetix will credit the affected client accounts accordingly.
Goals
Conetix’ goal is to achieve 100% web site and server availability for all customers. Our published service level agreement is an up-time of 99.99%. Therefore the acceptable downtime limit is 0.01%. This percentage is calculated based on a total number of hours each month.
Service Level Penalties
Subject to the exceptions listed in section 3 of this agreement if the web site or server availability of customer’s web site or server is less than 99.99%, Conetix will issue a credit to the customer’s account in accordance with the following schedule, with the credit being calculated on the basis of the monthly service charge for the affected Services:
Web Site or Server Availability | Credit Percentage |
98% to 99.99 % | 10% |
94% to 98% | 20% |
90% to 94% | 30% |
87% to 90% | 50% |
Below 87% | 100% |
Exceptions
Customers shall not receive any credits under this SLA in connection with any failure or deficiency of Web Site or Server Availability caused by or associated with:
- circumstances beyond Conetix’ reasonable control, including, without limitation, acts of any governmental body, war, insurrection, sabotage, armed conflict, embargo, fire, flood, earthquake, cyclone or other acts of God, strike or other labor disturbance, interruption of or delay in transportation, unavailability of or interruption or delay in telecommunications or third party services, virus attacks or hackers, failure of third party software (including, without limitation, website programming by third party companies or inability to obtain raw materials, supplies, or power used in or equipment needed for provision of this SLA;
- scheduled maintenance and emergency maintenance and upgrades;
- DNS issues outside the direct control of Conetix;
- customer’s acts or omissions (or acts or omissions of others engaged or authorized by customer), including, without limitation, custom scripting or coding (e.g., CGI, Perl, HTML, ASP, etc), any negligence, willful misconduct, or use of the Services in breach of Conetix’ Terms and Conditions and Acceptable Use Policy;
- DNS (Domain Name Server) Propagation.
- Outages elsewhere on the Internet that hinder access to your account.
- Conetix is not responsible for browser or DNS caching that may make your site appear inaccessible when others can still access it.
Account Credit Requests
To receive a credit for a hosting account, the customer must make a request by sending an e-mail message to . The e-mail message must include the affected domain name and the dates and times of the unavailability of customer’s web site. If the unavailability is confirmed by Conetix, credits will be applied to the cost of the following billing period.
The total amount credited to customer in a particular month under this SLA shall not exceed the total hosting fee paid by customer for such month for the affected Services.
Note: Credits are not refundable and can be used only towards future billing charges. Beyond the refundable costs of the website hosting, Conetix do not agree to pay any additional remuneration to a client.
Performance and Security
Policies And Procedures
All servers are continuously monitored by technicians, to ensure rapid response to any faults that may occur. Monitoring is carried out on all primary services. Monitoring feedback is provided to Conetix staff 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
Servers have multiple connections to power supplies and high speed internet cable to ensure that there are backup services available in the event of a power outage or internet outage.
Servers are backed up daily. The backups are held for a period of 14 days, allowing a server to be restored to a back up version within the last 14 days. The backups are stored on multiple physical storage system.
Servers are updated periodically with anti-virus software, managed firewalls, anti- spam software and other applications to ensure a high level of security for the clients individual website and the integrity of the entire server.
Critical Issues
Critical issues relate to the server’s performance such as the server going offline or reaching a maximum capacity. In this case, every person attempting to connect to a website on that server is affected and therefore the issue is deemed to be critical. Support for critical issues is available from Conetix between business hours as discussed in section 6. Outside of business hours, critical issues are immediately responded to by server technicians and Conetix staff automatically.
The most common critical issues are:
- Maximum CPU usage
- Maximum server storage space usage
- Virus, Spam or Hacker attack on the entire server
Non-Critical Issues
Non-critical issues relate to a problem with the individual client’s connection to the server whilst the server is still online. In this case the general public can connect to the server however the individual client cannot. The issue is therefore deemed to be non-critical. Non-critical issues are not a fault of the website hosting, nor are they the result of a lack of monitoring. Support for non-critical issues is available from Conetix between business hours as discussed in section 6.
The most common non-critical issues are related to the following areas:
- Microsoft outlook configuration or support
- Problems with the clients’ ISP
- Internet browser or ISP caching
- Technical problems with the clients’ internet browser
- Third party plugins on the clients’ internet browser
- The server firewall temporarily stopping an email connection due to hacker, spam or virus attack.
- Incorrect passwords
- General technical support
- Updating a website
Customer Support
Support During Business Hours (9am – 5pm AEST)
During business hours, support requests can be made by phone to 1300 789 260 or by email . All support requests will be handled as soon as possible. The target time to action all support requests is within 60 Minutes.
Support Outside of Business Hours (6pm – 9am AEST)
Outside of business hours, customer support is not currently available. Any phone messages or emails will be replied to as soon as possible when business hours resume the next day.
To ensure that any server issues are attended to promptly outside of business hours, Conetix server technicians monitor all hosting servers 24 hours a day and to respond immediately to server problems. Conetix staff are also immediately notified of any server issues and can respond to these alerts immediately. This policy ensures that any server problems are fixed promptly regardless of what time of day it is.
Acceptance
The Customer signified acceptance of this Service Level Agreement, as well as our Terms of Service, Customer Service Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, Privacy Policy and any applicable Registrant Agreement, when they submitted their order to Conetix for Services, and that order was accepted.
Changes
Conetix may amend our Service Level Agreement at any time. Changes to this agreement will become effective upon their publication to our website.
Continued use of the Service(s) constitutes acceptance of the amended terms. If you do not wish to accept the amended terms, you may request cancellation of your Services in-line with our cancellation policy found within our Terms of service.
Definition of Terms
Primary services: Network availability, Operating system, Web server, Email server, Database servers.
Up-time: the total percentage of hours each month not affected by down-time.
Down-time: the total duration each month for which the primary services are not operating at a reasonable level. Down-time does not include periods for which the primary services are not operating as a result of scheduled outages or outages which can reasonably be determined as resulting from the customers actions.
Customer: Persons to whom the client has authorised access to the web hosting for the purposes of configuration, testing or development or those persons authorised/requested to act on behalf of the client.
Scheduled outages: From time to time upgrades to hardware and or software may be required, such upgrades will be performed outside of business hours. The client will be notified as far as practicable in advance of such upgrades. Scheduled outages under normal conditions should not exceed 5 hours per year. Under normal conditions the client will be advised via the Conetix technical news mailing list no less than 24 hours in advance of any scheduled outage.
Client: The company or individual so named on the web hosting order or hosting agreement.
ISP: Internet Service Provider. The company that provides the service of accessing the web. This is a different service to website hosting and not provided by Conetix.