Service Level Agreement

1. Overview

This SLA states our monthly uptime commitment for eligible services and the service credits available when we do not meet that commitment. It does not create a guarantee that any service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or immune from every security incident.

2. Eligible Services

Unless an order, product description, or separate written agreement states otherwise, this SLA applies to active, paid shared web-hosting and managed cloud application-hosting plans sold directly by 8th Layer Solutions.

This SLA does not apply to:

• Domain registration, transfer, renewal, WHOIS, registry, or DNS services provided by third parties;
• Third-party software, licenses, APIs, content-delivery networks, email relays, or external integrations;
• Free, trial, beta, discontinued, or complimentary services;
• Professional services, migrations, development, configuration work, or one-time projects; or
• A service suspended or restricted under our Terms of Service.

3. Uptime Commitment

We target at least 99.9% Monthly Uptime for each eligible service during every calendar month. Monthly Uptime is the percentage of total minutes in a calendar month during which the eligible service is available, excluding downtime described in Section 7.

4. Measuring Availability

A service is considered unavailable when a failure within systems under our control prevents the hosted website or application from responding to valid external requests for more than five consecutive minutes. Intermittent events separated by periods of availability are measured separately.

We determine availability using our server, network, monitoring, and incident records. Customer-side tests may be considered, but isolated monitoring failures, local connectivity problems, or measurements from a single geographic location do not by themselves establish downtime.

Monthly Uptime is calculated as follows: ((total minutes in the month − covered downtime minutes) ÷ total minutes in the month) × 100.

5. Service Credits

If Monthly Uptime for an eligible service falls below 99.9%, an approved claim will receive a credit based on the recurring monthly fee paid for the affected service:

• 99.0% to below 99.9%: 10% credit;
• 95.0% to below 99.0%: 25% credit; and
• Below 95.0%: 50% credit.

Credits exclude taxes, domain charges, licenses, add-ons, one-time fees, usage charges, discounts, and amounts owed for other services. The maximum credit for any service in one calendar month is 50% of that service's recurring monthly fee. For prepaid terms, the monthly fee is the prepaid recurring charge divided by the number of months in the term.

Service credits are applied to future invoices. They have no cash value, are not transferable, and will not be issued as cash refunds except where required by law.

6. Credit Requests

To request a credit, the account owner must submit a billing or support ticket within seven days after the end of the month in which the downtime occurred. The request must include:

• The affected service or domain;
• The date, approximate start and end times, and time zone of each event;
• A description of the observed error or loss of availability; and
• Any relevant logs, screenshots, monitoring results, or ticket numbers.

The account must be active and in good standing when the event occurs and when the credit is requested. Late, incomplete, duplicate, or unverifiable claims may be denied. We may request additional information reasonably necessary to investigate a claim.

7. SLA Exclusions

Downtime is excluded from the uptime calculation when caused by:

• Scheduled or emergency maintenance;
• The customer's code, content, configuration, credentials, software, plugins, themes, databases, resource use, security practices, or actions;
• Traffic, attacks, or resource consumption that exceeds the purchased plan's limits or materially threatens platform stability;
• Distributed denial-of-service attacks, malware, exploitation, spam, abuse, or other malicious activity not reasonably preventable by us;
• Internet backbone, routing, peering, carrier, DNS, registrar, registry, upstream provider, utility, or third-party service failures outside our reasonable control;
• Customer-requested changes, migrations, restorations, testing, or troubleshooting;
• Suspension, restriction, or termination permitted by our agreements, including for nonpayment, abuse, legal compliance, or security risk;
• Force majeure events or other circumstances beyond our reasonable control; or
• A customer's failure to report a service-specific problem when our systems could not reasonably detect it independently.

8. Scheduled and Emergency Maintenance

We may perform maintenance to protect security, reliability, and performance. When practical, we will provide advance notice of scheduled maintenance that is expected to cause a material interruption. Maintenance may be performed without advance notice when immediate action is reasonably necessary to address a security threat, service failure, legal requirement, or risk to customers or infrastructure.

9. Support

Support is available through the channels identified on our website or customer portal. We prioritize requests based on severity, scope, available information, and impact. Any estimated response or resolution time is a target rather than a guarantee unless a separate written agreement expressly states otherwise.

Support covers our hosting platform and the features included with the purchased plan. Custom development, third-party software debugging, content changes, and administration outside the plan's scope may require a separate paid service.

10. Customer Responsibilities

To help maintain service availability, customers must:

• Keep account, billing, and technical contact information current;
• Protect credentials and use available security controls;
• Maintain appropriate independent backups unless a purchased plan expressly includes managed backups;
• Keep customer-managed software, plugins, themes, and applications supported and secure;
• Use resources within applicable plan limits and acceptable-use requirements; and
• Promptly provide information and reasonable cooperation needed to investigate an incident.

11. Limitations and Exclusive Remedy

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the service credits described in this SLA are the customer's sole and exclusive monetary remedy for our failure to meet the Monthly Uptime commitment. This SLA does not expand any warranty, liability, or damages provision stated in our Terms of Service.

Credits apply only to the specific eligible service affected by covered downtime and may not exceed the caps stated in this SLA.

12. Changes to This SLA

We may update this SLA from time to time. The revised version will be posted with a new effective date. If a change materially reduces the uptime commitment for an active service, it will apply no earlier than the next renewal term unless the change is required by law or is necessary to address an urgent security, abuse, or infrastructure risk.

13. Contact Us