Service Level Agreement

1. Scope

This Service Level Agreement applies only to services or plans that expressly reference it. Product-specific SLAs or written order terms may define different commitments and take precedence for the affected service.

2. Availability Objective

Where a service order states a 99.9% monthly availability commitment, HostSteps measures availability for the covered service over the applicable calendar month using HostSteps monitoring and incident records, subject to the exclusions below.

3. Exclusions

Downtime does not count toward an availability calculation to the extent caused by scheduled or announced maintenance; emergency security maintenance; customer systems, code, credentials, DNS or configuration; customer-requested changes; third-party networks or providers outside HostSteps' reasonable control; attacks or abuse; force majeure; suspension under contract or law; beta or free services; or inability to access a service despite the covered service itself remaining available.

4. Incident Handling

HostSteps classifies incidents according to impact and urgency and uses reasonable efforts to restore service, communicate material incidents and preserve operational evidence. Response targets are service objectives unless an order expressly defines them as contractual guarantees.

5. Service Credits

If a paid service has an express uptime commitment and HostSteps confirms that the commitment was missed, the customer may request the service credit specified in the applicable order or plan. If no credit schedule is specified, no automatic monetary credit is created by this general SLA. Credits, where available, are the exclusive contractual remedy for the measured availability failure unless applicable law requires otherwise.

6. Claims

A claim must be submitted within thirty days after the end of the affected month and include the service identifier, relevant dates and a description of the impact. HostSteps may reject duplicate, unsupported or late claims where permitted by applicable law.

7. Maintenance

HostSteps may perform scheduled and emergency maintenance to protect security, reliability or capacity. Reasonable notice will be provided for planned work when practicable.

8. Dependencies

Third-party registries, carriers, cloud platforms, software vendors and internet routes may have separate SLAs. HostSteps does not extend a third party's SLA unless expressly stated in the order.