A service level agreement (SLA) is a contract that clearly outlines what services will be provided, in quantifiable terms. Service level agreements typically detail things like expected response times, what percentage of time the services will be available, performance benchmarks, and the procedure for notifying users when the service will be suspended for routine maintenance vs. emergency maintenance. Other things to consider include tracking service effectiveness, resolving service-related disputes, and escalation procedures. For example, most web hosting service level agreements detail that the website will be up 100% of the time (excluding scheduled maintenance and emergency maintenance) and include monetary penalties for unexpected failures; they also state how much time the web hosting provider has to respond to the problem.
Service level agreements are important documents for web hosting customers, because they set expectations and provide parameters for them to compare hosting services with other providers to see who is offering the best quality compared to the price of the service. Similarly, service level agreements set clear responsibilities on the part of the web hosting company and outline what is reasonable for customers to expect what is not.
Service level agreements should be established as early as possible in order to reduce conflict – often if they are created to manage customer expectations after customers have complained, they create even more contention and resentment, instead of solving the problem. Service level agreements are, after all, “agreements” – they are meant to benefit both parties.
Service level agreements are not, however, set in stone; they are a living document that must be reviewed and renewed regularly, and often the time and way in which the document will the reviewed is written right into the agreement. Service level agreements must be updated regularly to maintain relevance with ever-increasing technology. There is no one-size-fits-all service level agreement – they have to be created based on the abilities and limits of the provider, and on the requirements of the customer. It's also important to remember that they need to be enforced in order to be effective, and in order to enforce an SLA, you'll need some metrics relating to the uptime/downtime of your domain from an outside company. Pingdom, DotcomMonitor, and CopperEgg are some of the bigger players in the industry that can do these types of things. The main thing to understand here is that if you don't have any data to back up your claim of your web host not keeping to their end of the SLA, they may not take you seriously, or you may be forced to use their data.
Also, while they must encompass many items and be generally followed, they cannot possibly include every detail or every “what-if” scenario; service level agreements must allow for a little flexibility, or they will never be effective, nor agreed upon by either party.
Service level agreements are important documents for web hosting customers, because they set expectations and provide parameters for them to compare hosting services with other providers to see who is offering the best quality compared to the price of the service. Similarly, service level agreements set clear responsibilities on the part of the web hosting company and outline what is reasonable for customers to expect what is not.
Service level agreements should be established as early as possible in order to reduce conflict – often if they are created to manage customer expectations after customers have complained, they create even more contention and resentment, instead of solving the problem. Service level agreements are, after all, “agreements” – they are meant to benefit both parties.
Service level agreements are not, however, set in stone; they are a living document that must be reviewed and renewed regularly, and often the time and way in which the document will the reviewed is written right into the agreement. Service level agreements must be updated regularly to maintain relevance with ever-increasing technology. There is no one-size-fits-all service level agreement – they have to be created based on the abilities and limits of the provider, and on the requirements of the customer. It's also important to remember that they need to be enforced in order to be effective, and in order to enforce an SLA, you'll need some metrics relating to the uptime/downtime of your domain from an outside company. Pingdom, DotcomMonitor, and CopperEgg are some of the bigger players in the industry that can do these types of things. The main thing to understand here is that if you don't have any data to back up your claim of your web host not keeping to their end of the SLA, they may not take you seriously, or you may be forced to use their data.
Also, while they must encompass many items and be generally followed, they cannot possibly include every detail or every “what-if” scenario; service level agreements must allow for a little flexibility, or they will never be effective, nor agreed upon by either party.