Service Level Agreement – Hipposerve Digital Services Ltd. trading as Hipposerve (“Hipposerve”) strives to offer you (“Customer”) excellent service,  By this Service Level Agreement (“SLA”), Hipposerve guarantees to Customer that its Hosted Services will be available 99.9% of the time during any calendar month, subject to the terms and as set forth in this SLA (the “Uptime Guarantee”).

1. Covered Services.

The following services are not included in this SLA:

Hippo Pro Email, Mail Archiving, Website Management,  Online Backup services, Hippo VPS Hosting, and Hippo Dedicated Servers.

Hipposerve Digital Services Limited provides the Uptime Guarantee in this SLA for its Hippo Hosting, Hosted Services, calculated on a monthly basis, provided Customer (i) is in good standing with Hipposerve Digital Services Limited (i.e., is not in arrears in payments, and has not otherwise breached any of its obligations to Hipposerve Digital Services Limited), and (ii) requests the Hosted Service Credit (as defined below) from Hipposerve Digital Services Limited for its noncompliance with the Uptime Guarantee in writing within 30 days of the end of the month in which such noncompliance occurred.

2. Exclusions.

Downtime caused by any of the events noted below will be excluded from the Hosted Service and the service level agreement availability calculations (“Excused Outages”):

(i) Customer environment issues affecting connectivity or interfering with the Hosted Services, including without limitation, Customer’s connection to the Internet (i.e., problems with the Customer’s Internet Service Provider, modem, cable, xDSL or dial-up connection or other Customer Internet connectivity issues) or any other Customer software or equipment, Customer’s firewall software, hardware or security settings, Customer’s configuration of anti-virus software or anti-spyware or malware software, or operator error of Customer;
(ii) third party attacks, including without limitation, hacks, intrusions, distributed denial-of-service attacks or any other third party actions intended to cause harm to or disrupt the Hosted Services, the Hipposerve Website or Hipposerve’s or its partners’ servers;
(iii) verified bugs of any third party software used in conjunction with the Hosted Services (including Microsoft software);
(iv) force majeure events, including, without limitation fire, flood, earthquake, elements of nature or acts of God; third party labour disruptions, acts of war, terrorism, riots, civil disorders, rebellions or revolutions; quarantines, embargoes and other similar governmental action; or any other similar cause beyond the reasonable control of Hipposerve;
(v) issues related to third party domain name system (DNS) errors or failures;
(vi) scheduled maintenance of the Hosted Services, conducted on a regular basis, of which Hipposerve will give Customer a minimum of 24hrs advanced notice by email or notification posted to the Hipposerve Control Panel; and
(vii) emergency maintenance of the Hosted Services, not to exceed 4 hours in any month, for which Customer may not receive advanced notice.

3. Non Compliance.

In the event Hipposerve Digital Services Limited fails to meet the Uptime Guarantee regarding one or more of its Hosted Services (the “Affected Service(s)”), as verified by Hipposerve based on its monitoring logs (a “Service Outage”), Customer will be entitled to a credit for future Hosted Services of the same type as the Affected Services ( “Hosted Service Credits”).

4. Hosted Service Credit Calculation.

For each full 1% of downtime, of verified Service Outage in any calendar month (based on a 30-day month calculation), excluding downtime caused by a Scheduled Outage (an “Outage Incident”), Customer will receive a Hosted Service Credit equal to 5% of the monthly subscription fees paid by the Customer for the users impacted by the Affected Service. Should a Service Outage span more than one month, the calculation of Hosted Service Credits starts over at the beginning of each month.

5. Hosted Service Credits Payment.

Hosted Service Credits will be issued in the form of a credit towards Customer’s next invoice, unless the affected month is Customer’s last month of subscription to the Affected Services, in which case the value of the Hosted Service Credits, as calculated herein, will be issued to Customer by Hipposerve Digital Services Limited within 60 calendar days from the end of the Customer’s last month of subscription to the Hosted Services.

6. Total Credit Limits.

Hosted Service Credits will apply only to a Customer’s users directly affected by a Service Outage, and Hosted Service Credits may not exceed 100% of the total subscription fees of the Affected Services, excluding applicable taxes. Hosted Service Credits will not be issued for any fraction of an Outage Incident and will not accrue or carry over from month to month. Notwithstanding anything set forth in this SLA, the Hosting Service Credit described herein shall be the sole and exclusive remedy of the Customer in connection with any outages, unavailability or breach by Hipposerve Digital Services Limited of this SLA.