|
Also known as "Terms and Acceptable Usage Policy" your Service Level Agreement, SLA is probably the most important piece of text you will need to read. And read you will have to; the entire text. Once you have familiarized yourself with this SLA you can start to skim read and look out for the most important details you feel are most important to you as you search for other hosting companies.
An SLA basically tells you what services you will be paying for and what rights you do not have and what rights you do have. You are agreeing to pay for your web hosting and for what is in the SLA and nothing else. In this document or text, the web host provider is letting you know in print, what you will have to agree to if you wish their services. But remember, that it also tells you, what rights you have. If the web host provider does not live up to the SLA, you now have a right to use this agreement to your advantage.
Web sites and web pages are very powerful marketing tools to appeal and encourage the client to act or buy the service that company is offering. Web pages can contain images, Flash, colors and even sounds and music. A web page can even be interpreted as one big advertisement to the buyer. This is why the SLA of a company, or in this case, a web host provider is so important. It is straight to the point and to quite a number of people, simply boring. Many times the SLA is written in small text, is very long and to some people confusing or complicated. You may notice some SLA's are almost hidden or at the bottom of a page in small text or only available on the order form.
Is there a reason why this is so? To have your SLA on the first page would look very odd and highly unusual. There are many reasons why some companies choose to have their SLA located where they are, written the way they are. Some are simply so they do not confuse the buyer. Some are so they do not scare the buyer so he or she thinks that what they are "getting into", is way out of their league. Unfortunately, some companies "hide" these service agreements because it reveals too much about the company and what you are really purchasing. Remember the colorful and bedazzling web pages? Well these SLA's are just the opposite. They get straight to the point. It's like opening the hood of a car and looking at the engine to see exactly how it works.
If you do not find an SLA anywhere on the website and have looked on just about all the web pages, then simply move on to another provider. This must be present on all web host providers selling services, even if they are free. You can always ask for their SLA, but this is not advisable if it comes in the form of an email as there is no way for both parties to revert to a static SLA.
This is also another important matter. The web host provider can always change their SLA if need be, but find out if you are told so and how much time you have to adapt to these changes. It is not good agreeing to their terms and then having them change it later on to something you did not agree to. You may wish to make a copy of their SLA page and save it on to your computer's hard disk. You may also find it much easier to read their SLA by copying and pasting the text into Notepad and reading it from there. There is actually no need to read the small print on the web page itself, just copy and paste.
|
