Do you Know What your Hosting SLA is?

Written by: Lars Jensen


Another "tactic" for some web host providers is to provide their SLA on the order form. This is where you are just about to enter your credit card details and pay for your web hosting that they inform you of their SLA. A check mark is needed beside the agreement which usually has a link to the small text. 9 times out of 10, buyers can't be bothered to read this long complicated text and just get on with getting their web hosting. A mistake done all too often. Roughly 70% of all customers read their SLA after they have purchased a web hosting account.

Let's discuss what the SLA can contain. You can always "verify" if what the web pages say are true, as well as get the finer details in the SLA. For a while, a few years back, the most heated discussions involved unlimited bandwidth and web space. To cut a long story short, unlimited bandwidth or web space is simply and always will be an outright lie. There is no such thing; again, read the SLA.

30 day Money Back Guarantee.

The phrase sounds simple enough but there are still just a few things to think about. Can you receive a refund on the 30th day? Or do you need to give them 7 days warning that you wish for a refund. Is is truly a "30 day guarantee"? Does it regard all types of payments, check, money order credit card etc. Is it mentioned in the SLA? Remember, you are basically buying the services within the SLA.

Uptime Guarantee.

Another very important feature to look closer at. Again, web pages can look wonderful, but the business takes place within the text of the SLA. You may even want to compare how these uptime guarantees are calculated by other web host providers. Do you need proof to in order to tell the web host provider that your site was down more than x many hours a month so the web host provider can give you a refund? Or is it more complicated, where your site needs to be down for x many hours in a row? In other words, down 2 hours on Monday, 3 on Tuesday, and 1 hour on Sunday but not 6 hours in a row, therefore not receiving a refund? Or if their uptime guarantee does not involve third party software crashes, server maintenance, internet congestion etc. What does the uptime guarantee cover? Not, what does the uptime guarantee not cover. It is extremely unlikely for any web host provider to offer a 100% uptime guarantee, without some exceptions.

What Files are Permitted?

There are more than just .html, .gif and .jpg files on the Internet. Apart from those files, what other files are you allowed to upload? Do they include any multimedia files; mp3 or movie files? Are you allowed to upload software files? and etc.



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