Service Level Agreement SLA

A service level agreement is the part of a contract that says what you are really promised and what you get back when the promise breaks. Most people shorten it to SLA, and you meet one more often than you think. It sits behind hosting, an internet line, a support desk and any supplier who keeps your software running.

A useful SLA names three things, starting with the target, such as the service being up 99.9% of the month. The second is how that figure is measured and by whom, because a number nobody can check is an opinion. The third is the remedy, which is what happens when the target is missed. A big number with no measurement and no remedy is a sales page with a signature under it.

Measurement is where the arguments start, so ask what counts as down. A server answering a test is not a shop where a customer can finish paying. Ask who holds the stopwatch and whether you see the same screen. Ask what is left out too, because planned maintenance nearly always is. That is how a provider takes the service down for six hours on a Sunday night and still reports a perfect month. When Linkysoft agrees an SLA we write what down means in the client's own words, so nobody argues during the outage.

Then read the remedy, which is the part that surprises people. It is almost always a credit on your next invoice rather than money back, capped at that month's bill. So if a day offline costs your shop more than a month of hosting and servers, the SLA does not cover the difference and was never meant to. Most contracts also make you claim that credit yourself, in writing, within thirty days, and a credit nobody claims is a credit nobody pays.

Support promises deserve the same reading, because a one hour response often means an automatic email in one hour. Ask how long to reach a human, how long to a real fix, and what changes at two in the morning on a holiday. Ask a security question too, because you want to know how fast they tell you if someone breaks in. That clock belongs in the contract as much as any availability figure, and our cybersecurity team looks for it first. Linkysoft puts an SLA behind every web application it hosts and maintains, and we would rather promise a small number we always meet than a large one we argue about later.