1. Scope
This Service Level Agreement ("SLA") applies to all paid HostingDon hosting plans (Web, WordPress, Cloud, and Enterprise). It does not apply to free trials, beta features, add-on services purchased separately (such as third-party email or domain registration), or any service marked as "preview" or "experimental."
This SLA is part of our Terms of Service and is the exclusive remedy for service availability issues.
2. Definitions
- "Available" means the Services respond to a properly formed request from the public internet within reasonable latency for that plan tier.
- "Unavailable" means the Services fail to respond, or return server-error responses (5xx) attributable to HostingDon, for two or more consecutive minutes.
- "Monthly Uptime Percentage" = (Total minutes in month − Unavailable minutes) ÷ Total minutes in month × 100.
- "Monthly Service Fee" means the fee paid for the affected plan, prorated for the calendar month in which the unavailability occurred.
- "Service Credit" means a credit applied to your next billing cycle, equal to a percentage of the Monthly Service Fee.
3. Uptime commitment
HostingDon commits to the following Monthly Uptime Percentages, measured per calendar month:
| Plan tier | Monthly Uptime | Max monthly downtime |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Web — Starter / Plus | 99.95% | ~21 min 36 sec |
| Shared Web — Business / Pro | 99.99% | ~4 min 19 sec |
| WordPress — Personal / Business | 99.99% | ~4 min 19 sec |
| WordPress — Agency / Scale | 99.99% | ~4 min 19 sec |
| Cloud — Starter | 99.95% | ~21 min 36 sec |
| Cloud — Pro / Scale | 99.99% | ~4 min 19 sec |
| Enterprise | Up to 99.999% | ~26 sec (custom SLA) |
4. How we measure availability
We measure availability from third-party monitoring nodes located in seven geographically distributed regions (US-East, US-West, EU-Central, EU-West, Asia-Pacific, South America, and Oceania). Each node sends an HTTP request to a synthetic endpoint on each customer's infrastructure every 60 seconds.
A request is counted as "available" if at least 5 of the 7 monitoring nodes receive a 2xx, 3xx, or 4xx response within 30 seconds. If 3 or more nodes time out or receive a 5xx response, the minute is counted as "unavailable" — but only if the same condition persists for at least two consecutive minutes (to avoid penalizing transient blips that no real user notices).
The full uptime data for every plan tier and region is published on our public status page, with a 12-month rolling history.
5. Exclusions
The following are excluded from Monthly Uptime calculations and do not result in Service Credits:
- Scheduled maintenance announced at least 72 hours in advance and performed during the customer's selected low-traffic window;
- Emergency security maintenance, where delaying would expose customers to known active exploits;
- Customer-caused unavailability: misconfigured DNS, suspended account due to unpaid invoice or AUP violation, exceeded resource limits, or runaway customer code;
- Issues caused by customer's domain registrar or DNS provider when not managed by HostingDon;
- Force majeure: events beyond reasonable control (war, civil unrest, natural disaster, internet-scale BGP incidents, country-level regulatory blocks);
- DDoS attacks exceeding the mitigation capacity included in the plan, where the customer has declined offered upgrade to enhanced DDoS protection;
- Issues with third-party software running on customer's hosted environment (e.g., plugin conflicts, application bugs, dependency vulnerabilities);
- Outages affecting only a small portion of the customer's traffic (defined as fewer than 1% of requests) due to ISP-level issues outside our network.
6. Service credit schedule
If we miss the committed Monthly Uptime Percentage in a given calendar month, you are entitled to Service Credits as follows:
| Monthly Uptime | Credit (% of Monthly Service Fee) |
|---|---|
| ≥ 99.99% (commitment met) | 0% |
| 99.9% – 99.99% | 10% |
| 99.5% – 99.9% | 25% |
| 99.0% – 99.5% | 50% |
| Below 99.0% | 100% |
For plans with a 99.95% commitment (Starter, Plus, Cloud Starter), the thresholds are adjusted downward by 0.04 percentage points across the board.
7. How to claim a service credit
For incidents we publicly acknowledge on our status page that affected your plan tier and region, credits are applied automatically to your next invoice — you don't need to do anything.
For incidents not on the status page that you believe affected your account specifically, file a claim within 30 days of the incident:
- Email sla@hostingdon.com from your registered account address;
- Include your account ID, the affected domain or service, and the date/time range of the incident (UTC);
- Attach independent monitoring logs (Pingdom, UptimeRobot, StatusCake, etc.) showing unavailability;
- Briefly describe how you confirmed the issue was on our side, not your application's.
We respond to SLA claims within 10 business days. Approved credits are applied to the next invoice.
8. Maximum service credit
The total Service Credits awarded in any single calendar month will not exceed 100% of the Monthly Service Fee for the affected plan. Credits are applied to future invoices and are not refundable in cash, except where required by applicable law.
9. Disputes
If you disagree with our determination of a claim, please reply to the original ticket within 14 days with your reasoning. SLA disputes are reviewed by an engineering manager who was not involved in the original determination. If we still can't agree, the dispute is escalated to legal review.
10. Changes to this SLA
We may update this SLA from time to time. If a change reduces the level of commitment for plans you currently hold, we will notify you at least 30 days in advance and you may cancel and receive a prorated refund for the unused portion of your subscription.
Need a custom SLA? Enterprise customers can negotiate higher uptime targets (up to 99.999%), faster response times, and dedicated incident managers. Email enterprise@hostingdon.com.