Do you Know What your Web Hosting Sla is

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 through and look out for the 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, what rights you do and do not

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 to use 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, 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 find it 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 and written the way they are. Some do it 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 will be notified of the change and how much time

you will 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.

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 it 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 is their uptime guarantee.

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 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.

How is the

bandwidth and disk space quota handled?

If you go over your quota, how is it handled. Are you automatically charged the

extra fee? And if so, how much? Is your account suspended until you pay the

extra charges or pay for the next hosting account? Or, are you notified about

the “problem” and asked to pay the extra charges or upgrade to the next hosting

plan within a certain number of days?

Domain

names.

If you have registered a domain name with a registrar you should not encounter

any problems. If you are registering a domain name through your web host

provider, make sure you retain all rights to the domain name. This is especially

true if you are given a free or a very inexpensive domain name with your

account. Some web host providers will register the domain name for you, but in

their name, which means you do not own it. In some cases, if you wish to move to

another web host provider you will have to purchase the domain from them at a

much higher cost.

Miscellaneous categories.

A few other categories to study are server resources, background running

programs, mass mailing and other technical areas like Cron Jobs, telnet or SSH

etc. Some of these topics mentioned in the

SLA may sound

rather strict or stringent but it is actually very common to read these same

restrictions on almost all web host providers. This is, as mentioned earlier, to

inform you of your rights and most importantly in this case, to protect the

customer from harming or congesting the server for the company’s other clients.

You do not want someone slowing down the server which you are using so your web

pages load slowly or not at all. So you can actually be more reassured that if

this happens, action will be taken, thus an advantage to you and not necessarily

a hindrance. (This mainly refers to all virtual hosting accounts.)

If you are

uncertain about a certain part of an

SLA,

you should always ask the web host provider. Never assume something is adequate

unless you are sure and have checked. Always think ahead. Will I need this or

that in the future? What happens if my website grows much bigger? What if I need

to upload x type of files from now on? What if the third party company or

software I work with needs this or that enabled? Should I have read the whole

SLA? Never assume your web host provider will have or offer what you wish. Find

out, and if you are not sure, ask!

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