Here at Hightek Hosting (‘HH’), we have committed ourselves to providing a high level of reliability and service for our customers.

We have full confidence in our services and it’s uptime and as such, we offer our clients an SLA (‘Service Level Agreement’) to which we ensure we adhere to.

We aim to acheive 100% Web Site Availability for all customers, except under the conditions mentioned in the next sections below.

If the Web Site Availability of a customers web site is less that 100%, Hightek Hosting will issue a credit to your ("customer) according to the following table.

This Service Level Agreement (SLA) applies to you ("customer") if you currently hold an account with any of the Web Hosting services from Hightek Hosting (the "Services") and your account is current (i.e., not past due) with Hightek Hosting.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

I Definitions

1. Customer Credit means the compensation we provide to the customer when our obligations under this SLA are not met. The level of credit depends on the amount of downtime, but cannot exceed 50% of the monthly fee for the affected service.
   
2. Downtime means the length of time the customer cannot transmit or receive data.
   
3. Hardware means Processors, RAM, hard disks, motherboards, NIC cards, and other related hardware.
   
4. Infrastructure means power and HVAC systems, including UPSs, PDU's and cabling, but excludes power supplies on customer's servers.
   
5. Scheduled Maintenance means a period of time set aside each month in which vital maintenance is performed on Hightek Hosting's systems. The network and other services may be unavailable at these times.
   
6. Server Uptime means the length of time the network will be available in a given month excluding scheduled maintenance. This includes network infrastructure including routers switches and cabling, but excludes services and software.

II Guarantees

Website Availability	Credit Provided
99%-100% - 0 to 43.2 minutes	0% Credit
98%-98.9% - 43.2 mins to 14 hrs 24 mins	10% Credit
95%-97.9% - 14 hrs 24 mins to 36 hrs	20% Credit
90%-94.9% - 36 hrs to 72 hrs	30% Credit
89.9% or less - more than 72 hrs	50% Credit

(All availability calculations shall be rounded up to one decimal point).

III Procedures

The following procedures should be followed when a customer experiences downtime.

1. Customer cannot access their system, and submits a support ticket.
   
2. Hightek Hosting investigates the cause of failure.
1. Any network failures are rectified.
2. Any non functioning HVAC infrastructure is replaced and the server is powered back on.
3. Any non functioning hardware is identified; once identified, Hightek Hosting guarantees to replace the hardware within six (6 ) hours.
3. Hightek Hosting calculates downtime and, if applicable, compensates the customer within seven working days following the end of the calendar month.

IV Maintenance

The following procedures should be followed when a customer experiences downtime.

1. Hightek Hosting will do it's best to announce any scheduled maintenance at least 24 hours prior to it being executed.
2. Hightek Hosting reserves the right to perform emergency maintenance without prior notice at any time, should it be deemd necessary to protect and maintain the security and integrity of the service/s and it's clients.

V Conditions

Customer shall not receive any credits under this SLA in connection with any failure or deficiency of Web Site Availability caused by or associated with:

1. circumstances beyond Hightek Hosting's reasonable control, including, without limitation, acts of any governmental body, war, insurrection, sabotage, armed conflict, embargo, fire, flood, strike or other labor disturbance, interruption of or delay in transportation, unavailability of or interruption or delay in telecommunications or third party services, virus attacks or hackers, failure of third party software (including, without limitation, ecommerce software, payment gateways, chat, statistics or free scripts) or inability to obtain raw materials, supplies, or power used in or equipment needed for provision of this SLA;
2. failure of access circuits to the Hightek Hosting's Network or it's upstream providers, unless such failure is caused solely by Hightek Hosting;
3. scheduled maintenance and emergency maintenance and upgrades;
4. DNS issues outside the direct control of Hightek Hosting;
5. issues with FTP, POP, IMAP, or SMTP customer access;
6. false SLA breaches reported as a result of outages or errors of any Hightek Hosting's measurement system;
7. customer's acts or omissions (or acts or omissions of others engaged or authorized by customer), including, without limitation, custom scripting or coding (e.g., CGI, Perl, HTML, ASP, etc), any negligence, willful misconduct, or use of the Services in breach of Hightek Hosting's Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy;
8. e-mail or webmail delivery and transmission;
9. DNS (Domain Name Server) Propagation.
10. outages elsewhere on the Internet that hinder access to your account. Hightek Hosting is not responsible for browser or DNS caching that may make your site appear inaccessible when others can still access it. Hightek Hosting will guarantee only those areas considered under the control of Hightek Hosting : Hightek Hosting's server links to the Internet, and Hightek Hosting's servers.
11. Please note: Server downtime is not recorded and no credit is issued during scheduled or emergency system maintenance. Outages caused by the actions beyond Hightek Hosting's control including, but not limited to DoS attacks or other forms of intrusion are excluded from the uptime/downtime calculations.
12. To guarantee optimal performance of the hosting infrastructure, it is necessary for Hightek Hosting to perform routine maintenance on the servers. Such maintenance often requires taking Hightek Hosting web and email servers off-line, typically performed during off-peak hours. Hightek Hosting will give you advance notice of maintenance requiring the servers to be taken off-line whenever possible. Hightek Hosting reserves one hour of Service unavailability per month for maintenance purposes. Such unavailability is not included in the Service Availability calculation.

VI Credit

1. To be eligible for credit, the customer must do the following:
   
1. Open a valid and complete support ticket through the “Client Area” during any failure, providing relevant information regarding the nature of the problem, including any information reasonably necessary for diagnosis and correction (including date, time, and type of outage). This information shall be submitted notwithstanding any monitoring services which may be provided by Hightek Hosting.
2. Provide Hightek Hosting with accurate and complete designated points of contact using the Customer Portal.
3. Provide Hightek Hosting with accurate passwords for maintenance and repair use by Hightek Hosting’s technicians.
4. Request credit by completing a support ticket online through ““Client Area” within 7 days of the failure occurring.
2. Credit will be offered in the form of a percentage of the hosting charge for that month. No cash rebates are available under this scheme.
3. Credit shall not be offered for any other form of loss due to downtime (such as loss of business). The terms of this agreement exclusively define under what conditions a customer is eligible to receive credit.

VII Technical Support
Hightek Hosting will provide you with technical support for setup of your account, access basic site set and other related issues at no additional charge. We will not provide development-related support for web applications, scripts or components from third parties, scripts of installable applications from our Application Vault, or those developed by You.

Email support is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, including public holidays

Phone support is available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week with on-call technicians available.

Hightek Hosting's standard response time to technical support requests is within one hour. The response time depends on the complexity of the enquiry and current support request volumes.

If your issue is of an urgent matter, you may phone us directly for an urgent response.

VIII Limitations and Exclusions

All Service Level Agreements provided by Hightek Hosting are subject to the following limitations and exclusions.

The customer shall receive no Credit where;

1. The Datacenter has failed or sustained damage due to:
1. Natural disasters, including fires, floods and storm damage
2. Malicious damage upon Hightek Hosting property
3. Negligence on the part of non-Hightek Hosting employees, or contractors employed in the service of Hightek Hosting
4. Area wide electricity blackouts lasting any length of time
5. Any other events which Hightek Hosting has no control over, including but not limited to acts of government, war, sabotage, embargo, strike, virus attacks or hackers, failure of third party software (such as ecommerce software, free scripts, chat, statistics, payment gateways etc) or DNS issues
   
2. Procedures set by 'Credit Requirements' (Section IV) have not been followed.
   
3. Services, Datacentre operations or connections are interrupted by third party providers outside the control of Hightek Hosting.
   
4. Downtime has been caused by any negligence, wilful misconduct, or use of the Services by customers in breach of Hightek Hosting's Terms and Conditions.
   
5. Downtime has been caused by internet outages on the customer's end that hinders their access to the account.

IX Dispute Resolution
If there is a dispute as to the amount of downtime calculated by Hightek Hosting for the purposes of credit, the following procedure shall be followed.
1. Hightek Hosting will assign a team to review logs, customer support tickets and other relevant information. This information will be given to the customer in a detailed report.
2. If there is still a dispute the onus rests on the customer to provide proof that their service was down for longer than Hightek Hosting calculated. This could include anecdotes, server access logs, dated screenshots, and anything else that may assist Hightek Hosting in resolving the dispute.
3. An operations manager will be in communication with the customer to ensure that the matter is resolved. Extra credit can be provided at the manager's discretion if warranted.

X Contract Terms and Conditions

Hightek Hosting reserves the right to modify the SLA. Amendments will be posted on the Hightek Hosting website in this section.