Service Level Agreement

About this agreement

This agreement sets out what HostUp India commits to for availability, support response times and service credits. It covers Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, KVM VPS, Managed VPS, Dedicated Servers and the control panel, for as long as each is on an active, paid order.

It forms part of our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy. On availability, support targets and credits, this agreement takes priority.

What it doesn’t cover

free trials, beta and promotional services;
domains and DNS hosted outside our platform;
third-party software and licences, such as cPanel, Plesk, LiteSpeed, Softaculous, Windows Server, and third-party SSL and backup add-ons;
delivery decisions made by other mail providers;
one-off professional services and migrations.

Terms used here

Billing month: a calendar month in which the service is active; part-months count.
Downtime: at least 60 continuous seconds in which the service is completely unavailable, after the exclusions below. Slowness or partial problems are handled as support incidents.
Downtime minutes: all downtime in a billing month, rounded up to the whole minute.
Monthly fee: the recurring fee for the service, without setup fees, taxes, domains, third-party licences, overages or professional services.
Business hours: 10:00 to 19:00 IST, Monday to Saturday, except published public holidays.

Our uptime commitment

Each covered service is available at least 99.9% of every billing month. Uptime is worked out per service, not per account:

uptime % = (total minutes − excluded minutes − downtime minutes) ÷ (total minutes − excluded minutes) × 100

At 99.9%, the most downtime allowed is about:

1 minute 26 seconds a day, or 10 minutes 5 seconds a week (a guide only: the commitment is assessed monthly);
40 min 19 s in a 28-day month, 43 min 12 s in a 30-day month, 44 min 38 s in a 31-day month;
8 hours 45 minutes 36 seconds a year.

How we measure it

Automated checks run at least every 60 seconds from two or more independent locations outside our network.
A service counts as down when two checks in a row fail from two different locations. Downtime runs from the first failed check to the first successful one.
Available means reachable (ICMP, TCP or HTTP, as fits the service). For KVM VPS and Dedicated Servers, the server must also be powered on and on the network, with its hypervisor, hardware and upstream network working.
Our monitoring records come first, but we review your own monitoring evidence in good faith and correct our figures when it shows we were wrong.
Incidents are published on our status page; we suggest you subscribe to it.

What doesn’t count as downtime

scheduled maintenance, and emergency maintenance within its limits (see Maintenance);
problems you cause: your code, CMS, themes, plugins, cron jobs, queries or settings, or changes made with your login details;
slowing or suspension for going over your plan’s CPU, memory, disk, I/O, inode, process or bandwidth limits;
suspension for non-payment or a breach of the Acceptable Use Policy;
failures of software you install or manage on an unmanaged VPS or dedicated server;
faults outside our network: transit providers, internet exchanges, your own connection, third-party DNS, CDNs, payment gateways, APIs and outside mail services;
denial-of-service attacks larger than your plan’s protection, and null-routing used to protect the platform;
not applying a required change, patch or migration after reasonable notice;
events beyond our reasonable control (force majeure);
services this agreement doesn’t cover, and beta, trial or free features.

Service credits

If a service’s uptime falls below 99.9% in a billing month and you make a valid claim, you receive a credit on that service’s monthly fee:

below 99.9%, down to 99.50% (about 43 min 12 s to 3 h 36 min of downtime in a 30-day month): 10%;
below 99.50%, down to 99.00% (about 3 h 36 min to 7 h 12 min): 25%;
below 99.00%, down to 95.00% (about 7 h 12 min to 36 hours): 50%;
below 95.00% (more than 36 hours): 100%.

How credits work

Credits are worked out per service and only reduce that service’s monthly fee; they are not added up across an account.
The most you can receive is 100% of the service’s monthly fee for that billing month.
For plans paid a year or more ahead, the monthly fee is the amount paid divided by the months in the term.
Credits are account credit applied to your next invoice. They can’t be transferred, have no cash value, are not refunded, and lapse if the account is closed.
There is no credit on setup fees, domains, third-party licences, taxes, overages or professional services.
There is no credit if the account is in arrears, or suspended for an Acceptable Use Policy breach, at the time of the incident or the claim.

Claiming a credit

Credits are not applied automatically. Claim within 30 calendar days after the end of the billing month in which the downtime happened; later claims are not accepted.

Open a support ticket or email [email protected] with the subject “SLA Credit Claim – [Service ID] – [Month YYYY]”, and include:

your account number and the service (hostname, IP address or VPS ID);
the start and end time, with time zone, of each period of downtime;
how it affected you;
any evidence, such as monitoring reports, traceroutes, logs or time-stamped screenshots.

What happens next

We acknowledge your claim within 3 business days and send a written decision within 15 business days of receiving a complete claim, with the uptime we measured, the credit level and the reasons for any refusal.
Approved credits are applied within one billing cycle of the decision.
If you disagree, escalate in writing within 15 business days of the decision; you receive a final answer within a further 10 business days.

Support response times

Response times are measured from when we receive your ticket:

P1 Critical (service completely down, or data being lost or compromised, with no workaround): first response within 30 minutes, workaround or fix targeted within 4 hours, 24/7.
P2 High (major slowdown or a key function unusable, with no practical workaround): first response within 2 hours, target 8 hours, 24/7.
P3 Normal (partly affected, with a reasonable workaround): first response within 8 business hours, target 3 business days, in business hours.
P4 Low (questions, setup help, documentation, cosmetic issues, feature requests): first response within 1 business day, best effort, in business hours.

How support works

Support tickets and support email are received 24/7; the ticket is the record our response times are measured against.
Billing, invoices, renewals, refunds and credit claims are handled in business hours.
Live chat is for sales and short questions in business hours, not for P1 issues.
Emergency phone escalation is available 24/7 for P1 issues, once a P1 ticket has been raised.
A first response is a real reply from an engineer who has read your ticket, not an automatic acknowledgement.
We set the priority reasonably; you can ask for it to be changed and we won’t unreasonably refuse.
Fix times are targets, not guarantees, and carry no credits. We update you at least every 60 minutes on P1 issues and every 4 hours on P2 issues until they are resolved.
The clock pauses while we are waiting for information, access or a decision from you.
Escalation: a support engineer from the start; a senior systems engineer after 1 hour (P1) or 4 hours (P2); a support manager after 2 hours (P1) or 8 hours (P2); the head of operations after 4 hours (P1), or for any incident open more than twice its target.
Please give us a named technical contact, reasonable access and information, and timely replies.

Backups

Shared and Reseller Hosting: a full daily backup of the account, keeping 7 daily copies, included.
Managed VPS and KVM VPS: a full nightly backup of the server with a backup add-on; how long copies are kept depends on the add-on.
Dedicated Servers: backups are yours to manage unless you buy a backup add-on.
Where backups are included or an add-on is active: at most 24 hours of data can be lost (RPO), and a restore is done within 8 hours of a valid request (RTO).
One restore per service per calendar month is free; further restores may be charged, and we tell you before starting.
Backups are a convenience, not a replacement for your own copies outside our platform. We don’t promise that a backup is complete or can be restored.

Your data and security

Your data is yours. We only process it to provide, secure, bill and support your services.
Data is stored in our data centers in India unless you choose another region when ordering.
Our security minimums are listed on our Security Standards page.
If we confirm a security incident that affects your data, we tell you within 72 hours and keep you updated as we investigate.
When a service ends, its data is kept for 30 calendar days so you can export it, then erased as backups rotate. A service ended for an Acceptable Use Policy breach may be erased at once where legal or security reasons require it.

Maintenance

Our standard maintenance window is 00:00 to 06:00 IST.
We give 72 hours’ notice for interruptions of 30 minutes or less, and 7 calendar days’ notice for longer ones, by email to your technical contact and on our status page, with the window, expected length and affected services.
Maintenance within the notified window and length doesn’t count as downtime; any overrun does.
Scheduled maintenance is limited to 8 hours per billing month; anything beyond that counts as downtime.
Emergency maintenance for security, integrity or availability may go ahead without notice. Up to 4 hours of it per billing month doesn’t count as downtime; anything beyond does.
For incidents that cause more than 60 minutes of downtime for several customers, we publish a summary on our status page within 5 business days.

Your responsibilities

These commitments apply as long as you:

pay invoices on time and keep your account in good standing;
keep your technical and billing contacts accurate and watched;
follow the Acceptable Use Policy and the law;
keep your login details, code and software secure, and update software you control;
stay within your plan’s resource limits, or upgrade when you are regularly close to them;
keep your own independent backups;
report incidents through a support ticket or email, with diagnostic information;
act within a reasonable time on required changes, patches or migrations.

Suspension and ending a service

We may suspend a service for non-payment 7 calendar days after written notice, for an Acceptable Use Policy breach, if it is compromised or used to attack or spam others, or where the law requires. Where practical, we give notice and a chance to put things right. Time suspended doesn’t count as downtime.
If a service is below 95.00% for three months in a row, or below 99.00% in any four months within twelve, you may end that service within 30 days of the last of those months, with no early-termination fee and a pro-rata refund of fees paid in advance for the unused period. Credits already earned still apply.
Either of us may end the agreement under the Terms of Service; this agreement ends with your last covered service. Unused credits lapse and are not paid out.

Limits

Service credits and the right to end a chronically failing service are your only remedy for missed availability or support targets.
We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profit, revenue, goodwill, savings or data.
Nothing here limits liability that the law does not allow to be limited, such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or fraud.
Any overall limit on liability in the Terms of Service still applies.

Changes to this agreement

We give 30 calendar days’ written notice of changes, published on this website. If a change is materially worse for you, you can end the affected service before it takes effect, without penalty and with a pro-rata refund. Using the service after the change takes effect means you accept it.

Contact

Support and incidents: a support ticket or [email protected]. Registered office: Paschim Vihar, New Delhi 110063, India.