Coverage and Terminology

This Service Level Agreement (SLA) applies to you (“customer”) if you currently hold an account with any of the Web Hosting services from Studio 21 (the “Services”) and your account is current (i.e., not past due) with Studio 21.

As used herein, the term “Web Site Uptime” means the percentage of a particular month (based on 24-hour days for the number of days in the subject month) that the content of customer’s Web site is available for access by third parties via HTTP and/or HTTPS, as measured by Studio 21.

Service Level

Objective:

Studio 21 strives to achieve a 100% Web Site uptime for all customers.

Remedy:

Except under the conditions mentioned in the next section below, if the uptime of customer’s Web site is less than 100%, Studio 21 will issue a credit to customer according to the following table:

Web Site Uptime

The credit will be calculated based on the monthly service charge for the affected Services.

Maintenance Procedure:

• Studio 21 will do its best to announce any scheduled maintenance at least 24 hours ahead of time to the customer
• Studio 21 reserves the right to perform emergency maintenance without any prior notification, should it be deemed necessary to protect and maintain the security and integrity of the Service.

Response times

Support, unless noted otherwise in a supplementary service level agreement, technical support is provided by Studio 21 on a first-come, first-served “best effort” basis. We aim to at least acknowledge, if not fully answer, all emails to our support address (enquiry@studio21.co) within 24 working hours. We aim to answer the phones during working hours, but under times of high demand or staff sickness, may defer to an answering service where we promise to return all messages as soon as possible.

WordPress

For those websites hosted by Studio 21 which have been built (or part-built) upon the WordPress platform, please be aware that WordPress irregularly makes updates which means that Studio 21 may need to make updates to your site so that your website continues to work upon our servers. It is not known how many times per annum that WordPress makes updates, however, we estimate between 4 – 8 updates per year. The more functionality a WordPress site has the more time needed to make updates to that website.

Studio 21 are not help responsible for website downtime due to automatic WordPress updates unless the customer has signed up for monthly maintenance and care-plans (view care plans).

Plug-ins

On occasion, when budget, time or requested functionality limits the opportunity for a bespoke build, an off-the-shelf solution in the form of a third party plug-in may be implemented.

Premium plug-ins may in some cases, require a subscription based or one-off licensing fee. Whilst Studio 21 will make every effort to minimise ongoing maintenance costs, premium plug-ins will need to be updated outside of our update agreement, with any additional costs agreed by and passed onto the client.

Conditions:

Customer shall not receive any credits under this SLA in connection with any failure or deficiency of Web Site Uptime caused by or associated with circumstances beyond Studio 21’s reasonable control, including, without limitation needed for provision of this SLA:

•  acts of any governmental body
• war
• insurrection
• sabotage
• armed conflict
• embargo
• fire
• flood
• strike or other labor disturbance
• interruption of or delay in transportation
• availability 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)
• inability to obtain raw materials, supplies, or power used in or equipment
• failure of access circuits to the Studio 21 Network or it’s upstream providers;
• scheduled maintenance and emergency maintenance and upgrades;
• DNS issues outside the direct control of Studio 21;
• issues with FTP, POP, IMAP, MS Exchange or SMTP customer access;
• false SLA breaches reported as a result of outages or errors of any Digital Catalyst’s measurement system;
• 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, PHP, ASP.Net, etc), any negligence, wilful misconduct, or use of the Services in breach of Studio 21’s Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy;
• e-mail or webmail delivery and transmission;
• DNS (Domain Name Server) Propagation
• outages elsewhere on the Internet that hinder access to your account. Studio 21 is not responsible for browser or DNS caching that may make your site appear inaccessible when others can still access it. Studio 21 will guarantee only those areas considered under the control of Studio 21 : Studio 21 server links to the Internet, and Studio 21’s servers.

Credit Request and Payment Procedures

Each request in connection with this SLA must include customer’s account name and the dates and times of the unavailability of customer’s Web site and must be received by Studio 21 within ten (10) business days after customer’s Web Site was not available. If the unavailability is confirmed by Studio 21, credits will be applied within two billing cycles after Studio 21’s receipt of customer’s credit request. Credits are not refundable and can be used only towards future billing charges.
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, the total amount credited to customer in a particular month under this SLA shall not exceed the total hosting fee paid by customer for such month for the affected Services. Credits are exclusive of any applicable taxes charged to customer or collected by Studio 21 and are customer’s sole and exclusive remedy with respect to any failure or deficiency in the Web Site Uptime of customer’s Web site.
Note: Credits are not refundable and can be used only towards future billing charges.

Late Payments, Support and Late Fee Surcharge

You acknowledge that if any payment for renewal of an agreement is not received in our bank by the due date we may limit or suspend the Services and / or cancel this agreement.

We may choose not to cancel the agreement if you make an additional payment to us to cover the disruption caused by your late payment.  This payment is:

– if you have not paid within 30 days of the due date, the late payment fee will be A$11.00 and customer response time will reduced to a 24 hour turnaround;
– if you have not paid within 60 days of the due date, the late payment fee will be A$33.00 and customer response time will be ceased until payment has been received;
– if you have not paid within 90 days of the due date, your account will be closed and services will be discontinued. Recovery action will be taken for the outstanding fees.

If your account is closed by us because you have not made a payment when due or because you have for any reason failed to give us notice of cancelation you agree to pay us:

– all of the Price for Services to the end of the quarter of cancellation, whenever that is;
– and you agree that these terms are reasonable.

Effective date:
 1st January 2022