Service Level Agreement (SLA)

This Service Level Agreement, hereinafter the "SLA", defines the availability standards, the methods for calculating uptime and downtime, the related exclusions and any service credits applicable to the services provided by DeluxHost, a business owned by Matteo Martelloni, sole trader, VAT no. IT17734661006.

This SLA forms an integral part of the Terms of Service, of the Fair Use Policy and of the other contractual conditions applicable to DeluxHost services.

In the event of a conflict, this SLA shall prevail solely in respect of:

• the scope of the availability commitment;
• the calculation of uptime and downtime;
• the exclusions from the uptime calculation;
• the procedures for requesting and granting service credits.

In all other matters, the Terms of Service shall prevail.

Unless otherwise indicated on the product page, this SLA applies to the following services:

• Game Server;
• VPS;
• VDS;
• Cloud services.

This SLA applies to Dedicated Servers only where such coverage is expressly indicated on the product page, in the commercial offer or in the order confirmation.

The presence of DDoS protection does not constitute a guarantee of absolute protection or of constantly uninterrupted operation.

This SLA does not apply to:

• services in beta testing;
• services provided as a free trial;
• promotions or products expressly identified as not covered by the SLA;
• Dedicated Servers for which SLA coverage is not expressly indicated;
• licences, control panels and software supplied by third parties;
• components, applications, operating systems and configurations installed or managed by the customer;
• services suspended for non-payment;
• services suspended for abuse or breach of the Terms of Service;
• services suspended for breach of the Fair Use Policy;
• services suspended by order of a competent authority.

For the purposes of this SLA:

Availability or Uptime: the percentage of time during which the service is reachable and operational in the reference period.

Chargeable downtime: the period exceeding 2 consecutive minutes during which the service does not respond to valid network requests for reasons attributable to the infrastructure managed by DeluxHost, excluding the causes set out in Section 9.

Reference period: the calendar month, from the first to the last day of the month, save for services expressly identified as subject to annual calculation.

Monthly cost of the service: the price of the individual service concerned, calculated on a monthly basis even where billing is quarterly, half-yearly, annual or multi-year.

Service credit: the amount granted to the customer as a discount on the next renewal of the service concerned.

Upstream provider: datacentres, carriers, transit providers, network suppliers and other external parties used by DeluxHost to deliver the service.

Scheduled maintenance: technical work notified in advance and aimed at updates, improvements, migrations, hardware replacements or preventive activities.

Emergency maintenance: urgent work necessary to contain vulnerabilities, faults, security incidents or risks to the stability of the infrastructure.

DeluxHost undertakes to adopt commercially reasonable technical and organisational measures to maintain 99.9% availability for the services covered by this SLA.

The availability commitment is normally calculated on a calendar month basis.

Annual calculation applies exclusively to services clearly identified as subject to an annual SLA on the product page, in the commercial offer or in the order confirmation.

The 99.9% commitment does not constitute a guarantee of absolutely uninterrupted operation and must be interpreted taking into account the exclusions provided for by this SLA.

Uptime is calculated using the following formula:

Uptime % = ((Total minutes in the period − Minutes of chargeable downtime) ÷ Total minutes in the period) × 100

For services subject to annual calculation, the formula is applied using the total minutes of the reference year.

The following are primarily used for the purposes of the calculation:

• the DeluxHost monitoring systems;
• network logs;
• infrastructure logs;
• data from the DDoS mitigation system;
• data provided by the datacentre;
• data provided by the upstream providers.

The unavailability of the ICMP protocol alone does not automatically constitute downtime where the service is duly accessible through the intended ports, protocols or applications.

Uptime is calculated separately for each service.

Downtime affecting a single VPS, VDS, Game Server, Cloud service or Dedicated Server does not automatically give rise to an SLA breach in respect of the other services held on the same account.

An issue affecting exclusively a single application, port or configuration of the customer does not automatically result in the unavailability of the entire service.

Where the 99.9% availability commitment is not met, the customer may request the following service credit:

• uptime equal to or greater than 99.9%: no credit;
• uptime equal to or greater than 99.5% and lower than 99.9%: credit equal to 5% of the monthly cost of the service;
• uptime equal to or greater than 95% and lower than 99.5%: credit equal to 10% of the monthly cost of the service;
• uptime lower than 95%: credit equal to 20% of the monthly cost of the service.

The credit is calculated exclusively on the cost of the individual service directly affected by the chargeable downtime.

Downtime affecting one service does not generate credits for other services held on the same account.

The service credit is applied as a discount on the next renewal of the service concerned.

No monetary refunds are provided for under this SLA, save where required by mandatory provisions of law.

The credit:

• may not be transferred to another account;
• may not be transferred to another customer;
• may not be converted into money;
• may not be used to purchase a different service, save with the express authorisation of DeluxHost.

The maximum credit that may be granted for each service and reference period may not exceed 20% of the monthly cost of the service concerned.

The maximum limit applies even where there are multiple downtime episodes during the same reference period.

The credit provided for by this SLA may not be combined with other credits, refunds, free extensions, discounts, bonuses or compensation granted for the same service, period and event, save where expressly indicated otherwise by DeluxHost.

DeluxHost may voluntarily grant:

• free extensions of the service;
• technical bonuses;
• additional resources;
• discounts;
• credits;
• other commercial compensation.

The granting of voluntary compensation does not constitute an admission of liability, non-performance or breach of the SLA.

DeluxHost shall specify in the relevant communication whether the voluntary compensation is in addition to, or in substitution for, any SLA credit.

DeluxHost may carry out scheduled maintenance work for:

• security updates;
• software updates;
• infrastructure improvements;
• migrations;
• hardware replacements;
• optimisations;
• preventive work;
• network changes.

Scheduled maintenance work is notified, where reasonably possible, with at least 24 hours' notice through one or more of the following channels:

• email;
• client area;
• status page;
• notice on the website;
• support ticket.

Such work is normally carried out during low-traffic windows.

Periods of scheduled maintenance are not included in the calculation of downtime.

Any extension of the maintenance beyond the window initially notified is assessed on the basis of the actual cause of the extension and of the exclusions provided for by this SLA.

DeluxHost may carry out emergency work with reduced notice or without notice in the presence of:

• critical vulnerabilities;
• urgent hardware faults;
• security incidents;
• compromise or risk of compromise of systems;
• risk of loss of or damage to data;
• risk to the stability of the network;
• risk to the security of other customers;
• urgent requests from the datacentre or the upstream provider.

Such work must be limited to the time reasonably necessary to contain the risk and restore the service.

Periods of emergency maintenance are not included in the calculation of downtime.

DeluxHost includes best effort DDoS protection on the services for which it is expressly provided.

The customer acknowledges that no mitigation system can guarantee complete protection against any:

• attack technique;
• traffic volume;
• attack duration;
• type of protocol;
• distributed attack;
• application-layer attack;
• evasion method;
• combination of attack vectors.

Periods of unavailability directly and predominantly caused by the following are not included in the calculation of uptime:

• DDoS attacks;
• malicious traffic;
• attacks exceeding the available mitigation capacity;
• attacks that evade or circumvent the mitigation systems;
• attacks that materially compromise the filtering systems;
• nullrouting;
• blackholing;
• extraordinary traffic filtering;
• temporary traffic limitation;
• diversion of traffic to mitigation systems;
• action taken by the datacentre or the upstream provider;
• urgent action necessary to protect the infrastructure or other customers.

The exclusion may be applied on the basis of:

• network logs;
• data from the mitigation system;
• NetFlow data;
• firewall data;
• datacentre data;
• communications from upstream providers;
• available technical information;
• analysis of the origin and nature of the traffic.

Periods of unavailability caused by autonomous internal issues that are not directly attributable to the attack, or that are reasonably separable from the DDoS event, are not automatically excluded.

DeluxHost may temporarily suspend traffic directed to one or more IP addresses under attack where this is necessary to preserve:

• the stability of the infrastructure;
• the security of the network;
• the availability of the other services;
• the integrity of the systems;
• relations with the datacentre or the upstream provider.

The application of nullrouting, blackholing, filtering or traffic limitation during an attack does not automatically constitute a breach of the SLA.

The credit request must be submitted within 30 calendar days of the end of the reference period in which the alleged downtime occurred.

Requests submitted after that deadline may be rejected.

The request must be submitted:

• by ticket from the client area; or
• by email to support@deluxhost.net.

The request must include:

• the identifier of the service concerned;
• the hostname, IP address or service ID;
• the date of the issue;
• the start time;
• the end time;
• the time zone used;
• a detailed description of the unavailability;
• the ports or protocols affected;
• any logs;
• any screenshots;
• any external monitoring data.

Incomplete requests may be rejected or returned to the customer in order to obtain additional information.

DeluxHost verifies the request by comparing the information provided by the customer with:

• its own monitoring systems;
• internal logs;
• network data;
• datacentre data;
• upstream provider data;
• the maintenance history;
• the DDoS attack history;
• any open tickets;
• any further technical elements available.

External monitoring systems constitute supporting elements, but do not automatically determine the existence or the duration of chargeable downtime.

The results of external monitoring may be affected by:

• routing issues;
• issues with the customer's provider;
• blocking of the ICMP protocol;
• firewalls;
• rate limiting;
• geographical issues;
• unavailability of the monitoring system;
• configuration errors.

DeluxHost shall communicate the outcome of the request within 30 days of receipt of the information necessary for verification.

Where the request is accepted, the credit is applied to the next renewal of the service concerned.

Where the request is rejected, DeluxHost shall provide an explanation based on the technical elements available.

In order to obtain the credit, the customer must:

• have an account in good standing with regard to payments;
• not be in breach of the Terms of Service;
• not be in breach of the Fair Use Policy;
• not have caused the downtime, directly or indirectly;
• have submitted the request within the deadline provided for;
• have provided sufficient information to identify and verify the issue;
• keep the service concerned active until the verification has been completed, unless otherwise authorised.

The credit may be refused where:

• the customer caused the issue;
• the service has been suspended;
• the service has been cancelled;
• the request is fraudulent;
• the information provided is false or manipulated;
• the issue falls within the exclusions provided for by this SLA.

The following are not included in the calculation of downtime:

• scheduled maintenance;
• emergency maintenance;
• DDoS attacks;
• malicious traffic;
• nullrouting;
• blackholing;
• traffic filtering or limitation during an attack;
• issues caused by the customer's software;
• issues caused by the customer's applications;
• issues caused by the customer's operating system;
• incorrect configurations;
• firewalls configured by the customer;
• compromise of credentials;
• excessive or abusive use of resources;
• suspensions for breach of the Terms of Service;
• suspensions for breach of the Fair Use Policy;
• suspensions for non-payment;
• suspensions due to chargebacks or payment disputes;
• suspensions requested by the customer;
• issues on the customer's local network;
• issues with the customer's Internet connection;
• issues on the network path outside the infrastructure managed by DeluxHost;
• issues caused by external DNS;
• issues caused by third-party software, panels or licences;
• issues caused by datacentres, carriers or upstream providers outside the reasonable control of DeluxHost;
• power or connectivity outages at third-party infrastructure;
• requests, orders or measures of competent authorities;
• force majeure events;
• acts or omissions of the customer;
• acts or omissions of parties authorised by the customer;
• unlawful activities carried out by means of the service;
• issues caused by migrations requested by the customer;
• periods during which DeluxHost is unable to act for want of the necessary information or authorisations;
• unavailability limited to features not included in the plan purchased.

DeluxHost shall not be liable for failure to comply with this SLA where such failure is directly caused by events:

• outside its reasonable control;
• not reasonably foreseeable;
• not avoidable by means of commercially reasonable measures.

Such events may include:

• earthquakes;
• floods;
• fires;
• natural disasters;
• wars;
• acts of terrorism;
• civil unrest;
• pandemics;
• public health emergencies;
• large-scale blackouts;
• regional or national connectivity outages;
• government measures;
• judicial measures;
• sanctions;
• external strikes;
• critical supply chain disruptions;
• widespread datacentre failures;
• widespread carrier failures;
• cyberattacks of exceptional scale;
• events involving upstream infrastructure not directly managed by DeluxHost.

The mere existence of a cyberattack does not automatically constitute force majeure.

DDoS attacks and malicious traffic are governed specifically by Section 7.

The liability of DeluxHost, the related exclusions and the applicable maximum limit are governed by Section 5 of the Terms of Service.

Nothing in this SLA may be construed as excluding or limiting liability for:

• wilful misconduct;
• gross negligence;
• breach of mandatory obligations;
• other cases in which liability may not be excluded or limited by law.

The credits provided for by this SLA constitute the specific contractual remedy for failure to meet the availability commitment, without prejudice to mandatory statutory rights.

The granting of an SLA credit does not constitute an admission of further liability or damages.

In order to benefit from the commitments provided for by this SLA, the customer undertakes to:

• use the service in compliance with the Terms of Service;
• comply with the Fair Use Policy;
• comply with applicable law;
• protect their access credentials;
• use adequate passwords;
• enable two-factor authentication where available;
• keep the operating system up to date;
• install security updates;
• correctly configure firewalls and applications;
• perform regular external backups;
• verify the actual integrity of the backups;
• report any issues promptly;
• provide accurate information to support;
• keep contact details up to date;
• cooperate reasonably with DeluxHost during verifications;
• not alter or falsify logs, screenshots or monitoring data.

Failure to comply with these obligations may result in the refusal of the credit where it caused or contributed to the issue, or prevented its proper verification.

DeluxHost may amend this SLA for reasons that are:

• technical;
• organisational;
• economic;
• regulatory;
• infrastructural;
• security-related.

Material changes are notified by email and/or through the client area with at least 30 days' notice, unless a shorter period is:

• required by law;
• necessary for urgent security needs;
• necessary to prevent abuse;
• imposed by changes made by upstream providers;
• caused by events that are not reasonably foreseeable.

Changes do not apply retroactively to service periods that have already ended.

The applicable version is the one published and in force during the reference period concerned.

This SLA is supplemented by:

• the Terms of Service;
• the Fair Use Policy;
• the Privacy Policy;
• the Data Processing Agreement, where applicable;
• the specific conditions of the product;
• the order confirmation;
• any contractual communications relating to the service.

For questions, clarifications or requests relating to this SLA:

General support and credit requests: support@deluxhost.net

Abuse reports: abuse@deluxhost.net

Privacy requests: privacy@deluxhost.net

PEC: deluxhost@mypec.eu