Service Level Agreement

1. Introduction

Blue Arctic is committed to providing reliable, high-quality hosting services on infrastructure we own and operate. This Service Level Agreement (“SLA”) describes our uptime commitments by service tier, how SLA Credits are calculated, and how they may be claimed. The remedies set out in this SLA are the Client’s sole and exclusive remedy for downtime and service availability issues covered by this SLA, unless otherwise required by applicable law. This SLA is subject to the Master Service Agreement and does not apply to Professional Services (website maintenance, server administration, website development, or digital marketing).

2. Definitions

Monthly Period: A single billing cycle within a calendar month corresponding to the Client’s invoice date.

Downtime: Any period during which the Services are unavailable or inaccessible to the Client or the Client’s end users, as measured by Blue Arctic’s monitoring infrastructure. Downtime is calculated from the time Blue Arctic’s monitoring systems detect the outage (or the time a valid support ticket is submitted, whichever is earlier) to the time service is restored and confirmed operational. Downtime does not include Scheduled Maintenance or exclusions listed in Section 5.

Scheduled Maintenance: Planned maintenance windows for which Blue Arctic provides at least 24 hours’ advance notice via the Blue Arctic status page (status.bluearctic.com) or email. Blue Arctic schedules routine maintenance during low-traffic hours (typically 2:00 AM–6:00 AM Eastern Time) and limits Scheduled Maintenance to no more than 4 hours per Monthly Period.

Emergency Maintenance: Unscheduled maintenance necessary to protect network integrity, security, or the Services of other customers. Blue Arctic will provide notice as soon as practicable and will use commercially reasonable efforts to minimize the duration of Emergency Maintenance.

Monthly Subscription Value: The actual amount invoiced to the Client during the Monthly Period for the affected Service, excluding add-on services, bandwidth overage charges, domain registration fees, SSL certificate fees, paid support plans, Professional Services fees, and any other supplementary charges.

SLA Credit: A service credit applied to the Client’s account balance or future invoices as compensation for Downtime. SLA Credits shall not exceed 100% of the Monthly Subscription Value for the affected Service in any single Monthly Period, and total SLA Credits across all Services shall not exceed the total amount invoiced to the Client in the applicable Monthly Period.

Infrastructure Uptime: Availability of Blue Arctic-managed infrastructure components, specifically: network connectivity, power and cooling, hypervisor (for VPS), and hardware (for Dedicated Servers). Infrastructure Uptime does not include the availability of guest operating systems, applications, databases, or software installed or configured by the Client.

3. Uptime Guarantees by Service Tier

Blue Arctic’s uptime commitments vary by service type, reflecting the level of infrastructure control Blue Arctic maintains for each tier:

Measurement methodology. Uptime is measured using Blue Arctic’s internal monitoring systems, which perform HTTP and ICMP checks at 60-second intervals from multiple monitoring nodes. A Service is considered unavailable when monitoring confirms that the Service is unreachable from at least two independent monitoring nodes for a continuous period of 5 minutes or more. Outages lasting less than 5 consecutive minutes are not counted as Downtime.

4. SLA Credits

If monthly uptime for a Service falls below the applicable guarantee in Section 3, the Client is entitled to receive an SLA Credit according to the following schedule:

SLA Credits are calculated separately for each affected Service. Credits are applied to the Client’s account balance and will be deducted from the next invoice. SLA Credits are not redeemable for cash and are not transferable. If the Client’s account is terminated before credits are used, unused credits are forfeited.

5. Exclusions

SLA Credits are not issued for service unavailability caused by or arising from:

• Scheduled Maintenance with at least 24 hours’ advance notice posted on the Blue Arctic status page
• Emergency Maintenance necessary to protect network integrity, security, or the Services of other customers
• The Client’s actions, configurations, code, scripts, plugins, or applications (including misconfigured firewalls, resource-exhausting processes, or software installed by the Client on VPS or Dedicated Servers)
• Third-party service failures including DNS providers, CDN providers, mail relay services, SSL certificate authorities, or upstream internet service provider outages
• Force Majeure events as defined in the Master Service Agreement, Section 14
• Client’s failure to pay invoices when due, resulting in account suspension
• Outages or unavailability lasting less than 5 consecutive minutes
• Issues resulting from the Client’s use of the Services in violation of the Acceptable Use Policy
• DDoS attacks targeting the Client’s IP addresses or domains, to the extent that Blue Arctic’s commercially reasonable mitigation efforts are insufficient to fully absorb the attack
• Issues caused by the Client’s failure to implement recommended security patches, updates, or configurations after notification by Blue Arctic

6. Claiming Credits

To request an SLA Credit, the Client must submit a support ticket within 30 days of the Downtime incident. The support ticket must include:

• The affected Service (hostname, IP address, or account identifier)
• The date and time the Downtime began and ended (with timezone)
• A description of the issue experienced
• Any relevant error messages, screenshots, or traceroute output

Blue Arctic will review the claim against its monitoring data and respond with an approval or denial within 10 business days. If approved, the SLA Credit will be applied to the Client’s next invoice or account balance. If denied, Blue Arctic will provide a written explanation of the denial, including relevant monitoring data. Claims submitted more than 30 days after the incident are not eligible for SLA Credits.

7. Prolonged or Repeated Outages

If a single Downtime event exceeds 24 consecutive hours, or if total Downtime in any Monthly Period exceeds 12 hours across multiple incidents, the Client may (in addition to receiving SLA Credits) terminate the affected Service without penalty by providing written notice within 14 days of the qualifying event. In such cases, Blue Arctic will issue a prorated refund for the unused portion of the current billing period for the affected Service. This right to terminate is in addition to, and does not limit, any other termination rights under the Agreement Documents.

8. Support

Blue Arctic provides 24/7 technical support via support tickets. Our target is a first response in under 25 minutes; this is a service target, not a guaranteed maximum. Blue Arctic’s support team assists with:

• Server and network infrastructure issues
• cPanel, WHM, and hosting account-level problems
• SSL certificate installation and configuration
• DNS configuration and management
• General hosting questions and account administration
• Backup restoration requests
• Migration assistance

Blue Arctic’s standard support does not include: custom website development or coding; installation, configuration, or troubleshooting of third-party software not included with the Services; performance optimization of client-built applications; or troubleshooting of client-installed applications. For advanced support needs, please inquire about our Professional Services offerings.

Support response time targets are goals, not guarantees. Support response times are not subject to SLA Credits.