This Service Level Agreement (SLA) sets out the uptime guarantees of IPHOST services, the credits granted when these guarantees are not met and how to claim them. It supplements the Terms and Conditions (sections 9 and 10) and forms an integral part of them.
1. Definitions
- Uptime – the percentage of time in a calendar month during which the service is available.
- Downtime – a continuous period of at least 5 minutes during which the service is unavailable because of IPHOST infrastructure (servers, virtualization nodes, network, power), as recorded by the IPHOST monitoring system. Interruptions shorter than 5 minutes are not counted. Downtime of 5 minutes or more is counted in full, from the first minute. Downtime that crosses from one month into the next is split between the two months. The calendar month follows Chișinău time (EET/EEST).
- Service credit – an amount added to the client's account balance as compensation for downtime.
- Monthly fee – the base price of the affected service actually paid (after discounts and promotions), excluding VAT; for services paid for several months, the amount paid divided by the number of months. Add-on options (IP addresses, backup, traffic), domains, licences, SSL certificates, minute bundles and electricity billed separately for colocation are not included.
2. Uptime guarantees
Uptime is calculated separately for each service, for each calendar month.
| Service | Guaranteed uptime | Allowed downtime (30-day month, approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| Shared web hosting and e-mail hosting | 99.9% | 43 minutes |
| VPS and VDS | 99.9% | 43 minutes |
| Dedicated servers | 99.9% | 43 minutes |
| Colocation – power, equipment with two power supplies (2PSU) | 99.98% | 8 minutes |
| Colocation – power, equipment with a single power supply (1PSU) | 99.0% | 7 hours 12 minutes |
| Colocation – internet connectivity contracted from IPHOST | 99.95% | 21 minutes |
| DNS hosting | 99.95% | 21 minutes |
| Backup space | 99.9% | 43 minutes |
Internet connectivity contracted from other carriers for colocation services has no uptime guarantee.
Services not listed in the table (domains, SSL certificates, licences, telephony and numbers, business internet, dark fiber) have no uptime guarantee under this SLA; their terms are in the contract or on the service page.
3. What the guarantee covers
- Shared web hosting and e-mail hosting: the server, operating system, web server, database and e-mail services managed by IPHOST.
- VPS, VDS and dedicated servers: IPHOST infrastructure – physical hardware, the virtualization node, network and power. For unmanaged services, the guarantee does not cover the operating system, control panel and applications installed or managed by the client.
- Colocation: power and, if contracted from IPHOST, internet connectivity, as shown in the table above.
- DNS: responses of the IPHOST DNS servers for the domains hosted on them.
- Backup space: the backup server and network access to it.
4. What is not counted
The following are not downtime and are not included in the uptime calculation:
- scheduled maintenance announced at least 24 hours in advance, carried out between 00:00 and 06:00 (Chișinău time (EET/EEST)) and not exceeding 4 hours per month in total – anything beyond this limit is counted – and urgent security updates lasting no more than 15 minutes per intervention;
- DDoS and other cyberattacks targeting the client's service;
- issues caused by the client's configuration, changes or actions;
- exceeding the plan resources (CPU, memory, processes), exhausted disk space or file count (inodes), and compromised (hacked) sites;
- failures of third-party software, applications or services installed or managed by the client;
- for VPS, VDS and dedicated servers, the time needed after the server is powered on to start the operating system and the client's applications and services, including those not set to start automatically;
- suspension of the service for unpaid invoices or for breach of the Acceptable Use Policy;
- internet connectivity provided by other carriers;
- force majeure events, including natural disasters, actions of public authorities, armed conflicts and major internet infrastructure outages.
5. Uptime measurement
Uptime is measured by the IPHOST internal monitoring system. If you notice downtime, let us know right away with a support ticket, even if you do not claim a credit.
Public uptime statistics, measured independently by Better Stack, are available at status.iphost.md. They are for information: credits are calculated from the IPHOST monitoring system.
For VPS, VDS and dedicated servers, downtime ends when the server is running and reachable over the network.
6. Service credits
If the uptime of a service in a calendar month is below the guarantee in section 2, the client receives a credit calculated from the monthly fee of the affected service:
| Uptime in the month | Credit |
|---|---|
| below the guarantee, but at least 99.5% | 5% |
| below 99.5%, but at least 99.0% | 10% |
| below 99.0%, but at least 95.0% | 25% |
| below 95.0% | 50% |
For services with a 99.0% guarantee (colocation with a single power supply) the tiers are: 10% below 99.0% but at least 98.0%; 25% below 98.0% but at least 95.0%; 50% below 95.0%.
What you get back: indicative, in minutes
Find the column with your service's guarantee (section 2) and check how many minutes it was unavailable in a 30-day month:
| Credit from the monthly fee | 99.9%: web hosting, VPS, VDS, dedicated servers | 99.95%: colocation internet, DNS | 99.98%: colocation, dual power supply | 99.0%: colocation, single power supply |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| no credit (within the guarantee) | up to 43 min | up to 21 min | up to 8 min | up to 7 h 12 min |
| 5% | 43 min – 3 h 36 min | 21 min – 3 h 36 min | 8 min – 3 h 36 min | – |
| 10% | 3 h 36 min – 7 h 12 min | 3 h 36 min – 7 h 12 min | 3 h 36 min – 7 h 12 min | 7 h 12 min – 14 h 24 min |
| 25% | 7 h 12 min – 36 h | 7 h 12 min – 36 h | 7 h 12 min – 36 h | 14 h 24 min – 36 h |
| 50% (maximum) | more than 36 h | more than 36 h | more than 36 h | more than 36 h |
VPS example: you have a VPS at $20 a month. If it was unavailable for 2 hours in a month, you get 5%, that is $1 to your balance. For 10 hours you get 25%, that is $5. For 40 hours you get 50%, that is $10, the maximum.
Colocation example: your server with two power supplies is colocated with us at $50 a month. If power was lost for 30 minutes in a month, the 99.98% guarantee was missed and you get 5%, that is $2.50.
The minute values are indicative, for a 30-day month; in shorter or longer months they differ slightly, and the uptime percentage is what counts.
How the credit is calculated, step by step
- Downtime events of 5 minutes or more in the month are taken from the IPHOST monitoring system, leaving out the cases excluded in section 4.
- The minutes are added up separately for each service.
- Uptime = (minutes in the month − downtime minutes) ÷ minutes in the month × 100, to two decimals, never rounded up. Example: September has 43,200 minutes; 2 hours of downtime are 120 minutes, so (43,200 − 120) ÷ 43,200 × 100 = 99.72%.
- The credit percentage is taken from the service's guarantee (section 2 and the table above).
- Monthly fee = the base price paid for the service, excluding VAT, after discounts; for multi-month payments, the amount paid ÷ the number of months (for example, $180 a year = $15 a month).
- Credit = percentage × monthly fee, rounded to two decimals, in the account currency.
- The maximum credit for one service in one month is 50% of that service's monthly fee.
- The credit is added to your IPHOST account balance and used for your next invoices. It is not paid out in cash, cannot be transferred to another account and is not a refund under the Refund Policy.
- Downtime within the same month is added up; the credit is calculated once per month, for each service.
- The credit does not expire while the account is active. If you close the account or all services, any remaining credit is lost.
7. How to claim a credit
- Open a support ticket from your client area no later than 30 days after the end of the month in which the downtime occurred.
- State the affected service, and the date, time and approximate duration of the downtime.
- We check the downtime in our monitoring system and reply within 5 business days. If the claim is confirmed, the credit appears in your account balance.
Credits are not granted automatically, only at the client's request.
8. Relationship with other documents
This SLA supplements the Terms and Conditions. For uptime guarantees and the calculation of credits, the provisions of this SLA prevail. Ticket response and resolution times are set out in the Terms and Conditions, section 7, and do not entitle you to credits. IPHOST may change this SLA; the version in force is the one published on this page.
Last updated: 28 September 2026.