This agreement describes the standard level of service that all website hosting customers can expect from Town and Parish Council Websites. It attempts to quantify the levels of service that all hosting customers can expect, and the remedies we offer if we fail to provide service at those levels.
Town and Parish Council Websites provide a reactive hosting service for all websites and offer a 99.9% uptime. We do not constantly check the websites we host to ensure they are functioning correctly as routine use, maintenance and software updates can affect website functions. It is therefore the responsibility of the client to ensure their website is operating as it should. ‘Always on’ and ‘managed hosting services’ support can be provided and can be quoted on a case-by-case basis.
99.9% Network and Servers Uptime
Town and Parish Council Websites guarantees that the customer’s website, will be available 99.9% of the time, excluding maintenance, as defined below. Network downtime is defined as the customer’s hosted website being unable to be viewed or accessed through the Internet, caused by failure of network equipment managed by Town and Parish Council Websites., excluding scheduled or emergency maintenance.
Maintenance means scheduled maintenance or emergency maintenance. Scheduled Maintenance means any maintenance in the Town and Parish Council Websites. network/servers of which the customer is notified at least 5 days in advance. Emergency maintenance means any maintenance in the Town and Parish Council Websites. network/servers that: (a) in Town and Parish Council Websites’ sole discretion, is necessary to avoid an immediate threat to the Town and Parish Council Websites networks/servers or customer’s server and (b) of which customer is notified.
Response times
Support, unless noted otherwise in a supplementary service level agreement, technical support is provided by Town and Parish Council Websites on a first-come, first-served “best effort” basis. We aim to at least acknowledge, if not fully answer, all support tickets within 4 working days. Support is offered on all our services including webmail. Our support does not extend to third party email client software and we would advise clients to access support from the software company website directly. If webmail is deemed to be accessible and working then any misconfiguration of client software doesn’t fall under the scope of support.
WordPress
For those websites hosted by Town and Parish Council Websites which have been built (or part-built) upon the WordPress platform, please be aware that WordPress irregularly makes updates which means that Town and Parish Council Websites 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.
Town and Parish Council Websites works reactively for such updates – we respond should we be informed of a critical change (by WordPress) or should the client point out an error in functionality. Please note, Town and Parish Council Websites cannot be held responsible for any functionality failure caused directly by an update to WordPress or a plug-in of which we were not made aware.
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 Town and Parish Council Websites 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.
Invoicing
Website hosting runs annually, paid in advance. An invoice will be sent automatically at the time of renewal. Should a client not wish for Town and Parish Council Websites to renew the hosting service, we request a notice period of sixty days in advance of cessation along with details to where you would like the web files sent. If we do not hear such a request, it will be assumed that you do wish the web hosting to be renewed and are in agreement with the terms for the following year.
The Service level agreement runs in conjunction with Town and Parish Council Website’s standard terms and conditions.
Exceptions
The customer shall not be entitled to any credit hereunder if the network downtime is caused by: (i) actions of the customer or others authorised by the customer to use the service under the Agreement; (ii) customer application, software, or customer’s operating system failure, (iii) the result of network maintenance activity, (iv) denial of service attack, hacker activity, or other malicious event or code targeted against Town and Parish Council Websites. or a Town and Parish Council Websites customer, or (v) failure of any network or Internet Infrastructure not owned or managed by Town and Parish Council Websites. (vi) If customer has more than one website hosted on Town and Parish Council Websites networks or servers, then a claim may be accepted for one hosted website.
Definitions
“Town and Parish Council Websites”, “we”, “us”, “our” means Town and Parish Council Websites
“Service” means any hosting or connectivity service offered by Town and Parish Council Websites, including but not limited to Hosting Services or Dedicated Hosts, Support and Maintenance Agreements.
“Customer”, “you”, “your” means you, the person or persons in whose name(s) a service is maintained by.
“Technical contact” means a person or persons nominated by the Customer with whom Town and Parish Council Websites can discuss all matters of a technical nature relating to the Service.
“Working hours” means 9.00am to 5.30pm, Monday to Friday, excluding English bank holidays.