Skip to content

Last updated September 30, 2022

This Service Level Agreement (“SLA”) describes the standard level of service that all website hosting customers can expect from Unity Web Agency LLC (“Unity,” “we,” or “us”). This SLA runs in conjunction with Unity’s Master Service Agreement and the Managed WordPress Hosting Terms & Conditions.

99.9% Uptime Commitment

Uptime. Unity guarantees that the customer’s website, which is hosted on the Unity servers, will be available 99.9% of the time, excluding maintenance and circumstances beyond our control, as defined below.

Scheduled Maintenance. Scheduled maintenance means a short downtime necessary for quick updates and patches that require reboots or restarts. We do our best to keep such incidents to a minimum and we will attempt to give you advance notice of any scheduled maintenance.

Emergency Maintenance. Emergency maintenance means any service affecting maintenance that is so severe it requires immediate attention. This type of maintenance is inherently not scheduled and is only used in extreme circumstances. We will make our best effort to notify customers should this become necessary.

Circumstances Beyond Our Control. We are not responsible for outages or circumstances beyond our control that hinder access to your site or server such as the following: (a) Actions of the customer or others authorized by the customer to edit the website; (b) Network conditions across the internet (outside of our network), such as between your ISP and our data center; (c) Problems with Your ISP’s network; (d) Browser or DNS caching issues; (e) DDoS or other attacks on our servers.

Uptime Monitoring. Our monitoring system will text us if your website ever goes down. We’ll drop everything to help get it back up. If your website is down for more than 10 minutes, we will notify you, explain the situation, and lay out our plan of action to fix the problem. Notifications will occur within 30 minutes during 9 AM – 5 PM ET, within 1 hour on holidays and weekends, and within 8 hours any evening.

Service Credit. In the event of downtime that exceeds more than 0.1% of the total time per month, we will provide a service credit in the amount of 5% of the paid fee for the month, for every hour that your website is unreachable, excluding scheduled or emergency maintenance or circumstances beyond our control. Downtime must be confirmed by a staff member of our support team. Maximum service credit given will be for the full amount paid for the month of outage, excluding any paid fees for additional services. Service credits have no cash value and are extended at our discretion. Service credits expire if your account is fully terminated.

Security Scans

Real-time security scans let us know if there are any security vulnerabilities on your server or within your website. If a scan identifies a problem, we’ll do everything we can to fix the problem completely and quickly. If your website comes under attack, we will notify you within the hour, explain the situation, and lay out our plan of action to fix the problem.

File and Database Backups

Our backup system will take nightly incremental backups of your website files and database and store them securely in a separate US-based cloud server from your live website. These backups are retained for 90 days. If you need us to keep these for longer than 90 days, we are happy to provide a separate estimate for that.

WordPress Core and Plugin Updates

Keeping your website’s software up to date is essential in maintaining a safe and sound website. Performing software updates on a regular basis will make your website less vulnerable to hackers who look for instability in code. We will do a scan (weekly or monthly, depending on your selected plan) to determine the most recent core and plugin updates, then perform them within the following week. We receive daily notifications of any security-related updates, and will run these updates immediately. If an update is incompatible with your website, we will notify you, explain the issue, and lay out our plan of action to fix the problem.

Server and/or Database Access

In order to provide the best security for all of our clients' websites, we do not provide FTP, SFTP, or SSH access to individual websites on our servers or the server at large. We also do not provide a website interface for database access.

If you need to upload anything to your website, you may do so through the WordPress media library. If that does not work (common reasons include: file too large or unsupported file type), you may reach out to our support team at [email protected] and request that our team uploads the files for you.

If you need to download a copy of your website files or database, you may reach out to our support team at [email protected] to make the request. Our team can provide you with a link to download a full backup of your website.

Migrating to our server

We do host websites that we did not build, however not every WordPress website is a good match for our services. For instance, we have experience working with websites that use:

  • Advanced Custom Fields (ACF)
  • Beaver Builder
  • Elementor
  • Divi
  • WordPress’s Block Editor

However, if your website is built using a theme or builder like one of the following, we may not be the best fit:

  • Avada
  • Thrive
  • WP Bakery
  • X Theme

Our first step is to perform a free initial audit of your existing website. Our essential performance, accessibility, and security (PAS) audit tells our team what we need to know about your website's technical needs. It also helps you gain a clear understanding of their website’s technical performance and security, an overview of found issues, and recommendations for improvements.

From there, we’ll have a phone call to discuss the results of your audit. If our Managed WordPress Hosting is a good solution for your website and you choose to proceed with us, we will get started on the migration.

We charge our standard hourly rate to migrate any websites we did not build to our server. Most migrations take between 1-3 hours of our team’s time, depending on the complexity of the website. If we anticipate it taking more time than that, we will provide a written estimate.

Self-hosted websites

Clients may choose to purchase their own hosting plan with another provider (“alternative server”) while also hiring Unity to provide monthly maintenance through our Self-Hosted Maintenance plan. In this case, it is the client’s responsibility to ensure the alternative server is set up correctly to host their website. Unity cannot be held responsible for compatibility issues their website may face on the alternative server, although we will make efforts to advise on system requirements and compatibility.

Email

Unity does not provide email services. As such, email hosting is not included within the price of our Managed WordPress Hosting plans. We recommend clients purchase Google Workspace or work with an IT partner to obtain email services.

Domain Names

We prefer for our clients to directly own their website domain names, while providing access to our team. We recommend the following registrars for affordable and reliable domain names:

For clients’ domain names that we register or transfer to our account, we become the legal ‘owner’ of the domain name. Unity chooses to treat this ‘ownership’ as one of ‘guardianship’ with all decisions regarding the control, transfer, and renewal of the domain being made by the client.

Domain renewals occur either annually or after multiple years, depending on the length of the original registration. They are automatically renewed with an invoice sent in advance of the renewal date. Non-payment may result in the domain not being renewed and becoming available for others to purchase.

Cancellations

Although we’ll be sad to see you go, we understand business needs are always changing. We require a 30-day notice of any termination.

We'll work with you to provide a full backup of your website and also send you any necessary information for your new provider to transfer your website. Following the transfer of the website or after the last day of the last month of service, we will remove the website files from our server space.

[END OF DOCUMENT]