SLA for a small SaaS: uptime, credits and support

What an SLA covers, what 99.9% or 99.5% uptime means in minutes, how service credits work with a worked example, and support hours and exclusions.

The short answer

A service level agreement (SLA) says how available your service will be, how quickly you respond to faults, how both are measured, and what the customer gets when you miss them, usually a service credit off the next invoice. For a small SaaS it sits beside the subscription agreement and covers only the service levels.

Promise what your monitoring can prove and your team can deliver. A 99.9% target sounds better than 99.5%, but in a 30-day month it leaves 43 minutes of downtime instead of 216, and every minute beyond it costs money.

What an SLA for a small SaaS covers

QuoteBill’s SLA sample is built from these parts, each with blanks you set:

  • The services covered, and that trial, test and beta features are not.
  • Service levels: monthly availability, response times and target fix times.
  • Measurement: the monitoring tool, how often it checks, and how long an outage must last to count.
  • Support hours, severity levels and the channel for reporting faults.
  • Planned maintenance, exclusions and the customer’s own duties.
  • Monthly reporting, service credits, and the right to leave after repeated failures.

What uptime percentages mean in minutes

Translate a target into the downtime it allows before you sign. A 30-day month has 30 × 24 × 60 = 43,200 minutes, and a 31-day month 44,640, so state that availability is measured per calendar month:

  • 99.9% allows 0.1% of 43,200, which is 43.2 minutes a month.
  • 99.5% allows 0.5% of 43,200, which is 216 minutes, or 3 hours 36 minutes.
  • 99.0% allows 1% of 43,200, which is 432 minutes, or 7 hours 12 minutes.
  • 95.0% allows 5% of 43,200, which is 2,160 minutes, or 36 hours.

Worked example: a missed month and its credit

A customer pays an illustrative 800 a month. The SLA uses the sample’s defaults: a 99.5% target, and credits of 5% below 99.5%, 15% below 99.0% and 30% below 95.0%, capped at 30% of the monthly fee. In a 30-day month the service is down for 300 minutes because of a fault, plus 3 hours of announced maintenance, which does not count.

Under the sample the customer asks for the credit in writing within 30 days after the monthly report, and the agreed credit comes off the next invoice; it is paid out only if no further invoice will follow.

  • Availability: (43,200 − 300) ÷ 43,200 = 99.31%, rounded.
  • That is below 99.5% but at least 99.0%, so the credit is 5%.
  • Credit for the month: 800 × 0.05 = 40.
  • Next month’s invoice: 800 − 40 = 760.

Support hours, maintenance and exclusions

Response times only mean something with support hours and severity levels beside them. The sample counts in business hours from the moment a report reaches the support channel: a critical fault gets a response within 1 hour and a fix or workaround aimed for within 8, a high one 4 hours and 2 business days, a normal one 1 business day and 5. Resolution times are targets; the credits attach to availability.

Planned maintenance of up to 4 hours a month, announced 48 hours ahead, does not count as downtime. Neither do faults caused by the customer’s own systems or connection, third-party services the customer chose, events beyond your reasonable control, or beta features. Time spent waiting for the customer’s information or access does not count against you either.

Writing it and billing credits with QuoteBill

Read the service level agreement and software subscription samples on their public pages; the SLA names the service contract it is added to and prevails on service levels only. Fill the blanks with figures your monitoring can actually measure, then send both through E-Contracts. It is a simple electronic signature with an audit trail, not an advanced or qualified electronic signature, and QuoteBill does not verify who signs; whether that is enough depends on the contract and the country. The sample texts are not legal advice.

For a credit, either issue a credit note that names the month and the invoice, or give a discount of the credit amount on the next invoice’s subscription line and explain it in “Notes”. QuoteBill does not monitor uptime or calculate credits; it prints the figures you enter.

Check before you commit to a target

Five questions for the provider:

  • Can your monitoring prove the figure, at the interval and place the SLA names?
  • How many minutes of downtime does the target allow, and did you have more last quarter?
  • Are support hours and severity levels realistic for your team, including holidays?
  • Is the total credit capped, and is it the usual remedy?
  • Are maintenance windows, exclusions and the customer’s duties written down?

Questions people ask

Is 99.9% uptime a good target for a small SaaS? Only if your architecture and monitoring support it; it allows about 43 minutes a month. Many small providers start at 99.5% and raise it once they have a track record.

Does planned maintenance count as downtime? Not when it is announced in advance and stays within the agreed monthly limit. Urgent security maintenance may count unless the parties agree otherwise.

Are service credits the only remedy? In the sample they are the usual remedy for missed availability, but they do not limit rights the law gives that cannot be excluded, and repeated failures let the customer end the service.

Do I need an SLA at all? Not every customer asks for one, but business customers often do. A short SLA with honest targets builds trust more than vague promises in a sales email.

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