Guides 4 min read
The Cost of Website Downtime: How to Calculate Yours
What does an hour offline really cost? A simple formula for the direct and hidden costs of downtime, worked examples and what uptime percentages mean in money.
ReadGlossary · Reliability metrics
What is a service credit?
SLA credit
A service credit, or SLA credit, is the compensation a provider gives when it misses the service level in its SLA: usually a percentage of the monthly fee, taken off a later invoice rather than paid out as money.
How it works and why it matters
Most SLAs scale the credit with how far the level was missed: for example 10% of the monthly fee below 99.9% uptime, 25% below 99% and more below 95%. The credit is calculated on the fee for the affected service and month, not on the whole bill.
Credits are rarely automatic. The customer usually has to claim them before a deadline, often 30 to 60 days after the month ends, with the times of the outage, and the total is capped, often at that month’s fee for the service. Excluded events, such as announced maintenance, don’t count.
A credit seldom covers what an outage cost in lost sales and work. Its real value is as a signal: your own measurements of a provider tell you when a claim is due, and the SLAs you give customers tell you what you might owe them.
Formula
Credit = monthly fee × the credit rate for the uptime reached
Example: 1 hour of downtime in an average month (30.44 days) leaves about 99.86% uptime. Under the tiers above that earns 10%: €40 off a €400 monthly fee.
How Uptimecheck helps
Uptimecheck gives you the evidence a claim needs, measured from outside the provider’s network: every incident has its start, its end and the failing response. Reports show uptime, downtime and incidents per monitor for this month or last month against an SLA target from 99% to 99.99%, also as CSV, and a live client report shows your own customers the same numbers and is emailed on the 1st of each month.
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Read more in the guides
Guides 6 min read
What Does 99.9% Uptime Mean? SLA Downtime Explained
99.9% uptime allows 43 minutes and 49 seconds of downtime in an average month. What each level of nines allows per day, month and year, how SLAs measure uptime, how service credits work and how to choose a target.
ReadQuestions
How are SLA credits calculated?
From the uptime the provider reached in the month and the tiers in its SLA: each tier gives a percentage of that month’s fee for the affected service, credited on a later invoice.
Are service credits paid in cash?
Usually not. They are taken off future invoices, are capped, and are lost if you leave. Some contracts add a refund or the right to terminate after repeated misses.
How do I claim a service credit?
Follow the claim process in the SLA before its deadline: name the service, the month and the times of the outage, with your own measurements. Without a claim, most providers credit nothing.
More from Reliability metrics
All terms-
SLO
Service level objective An internal reliability target, with the error budget it leaves. Read the definition : SLO -
SLI
Service level indicator The measurement behind an SLO: the share of good events. Read the definition : SLI -
Error budget
The unreliability an SLO allows: 100% minus the target, over a window. Read the definition : Error budget
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