Service level agreement
Last updated November 11st, 2022
1. Definition Of Terms
The following words and expressions shall have meanings hereby assigned to them except where the context otherwise requires: “Company”, “us”, “we” and “our” BigBlock Studios; “You”, “Your”, “the customer”, means the party or parties who utilise services provided by BigBlock Studios.
2. Technical Support
BigBlock Studios will provide you with technical support on set-up of your account, access, and other server related issues at no additional charge. BigBlock Studios will not provide development-related support for web applications, scripts, or components from third parties or those developed by You.
Email and phone support is available Monday through Friday, excluding public holidays, from 8am to 6pm EST. Please be prepared to provide a full description of the problem and your Account ID.
Existing customers also have 24/7 access to the support ticket system, which is continually monitored
BigBlock Studios standard response time to technical support issues is within 24 hours. This time depends on the complexity of the issue and support request volume.
3. Scheduled Maintenance
Notification will be given as soon as possible for maintenance windows that would require any gaps in server availability.
3.1 Emergency Maintenance
If at all possible notification will be given in the event emergency maintenance is required, but notification is not guaranteed.
4. Availability
BigBlock Studios guarantees at least 99% availability. Availability is defined as the ability to pass incoming and outgoing TCP/IP traffic through BigBlock Studios servers. Application and mail server unavailability resulting from loss of network availability is not included in Mail Server Availability or Application Server Availability calculations or if the Network Availability loss is caused by any factor(s) beyond BigBlock Studios control, including such factors as problems on domestic and international backbones or on the customer’s portion of the network, and denial of service or similar attacks directed at BigBlock Studios servers or the BigBlock Studios network.
4.1 Application Server Availability
BigBlock Studios guarantees at least 99% Application Server Availability. Application (Web) Server Availability is defined as the ability to retrieve the HTTP headers from the hosting server, calculated on a monthly basis. BigBlock Studios does not monitor availability of individual web sites but only monitors the server availability as a whole.
Denial of service attacks or other types of attacks directed toward the web server resulting in or contributing to downtime will not be included in Web Server Availability calculations.
4.2 Application Server Availability Monitoring
BigBlock Studios monitors and logs all availability for all servers and services 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
4.3 Mail Server Availability
BigBlock Studios guarantees at least 99% Mail Server Availability. Mail Server Availability is defined as the ability to retrieve the SMTP, POP and IMAP headers from the mail server, calculated on a monthly basis. BigBlock Studios will not monitor availability of individual mail accounts or mailboxes but only monitors the server availability as a whole.
Denial of service attacks, mail bombing, and other flooding techniques directed toward the mail server resulting in or contributing to downtime will not be included in Mail Server Availability calculations.
The outgoing email protocol used on the mail server (SMTP) is a “store-and-forward” type of protocol that does not guarantee immediate delivery of email messages. If the mail server’s first email delivery attempt fails, it will re-attempt delivery according to a predefined schedule. If the message fails to be sent for 5 days, the messages will be returned to the sender.
4.4 Mail Server Availability Monitoring
BigBlock Studios monitors and logs all availability for all servers and services 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
5. Data Backup
BigBlock Studios maintains backup solutions for disaster recovery only. All customer data backups are the sole responsibility of the customer.
In no event will BigBlock Studios be held responsible, finacially or otherwise, for any data loss to customers failing to maintain their own data backup solution.
6. Refunds
Refunds are granted solely on the discretion of BigBlock Studios.
Refunds are never granted for domain name renewals or registrations.
All refunds are granted in the form of account credit.
To receive a refund, send an email or written refund request to the Accounts Department. You must provide your Account ID and all dates and the reason a refund is being requested.
Refund request must be received by the accounts department within 5 business days from the end of the month for which you are requesting a refund
6.1 Maximum Total Refund
The total refund to You for any account may not exceed 50% of the monthly fees charged to that account during the month for which the refund is to be issued.
6.2 Restrictions
Customer shall not receive any refunds under this SLA in connection with any failure or deficiency of website availability caused by or associated with:
- Circumstances beyond BigBlock Studios reasonable control, including, but not limited to, acts of any governmental body, fire, flood, earthquake, strike or other labour disturbance, interruption of / or delay in transportation, unavailability of / or interruption or delay in telecommunications or third party services, virus attacks or hackers, failure of third party software (including, without limitation, ecommerce software, payment gateways, chat, statistics or free scripts);
- Scheduled maintenance and emergency maintenance and upgrades;
- Your acts or omissions (or acts or omissions of others engaged or authorized by You), including, without limitation, custom scripting or coding (e.g., CGI, Perl, HTML, ASP, etc), any negligence, willful misconduct, or use of the Services in breach of the Company’s Terms and Conditions and Acceptable Use Policy;
- DNS (Domain Name Server) Propagation.
- Outages elsewhere on the Internet that hinder access to your account. The Company is not responsible for browser or DNS caching that may make your site appear inaccessible when others can still access it.
7. Storage Capacity / Data Transfer
Each account is allotted storage capacity and data transfer amounts on BigBlock Studios servers according to the plan and options selected by You. This storage size and data transfer allotments can be increased by request for an additional fee. The servers may stop accepting, processing, or delivering data when the purchased limit is reached thus causing server unavailability or data loss. BigBlock Studios shall not be held responsible for such unavailability or data losses.
8. Data Retention
BigBlock Studios shall not be responsible for retaining any your data after account termination. All data is deleted from the servers after the account is terminated and from back-ups during scheduled back-up rotation. BigBlock Studios shall not restore, provide on any storage media or send out any data pertaining to existing or terminated accounts unless agreed to by BigBlock Studios.
9. Customer Responsibilities
To access BigBlock Studios services You must provide at the very minimum:
- An Internet connection with sufficient bandwidth and quality to allow trouble-free browsing and data uploading and downloading; a fully functional Internet browser
- Tools to develop and publish content as You find suitable and necessary
- Tools to access database servers if such services are purchased by you.
10. Privacy Statement
BigBlock Studios values the privacy of its customers. Please refer to BigBlock Studios Privacy for further information.
11. Lawful Use of the Services
You agree to use BigBlock Studios hosting and/or other services provided hereunder (the "Services") only for lawful purposes. In the event that Your use of the Services violates any law, rule or regulation, BigBlock Studios shall have the right to immediately terminate any and/or all services without renumeration.
12. Provision of Services
YOU SHALL AT ALL TIMES PROVIDE AND KEEP CURRENT AND UP TO DATE YOUR CONTACT, CREDIT CARD, IF APPLICABLE, AND BILLING INFORMATION BY CALLING BIGBLOCK STUDIOS OR BY LOGGING INTO YOUR ACCOUNT AND UPDATING THIS INFORMATION
13. Term and Termination
The Agreement term is either the Initial Term or Renewal Term (each, a "Term") as defined herein.
13.1 Termination
Without prejudice to any other rights, BigBlock Studios may terminate your rights to use any or all services for any reason at its discretion or if you fail to comply with these terms and conditions. In the event of termination or cancellation, you must stop using and/or accessing BigBlock Studios services.
13.2. Automatic Renewal
This Agreement shall renew automatically at the end of the prior Term unless terminated in accordance with this Agreement either by You or by Click IT. When a new Term begins, the then current Master Service Agreement and Service Level Agreement shall replace in their entirety the previous Master Service Agreement and Service Level Agreement. The then current Master Service Agreement and Service Level Agreement shall be considered this "Agreement". Please review the then current Master Service Agreement and Service Level Agreement from time to time so that You will be apprised of any changes by visiting this page.
14. Zero Tolerance Spam Policy
BigBlock Studios defines spam as unsolicited email originating from scripts or applications hosted in the application environment and/or unsolicited email originating from mail clients, external applications and API activity outside BigBlock Studios environment.
BigBlock Studios reserves the right to classify any message(s) as spam based on content at BigBlock Studios discretion.
BigBlock Studios has a zero tolerance spam policy, subscriptions found to be sending spam without intention (virus, scripts, bots etc) will be suspended & the customer notified with the expectation they will remedy the issue before the site is reactivated.
Subscriptions determined to be intentionally sending spam will be immediately terminated without exception or renumeration.
15. Acceptable Content Policy
BigBlock Studios maintains a zero tolerance policy regarding, but not limited to, content or communications containing: hate speech, racism, criminal activity, government subversion or insurrection, pornography, violence.
BigBlock Studios reserves the right to determine any content or communication(s) violate the acceptable content clause at BigBlock Studios discretion.
Subscriptions violating the acceptable content clause will be terminated without notice and renumeration.
