Service-Level Agreement Program (SLA)

Created by Sloane DellOrto, Modified on Wed, 12 May 2021 at 10:26 AM by Ryan Ginsberg

We are committed to providing a reliable, predictable website experience for our customers for a flat monthly fee through our SLA program:
  • Support tickets: unlimited ticket submission provides fast and skilled help in a guaranteed timeframe, creating a complete warranty for any problems you encounter with your website
  • Hosting & platform updates: redundant hosting environment with 24/7 monitoring and 99.95% uptime, daily backups, ongoing feature development, cutting-edge update process and security updates ensure website stability
  • Training & best practices: ongoing training and professional development resources help your team better leverage the site’s technology and website best practices
  • What’s included vs. what costs extra: certain services such redesign services, post-launch domain or DNS issues, custom or 3rd-party integrations are billed by the hour. See below for details.
Support tickets
  • Guaranteed 24-hour response during business hours (M-F, 9:00-5:00 Pacific): whenever you have an issue, you can create a ticket using any of the methods below:
    • Using the Support Portal or In-App Widget (preferred)
      • We have a web-based portal for our help desk system running at https://support.digitaldeployment.com. Using this portal, you can submit both emergency and non-emergency tickets, view our knowledge base, and view and update your existing tickets.
    • The URL to the specific page where you’re seeing the problem (if an issue is occurring on multiple pages, pick the most important one. We’ll focus on that one first)
    • Additional URLs where you’re seeing the same problem
    • Any additional information about the expected behavior of the identified pages
  • Emergency Support
    • Please read our Emergency Policy for details here.

Accessibility support: We are committed to helping you maintain a site that complies with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines, the gold standard for website accessibility. Support related to the accessibility of the platform is included in your SLA; see examples of what’s included in the table below under “Website Accessibility”. If you have questions or a request, submit a ticket through our support system.


Please note that we are unable to sign documentation certifying that your site meets all legal accessibility requirements, as they vary from state to state and country to country, and rely on our clients adding content in fully accessible formats.


Hosting & platform updates


Hosting: Digital Deployment has created a powerful hosting environment specifically tailored to its technology. It uses multiple providers and data centers to ensure speed and uptime. We guarantee 99.95% uptime, seamless monthly updates, and fast operation. Full specs for the IT-minded: for a comprehensive overview of the hosting environment, uptime guarantees, hardware configuration, and security practices, please visit digitaldeployment.com/hostingspecs.

Continuous evolution: as we develop new sites, we often refine functionality or add new ways of solving problems. We make each new solution available to our other clients that have a similar need. Centralizing development gives us the ability to spend more money and time on a problem than any one client could afford to spend, and develop better and more refined features that can be provided on one-off CMS installations. Most reasonable website providers might not spend 10 hours to fix a small but annoying bug on your site, but we will, because it potentially affects hundreds of others.

Security patches and monthly updates: security updates and patches are applied immediately; standard updates are released on a monthly schedule. To get a sense of the cool features we release, see our release notes at digitaldeployment.com/releases.

Future-proof: we look ahead for events like “mobilegeddon” — the day Google started penalizing sites that were not mobile-friendly. Future penalties are expected for sites that load slowly and that do not use SSL (https), and we are constantly evolving the platform to meet such technical requirements before they are enforced.

Training & best practices

One quarterly training: have a new employee? Need a refresher? One quarterly two-hour training for up to four people is included with your agreement and will help your team better leverage the site’s technology and website best practices. Trainings are conducted at Digital Deployment’s office or remotely. Onsite, large team or additional trainings can be purchased for a fee.

One post-launch review: after your site goes live, your service agreement includes an in-depth review of your site by our content specialist and/or strategist. Additional reviews can be purchased for a fee.

Knowledge base: updates to our online knowledge base are included in your service-level agreement.

What’s included vs. what costs extra?


Category

Services included in the SLA

Services that may require scoping and separate cost proposal

Bug fixes and technical / developer support
  • Bug fixes for known/discovered bugs in our platform

  • Security updates for Drupal and contributed modules

  • Rolling back your site to a prior version, if something has gone wrong (even if it was your fault!) 

  • New features DD chooses to add to the platform

  • Pre-launch DNS and domain assistance (for example, setting up additional domains to point to your site, helping configure DNS to take the site live)


  • Restoring a webform submission from two weeks ago that was accidentally deleted

  • Partially restoring certain parts of your site but leaving others intact

  • New feature development on-demand / for single clients

  • Post-launch DNS and domain assistance
  • Server configuration for email, Google apps setup
  • Bug fixes for custom functionality that was built specifically for your site

Content/platform use support and training


  • One quarterly training at the DD office (or remote) for up to 4 people

  • Access to all knowledge base articles

  • Unlimited support tickets with specific questions related to using of the system


  • Training for large groups of 5 or more people

  • Training at your location

  • Additional training beyond one quarterly


Website accessibility


  • Programmatic fixes (problems in the platform’s code) identified by the client and sent to DD via support ticket

  • Accessibility audits

  • Automated scanning tools

  • Branding and design updates

  • Manual accessibility testing


Third-party systems

  • Adding a snippet of code to your site header

  • Assistance using the HTML embed feature

  • Assistance with Mailchimp or PayPal Commerce functionality

  • Assistance with Google Webmaster Tools

  • Assistance with Google DoubleClick for Publishers

  • Assistance or setup of other systems not integrated with our platform

Theme, display, or design related issues

  • Template guidance for existing templates, assistance with landing page display using existing templates

  • Fixing display issues with existing templates (e.g. text not wrapping correctly around an image)

  • Fixes for display issues when using a supported browser

  • Theme or design revisions to content or landing pages, templates, or home page

  • New templates not designed during the site build process

  • Fixes for display issues on legacy/unsupported browsers

Site reviews and content quality control
  • One post-launch site review

  • Initial Google Analytics setup and training

  • Additional site reviews

  • Additional in-depth Analytics training (beyond the 2-hour quarterly training that is included)

  • Custom report configuration and/or review



The fine print


Liability. By enrolling in our SLA program, the Client accepts responsibility for the content it publishes on its website and agrees to monitor the site to ensure the content on the site is appropriate and does not pose a risk to the Client. In return, Digital Deployment accepts responsibility for maintaining the website infrastructure and will take reasonable measures to ensure that installed software is kept current, that security patches are applied in a timely manner, and that any problems with the website infrastructure are quickly resolved.

Termination and Reinstatement of SLA. Clients who wish to terminate their SLA may do so at any time with no cancellation fee. If the SLA is terminated, only 60 days of temporary website hosting will be provided while the client makes arrangements to transfer their site to a new hosting provider. Sites not on an SLA will not receive security updates or get regular backups, and may not be recoverable if compromised.

SLA program subject to change. The details of Digital Deployment’s SLA program are subject to change. Up-to-date program details are always available at 
http://www.digitaldeployment.com/sla.

Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility. By contracting with Digital Deployment, you are supporting a privately-owned small business. We support many of our community's non-profit organizations. We provide living salaries, family-friendly hours, and comprehensive health benefits to all our employees; use energy-efficient and environmentally friendly technology; and we contribute to the open-source community. Thank you for your support.

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