Version 1.0 · published 24 September 2026
NTECH Service Level Agreement (SLA)
This SLA explains how quickly we respond, how reliable your website should be, and what we do to keep it healthy. It applies to websites on an active, paid-up NTECH care plan or website subscription. It forms part of the NTECH Terms of Service and the Care Plan Agreement.
1. Support hours and channels
- Business hours: Monday to Friday, 08:00–17:00 (South African Standard Time), excluding South African public holidays.
- How to reach us:
- Client portal or app ticket (preferred): every request is tracked, timed and visible to you.
- Email: info@ntech.website. We turn it into a ticket.
- WhatsApp 074 038 6412: for Critical issues only (your site is down). Please also log a ticket.
- Times are measured from when a ticket is logged (or when a Critical WhatsApp is received), counting business hours only, unless stated otherwise.
2. Priority levels
We set the priority based on impact. If you disagree with a priority, tell us in the ticket.
| Priority | Meaning | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| P1 — Critical | Website down or unusable for everyone, or a security breach | Site not loading, hacked or defaced, SSL error on every page |
| P2 — High | An important function is broken, but the site is up | Contact form not sending, checkout failing, key page erroring |
| P3 — Normal | A minor problem with a workaround | Layout glitch on one device, broken link, slow page |
| P4 — Change request | Something new or different, not a fault | New photos, text or price updates, a new page |
3. Response and resolution targets
First response (a person acknowledges the ticket and starts work or asks questions)
| Priority | Essential | Growth | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 Critical | 4 business hours | 2 business hours | 1 hour, 7 days a week (07:00–21:00) |
| P2 High | 1 business day | 8 business hours | 4 business hours |
| P3 Normal | 2 business days | 1 business day | 4 business hours |
| P4 Change | 2 business days | 1 business day | 4 business hours |
Target to restore or resolve
| Priority | Target |
|---|---|
| P1 Critical | Service restored (or a workaround in place) within 8 business hours of first response. Premium: within 4 hours |
| P2 High | Fixed within 2 business days |
| P3 Normal | Fixed within 5 business days |
| P4 Change | The turnaround shown on the approved quote, counted from quote approval and receipt of all content |
Targets, not guarantees: these are commitments we measure ourselves against and report on. Some problems depend on third parties (the hosting data centre, a domain registry, Google, a plugin developer); in those cases we keep you updated at least every 4 business hours for P1, and daily for P2.
Out-of-hours emergencies: outside business hours, P1 help is available on Essential and Growth at the emergency rate (R690 call-out + R395/hour). There is no charge if the cause was NTECH's own work or our hosting.
4. Uptime
4.1 Target
99.5% monthly uptime for your website, which allows about 3 hours 39 minutes of downtime in a month.
4.2 How we measure it
- NTECH's monitoring requests your homepage every 5 minutes, automatically, day and night.
- Downtime starts when two checks in a row fail, and ends at the first successful check — one isolated blip counts against neither of us.
- A failure opens an incident: NTECH is alerted immediately and you are emailed too, usually before you have noticed. On Premium the alert repeats until a person has acknowledged it.
- The incident closes itself when your site recovers, and you are emailed again.
- Your live uptime figure and every incident are visible in your client portal.
4.3 What doesn't count as downtime
- Scheduled maintenance:
- announced at least 48 hours in advance
- done between 21:00 and 05:00 where possible
- no more than 4 hours per month
- Suspension for non-payment or a breach of the Terms.
- Problems caused by changes made by you, your staff or someone other than NTECH (e.g. installing plugins, editing code).
- DNS or domain problems where the domain is not managed by NTECH, or where a domain renewal was not paid.
- Attacks (such as DDoS) or events beyond our reasonable control, including national internet outages and force majeure.
- Third-party services that are not part of the hosting (e.g. Google Maps, social media feeds, external booking or payment systems).
4.4 Service credits
If uptime falls below target in a calendar month (after the exclusions above), you can claim a credit on your next care plan or subscription invoice:
| Monthly uptime | Credit (% of that month's care/subscription fee) |
|---|---|
| 99.0% – 99.49% | 10% |
| 98.0% – 98.99% | 25% |
| below 98.0% | 50% |
- You do not have to claim it. NTECH's system measures your uptime from its own monitoring and works the credit out automatically at the end of each month. It appears in your client portal, and it comes off your next invoice. If you think a month has been measured wrongly, raise it on a ticket within 30 days after the month ends.
- Eligibility: your account must be paid up.
- Limits:
- credits can't be exchanged for cash
- they are capped at 50% of that month's fee
- they are your sole remedy for uptime shortfalls
5. Backups
| Essential | Growth | Premium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Provider backup (whole server) | Daily | Daily | Daily |
| NTECH off-site backup (separate location) | Weekly | Weekly | Daily |
| Off-site retention | 4 weeks | 8 weeks | 30 daily + 3 monthly |
| Free restores | 1 per quarter | 1 per month | Unlimited (reasonable use) |
- Extra restores: charged at the hourly rate.
- Critical restores: a restore needed to recover from a P1 incident caused by NTECH or our hosting is always free.
- Restore tests: we test restoring from backups at least quarterly.
- Your own copy: backups protect your website. They are not an archive of old content, so please also keep your own copies of important documents and photos.
6. Maintenance and security
| Essential | Growth | Premium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress core, theme and plugin updates | Monthly | Weekly | Weekly, tested on staging |
| Security scanning (malware, vulnerabilities) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Malware clean-up if hacked | Charged at rate card | Included | Included |
| SSL certificate renewal | Automatic | Automatic | Automatic |
| Domain and SSL expiry monitoring | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Performance and SEO score checks | Monthly | Weekly | Weekly + improvements |
Our security baseline for every hosted site:
- a separate hosting account per client
- firewall and malware protection at server level
- strong passwords and two-factor authentication for NTECH admin accounts
- security updates
- file-editing disabled in the WordPress dashboard
- the least access necessary
Critical security updates are applied as soon as reasonably possible, outside the normal update schedule.
If we detect a compromise that affects personal information, we notify you without undue delay, so that you can meet your POPIA obligations (see Terms clause 10).
7. Reporting
You can see live site health, uptime, open tickets and SLA timers in the client portal and app at any time. Scheduled reports follow your plan (quarterly, monthly, or monthly with a review call), and cover:
- uptime and incidents
- backups
- updates applied
- security findings
- performance scores
- one recommendation
8. Your part
To help us meet this SLA, please:
- log requests as tickets with clear details (page links and screenshots help)
- keep your contact details up to date
- don't install plugins or change code without talking to us first
- pay invoices on time
If you change the site yourself: where changes you made cause a problem, fixing it is billable and doesn't count against the SLA.
9. Reviewing this SLA
We review this SLA at least once a year. Changes follow the notice process in the Terms (30 days' notice, with acceptance in the portal).