Service level agreements (archived)

Effective date: 7 January 2015

We know that service interruptions hinder productivity and disrupt your workflow. We’ve set a high bar for service uptime because we believe that you should be able to depend on Slack and run your business without having to worry about possible downtime.

The basics

  • Our service level agreement (SLA) for customers on the Plus subscription and above guarantees a 99.99% monthly uptime. 1
  • We’ve designed our SLA to be clear and simple – based directly on the information we make publicly available on the Slack status page.
  • If we fall short of our 99.99% uptime guarantee, we’ll refund customers on the Plus subscription and above 100 times the amount your workspace paid during the period Slack was down.

SLA breakdown

SLAs can be chock-full of terminology that is difficult to decipher. We’d like to take the opportunity to explain, in real words, what the details are.

Downtime

“Downtime” is based on two factors: the number of minutes Slack was unavailable and the percentage of customers that were affected. If Slack is down, we use server monitoring software to measure the server side error rate, ping test results, web server tests, TCP port tests and website tests.

At the end of each month, we add “downtime” periods together to calculate the overall monthly “downtime period”. Calculating “downtime” can be difficult but we aim to keep it simple by tying our SLA guarantee to a single monthly uptime number.

Note: “Downtime” doesn’t affect everyone at the same time or in the same way: Slack could be experiencing an outage but your workspace is unaffected and vice versa. 2

Some scenarios don’t count towards downtime. Here are some examples:

  • Slowness with certain features (link expansions, search, etc.)
  • Issues affecting only your workspace that are related to external apps or third parties
  • Delays with uploading, sharing or processing images and files
  • External network problems outside of our control, such as bad routing tables between your internet service provider (ISP) and our server
  • “Scheduled downtime” for maintenance

Uptime

“Monthly uptime” is the percentage of total possible minutes that Slack was available to you. Here’s how we calculate this:

[(total minutes in month - minutes of downtime) / total minutes in month]

Tip: To review the history of our service uptime, visit Slack status.

Scheduled downtime

Sometimes we need to perform maintenance to keep Slack working smoothly. If scheduled downtime is necessary, we’ll give you 48 hours’ advance notice. In a calendar year, scheduled downtime won’t exceed 10 hours.

Service credit

If we fall short of our 99.99% uptime guarantee, we’ll refund you 100 times the amount your workspace paid during the period Slack was down in the form of “service credit”. When you reach your renewal date, or if you add new members, we’ll draw from your credit balance before charging you.

Note: “Service credit” can’t be exchanged for cash. It’s capped at a maximum of 30 days of paid service and only expires if you downgrade to the Free subscription.

A note about performance issues

Our SLA excludes the following performance issues:

  • Issues caused by factors outside of our reasonable control
  • Issues that resulted from any actions or inaction by you or a third-party
  • Issues that resulted from your equipment and/or third-party equipment (not within the primary control of Slack)
  • Issues that arise from our suspension or termination of your right to use Slack in accordance with our terms of service

1. We’ve purposely made our commitment to the ‘fourth 9’, i.e. 99.99% uptime guarantee in contrast to the typical SLAs which tend to offer 99.90%. We believe that extra availability makes a difference: the ‘fourth 9’ is important when your team rely on Slack every day. You need Slack at least 9,999 out of every 10,000 minutes.

2. This means that the service credit added to your account may not match your exact experience: when only a small minority of workspaces are affected, the downtime will average to a lower number and you may receive less than you expected. On the other hand, it also means you’ll receive credit for significant outages even if your workspace felt no impact. If you feel like a particular case hasn’t been handled correctly, don’t hesitate to contact us: we aim to please.