TABLE OF CONTENTS
This SLA pertains to the Stack Internal product. For the SLA for Stack Internal Community (previously known as Stack Internal or Stack Overflow for Teams) go here.
Overview
During the term of any agreement for which Customers have a license for Stack Internal (Organization tier), such license includes ongoing coverage and technical support for the software products and services ("Services") provided by Stack Exchange, Inc. ("Stack”). This SLA describes the response that Stack will make to reported issues with the Services, along with a categorization of issue severity.
Customers should report all support issues to Stack by opening a ticket on Stack’s support portal. Once a case has been opened, Stack will provide support communication via e-mail to address and resolve the issue, including providing status updates as appropriate, until the issue is resolved. Support cases opened via other means will not be covered by this SLA.
Covered systems
This SLA only cover the performance, hosting, and support of the Stack Internal (Organization) service. For clarity, this SLA shall not apply to Stack Internal (Starter), early access releases, feature previews or trials (such as Alpha or Beta releases), or non-production sites such as those used for testing.
Covered Services do not include any of the associated systems or infrastructures for which the Customer is responsible for operating or managing, which include but are not limited to: VPN endpoint or concentrators, Identity or Authentication Providers, local networks, and ISP connections.
Service credits are not available to customers using Services for Proof of Concept.
Severity levels
| Severity Level | Issue Description | Response & Commencement Time |
|---|---|---|
| Urgent (Inoperative) | Complete production outage or severe security/data risk affecting all or many customers; no workaround | Acknowledged and work commenced within 30 minutes |
| High (Major) | Major functionality degraded for one or more customers; business-critical workflow blocked; limited workaround | Acknowledged within 2 business hours and work commenced within 1 business day |
| Medium (Minor) | Non-critical feature impaired; workaround exists; limited customer impact | Acknowledged within 4 business hours |
| Low (Low) | Cosmetic issue, question, minor defect, enhancement request | Acknowledged within 1 business day |
Service level guarantees**
Customer's Stack Internal (Organization) services will maintain a Quarterly Uptime of at least 99.5%
In the event that Quarterly Uptime is less than 99.5% but greater than 99%, Customers will receive a pro-rated credit of their license fee, equal to 5% of that quarter's portion of the annual fee.
In the event that Quarterly Uptime is less than 99%, Customers will receive a pro-rated credit of their license fee, equal to 10% of that quarter's portion of the annual fee.
The Quarterly Uptime guarantee does not apply to Downtime that is due to the direct result of an issue that affects the Microsoft Geographic Region.
While Stack takes steps to minimize Downtime, occasionally there will be service interruptions that are beyond Stack’s control and do not constitute Downtime for the purposes of this SLA, including:
- Slowness or faults with a specific feature (such as search, voting, etc);
- Delays with uploading or processing files;
- External network problems outside of Stack’s control, such as bad routing tables between a Customer’s internet service provider (ISP) and Stack’s servers;
- "Scheduled Downtime" for maintenance (as detailed below); or
- Other Acts of God or Force Majeure events.
Maintenance windows
While most of the work on Services happens silently, occasionally Stack will need to perform maintenance that requires Scheduled Downtime. If Scheduled Downtime for maintenance is necessary, Stack will endeavor to provide Customer’s administrators a minimum of 24 hours advance notice via email or notices provided on the Services.
Definitions
- Available/Availability The ability of end-users to reach and display at least one page of the Customer’s Stack Internal (Organization) service, as applicable.
- Business Day/Hours Customer support is available for tickets of all severity between the hours of 2am - 6pm, Monday through Friday, eastern standard time, not including US Holidays, office closures, and staff availability. After-hours support is available by opening an Urgent ticket and setting the category to Outage on Stack’s support portal.
- Cosmetic Functions User interface issues, all static site content (such as documentation, help pages, or error messages).
- Downtime A time period that the service is not Available.
- Major Functions Authentication, chat, server access and management for AI/agent workflows, API access, connecter creation, modification, and synchronization.
- Minor Functions Site functionality not included as part of Major Functions.
- Quarterly Portion The quarterly portion of a license fee shall be defined as equal to 25% of the Annual Platform Fee as listed on the Order Form or any other applicable ordering document agreed upon by Stack.
- Quarterly Uptime Quarterly Uptime % = ((Maximum Available Minutes minus Downtime Minutes) / Maximum Available Minutes) * 100, calculated on a quarterly basis.
- Scheduled Downtime A time period that the Service is anticipated to be unavailable for more than 5 minutes due to planned maintenance events.
- Unscheduled Downtime A time period that the Service is unavailable for more than 5 minutes without planned maintenance events.