Our Guarantee

I. Service Availability

a. Uptime. BlueTie shall provide 100% Service Availability, measured on a per calendar-month basis. Service Availability is defined as the ability of a subscriber to (a) send and receive messages via their mailbox using the Services and (b) access, view and create calendar events, tasks, and contacts, so long as subscriber is accessing Services in a manner consistent with approved and supported web browser, mail clients and mobile devices, and so long as provided account is active, in good standing and Services described herein are enabled. Unavailability caused by issues beyond BlueTie’s reasonable control, including, but not limited to, denial of service or similar attacks, DNS resolution failure, Domain Name expiration, Internet availability, mail bombs, or other Force Majeure event will be excluded from Service Availability calculations. Unavailability of Services due to Maintenance as described in Section II will be excluded from Service Availability calculations.

b. Service Availability Monitoring and Reporting.

i. BlueTie monitors its infrastructure and the Services but does not monitor individual mailboxes, desktop clients, mobile devices or otherwise availability. Service Availability is monitored internally and verified using 3rd party monitoring utilities. Monitoring checks are run at predefined intervals with failure thresholds defined with respect to the service being provided. If three or more consecutive tests should fail, the lack of Service Availability will be recorded as the number of minutes between the first and last failed tests. Any unavailability less than ten (10) minutes in duration will not be recorded.

ii.  BlueTie does not guarantee the delivery time of incoming and outgoing email, and as such does not include this in its calculations of Service Availability. If a delay in mail delivery is due to a complete Service, server or network outage, Service Availability is calculated as related to those services only. BlueTie will use commercially reasonable efforts to provide reasonable delivery times for incoming and outgoing mail delivery.

 

II. Maintenance

a. Scheduled Maintenance. BlueTie periodically performs maintenance on its infrastructure to ensure optimal performance and reliability. Scheduled Maintenance may occur between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. Eastern Time. Service unavailability due to Scheduled Maintenance shall be excluded from Uptime calculations. BlueTie will use commercially reasonable efforts to provide notification of Scheduled Maintenance seven (7) days in advance.

b. Emergency Maintenance. In certain circumstances, it may be deemed necessary to perform immediate maintenance on the system to ensure continued reliability which may or may not impact user access to Services. Service unavailability due to Emergency Maintenance shall be excluded from Uptime calculations.

c. 3rd Party Provider Maintenance. BlueTie contracts several 3rd party service providers in relation to the delivery of Services to users. BlueTie will make commercially reasonable efforts to provide notification of 3rd Party Provider Maintenance which may impact the availability of Services to users within one (1) day of receipt of this maintenance. Service unavailability due to 3rd Party Provider Maintenance shall be excluded from Uptime calculations.

 

III. Service Availability Limitations

a. Storage Capacity. Subscriber accounts are assigned a storage capacity limitation based on Service plan type. Upon reaching the storage capacity limit, access to send and receive messages will be revoked until such time as the account storage capacity is increased, or data is deleted to recover storage. Reaching the defined storage capacity limitation may lead to Service Unavailability and the loss of data, unrecoverable to the user. BlueTie is not liable for Service Unavailability or data loss as a result of exceeding the Subscriber defined storage limit.

b. Anti-Virus Message Filtration. BlueTie utilizes 3rd party Anti-Virus filtering technology to scan messages entering the mail delivery infrastructure. Messages and/or attachments that cannot be filtered, contain viruses, phishing code, spoofed domains and headers, malware, Trojans or other threats may be permanently deleted and unrecoverable. BlueTie is not liable for lost or deleted messages or attachments filtered by Anti-Virus systems, and makes no warrantee to the accuracy of message filtering.

c. Anti-spam Message Filtration. BlueTie utilizes a combination of proprietary and 3rd party Anti-spam message filtration technology to scan messages entering and exiting the mail delivery infrastructure for spam sources, content and non-compliant protocol usage, or other mechanisms designed to circumvent spam filtration. Messages may be blocked from entering the mail delivery infrastructure and may not be recoverable. BlueTie is not liable for lost, non-delivered, delayed or misclassified email messages filtered by the Anti-spam systems, and makes no warrantee to the accuracy of message filtering.

 

IV.  Credits For Non-Compliance

a. Service Availability. If Service Availability is below 99.99%, BlueTie will issue a credit to the affected subscriber, reseller, or partner according to the following schedule:

 

99.8% to 99.99%	1% of monthly fee credited
99.5% to 99.79%	2% of monthly fee credited
98.3% to 99.49%	8% of monthly fee credited
90.0% to 98.29%	20% of monthly fee credited
89.9% and below	2.5% of monthly fee credited per 1% of downtime up to the maximum service credit

 

BlueTie calculates the credit for Service Availability based on the Credit Applied multiplied by the monthly fee for the number of Subscribers impacted. For example, for a Service Availability credit where two mailboxes are affected out of 10, Service Availability credit will be the total monthly fees multiplied by the Credit Applied and then multiplied by the percentage of users affected.

 

V.    Application For Service Availability Credit. To receive a credit, your account must (a) not have any past due balance at the time of the outage, and (b) an email must be sent to BlueTie’s Billing Department (billing@bluetie.com) within seven (7) days of the incident. The communication must include (i) the dates and times of each incident that you claim to have experienced including the relevant data center (if applicable) (ii) the relevant services for which a claim is being requested and (iii) supporting documentation to corroborate your claim.

 

VI.  Limitation of Service Availability Credits; Sole Remedy. Notwithstanding anything set forth in the Agreement, the credit described in "Section IV-a" will be the sole remedy in connection with any Service unavailability, outages or breach of this Service Level Agreement by BlueTie. The limitation of service Availability Credits may not exceed 50% of the billed services monthly fees for the account during the month for which the credit is to be issued.