# Uptime guarantee and service credits

> Ruachost's 99.9% uptime guarantee, how service credits are worked out when we miss it, and how to claim one.

Source: https://helpcenter.ruachost.com/getting-started/guides/uptime-guarantee-and-service-credits/

We aim to keep your services online all the time. If unscheduled downtime caused by a fault on our side goes over our uptime guarantee, you can claim a **service credit**.

## The guarantee

| | |
| --- | --- |
| **Uptime guarantee** | 99.9% each calendar month |
| **When it's missed** | Unscheduled downtime of more than 0.1% of the month, roughly **43 minutes** |
| **Credit** | **5% of the service's monthly fee** for every hour the service was unavailable |
| **Maximum credit** | The full amount you paid for that service for the month of the outage, not including fees for additional services |
| **What's covered** | Downtime caused by a failure of our internal network or equipment |

### Example

Your hosting plan costs ₦10,000 a month, and a fault in our data centre makes it unavailable for 3 hours in one month. That's more than 43 minutes, so you can claim 3 × 5% = **15%**, which is ₦1,500.

## What isn't covered

The guarantee covers faults on our side. It doesn't cover downtime caused by:

- **Scheduled maintenance** that we announce in advance. See [Checking Ruachost service status](https://helpcenter.ruachost.com/getting-started/guides/checking-ruachost-service-status/).
- **Your website or account**, for example code errors, a hacked site, plugin problems, reaching your plan's [resource limits](https://helpcenter.ruachost.com/getting-started/website-troubleshooting/fixing-503-and-508-errors/) or [disk space](https://helpcenter.ruachost.com/getting-started/website-troubleshooting/hosting-account-out-of-disk-space/).
- **Suspension** of your account, for example for an unpaid invoice or a breach of our [Terms of Service](https://ruachost.com/legal/tos).
- **Things outside our network**, such as your internet provider, DNS hosted elsewhere, or third-party services.
- **Attacks** on your website, such as DDoS attacks, or events outside our reasonable control.

## Claim a credit

1. [Open a ticket](https://dashboard.ruachost.com/submitticket.php) in the **Billing** department within **30 days** of the outage.
2. Tell us which service was affected, and the date, time and how long it was down. Screenshots or uptime monitor reports help.
3. We check the outage against our monitoring. If it's covered, we add the credit to your **account credit**, which is used automatically on your next invoice. See [Account credit](https://helpcenter.ruachost.com/billing/guides/can-i-make-payment-in-advance-for-hosting-or-domain/).

Service credits aren't paid out as cash and can't be moved to another account.

> **Tip:**
A free uptime monitor, such as UptimeRobot, checks your website every few minutes and emails you if it goes down. Its reports are useful when you claim a credit.

## Related articles

- [Website not working? Where to start](https://helpcenter.ruachost.com/getting-started/website-troubleshooting/website-not-working-where-to-start/)
- [Contact support](https://helpcenter.ruachost.com/getting-started/guides/contact-support/)