Free Service Level Agreement (SLA) Template

A service level agreement defines the standard a provider must meet and what follows when they miss it. People usually shorten it to SLA, and it commonly attaches to a broader contract rather than standing alone.

The distinction from a service agreement matters. That document says what the provider will do, while this one says how well, measured how, and with what consequence.

Most weak examples fail the same way. They promise something impressive, then leave measurement undefined, so nobody can say whether the target was hit.

Any recurring service can carry one. Software hosting, managed support, logistics, facilities, and outsourced back-office work all use them.

The test is simple. If two reasonable people could read the document and calculate different results, it needs more work.

Size shapes the detail rather than the structure. A small support contract and a large hosting arrangement both need defined metrics, measurement rules, and a consequence. Only one needs a dozen of each.

Pick a small number of measures that reflect what the customer actually experiences.

Availability Versus Uptime

Decide whether you measure the system being reachable or the service being usable. A system that responds while a core function fails is technically up and practically down.

Speed of First Response

Define when the clock starts, what counts as a response, and whether an automated acknowledgement qualifies. Most disputes here concern the automated reply.

Time to Restore

Separate restoring service from fixing the underlying cause. A workaround that gets the customer running may satisfy one and not the other.

Quality Measures

Where speed is not the point, measure accuracy, completeness, or rework instead. Logistics and back-office work often need these more than response times.

Volume Assumptions

State the demand the targets assume. Commitments built for a hundred tickets a month behave differently at a thousand.

Severity Bands

Where targets differ by urgency, define the bands by business impact rather than by technical symptom. Customers and providers rank symptoms differently.

Avoiding Vanity Measures

Drop anything nobody would act on. A metric that never changes a decision adds reporting cost and nothing else.

The measurement rules decide the number far more than the target does.

The Measurement Period

Say whether performance is assessed monthly, quarterly, or per incident. A monthly window forgives a bad afternoon that a daily window would not.

What Counts as an Outage

Define the start and end precisely: detection, customer report, or monitoring alert. Then say how partial degradation gets treated.

Planned Maintenance

Agree notice periods and permitted windows, and confirm that properly notified maintenance sits outside the calculation.

Emergency Maintenance

Urgent security work rarely waits for a notice period. Say how it is handled and whether it counts.

Customer-Caused Issues

Exclude downtime the customer caused, and define it narrowly. Broad exclusions here hollow the whole document out.

Third-Party Dependencies

Say what happens when an upstream provider fails. Carving out every dependency leaves the customer with a promise about almost nothing.

Credits give the targets teeth. Design them so they matter without becoming the only option.

Earning a Credit

Set the thresholds and the amounts, expressed as a share of the fee for the affected period. A tiered scale suits repeated misses better than a single figure.

Claiming a Credit

Say whether credits apply automatically or require a claim, and set a deadline. Claim windows quietly reduce what customers actually receive.

Credit Caps

Most providers cap total credits per period. State the cap plainly rather than leaving customers to work it out.

Credits as the Only Remedy

Providers often make credits the sole remedy for missed targets. Customers should consider whether that fits, since a credit rarely covers a serious business impact.

Repeated Failure

Agree what follows when a provider misses targets several periods running. A right to terminate without penalty is the usual answer.

Beyond Credits

Consider whether serious failures should trigger more than money. An escalation to named executives works, as does a right to bring in a third party.

Improvement Plans

Where performance slips, require a written plan with dates rather than an apology and a promise.

An unmeasured target is a wish. Set out how the numbers reach the customer.

Reporting Cadence

Say how often reports arrive and what they contain. Monthly suits most arrangements, with a separate report after each significant incident.

Who Produces the Numbers

Name the system of record and who runs it. Providers usually measure their own performance, so the customer needs visibility into how.

Challenging a Measurement

Set a route and a deadline for disputing a figure. Then say what happens while the dispute runs.

Review Meetings

Schedule regular reviews with named attendees. Documents nobody reviews drift out of date within a year.

Adjusting Targets

Say how targets change as the service matures or the customer grows. Fixed targets that never move eventually stop describing reality.

Version Control

Number the versions and date them. Arguing from two different revisions wastes a meeting, and it happens more often than anyone admits.

A service level agreement rarely stands alone, so its position in the stack needs stating.

Where It Sits

Attach it as a schedule to the main services agreement. Standalone documents lose their commercial context.

Order of Precedence

Say which document wins where wording clashes. Without that, both sides quote whichever revision helps them most.

Passing Targets Down

Where subcontractors deliver part of the service, make sure the commitments they accept support the ones you gave. Gaps here surface at the worst moment.

Onboarding Period

Consider a ramp before targets bite. Measuring a service in week one rarely produces useful numbers.

Exit Arrangements

Say whether targets apply during a transition out, when performance often matters most.

Signature and Effective Date

Both parties sign, and the document carries a clear start date. Note who holds the signed copy.

Write the measurement rules before agreeing the target. A service level agreement template gets the structure in place, and the numbers follow the conversation.