When file sharing is critical to your business, the service level agreement (SLA) matters. Understanding what to look for helps you choose reliable services and know what to expect.
Key SLA Components
Uptime Guarantee
Uptime is expressed as a percentage:
- 99% = 3.65 days downtime/year (poor)
- 99.9% = 8.7 hours downtime/year (standard)
- 99.99% = 52 minutes downtime/year (excellent)
Look for financial credits if SLA is missed.
Support Response Time
Typical commitments:
- Critical issues: 1-4 hours
- High priority: 4-8 hours
- Standard: 24 hours
Data Protection
- Backup frequency
- Data retention policy
- Recovery time objective (RTO)
- Recovery point objective (RPO)
Security Commitments
- Encryption standards
- Security certifications
- Incident response
Questions to Ask
- What's your historical uptime?
- How do you communicate about outages?
- What compensation for SLA breaches?
- Where is data stored? (data residency)
- How are backups handled?
- What security certifications do you have?
Red Flags
- No published uptime commitment
- No financial remedy for downtime
- Vague security claims
- No status page
- Unclear data handling policies
GetShared Reliability
GetShared provides:
- Reliable EU data center infrastructure
- Redundant storage (3x replication)
- Regular backups
- Strong encryption
- Professional operations team
Conclusion
When evaluating file sharing SLAs, focus on:
- Uptime guarantees with remedies
- Support response commitments
- Data protection practices
- Security standards
Choose services that back their claims with clear commitments.
