Built on Bonterms. This SLA incorporates the Bonterms Service Level Agreement by reference. The SLA Key Terms and the AutoSPF-specific terms below replace the Bonterms defaults. The standard is published under CC BY 4.0.
AutoSPF is a DuoCircle service. This SLA applies to the AutoSPF Cloud Service governed by the DuoCircle Cloud Terms and sits alongside the portfolio-wide DuoCircle SLA. Where this document and the portfolio SLA differ, this document controls for AutoSPF. Free trials and beta features are excluded as set out in the Cloud Terms.
Three tiers
AutoSPF’s plans map to the tiers by name. This mapping is an AutoSPF-specific term: the portfolio SLA makes Standard the default for every paid plan unless an Order says otherwise, whereas on AutoSPF the Premium plan carries the Premium tier without a separate Order Form.
| Tier | Target Availability | Who gets it |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 99.0 percent of each calendar month | The AutoSPF Plus plan, and any paid plan not otherwise specified in an Order |
| Premium | 99.5 percent of each calendar month | The AutoSPF Premium plan, including self-serve subscriptions |
| Enterprise | 99.99 percent of each calendar month | The AutoSPF Enterprise plan, under a signed Order Form or counter-signed Cloud Terms cover page |
Free trials, and any plan during a trial period, carry no Target Availability commitment.
AutoSPF-specific terms
These are the provisions where AutoSPF specifies or replaces the Bonterms defaults. They exist because AutoSPF is a DNS service rather than a hosted application, so “available” has to mean something more precise than a dashboard loading.
What the Covered Service is
The Covered Service has two components, and they do not carry the same commitment:
| Component | Covered by Target Availability |
|---|---|
| Authoritative DNS resolution of the flattened SPF record AutoSPF serves for Customer’s delegated hostname | Yes. This is the component email delivery depends on. |
| The AutoSPF dashboard, API, and record-editing interface | No. Handled under the severity and response commitments below. An interface outage does not stop mail flowing, because the last-published record continues to resolve. |
How Availability is measured
Monthly Uptime Percentage is measured against authoritative DNS resolution: the percentage of the calendar month during which AutoSPF’s authoritative nameservers return a correct, non-SERVFAIL answer for Customer’s delegated SPF hostname.
Measurement is taken from AutoSPF’s monitoring infrastructure, supplemented by external third-party DNS monitoring from multiple geographic vantage points. Where AutoSPF’s own monitoring and credible external monitoring disagree, the external measurement controls.
An Outage means AutoSPF’s authoritative nameservers fail to answer, or return a record that is materially incorrect through no fault of Customer. Slow-but-correct resolution is not an Outage unless response times exceed two seconds sustained across multiple vantage points.
Exclusions specific to AutoSPF
In addition to the standard exclusions below, the following are not Downtime:
- Customer removing, altering, or failing to maintain the CNAME or NS delegation that points Customer’s SPF hostname at AutoSPF
- Failures at Customer’s registrar or DNS hosting provider, including zone-level outages and delegation errors
- DNS caching and TTL propagation delays at third-party resolvers after a record change, including negative caching of an earlier failure
- Changes a Customer’s own sending vendors make to their published SPF records, including a vendor exceeding its own lookup budget
- A Customer editing its source record into a state that cannot be flattened within the RFC 7208 ten-lookup limit
- Third-party recursive resolvers that fail to honour published TTLs or that filter responses
Service Credits
If Monthly Uptime Percentage falls below the applicable tier’s target, Customer earns Service Credits according to the schedule below. Credits are calculated as a percentage of the affected monthly fee.
Standard Tier (99.0 percent target)
| Monthly Uptime Percentage | Service Credit |
|---|---|
| 99.0 percent or higher | None |
| 97.5 to 98.99 percent | 5 percent of monthly fees |
| 96.0 to 97.49 percent | 20 percent of monthly fees |
| 94.0 to 95.99 percent | 35 percent of monthly fees |
| Below 94.0 percent | 50 percent of monthly fees |
Premium Tier (99.5 percent target)
| Monthly Uptime Percentage | Service Credit |
|---|---|
| 99.5 percent or higher | None |
| 98.5 to 99.49 percent | 5 percent of monthly fees |
| 97.0 to 98.49 percent | 20 percent of monthly fees |
| 95.0 to 96.99 percent | 35 percent of monthly fees |
| Below 95.0 percent | 50 percent of monthly fees |
Enterprise Tier (99.99 percent target)
99.99 percent allows roughly 4 minutes and 20 seconds of Downtime in a 30-day month. The tier is offered because the commitment is scoped to authoritative DNS resolution served from anycast infrastructure, not to an application stack.
| Monthly Uptime Percentage | Service Credit |
|---|---|
| 99.99 percent or higher | None |
| 99.9 to 99.98 percent | 5 percent of monthly fees |
| 99.0 to 99.89 percent | 20 percent of monthly fees |
| 98.0 to 98.99 percent | 35 percent of monthly fees |
| Below 98.0 percent | 50 percent of monthly fees |
Multiple Failures
A failure to meet the applicable tier’s Target Availability for two consecutive months, or any three months in a rolling twelve, is a Multiple Failure. Customer may terminate the affected Cloud Service for cause without further obligation, in addition to claiming any earned Service Credits.
Standard exclusions
Downtime excludes:
- Scheduled maintenance announced at least 48 hours in advance and performed during a defined maintenance window
- Emergency security maintenance, where prior notice would create unacceptable risk
- Failures of any third-party network, transit provider, or cloud platform outside AutoSPF’s reasonable control
- Failures of Customer’s own equipment, network, or configuration
- Force majeure events as defined in the Cloud Terms
- Suspension under the acceptable-use provisions of the Cloud Terms
Severity tiers and target response
| Severity | Definition | First response, paid Cloud Service |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Flattened records failing to resolve for Customer or a clear majority of Customers | Within 1 hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week |
| 2 | Records resolving but materially incorrect, or dashboard and API unavailable with no workaround | Within 4 business hours |
| 3 | Functional issue with a workaround, or a non-production problem | Within 1 business day |
| 4 | Question, documentation request, or feature feedback | Within 2 business days |
Business hours mean 09:00 to 18:00 US Pacific Time, Monday through Friday, excluding US federal holidays. Severity is initially assigned by Customer and may be re-classified by AutoSPF in good faith based on actual impact.
How to claim a Service Credit
Email billing@duocircle.com within thirty days of the end of the affected month. Include the affected account, the delegated hostname, and the dates and times of the Outage as observed by Customer. If our monitoring confirms the claim, the credit is applied to the next invoice. Service Credits are the exclusive remedy for any Downtime under this SLA, except where the Multiple Failures threshold is met.
Status communication
Live availability and incident history are published at status.duocircle.com. Severity-1 incidents trigger an immediate email to the technical contact on the account. Post-incident reviews are published on the status page within five business days for any incident that exceeded fifteen minutes of Downtime.
Modifications to the standard form
The Bonterms SLA governs except for the following, which replace the Bonterms defaults entirely:
- Target Availability. Bonterms defaults to a single 99.9 percent target. AutoSPF publishes three tiers, with 99.0 percent as the standard floor and 99.99 percent on the Enterprise plan. The Enterprise tier sits above the 99.9 percent Enterprise tier in the portfolio DuoCircle SLA, which is contemplated by that document: higher Target Availability, expressly including 99.99 percent, is available under a signed Enterprise Agreement that supersedes the standard SLA for the contracted services. For AutoSPF Enterprise, this document is that agreement.
- Plan-to-tier mapping. The AutoSPF Premium plan carries the Premium tier without a separate Order Form, rather than defaulting to Standard as the portfolio SLA provides.
- Service Credit schedule. The per-tier tables above replace the single Bonterms SLA Key Terms Chart.
- Definition of the Covered Service and of an Outage. Scoped to authoritative DNS resolution rather than to a hosted application, as set out under AutoSPF-specific terms.
- Exclusions. Extended to cover delegation, registrar, TTL, and upstream-sender conditions specific to a DNS service.
- Severity definitions and response targets. Replace the Bonterms defaults.
There are no other modifications.