Published SLA terms on 29 October 2026
| Host | Uptime commitment | Credit | Cap | Claim deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kinsta | 99.9% by default; higher if set in your order form (the SLA includes a 99.99% credit table) | 5% of monthly value for 43 to 59 minutes down, 10% for 60 to 119, 15% for 120 to 179, 20% for 180 to 239, scaled by share of sites affected | Monthly subscription value | 30 days, written request via chat |
| WP Engine | 99.95% standard; 99.99% for Enhanced SLA features | Standard: 5% of monthly fees per full hour beyond target. Enhanced: 3% per half hour beyond target | 100% of monthly fees | 30 days, contact Support |
| DigitalOcean (CPU Droplets) | 99.99% per Droplet per month | 100% service credit on charges for the affected Droplet | Not stated | Within two billing cycles; email [email protected] |
| Liquid Web | 100% network (major routing devices reachable) | 10 times the downtime | Monthly recurring charge; one credit per incident | Five business days |
| KnownHost | 99.9% network uptime | 10% of monthly renewal price at 99.80% rising to 100% at 99.00% | Table tops out at 100% | Five days, billing ticket with outage ticket number |
| SiteGround | States it 'guarantees 99.9% uptime' | Compensation terms not retrieved | Not retrieved | Ask before buying |
What does not count as downtime
Kinsta excludes its maintenance period (2 to 5 am local data center time), emergency maintenance, scheduled outages, force majeure, traffic exceeding the capacity of the plan, customer breaches, customer-authored code or configuration, and changes made by parties other than Kinsta. Downtime is total elapsed time from Kinsta's monitoring, not summed per site.
WP Engine excludes scheduled maintenance (Americas window 10 pm to 4 am Central), emergency maintenance, beta services, force majeure and downtime caused by you, your users or third parties acting for you, including configurations beyond its recommendations or advertised limits.
DigitalOcean counts loss of connectivity over the Droplet's public, reserved or private IP, or loss of read/write access to its root disk, caused by its infrastructure. It excludes scheduled maintenance, customer-initiated downtime and problems from your application code or configuration.
Liquid Web excludes scheduled network maintenance, hardware and software maintenance, malicious attacks such as denial of service, legal actions and cPanel update issues. KnownHost excludes internal services such as MySQL, Apache and PHP, scheduled maintenance, suspensions and customer-controlled downtime.
The common thread: a WordPress white screen caused by a plugin update, a PHP worker queue during a launch, or a database crash on a VPS you manage is your outage, not the host's.
Worked example: a two-hour outage during a launch
Hypothetical: the host's own infrastructure fails for 120 minutes during a 48-hour cart-open window, in a 30-day month, and the outage is not excluded.
Kinsta, Single 65k at $50 a month, one site: 120 minutes falls in the 120 to 179 minute band, so 15% x $50 = $7.50 in credit.
WP Engine, standard 99.95%: a 30-day month allows about 21.6 minutes of downtime, so 120 minutes is about 98 minutes beyond target. WP Engine's own example gives 10% for 61 to 120 minutes over target: $2.80 on a $28 Essential month. The plans page marks the 99.99% SLA as included on Business but not on Essential; under the Enhanced terms (3% per half hour beyond target) about 116 minutes over is three to four half hours, so 9% to 12%, or $36 to $48 on a $400 Business month depending on how a partial half hour is counted. Ask which target and rounding apply to your plan.
Liquid Web, if the cause was a network outage: 10 x 2 hours = 20 hours of service credit. On a $45-a-month VPS that is about 20/720 x $45 = $1.25.
KnownHost, $43.25 Basic VPS: 120 minutes in a 43,200-minute month is about 99.72% uptime, between the 99.80% (10%) and 99.70% (20%) rows, so $4.33 or $8.65 depending on how the tier is applied. Ask support which row applies.
Compare that with the launch: if a launch would sell $20,000 evenly over 48 hours, two hours represents about $833 of sales at risk. No credit here comes close.
How to use an SLA when choosing a host
- Read what is measured: network reachability (Liquid Web, KnownHost) is narrower than application availability over HTTP (Kinsta).
- Check the claim window and put it in your incident runbook; five days passes quickly after a launch.
- Keep your own uptime monitor; Kinsta and WP Engine compute credits from their monitoring, so a timestamped record of yours helps when you open the ticket.
- Check whether your plan has the higher tier: Kinsta's higher percentage comes from an order form; WP Engine's plans page marks the 99.99% SLA as included on Business and not on Essential.
- Do not rely on credits for launch risk. Rehearse the launch on staging, avoid plugin updates in the week before, and keep a static fallback sales page.
Who should care about the SLA and who should not
It matters most when your revenue is spread evenly and you want a host that tracks and reports its own outages: the SLA tells you what it monitors and how it will talk to you. It matters least for a course that sells in short launch windows, because the credit is sized to one month's hosting fee while the loss is sized to the launch.
For SiteGround, the contractual compensation terms on its legal page are not summarized here; its product information page states a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Ask for the clause in writing before treating it as equivalent to the others.
Questions before you decide
Are SLA credits paid in cash?
No. Kinsta's credits have no cash value, WP Engine's are not paid as a refund, and DigitalOcean applies credits to future Droplet charges. Liquid Web and KnownHost also issue account credits capped at the monthly charge.
Does a plugin crash count as downtime?
Generally not. Kinsta excludes customer configuration and customer-authored code, WP Engine excludes downtime caused by the customer or its third parties, and KnownHost excludes PHP, MySQL and Apache as internal services.
Do I have to claim the credit myself?
Yes, for every host in this table. Kinsta and WP Engine require a request within 30 days, DigitalOcean within two billing cycles, Liquid Web within five business days and KnownHost within five days.
Sources & verification
Product details and prices can change. Check the linked provider before buying.
- Kinsta: Service level agreement Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- Kinsta: WordPress hosting plans and pricing Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- WP Engine: Service level agreement Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- WP Engine: Plans and pricing Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- DigitalOcean: CPU Droplet SLA Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- Liquid Web: Service level agreement Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- KnownHost: Service level agreement Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- SiteGround: Company and product information page Accessed 29 Oct 2026
Sources link directly to providers. Product buttons may use separately labeled affiliate links. Read our disclosure.