Certification Standards

The uptime percentages above denote the average amount of time (as a percentage) that the service is available and accessible from UptimeSafe’s global network of testing stations. Note that while all APSsm standards represent a relatively good level of service, their suitability for any particular business purpose depends on a business’s specific needs. Businesses should evaluate their needs and budgets accordingly.

Testing & Analysis Standards

Before we certify a service provider, we rigorously test their network for a period of three months. Once certified, we continue to test service provider’s network on an ongoing basis to ensure they continue to meet our certification standards. As part of our testing and analysis procedures, we abide by a strict list of standards. These standards include:

Testing Frequency
We schedule multiple tests against the service provider’s network every minute of every hour, 24 hours a day.

Testing Diversity
We test a cross section of each service provider’s network and not just a couple server nodes. This increases the depth and accuracy of our uptime certification.

Qualification Period
We test every service provider’s network for a minimum of 3 months before certifying their services and allowing them to display our UptimeSafe Seal on their website.

Downtime during Scheduled Maintenance
It is an industry standard practice not to count downtime incurred during scheduled system maintenance in a service provider’s uptime percentage. As such, we abide by this practice within certain limits as follows:

The service providers must notify us and their affected customers of the scheduled maintenance at least one week in advance.
Downtime incurred during scheduled maintenance cannot exceed 2 hours per calendar quarter.

Any downtime that occurs outside of these scheduled maintenance limits is calculated into the service provider’s uptime percentage.

Re-qualification Period
If an UptimeSafe certified service provider has a downtime event which causes them to lose their certification, the service provider is no longer permitted to display the UptimeSafe Seal. The Service provider must then return their network to a level of uptime and performance which meets our certification standards for a minimum of 4 months before re-qualifying for UptimeSafe certification.