Date Modified: 10/19/2022

1. SLA Overview

The following constitutes The Turn Group (“TTG”, “we”, “us”, our”, etc.) service level agreement and commitments to Client/Owner (“you”, “your”, “customer”, etc.).

The Turn Group Service Level Agreement is designed to communicate with you (the customer) what you can expect in regard to our website support, website development and website hosting services as well as our practices, warranties and guarantees as they apply to your project.

If you have any questions about our SLA, feel free to call us or email us with any questions that you might have.

2. Service Level Description

Our Service Level Agreement applies to websites developed, separate development or support projects as well as hosting services provided to you and or any code written by The Turn Group for project(s).

3. Scope of SLA

This (SLA) service level agreement pertains to and specifically describes the level of website/project/hosting support provided to you as well as how we will provide those services during your project and after project completion. This SLA also pertains to The Turn Group Website Hosting Services in regard to how your website or project is fully managed and supported on our hosting servers as well as terms, definitions, refund policies and individual party responsibilities.

4. Initial Consultation

Our initial consultation on your project includes a onetime (1 hour) discussion as well as the time that it takes to quote your submitted requirements for your project. This is a free no-obligation service provided to you by The Turn Group.

5. Consulting Services (preparation for project)

Any consultation that will require more than 1 hour of The Turn Group's time will fall under our paid website consulting services which expands on the level of service and deliverables to be provided to you on your project. We provide two categories of consulting as well as two types of rates for consulting. Our consulting services fall under the "project development" category or "SEO strategies" category. Clients often times want to consult on an upcoming project, or they would like to consult on best SEO practices. Both types of consulting will be billed hourly prior to the start of the project based on your individual needs. Our project consulting rate is billed at $150 an hour and our SEO consulting rate is billed at $250 an hour. ALL consulting services are billed 100% upfront and are non-refundable.

6. Requirements (scope of project)

In order for The Turn Group to provide initial project development services to you (the customer/client), we must have been provided a requirements document submitted to us via email: mailto:[email protected], in which we will provide a quote to you. If we are providing web hosting services to you, and you need work done that will take less than 4 hours of time, we will bill you upon work completion. If your project or support request would look like it could take 5 hours or more, we would then provide you a quote for required services with a required 50% down payment.

7. Our Services

At The Turn Group, we provide the following list of main services and all sub-services that fall under each main service. Consulting, Branding, Business Mentorship, Business Development, Website Design, Website Development, Website Management/Support, Website Hosting, Website Training, and Website Marketing.

8. Support Services

The Turn Group provides a variety of different types of website/project/hosting support. These support services include but are not limited to the following items list below:

• Website – consulting, updates, optimizations, training, SEO best practices.

• Development - page creation, content upload, code creation or fixes, component/module install, setup and configuration.

• Assistance - the collection of, review of, upload of and implementation of site content.

• Migration - transfer of website to our hosting server, moving of content to CMS, setup and configuration.

• Training - on maintenance, updates, CMS systems, SEO, site content and publishing as well as best practices.

• Hosting - site configuration, uploading, flex plan implementation, file configuration, backup assistance and optimization.

9. Support Ticket Priorities and Response Times

Support tickets are worked on a first come, first served basis with priority given based on the nature of the issue or request.

• Low Ticket Status Response Time – Up to 48 hours to respond. Time to completion of ticket based on request.

• Medium Ticket Status Response Time – Up To 24 Hours to respond. Time to completion of ticket is based on request.

• High Ticket Status Response Time – Up to 12 Hours to respond. Time to completion of ticket is based on request.

• Critical Issue – Phone Call Required – resolution time to be determined based on issue.

10. Support Hours and Rates

The Turn Group can be open 24/7. Though we can and do work on the holidays and weekends, we do like our weekends and holidays to ourselves and prefer not to work. BUT, if you need us, we are here. So here are our available times.

Standard Hours
Monday thru Friday 8am to 5pm Central Time - Standard Rates: $150 per hour

Weekend Hours
Friday 5pm to Monday 8am Central Time - We are closed on the weekends. You can always submit a ticket and wait until normal business hours. However, if you need us, we will be here for you "if we can". - Weekend Rates: $250 per hour

Holiday Hours
Closed on all National Holidays. You can always submit a ticket and wait until normal business hours. However, if you need us, we will be here for you "if we can". - Holiday Rates: $400 per hour

Though we do and will work on holidays and weekends if you need us to, we do reserve the right to not work on the holidays and weekends you might request. We will do our absolute best to accommodate you. And if we do work the holidays and or weekend for you, it does not matter who is responsible for the reason we are working. Our weekend/holiday rates will apply under every circumstance.

11. Support Access

The Turn Group provides several methods of website support access. You may use any type of access we offer that best serves you. It is ALWAYS FREE to reach out to us any time you need. For example: it is free to text, but if a text, phone call, skype or email ends up requiring more than just a few minutes of our time, we bill for that. We have clients call and text all the time with a quick question. No problem. We are always happy to help. But, if your call requires us to spend anything more than 15 minutes engaging with you, we will charge for that. I am sure you understand. ALL we have is time to sell and we only have so much available each and every day. IF SUPPORT IS BEING REQUESTED FOR ANY WORK REQUIRED TO BE PERFORMED BY TTG, YOU MUST USE THE STANDARD CONTACT METHOD CONTACT – SET FORTH IN SECTION 12.

Ticket Support
No matter how you choose to contact us for your support you needs, eventually your support requests will have to be entered into the ticket system for tracking.

Phone Support
You may use our phone number to call or 816-399-2601 ext. 2 for support for your website. Any messages left during off hours will be answered the next business day. See section 10 for our hours.

Text Support
You may text this phone number 816-399-2602 if you are a person that likes to text. Any text messages left during off hours will be answered the next business day. See section 10 for our hours.

Skype Support
You can easily reach us on Skype. If you would like to chat our Skype username is "theturngroup". Or you can call us on skype. Any Skype messages left during off hours will be answered the next business day. See section 10 for our hours.

Email Support
Have a quick question? Need to send us documents? No problem. Email us at [email protected] and we will get back with you shortly. Any email messages left during off hours will be answered the next business day. See section 10 for our hours.

FAQ Support
Have some non-emergency questions about your website, hosting, or just general questions? Great, hop on over to our support FAQ section and review our clients commonly asked questions.

12. Standard Support Contact Method

Most of our support services are done through our online portal ticket system where we track all of your support issues and requests. This allows us to keep a record of all your requests within your account and allows us to communicate with you back and forth until the issue is resolved. This is also where our time-tracker software resides. Thus, it is important to note that this entire SLA and the response times listed above are only applicable within this mode of support.

Here is an example of how a typical support request happens.

• Customer sends us a text: hey, support team, just wanted to let you know we have an update we need done by tomorrow. We will be submitting a ticket later today. Our response: ok thanks, we will look for it.

• We get a ticket: the customer submits a ticket with their support request.

• 10 minutes later we get a phone call: Hey, support team, I just submitted a ticket, but I forgot to tell you I need to add (x) to the ticket. Our response: sure, no problem, we will update the ticket for you. Have a great day.

For High and Critical Ticket Status request, you should additionally contact us by phone, and we will respond within the designated time. Our website support services are extremely important to us and is the cornerstone of our business. We do our best to provide your website support "so well" you stay with us for years to come and tell all your friends and colleagues about us.

13. TTG Responsibilities

It is the responsibility of The Turn Group to provide the infrastructure, development tools, technology, personnel, development processes, various levels of communication access and monitoring tools necessary to provide and deliver the website and hosting support as described within this document in a timely manner. It is also the responsibility of The Turn Group to maintain all websites within the parameters set forth by any Flex Plan hosting requirements the customer has signed up for. See section 23.

14. Customer Responsibilities

As the customer/client, your responsibilities in support of this agreement include the following items:

• Use the standard contact method (see section 14) to request web support services from The Turn Group if support times are a requirement for your request.

• Reviewing any submitted content/communication to you such as draft designs, concepts, suggestion, ticket replies, phone calls, voicemails, skype message, texts, and emails etc., and to respond to all types of communication and or "reply communication" from The Turn Group in regard to your support request or The Turn Group initiated contact in a timely fashion. We define "timely fashion" as a 24-hour period.

• Regularly reviewing your website, its pages and content as well as testing all functionality on your website on a regular basis. We define "regular basis" as once a week.

• To plan your support requests around all national holidays to make sure our responses are delivered to you in a timely manner. (See section 10).

• To plan your support requests around nights and weekends to make sure our responses are delivered to you in a timely manner. (See section 10).

• To maintain any component/plugin/module license agreement that make up any of the functionality on your website and to provide us with the latest software updates via the support ticket system for your website updates.

• To personally upgrade your website within 90 days of the latest PHP release or request the latest version of PHP on your website within a reasonable time period. We define a "reasonable time period" as 90 days.

• To request all of the latest updates to the core CMS as well as all components/plugins/modules/themes that you might use within a reasonable time period. We define a "reasonable time period" as 30 days from date of software release.

• To pay any open invoices within 5 days of being invoiced or by a prior agreed upon date depending on if there is a contractual work order in place with payment milestones.

15. Support Limitations

Website support is provided by The Turn Group project managers, developers, or server team depending on what type of request is submitted. We do our absolute best to adhere to our ticket priority timelines. With that said, there are times (not often), that the ticket system can be overloaded in which case, as with everything else, we work each ticket as they come in on a first serve basis. We reserve the right to upgrade or downgrade the ticket priority based on time submission factors or based on individual request(s) and our ability to get to that ticket within a timely manner. Note: The Turn Group's support team goal is to have an EMPTY ticket queue by the end of each business day. We hit that goal over 99% of the time. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, TTG will not downgrade ticket status for Critical Status requests.

As of the writing of this SLA, we have not had to change ticket status in the last 6 years. One of our strengths and biggest assets is our website support services.

16. Server Support Limitations

Any server level WHM/Cpanel software support requests are generally handled by our development team who have direct access to The Turn Group servers. However, there are times when we will need to escalate your server-based requests to the server support team which operate outside of our ticket priority timelines. Our server support team operates on a first come-first serve basis. Our tier 3 server support team is the only department within The Turn Group that does not have direct phone access by our customers. If such a case is required, The Turn Group will help facilitate communication with that department for you. You do however have tier 1 and tier 2 phone access support for any server related items.

Any proprietary software not directly owned by or used by The Turn Group is not supported by The Turn Group (such as Linux, cPanel, Litespeed), though we will endeavor to help just the same. If there is an issue with one of the components or plugins on your website, we will work with the software vendor for you on your behalf based on our standard hourly rate of $150 per hour.

17. Third Party Software Support Limitations

The template on your website as well as all the extensions, plugins, modules, and APIs are owned and controlled by a Third Party. The Turn Group is not responsible for any updates these third-party companies make to your website that may potentially break it. If we have developed a project for you, were we customized a template or extension, then we are only responsible for our code during the warranty period. IF you are outside of your warranty period, and we have to update your extension or template, and in the case where we have to update our code to accommodate the changes to the template or extension, you will be billed our regular development rate for the time needed to make the associated updates.

Each website that is hosted with The Turn Group is required at all times to be updated with the latest core CMS updates as well as ALL third-party extension updates that provide your specific functionality, within 30 days of release, to reduce the possibility of website virus intrusion, SQL injections or server hacking. OR you can pass that responsibility off to us. Either way, The Turn Group is not responsible, nor can we provide a warranty against third party updates, nor can we provide a warranty on your website if the core CMS updates break your website.

If for whatever reason we have not been asked to update your website for you, and you have not updated your website, The Turn Group reserves the right to update your website and all of its extensions at our standard hourly rate which would be billed to you upon update completion as well as any associated licensing costs without notice. We are not required to inform you of updates needed, it is your responsibility to inform us of updates that are required.

18. W3C and WCAG/ADA Validation

Unless we are specifically requested to W3C validate your third-party template and or extensions on your website as a quoted project, we are not responsible for code validation of which we did not write. Notwithstanding, all code written by The Turn Group will pass W3C validation where applicable. We are also not responsible for creating or maintaining WCAG/ADA Accessibility compliance on your website unless engaged by you the (Customer/Client) to do so.

19. Warranties and Updates

We warranty any work that we produce for 90 days. Our work we produce is guaranteed to pass W3C compliancy in both our code and CSS. We are basically saying our code we write will be perfect. If during those 90 days our code breaks, we will fix it at no charge to you. If our code we produce and implement breaks any aspect of your website or project, we will fix that as so long as the break is a reasonable fix.

• Reasonable fix warranty example. Our code we write causes a CSS display issue. We fix that.

• Reasonable fix non-warranty example. Our code we write causes a component to break because we were asked to update (something within your website or project) that is no longer compatible with our code. You would be charged the time it takes to for us to fix the issue with the Third-Party code.

Here is what is not warranted:

• Any core CMS update that causes our code to break or the core CMS itself to break.

• Any third-party component, theme, plugin, extension update that causes our code to break or the website/template code to break.

• Any server upgrade or PHP upgrade that causes our code to break and or the website to break.

20. Hosting Account Definitions

Our hosting services are made of up two parts. The physical server your website sits on and the support you get based on your hosting account you choose. All of our hosting accounts are called Flex Plans. A Flex plan is defined as a hosting account with a certain amount of developer time that is dedicated to you each month. If you have a hosting account called Flex Plan 2 (as an example), that means you get two hours of dedicated support each month. The reason we call if “Flex” is that you decide each month how you want to allocate your time. This means one month you can have us do your updates for you or save up that time until the next month and have us do content entry for you. However, you want to use your time each month is up to you. The only two items that are NOT covered under your Flex Plan is any graphic design, video development or anything SEO related as these services are separate and are either considered separate projects or are billed at a different rate.

21. Hosting Account Updates and Warranties

If part of your Flex Plan Hosting Account requirement for The Turn Group is that "we stay on top of all of your updates for you each month", we are still not responsible if those updates break your website, and you would be charged our standard hourly rate to fix what might be broken. As part of our Flex Plan Hosting, we do provide you a separate development hosting account so that all updates can be tested, as no updates should be done on a live production website if at all possible.

No warranty is provided to you on your website that you host with us other than the work that we produce for you. ALL warranties are directly related to new work we are asked to produce or support that we provide. If we write the code, we provide a full warranty for you (accept in very rare instances as described in this section). You are also responsible for keeping your website in compliance with section 14 and 16 of this SLA.

22. Flex Plan Accounts

Here are our available Flex Plan hosting accounts.

Flex Plan 1) a hosting account, a dev account and 1 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 2) a hosting account, a dev account and 2 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 3) a hosting account, a dev account and 3 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 4) a hosting account, a dev account and 4 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 5) a hosting account, a dev account and 5 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 6) a hosting account, a dev account and 6 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 7) a hosting account, a dev account and 7 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 8) a hosting account, a dev account and 8 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 9) a hosting account, a dev account and 9 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 10) a hosting account, a dev account and 10 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 11) a hosting account, a dev account and 11 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 12) a hosting account, a dev account and 12 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 13) a hosting account, a dev account and 13 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 14) a hosting account, a dev account and 14 hour of development time.
Flex Plan 15) a hosting account, a dev account and 15 hour of development time.

23. Flex Plan Uptime Guarantee

Our hosting uptime guarantee is as follows:

• 100 – 98% - No Refund

• 97 to 94% - 10% refund of base hosting rate (see section 25 for base hosting rate)

• 93 to 90% - full refund of base hosting rate

What constitutes The Turn Group responsibility for down time?

• If down time is caused by equipment upgrades that reduced downtime below 98%.

• If a virus has infected our server due to another client’s website that directly affects your site and that reduced your site downtime below 98%.

• Data center down time due to an internal issue.

What does not constitute downtown that The Turn Group would be held accountable for.

• Worldwide virus that attacks the data center routers that we could not have prevented.

• Upgrades to equipment to combat a Worldwide virus attack.

• A natural disaster that took the data center offline.

• A 3rd party component on your website that has been hacked or corrupted.

• Any part of your website being hacked.

• An upgrade to your website (either performed by you or us) that was corrupted that took down your website.

24. Flex Plan Account Rollover Time

The Flex Hosting Plan (1) has a 1-hour monthly time allotment associated to its respective package. Any unused time has a 3-month rollover expiration. So, if you do not use your time within an allotted month, that time is rolled over into the 2nd month. If you do not use any of the first months’ time by the (91st day), that first months’ time expires. There are no refunds for unused time. Rollover time cannot be used for any other hosting account.

25. Flex Plan Account Refunds

Our Flex Plan hosting accounts come with a 30-day money back guarantee on the "base rate fee" and full refund within 7 days. Our Flex Plan hosting accounts have a two-part cost. Our base rate fee for the following hosting accounts (Flex Plan 1-15) is $50 a month. The next aspect to our Flex Plan hosting accounts is the included Flex Time. Depending on the Flex Plan you choose will determine the amount of "Flex Time" you received. The Flex Time is billed at $125 per hour. So, an example refund would like this:

Example 1: Flex Plan (2) was purchased for $300 on a monthly basis. You request a refund after 7 days. We refund you $50. The other $250 is non-refundable.

Example 2: You purchased Flex Plan (4) for an entire year at a discounted rate of 10%. Your purchase cost was $5940 for the annual plan. You request a refund within 7 days of purchase. You would receive a full refund.

26. Flex Plan Account Downgrade

If for some reason you decide to downgrade your account to a lesser plan, your hosting rate is not prorated. Any unused time from our Flex Hosting Plans is non-refundable. You may downgrade your plan, but any unused time is not applied to your new hosting plan. The unused time is lost.

27. Payment on Services

The Turn Group accepts several payment methods. For an existing client we accept credit cards with a 3% credit card fee. We also accept checks and wire transfers. ALL hosting accounts that are setup on a monthly basis may only be paid for via credit card. The only exception to this rule is if you pre-purchase your hosting account for a years’ time to get the 10% discount. This payment may be made via check or wire transfer.

28. Dedicated Server Refunds

Because of the nature of this product, the time and provisioning of this service. There are no refunds for a dedicated server purchase for any reason at cancellation. Cancellation of this service needs to be before you next billing cycle. If you are billed and cancel the next day, you will not receive a refund for the prior days billing. Your access to the account will be until the next billing cycle.

29. Services Refunds

Services are defined as any service provided to you other than a hosting account. Examples of our services are as follows; website design, development, SEO, hourly, project based or monthly services. Any time we provide services above and beyond your hosting account you are either billed on an hourly basis, monthly basis or on a per project basis. Refunds are relative to the type of work that we have done for you. If we have provided a service for you, more than likely it comes with this service level agreement as well as a project agreement. A refund on a service is based on the completion or non-completion of the work requested. Example: if you requested us to do a backup or a restoration of a backup for you. Once the backup or restoration is completed and verified, you would not be able to request a refund at that point. However, if the backup or restoration was not done by a set and appointed time and a refund is requested, a refund would be provided. Each request will be taken on a case-by-case basis and treated within our "TOS" and conducted in a fair manner. Notwithstanding, any agreement or service we are requested to provide, and a payment has been made, and no work has been done yet, you only have 7 days to request a full refund. After 7 days, a refund is not available. If any work has been started and or completed, a partial refund will be given based on work started/completed.

30. SSL Certificate Refunds

Purchased SSL certificates are purchased on an annual basis. Depending on the type of SSL certificate you purchase, you might also have to purchase a dedicated IP address at an additional cost of $40, (there is a shortage on IPV4 addresses). There are no refunds on SSL certificates due to the nature of an SSL certificate and the time to implement it. Once you have an SSL certificate the most you can do is request that we uninstall it for you. If the SSL certificate is uninstalled, you also lose your dedicated IP address.

31. Pre-Purchased Bulk Time – Deposits and Refunds

Pre-purchased block time and deposits have a dollar and time value associated to them. Depending on how the initial block time purchase or deposit was made (first time client or existing client), determines the time value of your block time. In other words, client rates are anywhere from $125 to $150 an hour. In the case of pre-purchased block time or deposits toward projects, cash refunds are only issued within the first 7 days of the original deposit or purchase. Once the 7-day mark has expired, your dollars (which originally represented either a block of time based on a rate or a deposit towards a project based on a rate) converts to time-only and is only available within your account as time. Once the 7 days have passed, there are no cash refunds. Though our system tracks your available time, as of this moment, we have no way to display that amount of time available to you within your account for you to view. If you need to know what your available time is, simply login to your account and send us a ticket with your time-available request.

32. SLA Amendments

The Turn Group team is responsible for regularly reviewing and maintaining this document. The content of this document may be amended as required to keep up to date with the ever-changing internet, The Turn Group business needs and or our changing and varying services provided. By using our services in any shape or form, you agree to be bound by this document and all that it contains, provided that in no event will the commitments made by The Turn Group be diminished by any such change made during the term of the Agreement or while Flex Plans are maintained.