SLA Maintenance Contract: Predictable Shop Care Instead of Ad-Hoc Fixes
An SLA maintenance contract defines who is responsible for your shop, how quickly we respond and what is delivered each month. Three tiers from €199 per month — with documented response and recovery times instead of unpredictable hourly billing.
from €199
SLA plans per month (net)
45 min
Enterprise SLA first response
3
SLA tiers to choose from
50+
shops in managed service
An online shop is not a static product; it is a system that requires ongoing attention. Security vulnerabilities emerge, updates introduce incompatibilities, load profiles change and new legal requirements must be implemented. Without a structured maintenance agreement, all of this happens reactively, under time pressure and at unfavorable rates. An SLA maintenance contract changes this fundamentally: it defines upfront what is delivered, by whom, and at what time — at a fixed monthly price you know before the contract starts. Three tiers cover the common requirement profiles: Basic at €199, Business at €349 and Enterprise at €699 net per month.
Three SLA Tiers, Three Clear Prices
You choose the response time that matches your revenue risk — a fixed monthly flat rate with no hidden extra costs for regular operations.
Basic SLA
For smaller shops operating mainly during business hours.
- First response within 8 hours (business days)
- Security updates with compatibility checks
- 24/7 uptime monitoring with alerting
- Backup verification and SSL management
- Monthly status report
Business SLA
For growing shops with ongoing B2C or B2B business.
- First response within 4 hours — including weekends
- Everything in the Basic SLA
- Prioritized incident handling
- Extended performance monitoring
- Dedicated contact person and weekly status reports
Enterprise SLA
For high-revenue shops and critical business processes.
- First response within 45 minutes — 24/7, 365 days
- Everything in the Business SLA
- Live dashboard and real-time alerting
- Direct hotline with mobile line
- Monthly review meetings and prioritized resource access
All prices net of VAT. Minimum term 6 months, then renewal in 3-month increments with one month's notice. Upgrades to a higher tier are possible at any time.
What an SLA Maintenance Contract Delivers
SLA stands for Service Level Agreement — a contract that bindingly establishes performance standards. In the context of shop maintenance, this means concrete numbers: How long until the first response to a reported incident? How long until a critical error is resolved? Which maintenance tasks are performed regularly? Which contact person is responsible for your shop? This commitment distinguishes an SLA contract from a loose agency relationship on an hourly basis, where availability and priority depend on the provider's current workload.
SLA vs. Single Assignment
The Three SLA Tiers at a Glance
Basic SLA
Response within 8 hours on business days. Monthly monitoring reports, regular security updates and backup verification. Suited to smaller shops with manageable daily revenue and primarily business-hours operation. From €199 net per month.
Business SLA
First response within 4 hours, including weekends. Weekly status reports, prioritized incident handling, extended performance monitoring and a dedicated contact person. Recommended for growing shops with B2C or B2B operations. From €349 net per month.
Enterprise SLA
First response within 45 minutes around the clock, 365 days a year. Live dashboard, real-time alerting, monthly review meetings, prioritized resource access and a direct hotline. Designed for high-revenue shops and critical business processes. From €699 net per month.
Scope of Service: What the Contract Includes
An SLA maintenance contract is not an all-inclusive budget for arbitrary work — it is a clearly defined service package. The scope is organized into three categories: regular care, reactive support and proactive monitoring. Together, these three dimensions cover the entire needs of ongoing shop operations.
Regular Security Updates
Timely application of security patches for the CMS, all installed plugins and extensions, and server components. Compatibility check and backup creation before every update.
24/7 Uptime Monitoring
Continuous availability monitoring through our monitoring system with configurable alert thresholds. Immediate notification on outages and automatic escalation following the SLA process.
Backup Verification and Management
Regular checks of backup integrity: were backups created successfully? Are they complete and restorable? Alerting on failed backup cycles.
SSL Certificate Management
Monitoring all SSL certificates for expiry dates, timely renewal and verification of correct configuration. No expired certificates that unsettle customers or damage search engine rankings.
Performance Monitoring
Continuous measurement of load times, server response times and database performance. Early detection of degradation through performance trend analysis before customers notice it.
Monthly Status Reports
Clear summaries of all relevant metrics: uptime, incidents, updates applied, SSL status and performance trends. Full transparency about what is being done for your shop behind the scenes.
Response Times and Recovery: The Core Commitments
The heart of an SLA maintenance contract is its response and recovery timeframes. These values are not informal targets — they are binding commitments. We distinguish between the time to first response on a reported issue (reaction time) and the time to full resolution (resolution time). Both vary by incident severity — the monthly flat rate remains unaffected.
| Severity | Example | Basic SLA | Business SLA | Enterprise SLA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P1 — Critical | Shop completely unreachable | 4 h response (business days) | 4 h response (daily) | 45 min response (24/7) |
| P2 — High | Checkout broken, payment not possible | 8 h response (business days) | 4 h response (business days) | 2 h response (daily) |
| P3 — Medium | Performance drop, elevated error rate | 1 business day | 4 h (business days) | 4 h (daily) |
| P4 — Low | Minor display issues, optimization needed | Next maintenance window | 3 business days | 1 business day |
| Monthly flat rate | Fixed price, net per month | €199 | €349 | €699 |
Not sure which SLA tier fits?
We review your shop free of charge and recommend the tier that matches your revenue and downtime risk — no obligation, within one business day.
How an SLA Maintenance Contract Works
Onboarding and System Documentation
At the start of the contract, we create complete documentation of your shop system: platform used (Shopware, WordPress etc.), installed extensions, hosting configuration, external services and critical dependencies. When you switch from another provider, we coordinate the handover directly with the previous service provider; onboarding takes two to five business days depending on system complexity. This documentation is the foundation for efficient maintenance and rapid response to incidents.
Dedicated Contact Person: Continuity Instead of Anonymity
Who actually knows your shop?
When work is commissioned without a structured maintenance contract, every technician starts from scratch: obtaining system access, understanding the architecture, gathering hosting details. This costs time that is especially valuable during a problem. Under an SLA maintenance contract, a dedicated contact person is assigned to each shop — someone who knows the system history, understands the platform's specifics and has documented previous incidents. This contact is your first point of contact for all questions, from the next update schedule to an acute emergency. Under the Enterprise SLA, you also receive a direct mobile number for critical situations outside business hours.
Familiarity as a quality factor
Scope Boundaries: What the SLA Contract Covers and What It Does Not
An SLA maintenance contract covers ongoing operations and reactive troubleshooting. It is not a development budget for new features or fundamental platform migrations. This clarity serves both sides: you know what you receive each month, and we can reliably meet the agreed response times because the scope is predictable.
Included in the SLA contract
Security updates for CMS, plugins and server software. Monitoring and alerting. Backup verification and restoration tests. Incident handling by priority. SSL management. Performance monitoring and baseline optimizations. Monthly status reports and reviews.
Commissioned separately (by effort)
Development of new features and functional enhancements. Design changes and relaunches. Complex migrations to new platform versions. Custom integrations with ERP or PIM systems. SEO campaigns and content creation. Third-party integrations outside the agreed stack.
For work outside the agreed scope, you receive a transparent quote based on effort in advance. For context: without a maintenance contract, we charge emergency deployments at €95 net per hour, billed in 15-minute increments. Contract clients benefit from included incident handling and preferential rates for additional work — keeping even out-of-scope tasks predictable.
Predictable Costs Instead of Surprise Invoices
One of the underestimated advantages of an SLA maintenance contract is financial predictability. Operators running their shop without a structured maintenance agreement pay emergency hourly rates during incidents — €95 net per hour with us, and often considerably more on the market depending on availability and time of day (project experience). Add to this the indirect costs: lost revenue during downtime, erosion of customer trust and the internal effort of coordinating the emergency.
The monthly flat rate — €199 for the Basic, €349 for the Business and €699 for the Enterprise SLA — covers all regular maintenance tasks and incident handling within the agreed scope. You pay a fixed amount and receive a defined level of service in return, regardless of whether the month passes uneventfully or an incident requires effort. This protection enables realistic budget planning and guards against unpredictable peak costs from unplanned outages.
Fixed Prices, Clear Commitments
SLA Maintenance Contracts Across All Platforms
Our SLA maintenance contract is available across platforms. Depending on the system in use, we adapt the service scope to the specific requirements of each platform. Update cycles, monitoring parameters and typical risk profiles differ considerably by system — the three price tiers apply regardless of platform.
- Shopware: message queue monitoring, Elasticsearch index monitoring, plugin compatibility checks before updates, Shopware-specific security advisories
- WordPress: wp-cron monitoring, plugin vulnerability tracking, core update management, theme compatibility
- TYPO3: extension update management, TYPO3 core security patches, scheduler task monitoring
- Contao, Drupal, Joomla: platform-specific update feeds, community advisories and patch deployment following a defined process
SLA Documentation and Transparency
All activities under the SLA maintenance contract are documented without gaps. This serves not only internal traceability but also provides you with the records needed for internal compliance requirements or audits. Documentation covers the change log of all updates applied, the incident register with timeline and root cause analysis, monitoring reports with historical data and backup verification records.
This transparency has an additional practical benefit: if you later want to extend your shop with a new feature or migrate the platform, all relevant information is structured and ready. The system documentation maintained under the SLA contract is a valuable foundation for any further development — saving the time and cost that would otherwise be spent on an inventory assessment of an undocumented system.
Key takeaways
- Three SLA tiers: Basic €199, Business €349, Enterprise €699 — net per month, as a fixed flat rate instead of open-ended hourly billing.
- Binding response times: 8 hours (Basic), 4 hours (Business) and 45 minutes around the clock (Enterprise) — with documented service credits for SLA violations.
- A dedicated contact person who knows your system, history and hosting — no onboarding delay in an emergency.
- A clear scope: security updates, 24/7 monitoring, backup verification, SSL management and incident handling included; further development quoted separately by effort.
- Fair terms: 6-month minimum, then renewal in 3-month increments with one month's notice.
Frequently Asked Questions About SLA Maintenance Contracts
Ready for a structured maintenance contract?