If you’re reading this part of our site, odds are that you’ve entered into a Support Partnership with our team here at IPGeeks LLC, or that you’re thinking about it. The document you’re looking at right now makes up our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service and Services Schedule; collectively known as the Service Level Agreement. The intention of this document is to lay out expectations, assurances and responsibilities of ourselves and our clients so that we can be accountable to one another and foster the mutual success of all participating parties.
By working with IPGeeks LLC and/or using services provided by IPGeeks LLC, you agree to the terms and conditions laid out in this document.
Privacy Policy
Information is the single greatest tool in our arsenal. IPGeeks LLC and its partners and clients will use numerous types of information in order to offer and deliver on services that will attend to the need of your clients and/or infrastructure. This policy identifies the types and uses of information necessary to our work.
– IPGeeks LLC will only ask for information that is deemed necessary for the understanding and carrying out of support duties for its clients.
– IPGeeks LLC will only retain information provided by clients and partners for the length of the business relationship. Information that can be returned will be returned on request, or destroyed/deleted once deemed necessary.
– IPGeeks LLC respects your privacy, and will never share or sell your sensitive information to third parties.
– IPGeeks LLC will take every reasonable precaution to secure information shared with our team; both through restricting access of information to authorized parties, and through standard security practices.
– If information provided to IPGeeks LLC by a client must be changed for any reason, we will alert the client to the change, and the reason behind it in a reasonable time frame.
– IPGeeks LLC may provide information to clients in order to perform it’s job supporting your customers. Information provided by IPGeeks LLC to it’s clients is considered confidential.
If you are located in the EEA or the United Kingdom and have questions about your personal data or would like to request to access, update, or delete it, you may contact our representative at:
Bird & Bird GDPR Representative Services SRL
Avenue Louise 235
1050 Bruxelles
Belgium
Key Contact: Vincent Rezzouk-Hammachi
Bird & Bird GDPR Representative Services UK
12 New Fetter Lane
London
EC4A 1JP
United Kingdom
Key Contact: Vincent Rezzouk-Hammachi
Your Data, Third Parties, and Choosing What to Share:
IP Geeks rarely works with third parties, but in cases where we do, it’s important that our clients and partners know what kinds of data we share, and in what capacity.
DATA SHARED:
The only data we share with third parties include:
– Server access data
– Client or client-representative email address
We share these details with server management partners to facilitate management services for servers when internal IP Geeks management service falls short of client needs. No other details of our clients are shared to any third parties.
ACCESS TO DATA:
If you are a client or partner of IP Geeks LLC, you have a right to view (or request edits to) the information we have on file for your business. A client or partner may place a request for any such information by email to [email protected] or [email protected]. You may request details of any portion of your account at any time, though requests must be submitted by clients using their IP Geeks account, or by email using the email address on file for the client’s account. Security of your data is a topmost priority.
DISCLOSURE:
As our client you may request at any time to limit or refrain from disclosure of your data to any third parties. As mentioned above, data shared is only in relation to Server Management products we offer and as such our clients may request to opt-out of our Server Management service at any time by email to [email protected].
DATA JURISDICTION:
Please note the following points relating to data sharing and access:
– IPGeeks LLC is subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
– Data Subjects have the ability to invoke binding arbitration.
– IPGeeks LLC may be required to disclose data to government authorities, such as to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.
– IPGeeks LLC maintains liability for onward transfers of data transferred to third parties.
Terms of Service
The following terms and conditions apply toward all business relationships between IPGeeks LLC and its clients:
Limitation of Liability – IPGeeks LLC and its clients hereby knowingly, voluntarily and intentionally waive the right to a trial by jury in respect of any claim based hereon, arising out of, under or in connection with this agreement or any other documents contemplated to be executed in connection herewith or any course of conduct, course of dealings, statements (whether verbal or written) or actions of any party relating to the parties business relationship, and agree that no party will seek to consolidate any such action with any other action in which a jury trial cannot be or has not been waived. This waiver constitutes a material inducement for IPGeeks LLC to accept this agreement.
Accuracy of Information – Being human, our team at IPGeeks LLC are subject to error as much as the next human. However, we have taken great efforts to ensure the accuracy of information provided herein, across our site, in internal and external documentation and our Service Agreements. IPGeeks LLC reserves the right to change pricing, policy, and branding information at any time. Such changes that would reflect changes in our Service Level Agreement will be updated within this document.
Services – Services provided will adhere to the policy laid out in our Service Schedule, referenced here.
Custom Services – Services not detailed in our Service Schedule, and provisions thereof will be included in each client’s unique IPGeeks Service Agreement.
Confidentiality – IPGeeks LLC, it’s management and staff and any representative parties agree to not provide, disclose or otherwise share the personal and confidential information of our clients and their businesses. We agree to protect your information and treat all data and communication provided as confidential.
Abuse – We at IPGeeks LLC are professionals in the art of customer interaction, service management, and business to business relations. In all dealings, it is expected that all parties will remain courteous and maintain professional communications. IPGeeks LLC will not tolerate abusive language or behavior that impacts our staff, products, service levels or brand integrity. Any client of IPGeeks LLC identified as practicing abusive conduct will be subject to immediate termination.
Term – Service Agreements between IPGeeks LLC and its clients will exist for the agreed upon period written into the Service Agreement. Upon expiry a term will automatically renew month-to-month unless a change is requested by either party.
[Billing] Payments – Upon signing a Service Agreement with IPGeeks LLC, each client will be provided a billing date for their service. Payment is due to begin service, and billing will recur month after month on the anniversary date of the initial payment.
[Billing] Overdue or Failure to Make Payment – In the event of missed payment, IPGeeks LLC reserves the right to charge 5% of the outstanding payments as a late fee for payments received later than 3 days past the due date for payment. IPGeeks LLC reserves the right to suspend, limit or terminate service in the event of missed payment. Clients are bound to their agreements with IPGeeks LLC, and such suspension, limitation or termination does not provide exemption from such to the client.
[Billing] Refunds and Credits – Payments and fees paid to IPGeeks LLC are non-refundable for all services. Credits may be applied to a client’s account for the following:
– Failure to meet SLA guidelines for services as outlined in Service Schedule
– Ending service on request partway through a paid service month
Credit will apply to the next due invoice, and will be used prior to payments being captured to ensure credit is always used first. No client may bank more than 100% of the monthly cost of a service at any time. Events where credit will not apply include:
– Client Outages. If a client’s service, infrastructure or other resources fail to allow IPGeeks LLC staff to carry out their work.
– Planned Maintenance. If IPGeeks LLC or its client schedules and carries out maintenance on any part of their service or infrastructure which results in a loss of ability to deliver services.
– Unplanned Maintenance. In the event of critical failures or emergency maintenance required by IPGeeks LLC or its clients which impacts the delivery or quality of services provided.
– Third Party Outages or Service Interruptions. Carrier, vendor, or other third party emergencies, outages or maintenance not related directly to IPGeeks LLC or its partners and clients.
– Late Payments or breach of services. No credit will apply during months in which a client is overdue for payment, or in cases where the conduct of a client or agent of the client produces a breach of the terms in this document, and/or the Service Agreement between IPGeeks LLC and its client.
Determining the volume and validity of credit is the sole discretion of IPGeeks LLC, and all credit applied to any client must be requested by that client or a representative of the client company.
[Billing] Cancellation – Requests for cancellation by a client must be submitted in writing by the undersigned party as listed within their Service Agreement. Such requests must be received no less than 30 days prior to the renewal date for those services, and requests to cancel service constitute agreement by the canceling party that all services have been delivered successfully to the client by IPGeeks LLC.
Force Majeure – Events outside of the control of IPGeeks LLC that impact its ability to perform contracted duties for its clients are not the responsibility of IPGeeks LLC or it’s agents and partners. Such cases can include [but are not limited to] natural disasters, third party service delays or interruptions, fire and flood, or other disasters and events not listed herein which are considered external to IPGeeks LLC and its clients and partners.
No Poaching – IP Geeks LLC and it’s clients undertake that each will not for a period of two years from the termination of their Service Agreement entice away or endeavor to entice away from the other party any employee of such other party. Each party acknowledges that the prohibition and restriction contained in this clause are reasonable in the circumstances and necessary to protect the business of the other party.
Jurisdiction and Liability – This agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the state of Virginia, USA, without regard to its conflicts of law provisions. The exclusive jurisdiction and venue for any disputes arising out of this Agreement shall be the federal or state courts of Fredericksburg, Virginia and all parties hereby consent to personal jurisdiction and venue therein.
IPGeeks LLC and its clients hereby knowingly, voluntarily and intentionally waive the right to a trial by jury in respect of any claim based hereon, arising out of, under or in connection with this agreement or any other documents contemplated to be executed in connection herewith or any course of conduct, course of dealings, statements (whether verbal or written) or actions of any party relating to the parties business relationship, and agree that no party will seek to consolidate any such action with any other action in which a jury trial cannot be or has not been waived. This waiver constitutes a material inducement for IPGeeks LLC to accept this agreement.
Service Schedule
The following outlines policy surrounding services fashioned and provided by IPGeeks LLC.
Schedule 1 – Tier 1 Customer-Facing Support Services
This policy covers the provision, delivery, and responsibility surrounding IPGeeks LLC Tier 1 services directed toward the end users of its clients.
Tier 1 technical support and customer service duties include, but are not necessarily limited to any tasks or duties available to an end user such as installing an app or module via platform-provided installers such as Softaculous; email setup, configuration and troubleshooting; website accessibility and troubleshooting basic errors; as well as duties available to agents within the client’s billing and platform admin portals such as password resets, welcome letters, IP unblocks, IP whitelisting (if it applies), zone file edits (via GUI), and similar customer-service and basic support tasks. The nature of Tier 1 support services may be a) technical support – related or b) sales and billing – related. In such cases, the client is responsible for informing IPGeeks LLC of the nature of work expected by its employees. Tier 1 Complete Support plans are packed under Schedule 5 of your Service Agreement.
1.1 Help Desk Support Parameters
Integration – Clients are expected to have their own help desk with which to accept and reply to customer tickets. Prior to deployment of services, the client will be required to provide IPGeeks LLC with the name and connection information (either Database access or API, and one administrator account) for their help desk. IPGeeks LLC will integrate this help desk information and a list of departments to be monitored into a central monitoring system which watches all supported help desks for tickets, displaying them in an order of oldest-to-newest to be completed and logged locally.
Delivery – IPGeeks LLC and its employees providing support will accept tickets in an order of oldest-to-newest, and make every reasonable effort to inform and advise end-users on best practices, proper usage and handling of services, and to provide issue resolution in all casess wherever possible. Issues handled in tickets that are deemed outside the scope of support will be escalated to the client based on the client’s discretion and internal policies for handling of tickets.
SLA Response Time – 2 hours response time guaranteed on 80% or more of applicable tickets received to the client’s helpdesk during a given month. IPGeeks LLC will always strive to answer your tickets as quickly as possible, and works to answer oldest tickets first.
Billable Tickets – Each ticket received becomes billable by IPGeeks once an employee of IPGeeks LLC places a response onto an existing help desk ticket. Each unique ticket replied to by IPGeeks LLC employees may only be billed to the client once during a given month, unless a) the customer makes new requests in an existing ticket, b) the client requests we handle a separate matter for a customer within a pre-existing ticket. Notes placed on a ticket do not make the ticket billable, unless the note is also accompanied by a response to the end-user.
1.2 Telephone Support Parameters
Integration – Clients using telephone services provided by IPGeeks LLC will either a) have their own toll-free number, or b) may purchase one from IPGeeks LLC. In either case, IPGeeks LLC will also provide a DID (direct dialing) number to the client. The client will direct their public-facing telephone number, or one or more departments of it toward the DID. IPGeeks LLC will assign employees to the corresponding queue, allowing inbound calls to be answered and addressed.
Delivery – Calls will ring into a central shared queue, monitored by IPGeeks employees, and answered by said employees in the order of oldest-call-first, and will work to address the end-user’s questions or concerns in a timely and efficient manner, maintaining a polite and professional demeanor. We will work to move calls into tickets where employees deem calls will exceed 5 minutes. There is no calltime guarantee on minimum or maximum call times.
SLA Response Time – 5 minute pick-up time guaranteed on 60% or more of inbound calls to a client’s DID during a given month.
Billable Minutes – All calls answered by IPGeeks LLC over its clients DID are considered billable minutes. Partial minutes round up for billing purposes.
1.3 Live Chat Support Parameters
Integration – IPGeeks LLC will provide its clients with Chat Support with a widget for our chat application, Tawk.to. Clients using Tawk.to already may continue to do so, by inviting us to their Tawk instance. We can marry the two so IPGeeks LLC employees may access and answer chats for end-users of the client.
Delivery – Upon integration of Live Chat Support, IPGeeks LLC employees will monitor for incoming chats for the client, and answer chats from end-users. Chats will be answered in the order of oldest-to-newest, and employees may handle multiple chats at a given time. Employees of IPGeeks LLC are instructed to assist via chat in much the same way as in tickets or calls, and will move chats into tickets if the request a) exceeds the scope of Tier 1 support, b) will be time consuming for the chat-taking employee, or c) on request by the client or end-user to do so.
SLA Response Time – 5 minute pick-up time on 80% or greater of inbound Live Chats to a client’s chat property during a given month.
Billable Chats – All chats accepted by IPGeeks LLC over its client’s chat property are considered billable chats.
Schedule 2 – Tier 2 Support Services
This policy covers the delivery and handling of Tier 2 support requests placed by clients of IPGeeks LLC or by end-users of clients of IPGeeks LLC as agreed upon in the Service Agreement.
Tier 2 support services requested by clients must be requested by email to [email protected] no less than 24 hours prior to the expected handling of such issues. Requests made with deadlines of less than 2 hours are subject to additional fees.
Tier 2 support services requested by end-users must be requested within the help desk of the client. The SLA Response time of Tier 1 tickets (if purchased by the client) do not count toward Tier 2 tickets handled by IPGeeks LLC, it’s employees or agents.
Tier 2 billable work may include [but is not limited to] requests requiring SSH access to client servers; database optimization (manual), httpd.conf editing, email blacklist mitigation, log analysis, and similar tasks. Tier 2 duties such as these which may be included with other services provided by IPGeeks LLC are not considered billable separately if such other services are purchased by the client. An example of this is email blacklist mitigation which is covered with Server Management LITE or FULL.
Schedule 3 – Server Management and Monitoring Services
This policy reflects the parameters of server health services provided by IPGeeks LLC, and shows the expectations and coverage of these services.
3.1 – Server Monitoring Parameters
IPGeeks LLC currently uses a customized Site24x7 installation for its stand-alone server monitoring services. Monitoring alerts are centrally gathered and monitored by IPGeeks LLC employees, and acted upon in the event of an outage, loss of service, or warning from the monitor.
Response to Monitoring alerts is handled within 15 minutes, and all necessary actions to restore service are taken. Handling a monitoring alert is addressed in this way:
• Identify the issue – we’ll identify the issue in our monitor, then log in to resolve it.
• Duplicate the issue – we’ll work to duplicate the issue to ensure the monitoring alert is correct.
• Attempt to resolve – we will then attempt to connect to the server, restart the affected service, or restart the server based on instruction from the client.
• Resolve or escalate – if resolved, the alert will disappear from our monitor. If not, and our efforts will not resolve the matter we will escalate to the client or their Network Operation Center as directed to ensure proper handling of the matter.
• Alert customers – if a monitoring alert identifies a spammer on server, or similar other situation requiring customer contact, we will create a ticket to the client’s customer so long as IPGeeks LLC is also providing help desk support to the monitoring client.
Server Monitoring is a best-effort service intended to provide reactive support to your infrastructure, with proven results in improved uptime and server reliability.
3.2 Server Management Parameters
Server Management marries the reactive benefit of Monitoring with the proactive benefit of Management. Server Management entails the initial setup and ongoing maintenance necessary to ensuring each supported hosting environment is running smooth and without errors or abnormalities which could impact performance or security of the hosting environment.
Customers engaging in Server Management may opt to use Full or Lite Management for each of their servers. The overall provision offers these regardless of which Management tier a client purchases:
• 24/7/365 Server Monitoring with the same 15 minute expectation as Schedule 3.1.
• Initial Server Hardening and Optimization
• Performance Monitoring and Log Analysis
• Proactive Security Updates and Patching
• Firewall installation and management
• Backup Configuration
• Kernelcare license and installation
Lite Management also includes these items:
• Admin Work – 2 hours per month, split between regular maintenance outlined in Schedule 3.2 as well as for customer requests, such as for 3rd party software installations.
• Security Audits – Once per month, a security audit will be performed, checking for common exploits and rootkits.
Full Management also includes these items:
• Admin Work – 4 hours per month, split between regular maintenance outlined in Schedule 3.2 as well as for customer requests, such as for 3rd party software installations.
• Security Audits – Once per week, a security audit will be performed, checking for common exploits and rootkits.
• Tier 3 customer tickets – if the client also purchases Tier 1 and 2 Help Desk services from IPGeeks LLC.
Schedule 4 – Dedicated Services
Dedication can add a whole new dimension to your Hosting Support services, and enhances the overall experience for customers. These provisions cover the delivery and expectations of Dedicated and Semi-Dedicated Support services:
4.1 – Semi-Dedicated Support Parameters
Semi-dedicated services represent the doorstep of our dedication services. Agents working in a semi-dedicated capacity often support fewer clients than with our shared services. Semi-Dedicated support is provided in three levels, all of which enjoy these features:
1. 24/7 help desk, phone, and live chat availability.
2. Tier 1 and 2 help desk ticket responses*
3. Flexible metric plans**
* See Schedule 1/2 for Tier 1 and 2 service parameters.
** If a client does not wish to offer one of the included service metrics (phones, chats, tickets), they can be substituted for another metric. Speak with IPGeeks LLC for more information.
Additionally, each level of Semi-Dedicated service includes these individual benefits:
Basic:
• Billing Support addon for only $50.00 per month
• 100 base tickets
• 60 base minutes
• 75 base chats
• Resolution Time 240 minutes on 75% or more of monthly tickets
• SLA pickup times as Schedule 1
Business:
• Billing Support addon for only $40.00 per month
• 200 base tickets
• 120 base minutes
• 150 base chats
• Resolution Time 180 minutes on 75% or more of monthly tickets
• SLA pickup times as Schedule 1
Corporate:
• Billing Support included at no added charge
• Tier 3 ticket support included***
• 400 base tickets
• 240 base minutes
• 300 base chats
• Resolution time 120 minutes on 75% or more of monthly tickets
• SLA pickup times as Schedule 1
***Tier 3 ticket support provided by in-house system administration, managed by Operations. Tier 3 ticket support provides an added layer to Tier 2 tickets by resolving more complex matters or handling higher level tasks and configurations than are characterized in Schedule 2 of this document. Semi-Dedicated services are always-on, available 24/7/365.
4.2 – Dedicated Support Parameters
While the offerings on-site cover support personnel, reach us if other types of staff are required. We can fill any need! Dedicated Personnel pricing on IPGeeks.com indicates full-time work at 37.5 paid hours per week. Pricing for part-time Dedicated Personnel will exist in Schedule 5 of your Service Agreement.
Dedicated Support Personnel are offered in three varieties, each of which is characterized below:
Tier 1:
Dedicated Tier 1 agents can handle any number of Tier 1 tasks just as though you were purchasing Shared services. Use Schedule 1 for full detail on Tier 1 capabilities, including Billing Support.
Dedicated Tier 1 personnel operate using Schedule 1 response and pickup times, and you may advertise these on your website. If pickup and response times vary from our Schedule 1, there may be additional fees for this under Schedule 5.
Tier 2:
Dedicated Tier 2 personnel may handle any number of Tier 2 duties as per Schedule 2, however without any per-hour limitation on volume of work, nor any 24-hour delay on having requests handled. They may be passed to the Dedicated Tier 2 agent at any time to be completed on-shift by the agent.
No Dedicated Tier 2 work is considered billable, unless said work requires Dedicated personnel to work past the end of their scheduled shift. Work of this nature costs $49.99 per hour.
Tier 3:
Dedicated Tier 3 personnel handle high-end server administration, including setup, configuration, migration, optimization, and ongoing maintenance of server, virtualization platforms or other infrastructure and hosting environment assets necessary to your business.
The nature of Tier 3 work is more flexible than Tiers 1 or 2 in that Tier 3 is often hired to fill a specific need such as Server Management, Network mapping, coding and development, or other such areas. Due to this flexible nature, when requesting Tier 3 personnel to work with your company, please be sure to announce which certifications, duties and other requirements you have in mind, and we will ensure your personnel candidates meet these. IPGeeks LLC will include the parameters of Tier 3 work in your Service Agreement under Schedule 5 for Custom Work.
No Dedicated Tier 3 work is considered billable, unless said work requires Dedicated personnel to work past the end of their scheduled shift. Work of this nature costs $74.99 per hour.
Schedule 5 – Custom Services
Our product range is extensive and covers the most widely-used and most often-requested services in our industry of Web Hosting Technical Support and Customer Services. But we always strive to do more! Your satisfaction and that of your customers is our goal, and we love helping wherever we can.
We can provide consultancy, audits, message-taking, and more customized services centered around customer-facing support, infrastructure support, and business to business strategy. Let us know about what your business needs, and we’ll work with you to create a means by which to deliver it in line with your vision and deadlines.
Pricing, parameters, and time frames for custom services will be included with each applicable IPGeeks LLC Service Agreement.
Schedule 6 – Administrative Services
IPGeeks LLC employees will comprise the Supervisor and QA groups, and will provide the following Supervision and Quality Assurance(QA) services to the client:
In addition to overseeing day-to-day operations, Supervisors will provide a point of contact for on issues with any of the below services:
• Technical Support Services
• Customer Service
• Billing Services
• Advanced Support Services
All communication with IPGeeks LLC on technical issues will be addressed with the supervisor group. Questions on services, billing, contract etc. will be addressed with the management of IPGeeks LLC.
Quality Assurance will monitor staff to ensure that pre-determined standards of service are being consistently met. They will coach and/or train employees in areas where improvement or change is deemed necessary. QA will also liaise with the client regarding any concerns over the quality and delivery of support.
These terms may be updated at any time.
Terms of Service copyright 2021 IPGeeks LLC
Last edited by: John McMullin
Edited on: November 3, 2021