What is a Service Level Agreement?

This template is written for IT providers, agencies and the businesses they support, so that both sides can see what was promised, what it costs, and what happens if circumstances change.

18 details are captured across 6 areas: parties and contact details, scope and deliverables, payment and financial terms, dates, timing and duration, confidentiality and intellectual property, and legal protections and risk. Together they fix what the provider owes the customer, measured in subscribed seats rather than in adjectives.

Disputes tend to surface around each service period, when one side considers the obligation discharged and the other does not. Business agreements tend to fail at the edges — deadlock between owners, automatic renewals nobody diarised, and liability caps that turn out to sit above the value of the contract.

The preview updates live as you complete each field, so you can review the exact language before downloading it as PDF or Word. Treat the result as a well-organised first draft: sound in structure, but worth an attorney's review where the sums involved are significant or the situation is unusual.

What matters most in a service level agreement

Draw the line around included work

Routine updates, backups and small fixes are typically included; new features and major migrations are projects. State the boundary and the rate beyond it.

Coverage hours and escalation

Specify business hours versus 24/7, public holidays, and the escalation path outside normal cover.

Backups and disaster recovery

State backup frequency, retention and restore targets. This clause is worth more than the rest of the agreement combined on the day it is needed.

When you need a service level agreement

  • When either side may need an exit: Agree how the arrangement ends while both parties are still on good terms. Exit clauses negotiated during a dispute rarely favour anyone.
  • When an auto-renewal that rolled over because nobody diarised the notice date is a realistic prospect: If this is the way the arrangement usually goes wrong, it belongs in the document. Allocating that risk in advance is much cheaper than allocating it afterwards.
  • When replacing an earlier arrangement: Issue a fresh service level agreement when the original terms no longer reflect what the parties actually do. Amending informally leaves two inconsistent records of one relationship.
  • When sensitive information is shared: Confidentiality terms should be signed before disclosure, not after. Information already shared without protection is very difficult to claw back.
  • When the counterparty is new to you: With no track record between the parties, the written terms do the work that familiarity would otherwise do. That is exactly when precision pays for itself.
  • When the arrangement will repeat: For a relationship that runs across several jobs or periods, agree the standing terms once and let each instance sit under them rather than renegotiating from scratch.

What to include in a service level agreement

This generator collects 18 details. Here is what each group covers and why it matters when the document is relied on.

Parties and contact details

Name the provider and the customer as legal entities rather than as the people you deal with day to day. The individual you email is rarely the party that can be enforced against.

Client Name
The full legal name of the client commissioning the work. Use the registered company name rather than a trading name so the party is identifiable if the agreement is ever enforced.
Client Address
The client's registered or principal business address. This is the address used for formal notices, invoices and any legal service of documents.
Service Provider Name
The legal name of the business or individual delivering the service.
Service Provider Address
The service provider's business address for notices and invoicing.

Scope and deliverables

The description of the service is what turns an extra request into a chargeable variation. Write it so that someone outside the arrangement could tell what is in and what is out.

Purpose of Agreement
Why the parties are entering into the agreement. This helps a court interpret ambiguous clauses in line with the parties' actual intent.
Products or Services
The goods or services supplied, identified by specification, model or catalogue reference.
Performance Standards
The measurable standard the work must meet — response times, quality levels or service metrics.

Payment and financial terms

Tie each payment to something observable — a delivered subscribed seat, a date, or each service period — rather than to a general sense that enough has been done.

Commercial Terms
The core business terms — volumes, discounts, rebates, minimum commitments and review points.
Pricing
The unit prices or rate card, plus how and when prices may be revised.
Payment Terms
The invoicing cycle, payment window, accepted methods and consequences of non-payment.
Limitation of Liability
The cap on each party's financial exposure. Note that liability for fraud, death or personal injury generally cannot be excluded.

Dates, timing and duration

Use calendar dates, not relative triggers. "On approval" cannot be located on a calendar, which means it cannot be used to show that anyone is late.

Effective Date
The date the agreement takes effect. This can differ from the signature date, and it is the date obligations start running from.
Delivery Timeline
Lead times and delivery windows, plus what counts as a late delivery and the remedy for it.

Confidentiality and intellectual property

State the territory, media, term and exclusivity of anything licensed. An unbounded licence is a transfer that was priced as a licence.

Confidentiality Obligations
The duty to keep information private, who it may be shared with internally, and the standard of care required.
Intellectual Property Rights
Who owns the IP created under the agreement, and what licence the other party receives.

Legal protections and risk

These are the clauses nobody reads until something goes wrong, at which point they are the only clauses that matter.

Warranties
The promises each party makes about quality, title and authority, and how long they last.
Termination Rights
The circumstances in which each party may end the agreement, distinguishing termination for convenience from termination for breach.
Governing Law
The legal system that applies and the courts that will hear any dispute.

Completing this service level agreement

Filling in every blank

Unfilled placeholders are read against whoever produced the document. If a field genuinely does not apply, write "not applicable" rather than leaving a gap.

Making the counts checkable

Where the price depends on subscribed seats, keep a contemporaneous record as they are delivered. A count reconstructed at invoice time invites a challenge that a running record would have prevented.

Not stopping at each service period

Export of the customer's data when the subscription ends continues past that point. Give it its own clause, because obligations that are merely assumed to survive often do not.

Getting the numbers right

Write key figures out in full where the amount is central, and state the currency if either party is outside the country. Both are cheap precautions against an expensive misunderstanding on a service level agreement.

Describing the service

The strongest version of this service level agreement describes the service in terms someone outside the deal could check — quantities, subscribed seats, dates and standards. Write it so a reader who was not in the room can tell whether it has been done.

Common mistakes to avoid

  1. Copying an agreement without changing the substance. The structure travels between deals. The description of the service, the money and the dates do not — and those are precisely the clauses that get litigated.
  2. Not planning for an auto-renewal that rolled over because nobody diarised the notice date. This is the failure that recurs in this kind of arrangement. Name it in the agreement and say who carries the cost when it happens, because working it out afterwards means negotiating from a weak position.
  3. Silence on who carries the risk. Decide before each service period, not after, which side bears loss or damage and who insures it. Once something has gone wrong, both parties read the silence in their own favour.
  4. Using approximate dates. Use calendar dates rather than triggers like "on approval" or "once ready". A date that cannot be located on a calendar cannot be used to show that someone is late.
  5. Pricing without a unit. Quote against a defined number of subscribed seats. Where the price is a single figure covering an undefined quantity, every additional request looks free to the customer and unpaid to the provider.

How to use this service level agreement generator

  1. Fill in the form. Complete the 18 fields above. The provider and the customer both need naming in full, and the service should be described in enough detail that a stranger could tell whether it had been delivered. Nothing is sent to a server — the document is assembled in your browser.
  2. Read the preview. Scan the preview for anything left blank or approximate. Dates, amounts and the description of the service are the entries that get tested.
  3. Download and sign. Download in either format and circulate for signature. Diarise the dates the document creates, particularly anything that has to happen before each service period.

Service Level Agreement — frequently asked questions

What is the difference between an SLA response time and resolution time?

Response time is how quickly the provider acknowledges and begins work on an issue; resolution time is how long until it is fixed. Only response time is genuinely within a provider's control, which is why credible agreements guarantee response firmly and treat resolution as a target that varies by severity and cause.

What usually goes wrong with a service level agreement?

Auto-renewal that rolled over because nobody diarised the notice date. It is the recurring failure in this kind of arrangement, and it is rarely addressed in the document because both sides assume it will not happen to them. Name it, say who bears the cost, and the negotiation happens now rather than from a weak position later.

When is a service level agreement treated as complete?

At each service period — but only if the document says what has to be true for that point to have been reached and who confirms it. Without a test, the provider considers the obligation discharged while the customer is still waiting, and neither reading is unreasonable on the wording.

Which state's law should govern this service level agreement?

Choose a state with a genuine connection to the parties or the subject matter — where a party is based, or where the work or property is located. A choice with no connection at all may not be respected, and for property or employment the local state's rules will often apply regardless of what the contract says.

Who owns the work produced under this agreement?

Whoever the agreement says owns it — and if it says nothing, the creator generally does. Paying for work does not transfer copyright by itself. If ownership is meant to pass to the client, the assignment clause needs to say so expressly, and it is common to make the transfer conditional on payment in full.

How long do the confidentiality obligations last?

Ordinary commercial information is usually protected for a fixed period of two to five years after the agreement ends, while genuine trade secrets are often protected for as long as they stay secret. Whichever you choose, state expressly that the confidentiality clause survives termination — otherwise the protection ends with the contract.

Can liability be limited to any amount?

Within limits. Parties can cap ordinary commercial liability, and a cap set against contract value or insurance cover is normal. But liability for fraud, death and personal injury generally cannot be excluded, and a cap so low it makes the obligations meaningless may be struck down as unreasonable.

Does a business contract need to be signed by a director?

It needs to be signed by someone with authority to bind the entity. For a company that is typically a director or an officer with delegated authority; for an LLC, a manager or authorised member. If you are unsure, ask for evidence of authority before relying on the signature.