A Service Level Agreement (SLA) represents a contractual commitment from a technical or IT service provider to its client, guaranteeing a specific level of service. The terms and conditions of an SLA vary across industries and are of paramount importance in evaluating technology solution offerings. These agreements are frequently used in fields such as marketing technology (martech), online payment services, and SaaS software outside of marketing.

In these sectors, SLAs can encompass aspects such as application uptime (often set at 99.99%) and response times in milliseconds. For example, an e-commerce personalization platform might guarantee 99.99% server uptime with response times of 20 ms. It is crucial that the hosting of an e-commerce website meets the requirements specified in the SLA. In a more B2B marketing context, specific cases are sometimes mentioned.