1. What's covered
This commitment covers the redirect service: opening an SHCD.US short link, or a link on a connected branded domain, and being sent to its destination (or to its password, expiry or fallback page). That's the part your printed codes depend on.
The dashboard, API, QR generator, analytics and merch shop are important too, and we work to keep them up, but they aren't part of the uptime commitment.
2. The commitment
| Plan | Monthly uptime | Service credits |
|---|---|---|
| Starter (free) | 99.9% target | None |
| Pro | 99.9% target | None |
| Business | 99.9% committed | Yes, see below |
| Agency | 99.9% committed | Yes, see below |
Monthly uptime is the share of minutes in a calendar month during which the redirect service answered correctly, measured by our external monitoring from more than one location. A minute counts as down if most checks in that minute failed.
3. Service credits (Business and Agency)
| Monthly uptime | Credit (% of that month's fee) |
|---|---|
| Below 99.9% but at least 99.0% | 10% |
| Below 99.0% but at least 95.0% | 25% |
| Below 95.0% | 50% |
To claim, email hello@shcd.us within 30 days of the end of the affected month with the dates and times you saw problems. Credits are applied to your next invoice, can't be exchanged for cash, and are capped at 50% of the month's fee. For annual plans, the monthly fee is one-twelfth of the yearly price. Service credits are your sole remedy for missing the uptime commitment.
4. What doesn't count as downtime
- Scheduled maintenance announced at least 48 hours ahead, totalling no more than 4 hours a month, and scheduled outside US business hours. Maintenance during which redirects keep working isn't downtime at all.
- Problems with your branded domain's DNS, or DNS changes you or your provider made.
- Links that were disabled under the Acceptable Use Policy, or are expired, time-gated or password-protected by your own settings.
- Your destination website being down. We'll send people there; we can't make it load.
- Problems caused by the scanner's network, device or a third-party QR scanner app.
- Events outside our reasonable control, such as major internet or cloud-provider outages, natural disasters, or attacks we couldn't reasonably prevent.
- Accounts that are suspended or behind on payment.
5. When something breaks
If the redirect service is degraded, we'll email Business and Agency account owners about the incident, and send a short write-up of what happened and what we changed afterwards.
6. Support
| Plan | Channel | First response |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | Best effort | |
| Pro | Within 2 business days | |
| Business | Within 1 business day | |
| Agency | Priority email | Within 4 business hours |
Business hours are 9 AM to 6 PM US Eastern, Monday to Friday, excluding US federal holidays. Reports of phishing or malware on an SHCD.US link are handled around the clock, on every plan, at shcd.us/report.
7. Your codes outlive your plan
Downgrading or cancelling never switches off codes you've already printed. They keep redirecting on the free plan, as described in our Terms.