The 5 SaaS Clauses That Will Haunt You

Most SaaS contracts seem harmless.

Until you realize “99.9% uptime” means nearly 9 hours of annual silence… and that clause you skimmed about “reasonable support response” is vendor-speak for “we’ll get back to you eventually.”

This guide is for every procurement or legal team who’s been burned by a SaaS contract that looked fine… until it wasn’t.

Let’s break down the five most important clauses in any SaaS contract—and why getting them wrong can cost you more than just budget.

1. The SLA: Where Uptime Promises Go to Die

What’s “normal”?
Most vendors toss in a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Sounds good? That’s nearly 9 hours of downtime per year. High-stakes SaaS? Push for 99.99%. Every minute matters.

Watch out for:

• “Exclusions” that cover just about everything (cloud provider failures, scheduled maintenance, planetary alignments…)

• Support response times that say “reasonable” without ever defining it

Mitigation tactics:

• Demand clarity: actual numbers for uptime, response time, and penalties

• Limit the vendor’s get-out-of-jail-free cards for downtime