• What happened to free support?
• How many, and what kind of support subscriptions do I need?

The long answer is that we found -- over the past 3 years -- that 10% of our customers required 90% of our support resources. Since our products are already very agressively priced, the remaining 90% of our customers who did not require more than occasional support were paying the freight for those who made extensive use of our free support policy.

As a result, we've changed the way we do support in the following ways:

• Obviously, the first change is that technical support is no longer free.
  All customers have a 30-day 'grace' period, during which they may submit as many support requests as they like, without charge. The 30-day period begins on the date of the first support incident submission. After the 30-days are up, customers must purchase a support subscription to continue receiving product support.
  
  
• Software-product pricing has been reduced.
  As a result of implementing a paid-support program, we've reduced the base-price of our software products to un-bundle the product support costs that were previously built into the price of the products.
  
  
• We have introduced multiple levels of support.
  Our previous support program made no distinction between 'heavy' and 'light' customer support requirements. Under the new structure, customers now have the option of purchasing support plans that are:
  1. specific to the product they have purchased (e.g., Professional or Standard), and
  2. reflective of the level of support they anticipate they'll need.
  
  We now offer Business Hours Support for those customers who are not using our products in mission-critical environments, as well as 24 x 7 Support for those customers who rely on our products for critical functions in their business. Our Enterprise-level support program is designed for those customers who want the assurance that they're getting the absolute highest level of support availble for our products.
  
  
• We have distinguished Software-Product from Service-Product support.
  Our prior support model allowed service-product licensees to obtain technical support from the same support-pool that was responsible for providing software-product support. Under the new model, service-product licensees have dedicated account contacts. Similarly, all software-product licensee incident submissions are now handled by a seperate, dedicated staff.
  
  
• We have confined phone-support to our 24 x 7 and Enterprise Support Subscribers.
  In the past, telephone support has been available to all customers, but we found that we were answering the same questions over and over. As a result, we've created the online Support Knowledge Base which has been populated with many of the common (and some not-so-common) questions that our customers are likely to have. And, unlike our support staff, access to the knowledge base is available 24 hours a day.
  Back To Top
  
  

• The number of individuals who are permitted to submit support incidents
  Our support plans are tied to each subscriber's e-mail address. As a result, any incident resolutions will be sent to the address of record -- or the e-mail address that was originally entered when the support subscription was purchased. In addition, each support subscription is assigned a unique subscription ID, which is also tied to the subscribers e-mail address. So, if you're comfortable sending all of your support requests through one individual in your organization (not recommended) then you may only need a single support subscription. Also, only the e-mail address of record will receive notifications of product updates and/or available patches.
  
  
• The product(s) for which you need support
  Our support subscriptions are segregated by product-classes. They are
  1. 'Standard Edition'-branded products;  (any product bearing the "Standard Edition" marking)
  2. 'Professional Edition'-branded products;  (any product bearing the "Professional Edition" marking)
  3. 'Enterprise Edition'-branded products;  (any product bearing the "Enterprise Edition" marking)
  4. 'VAR Edition'-branded products;  (any product bearing the "VAR or OEM Edition" marking)
  5. 24 x 7  (Available for all products)
  As a result, in order to obtain support for a product that is branded "Professional Edition", you must purchase either the "Professional Business-Hours" subscription, or the "Professional 24 x 7" subscription.
  
  
• The level of support that you require.
  The level and quality of support is consistent throughout all of the support plans that we offer. However, the methods of contact differ significantly. For example, subscribers of the Standard Business Hours or Professional Business Hours support plans do not have access to telephone support; whereas Enterprise subscribers do. Similarly, Standard subscribers do not have access to subscriber-downloads that are specific to Professional subscribers.

  To put it in terms of increasing levels of 'privileges', our support plans are:

  1. Standard Business Hours
  2. Professional Business Hours
  3. Standard 24 x 7 (determined by product license)
  4. Professional 24 x 7 (determined by product license)
  5. Enterprise
  6. VAR
  Please see the Support Plan Comparison Chart for more information.