Maintenance and Support Policy

1. Support channels

Support is provided through the client portal ticket system, which is the primary and recommended channel because it maintains a complete history and audit trail.

Email to [email protected] creates a ticket automatically. Telephone support is available to clients on managed IT and enterprise support plans.

2. Support hours

Standard support hours are Monday to Friday, 8:00am to 6:00pm Eastern Time, excluding United States federal holidays.

Extended and 24/7 coverage is available as an add-on on managed IT, monitoring and enterprise support plans.

3. Priority definitions

Urgent — production system unavailable, or a security incident in progress. Business is materially halted.

High — major function unavailable or significantly degraded, with no practical workaround.

Normal — a function is impaired but a workaround exists, or a non-blocking defect affects usability.

Low — cosmetic issues, questions, documentation requests and enhancement suggestions.

We assign priority on the operational impact described, and will discuss it with you if our assessment differs from yours.

4. Response targets

Urgent: one business hour to first response, with continuous effort until resolved or a workaround is in place.

High: four business hours to first response.

Normal: one business day to first response.

Low: three business days to first response.

These are response targets, not resolution guarantees. Resolution time depends on cause and complexity, and we keep you informed throughout.

5. What maintenance includes

Defect diagnosis and correction within the supported scope.

Dependency and framework version currency, including security patching.

Uptime and error monitoring with incident response.

Minor enhancements within the plan hour allowance where applicable.

Periodic technical review and a prioritised improvement backlog.

Monthly reporting on tickets, changes and platform health.

6. What maintenance excludes

New feature development beyond the plan allowance, which is quoted separately or drawn from retainer hours.

Failures in third-party services outside our control, though we will assist with diagnosis and vendor liaison.

Issues caused by modifications made by others without our review.

Training beyond what is included in the plan.

Data entry, content updates and routine administrative operation of the system.

7. Retainer hours

Retainers reserve senior engineering capacity monthly. Unused hours roll forward one month and then expire, because the reservation carries cost whether or not it is consumed.

Where work exceeds the allowance, we notify you before proceeding and agree whether to draw forward, add hours or defer.

8. Supporting software we did not build

We support third-party and inherited applications after a handover assessment of the codebase, infrastructure and documentation.

We report honestly on supportability. Where the code is in a state we cannot responsibly support, we say so and propose remediation rather than accepting a retainer we cannot honour.

9. End of support

Either party may end a maintenance arrangement with 30 days' written notice.

On termination we provide handover documentation, current dependency status and access transfer so another party can assume support.