Day 30: Maintenance and Support

This is our final blog post in our step-by-step series and is a continuation of licensing which we discussed yesterday. If you purchase a new license, one year of “Maintenance and Support” is always included. Now maintenance and support is not exactly the same but somehow related.

Let’s have a look at support first.

Support

No software is ever bug free. We give our best, but it’s simply not feasible to test all possible combinations of hard- and software. One day a problem can arise that you can not solve yourself. You need support.

We provide support in two areas: Forum support and ticket support.

Forum support

Forum support is free. Everybody can post an issue in the forums to get help. You do not need to have a licensed edition. Other users with experience will be there and provide additional support. Use the forums to discuss typical application problems. Use the forums to discuss your ideas for further development. If you ask yourself “How do I connect a computer to my server?” or “Why does my server immediately resume from standby?”, then use the forums.

Forums are not the best choice if you have an individual issue. Forums are not the best choice to publish log files with private or personal data.

Ticket support

Ticket based support is only available for licensed editions with valid “maintenance and support”. This is true for the first year, because each new license includes one. If you like to get support after this first year, purchase yearly maintenance. As proof of purchase please add your order number to the ticket.

Your tickets are only visible to the support team and you. So, you can share log files and other personal data.

Maintenance

We will publish new releases throughout the year. These are either bug fix releases, like 2.0.1 (scheduled for this week end) or versions with new features. If you have a perpetual license for version 2, you can update and install 2.1 or 2.2 at no charge.

In addition to minor releases we have major releases. Major releases include brand new features and are planned once a year. If you have active maintenance, you can install new major versions without the need for a new license.

Conclusion

Maintenance and support are an annual paid service, the license itself is perpetual. That’s the long answer to yesterday’s questions: “Do I have to pay each year again?”.

If you missed the expiration date of maintenance and support, you can still buy one or more additional years within one year after expiration. The new maintenance is always added to the end of the last maintenance and support period. Example: Maintenance expired November 11, 2016. You extend your maintenance on February 15, 2017 and get a new end of November 11, 2017.

Summary

Dear readers we’re done. Thanks for following us over the last 30 days. We hope you enjoyed the step-by-step series and learned something new.

Wishing you and yours a happy holiday season, and all the best in the coming year!
Martin