We provide professional support for our knowledge base software directly. We don't outsource. We provide an initial 12 months of free basic technical support from the date of purchase to all customers of our knowledge base software via our web-based ticketing system in the customer area. This can be renewed for a nominal renewal fee from the customer area.
What is supported?
We provide technical support for:
- How-to and feature related questions for the PHPKB edition you have purchased.
- Basic usage questions and troubleshooting unexpected behavior for documented features.
- Technical issues and defects where the product you purchased has been identified as the cause by a support engineer.
- Errors in documentation and official technical support materials as available from our website.
- Installation and/or upgrade related issues and defects.
- Product runtime and operation errors or failures (not including those produced by Apache, IIS, MySQL, etc).
- Only basic questions for interoperability with third party products, such as 3rd party HelpDesk and CRM Systems.
- Problems with license keys as a result of upgrading or changing servers.
What is not supported?
We do not provide technical support for:
- Issues with or usage of software outside of the product you purchased (such as creating FTP accounts, repairing corrupt database tables, etc).
- Database integrity or database performance issues, including database optimization and tuning.
- Configuration/installation of PHP, Apache, IIS, MySQL, MS SQL Server, etc.
- Products where code has been customized, regardless of whether the change was minor in nature or not.
- Data migration, database backups or repair of corrupt database.
- Enabling/disabling PHP settings on your web server.
- Debugging of mail servers or mail server configurations.
- Issues experienced in non-supported server or client environments.
- Network configuration or deployment.
- Products which have not been updated to the latest version.
Software Maintenance Period
- Software maintenance covers access to any support and software product updates for your software licence.
- All purchases include a 12 month maintenance period which can optionally be extended during or after purchase for an additional 12 or 24 months.
- You can renew your maintenance period from the customer's area.
- After your software maintenance period expires, you will no longer be able to access support, re-license the software or software updates (including security patches).
- You are not under any obligation to renew your software maintenance period if product support or software updates are no longer required.
- We will always email you 30, 15, 7, 3, and 1 day(s) before your maintenance period expires with the option to renew from our website.
Supported Products & Versions
- We will provide support to you for our knowledge base product which was purchased directly from our website for which you hold a valid maintenance period.
- You agree to keep your installation of PHPKB knowledge base software up to date by regularly updating to the latest release available from the customer area. If your product is not running the latest release, you will be required to update before technical support will be provided.
- Our partners are required to contact our technical support department on behalf of their client. If your client contacts our technical support department directly their problem will not be investigated and you will need to resubmit the ticket on their behalf, as per the partner program agreement.
Extent of support
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We will perform tests in accordance with standard procedures as part of the troubleshooting process. At a minimum, we will:
- Gather as much information from the customer as is required to replicate the problem
- Confirm that the customer is entitled to technical support by verifying customer records and maintenance period in the database
- Identify the general area of the problem - configuration, FTP, bug, setting, user interface, general information, etc
- If a problem is identified with the product, fix it or escalate to an engineer for assistance
- Escalate the problem to level 2 support if necessary
- If we are unable to solve a customer's problem, the supported customer will be notified via e-mail. Notification will include a description of the problem and troubleshooting techniques used. This will include any escalation to engineers or developers for resolution or any recommendations made to the customer
- We will not support products during beta testing
- We will not resolve coding problems caused as a result of customer modifications to the source code
- We are not responsible for problems with third-party software that are not provided by us
Technical support
We agree to provide the following technical support services to our customers:
- Live chat and help desk support will be available during regular operating hours, currently 9AM - 6PM IST (GMT+5:30)
- Support staff will escalate critical issues, using ticketing system for level two support
- Technical support assistance will be made available only in the English language
Customer's maintenance obligations
You understand and acknowledge that in order for us to provide technical support services, you must provide the following:
- One contact who will be authorized to deal with our technical support team. You may change your representative from the customer area at any time.
- You will keep your installation of PHPKB knowledge base management software up to date by regularly updating to its latest release.
Issue types
For issues of a technical nature (i.e. problems identified with the product), there are 4 severity ratings:
- Level 1 - Low impact issue that causes no impact to the business, such as a spelling mistake or design error.
- Level 2 - Application issue that has moderate impact to the business, such as a reoccurring error or a low impact feature not functioning as expected.
- Level 3 - Serious degradation of application performance or functionality, such as extended page load times or moderate impact feature not functioning as expected.
- Level 4 - The application is down or experiencing a major malfunction, such as not being able to login or perform a main function as expected, such as adding an article to the knowledgebase or creating a user account.
- IMPORTANT: The customer area is the only official support channel for customers. While we may assist customers with issues on the live chat, a support ticket must be logged for any customer experiencing a problem which requires further investigation.
Escalation procedures
Following escalation procedures will be used for all issues submitted by customers through the customer area.
- If technical support is unable to resolve the customer's problem, it will be escalated to level two support
- If level two support is unable to fix the customer's problem, it will be escalated to a senior technician via a trouble ticket
- Upon escalation to a senior technician, and only when the problem can be replicated locally, has been determined to be a direct result of using the product in a normal manner and is of a critical nature (i.e. causing loss of revenue for customer), we will move to rectify the problem as soon as is humanly possible
Response times
While our technical support department does not operate on a time-sensitive service level agreement (SLA), we do endeavour to provide all customers with a time-to-resolution as close to zero as possible. Our technical support department in Jalandhar, Punjab (INDIA) operates between 9AM - 6PM IST (GMT+5:30) Monday to Saturday.
A general guideline for response time is shown below. All times assume the problem has been replicated locally by our technical support team first:
- Level 1 - 2 business hours
- Level 2 - 4 business hours
- Level 3 - 6 business hours
- Level 4 - 12 business hours
Updates to Our Support Policy
This support policy may be updated at any time and without notice. By purchasing our knowledge base software and agreeing to the license agreement which is made available before download, you also agree to be bound by any changes to the support policy as they take place and without notification.
Premium Support Subscription
Premium support is available within the customer area. Premium support tickets are sent directly to the technical support team allowing users to communicate directly with PHPKB staff to receive firsthand assistance with any problems or questions they may have regarding their PHPKB Software.
Each PHPKB Software license purchase includes a one year basic support subscription (without free updates) at no additional cost. Subscriptions can be renewed till 30 days of expiry (grace period). After end of grace period, renewal fees will incur a penalty charge as shown below. PHPKB Software License does not expire, only Upgrades & Support subscriptions require renewal.
Active Subscriptions: The annual subscription cost will be 20% of the software license cost or $135 USD (whichever is higher)
Expired Subscriptions: The annual subscription cost will be 30% the software license cost to reinstate support or $185 USD (whichever is higher)
NOTE: It is not possible to renew support subscription (even with penalty charge) if the previous subscription has expired 6 months ago.
Any Questions?
Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about our support policy and we will be happy to help.
