What “I respond” actually means
“Fast, personal support” is what everyone writes and nobody can be held to. These are the numbers, and they are terms of the contract.
They are the numbers a single operator can actually meet. I would rather hand you a target I hit every month than one that sounds better and fails the first time you need it.
Severity, and what each one gets
S1 — it is down, or your data is at risk
Mail not flowing, files unreachable, a suspected compromise, a failed disk.
Acknowledged within 2 hours between 08:00 and 22:00 CET, any day of the week. Work continues without interruption until it is resolved or downgraded. Outside those hours it is best effort — monitoring alerts me and I answer if I am awake.
S2 — something is degraded but you can work
One service slow or intermittent, a sync failing on one device, a feature not behaving.
Acknowledged the same working day, with a fix or a workaround within two.
S3 — questions and changes
A new account, a new device, a new service, “how do I…”.
Answered within two working days, scheduled with you if the work is larger.
You set the severity when you write to me. I will not quietly downgrade one to make a number look better; if I disagree I will say so and tell you why.
The rest of the commitments
Support hours: 08:00–22:00 CET, seven days. Outside them, monitoring still runs and still pages me; whether I answer depends on whether I am awake, and I will not pretend otherwise.
Planned maintenance: announced at least 7 days ahead, carried out between 06:00 and 08:00 CET, and expected to be invisible to you. Emergency security work can happen at any time; you are told within the hour.
Security updates: within 14 days. Vulnerabilities under active exploitation within 72 hours — see the security page.
Backups: nightly, offsite, restores tested twice a year with the result written into your report.
Incidents: you hear from me in writing within 24 hours of my becoming aware, and get a written report within 15 working days.
What is not covered
Stated so that it is never a surprise during an outage:
— Your own devices, and your home or office network.
— Your internet connection, and mine, beyond the failover I have committed to.
— Third-party services you keep outside this estate, and anything that depends on them.
— Data you delete yourself, beyond what the retention window holds.
— Recovering an account whose only key was yours and is now lost. That is the cost of my not holding it, and it is the trade you are buying.
If I miss these
Repeated failure to meet the S1 target is a breach of contract, and you can leave on it without notice and without penalty — taking your data, your domain and your hardware with you, exactly as described in if I stop. A service level with no consequence attached is a marketing sentence, not a commitment.