Comments on: Announcing pfSense Commercial Support

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:05:00 +0000

Just put in a PO — my company (at my instigation) is actually using pfSense in production and this will be fantastic

By: Adrian

Adrian — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:10:00 +0000

I trully hope this will bring more $$ into the dev pockets as this is one of the BEST firewall/router projects out there. The other one that comes to mind is DD-WRT. I would love to features from both projects be exchanged in between

Anyways, this is a great decision ! Goog luck !

Adi

By: Chris Buechler

Chris Buechler — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 04:26:00 +0000

I think I covered everything in my last post. The response times are strictly guarantees, you can expect much faster typical responses, especially for severe issues (which will be addressed immediately). We can't contractually guarantee we'll jump right on minor issues when it's possible we're working on some significant problems for others.

We plan to revise that as we get a better feel for how this is going to work, and in the short term need to work on clarifying those terms.

Additional feedback welcome, either here or via email (cbuechler@gmail.com).

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:29:00 +0000

Good luck guys! You guys deserve to succeed with this business venture! Me and a bud from work are constantly promoting you guys, so we’ll get your name out there ever more! again fella’s, good luck!

By: Chris Buechler

Chris Buechler — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 17:47:00 +0000

Brian, we appreciate the feedback. Much of it is us needing to clarify certain things.

First, the business hours are strictly the hours the call center is staffed. If a customer wants to make a change after hours and have support available, they just need to let us know in advance. We hope eventually we’ll have the customer base to support a 24 hour call center, but at this point the goal is to support the project, not burn cash like a 1999 dot com.

Also, the live chat and web ticket system will be staffed on most all days for long after business hours, including weekends. But we don’t have the resources to guarantee longer availability.

The response times are largely the same. We’re guaranteeing that response time as the maximum. In reality, it should rarely take more than a couple hours to get a response. We’ll prioritize by severity, so critical problems will be addressed immediately, while less time sensitive issues will take longer for response.

writing this from my mobile, will post back later for further clarification when I get back to my PC.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:16:00 +0000

I think you have a great product and have started down the right road; however, don't expect to draw many support contracts given the current offerings. Having a 'premium' support which does not offer after hours support (when most changes are made and fixes are implemented) seems like a limiting factor. Additionally, the best SLA of one business day turn around (for response) seems long. Additionally, what defines a business day? Maybe put someone ‘on call’ for after hours response (1 hour SLA) and bump your pricing (and SLA) on premium accounts. I wouldn’t pay for your premium offering at current as there is little ‘value add’, but with the suggested changes I would pay double the current requested amount for the peace of mind it would provide.

Again you have a great product and are on the correct path. This was just constructive criticism.

Brian

By: kev009

kev009 — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 04:06:00 +0000

Congrats guys, I hope the company and yourselves prosper. Close commercial development and support of open source products has historically proven very beneficial to everyone (PHP, Xen, *SQL, etc). It lets the apps be used in markets previously not reachable, and of course puts hackers on the product for a full work week!