I'm grappling with a discussion about the costs of supporting drupal vs. proprietary solutions. Some say that there are steep hidden costs in supporting Drupal, and that a proprietary solution is cheaper overall because it comes with that guarantee of up time, and packaged support.
Does anyone know of a firm doing 24 hour remote LAMP/Drupal support? I put a request into Acquia but have not heard back yet. Are there any Philadelphia region firms willing to offer this kind of after hours support to help guarantee up time? I don't believe this would be a service utilized frequently, but I can tell you its something that will be required for Drupal to succeed here. Upper management needs that assurance that there will be substantial support in a crisis, and this can't all fall on myself or my team internally. The 24 hour aspect of this is paramount.
Chris
Comments
Chris, Do web shops offering
Chris,
Do web shops offering proprietary solutions offer 24 hour support? I know a lot of web hosts do, but I wasn't aware of developers or web shops that do.
In fact, for a number of the proprietary sites that I've converted to Drupal, the client was frustrated by the lack of support -- not that they weren't available 24 hours, but that they would take days to return a call.
If it's just in case of emergencies, you can probably easily find a Drupal Consultant, or a few of them, willing to be on-call 24 hours, in exchange for a monthly retainer or a higher hourly rate for those calls between 7pm and 7am.
Sam
NMS: Drupal Training & Services
www.new-media-solutions.com/drupal-training
Greater Philadelphia Drupal Meetup
www.meetup.com/drupaldelphia
Acquia
Acquia is one of the few that I talked to offers 24/7 support. They ask $8k/year for one server, and significantly more for more servers. I've actively been in talks with them for a while, as well as with our own management, but we haven't been able to justify the cost, even with a large group of Drupal users on campus.
So far, we have set up a high availability Drupal install with failover, and I'm stuck providing support to administrators while doing development. You are in education right? What's the use case for 24/7? We offer support during business hours unless it is something critical, but that typically just means hardware failures. Most of the rest we can unload on student assistants, or at least that is the theory.
Drupal evangelist.
www.CoderintheRye.com
24x7 Drupal Support from Acquia
I work on the sales team at Acquia and apologize for the slow response to @hunt3r. It's unlike the sales team here to be slow in getting back to people. We are in touch with hunt3r now...
We do offer 24x7 support that is included in our Enterprise package. The support option paired with Acquia hosting is becoming a lot more attractive to people because they indirectly receive LAMP stack support through hosting. Since, its a fully managed, high available offering, customers don't have to worry about even touch or thinking about the hosting configuration. It also goes nicely with our remote administration package where we manage all Drupal module updates, security patches, and minor tweaks to the site.
Universities are also leveraging subscriptions through our Acquia Network and receive the following electronic services:
o Acquia Search
o Heartbeat monitoring
o Remote cron activation
o Mollom spam blocking
o Software update management
o Code modification detection
o System profile management
o Site usage statistics
o Online documentation
In response to @nowarninglabel, I would say 24x7 Drupal support is valuable for after business hours. Especially if issues, malicious attacks, or site crashes arise over the weekend, then 24x7 Drupal support would kick into play. In comparison, our Professional level provides support from 8am to 8pm only on weekdays, which is perfect for less critical applications.
Either way, customers have access to unlimited tickets in Acquia's Technical Assistance Center. Imagine being able to shoot questions to our team whenever you have a question, issue, or want advisory support, for say...choosing the right module. We have this because we believe maintaining a continual conversation is more helpful than just limiting users.
If anyone has more specific questions or would like to learn more in general...please feel free to reach me on email (alex@acquia.com) or my direct line (978-289-4267).
Alex Lindahl
Acquia, Inc.
alex@acquia.com
978-289-4267
Twitter: @AlexLindahl
Blogs:
http://www.cleaneconomies.com
http://www.collegemogul.com
http://www.alexlindahl.com
I found Acquia's pricing to
I found Acquia's pricing to be inaccessible for a small business and/or education group with limited funding. I, too, would love to find someone I could pay a retainer to to be able ask questions and/or buy a certain amount of support a month from.
There are plenty of Drupal
There are plenty of Drupal freelancers out there who would be happy to work with you in this way -- and many won't ask for a retainer fee.
I'd suggest just posting something explaining what you are looking for -- I'm sure you will get many responses.
I'll also offer the advice that the easiest way to evaluate who to hire is to primarily look at what sites they've built and what clients they currently support.
NMS: Drupal Training & Services
www.new-media-solutions.com/drupal-training
Greater Philadelphia Drupal Meetup
www.meetup.com/drupaldelphia
We offer support to our
We offer support to our clients on a per / hour base. Unused hours go into development or consulting for the same clients. So there is never a hole between the paid amount and used support.
Usually the support costs between 70 and 510 € per month. Depending on the environment / solution / requirements of course. But we are quite flexible :)
Feel free to contact us.
or call +43 676 400 87 80
Twitter: @segments
Skype: segments.at
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Drupal Development by Trio Interactive
We offer 24/7 managed hosting
We offer 24/7 managed hosting at http://dripdrophosting.com to guarantee uptime and can arrange 24/7 code-level support as well at http://origineight.net. And we have a fast response rate during business hours, too.
sethviebrock.com