Support Services

Maintenance - "Your System Essentials"

‘Maintenance’ is provided by Audienceware as a managed service under the 'Your System Essentials' subscription plan, featuring:

  • Updates
    • Minor updates to existing CMS codebase, plugins, CiviCRM and extensions
    • Also known as ‘Patches’ these updates are typically minor modifications to existing programs
  • Upgrade
    • 1 Major upgrade per year, often a ‘replacement’ of the existing program, likely to be accompanied by changes in features, often requiring additional upgrades to dependent extensions and server software
  • Backup and Restore
    • Daily database backups to AWS S3
    • Restoration/roll back as required
  • Disaster Recovery
    • Server volume snapshots
    • Recovery of data from archives
  • Cloudfront and WAF
    • Implementation of AWS Cloudfront CDN (content Delivery Network) for improved website content delivery performance
    • AWS WAF (Web Access Firewall) for network level security and bot protection
  • 24/7 Support
    • Server and Website Monitoring, automatic intervention
    • Out of hours response for urgent issues (server outages etc)

Maintenance charges are to be advised by the Account Management team with consideration for the following factors

  • No of CMS instances
  • No of CiviCRM instances
  • Customisation, non standard features
  • Advanced custom features - complex tailored solutions
  • Other client specific requirements

Assumptions

  • To qualify to a standard maintenance plan, the system must be able to be updated or upgraded using the standard methodology as defined by the software developers
  • Highly customised or out of date systems may require significant modification in order to be compatible with an update or upgrade
  • In such cases, a ‘Project’ may be required to modify or fully redevelop a feature separately in order to re-qualify as a ‘standard’ site eligible for maintenance

Hosting

Hosting is provided as a managed service on the AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud platform, the costs for which are a function of the following:

  • Server Cost, based on CPU and Memory
  • Disk space
  • Backup and storage space
  • Additional services as applicable

Our pricing for maintenance is determined by the size of server required to meet performance standards for clients applications as indicated by the number of contacts (civiCRM)

  • Shared Hosting - up to 5000 contacts
  • Small Server - up to 20,000 contacts
  • Large Server - up to 100,000 contacts

Your organisation may also be eligible for Amazon Web Services Credits Program for Nonprofits, which can significantly reduce hosting costs. 

Support - "Your System Plus"

Designed in response to client feedback, this plan enables you to provide a clear budget to your Board or Executive while giving you the capacity as a manager to schedule training, technical development, and support without the pressure of a monthly use-it-or-lose-it contract.

Features:

  • Easy, even, monthly payments
  • Accrual of unused hours throughout the contract period
  • Quarterly review and guidance sessions with Audienceware to help you get the best value and proactively identify system improvements

Services Include:

  • Tasks performed through the user interface that you may not have internal capacity to implement. Just a few examples are: uploading content, images, and data; adjusting website design elements; creating users, custom fields, or forms for surveys and events.
  • Tasks requiring backend solutions that Audienceware technical team will perform in order to ensure the security of your system, for example installation of extensions and plug-ins.
  • Introductory and bespoke training for your staff, which can be learn-as-you-do sessions upon request.

How It Works:

  • We will work with you to determine a monthly allocation of “Plus” hours for inclusion in your  flat monthly rate
  • We will set aside technical and training team capacity each month to provide your “Plus” hours for planned development tasks or training,  or in response to your support requirements as they arise; 
  • Subject to scheduling, unused hours can be used later within the period of your contract, or banked for use towards achievement of a project (Projects are described in level 2 below) 
  • You will be able to track actual use of the Your System Plus component of your subscription use a tracking report that we will update each month to show hours used and hours accrued; 
  • A senior Audienceware consultant will meet with you every three months to review use of your subscription and provide guidance to help you get best value and to help us plan to have technical and training capacity available when you need it

 

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