Commercial Support

xerovis · Nov 5, 2008, 12:26 PM

Hi,

I am wondering what the commercial support from pfsense is like? Has anyone had any experiences with it? Is it worth the money?

I am a little worried about purchasing the support because the support on the forums seems very thin….. I have posted a number of questions and put plenty of information in them to have none of them answered. I don't want to have the same experience with the paid support.....

mhab12 · Nov 5, 2008, 4:03 PM

I think the reason that some of your prior posts went unanswered is that most people here in the forums do not feel that PPTP is the best VPN solution available through pfSense and therefore don't use it.

I would give commercial support a try, I'm sure they would work something out with you if you truly believed that they were unable to help you.

Guest · Nov 5, 2008, 6:29 PM

As I work for Centipede Networks, realize that my post is somewhat biased. I can say that over the past year, we have helped a great many commercial support customers. There have been several comments on the mailing lists from satisfied commercial support customers relating their experiences.

cybrsrfr · Nov 5, 2008, 11:53 PM

First off I will tell you that I don't work for paid support (Centipede).

Online support is done as time permits for those that know how to help you. When online support fails to bring you a result. Paid support will get you help when you need it.

Paid support helped me with a difficult challenge I came across when running pfSense in front of a wi-fi provider. The support I received was so good that it surprised me. My requirements were complex so they setup a test in a lab. After it worked successfully in the lab they gave me simple instructions to set it up in the field. I followed the instructions and the system has run perfectly since.

xerovis · Nov 10, 2008, 12:07 AM

Thanks mhab12, I appreciate the feedback about PPTP. This would have been appreciated in my posts (from anyone) and then I would have gone off and tried something else. What is a better option?

Thank you for all of your feedback, I will get the commercial support and hope for the best!

cybrsrfr · Nov 10, 2008, 5:09 PM

I use PPTP on many systems because it is quick and easy. It is not the highest security VPN option for that I use OpenVPN.

robertfranz · Mar 21, 2009, 12:33 AM

I know this is an old topic - but since it's where I looked first - someone else with the same question may as well.

I'm curious how the paid support hours are computed.

Is it strictly time-on-phone, do you have a standard time slot for certain things as would an auto mechanic?

If I ask a question that takes a fair bit of research, is that going to blow through my hours?

Our accountant has no objection to support contracts, but I need to set expectations.

And, of course - is there a significant benefit to purchasing support even though I haven't needed it yet?

Perry · Mar 21, 2009, 1:03 AM

https://portal.pfsense.org/index.php/support-subscription

Guest · Mar 22, 2009, 5:55 PM

We're typically very fair about how we charge against the hours. If the ticket requires a fair bit of research and bug fixing, no we don't charge you for the hours. A recent notable example involves a customer who came across a really nasty bug with the mobile IPSEC code. CMB and a couple of the developers have put approximately 30 hours into diagnosing, coding and testing the fixes, but the customer hasn't been charged anything like that. We only assign time to a customer's account if we're actually working directly for the customer during that time.

The other side of that, however, is that if the customer expects a support technician to be on the phone with them the entire time, while they try and figure out a completely unrelated problem, then yes, that time will get charged. To date, we've had a great track record with very satisfied customers and as far as I know, we've not had to refund a single customer based on a quality of service complaint.