Support response times
How soon we usually reply to a ticket at each priority, which priority to pick, and what moves a ticket up the queue.
Every ticket has a priority you pick when you open it, and each priority has a response target: how soon we aim to reply after your latest message. The ticket's page says it ("We usually reply within a day"). They're targets, not guarantees.
Targets by priority
| Priority | Pick it for | We usually reply within |
|---|---|---|
| Urgent | A production server is down | 2 hours |
| High | Something important isn't working | 8 hours |
| Normal | Most questions and problems | a day |
| Low | A question, no rush | 2 days |
The clock starts at your latest message, so a reply from you after ours starts it again. Tickets past their target are marked in our queue, and we work through those first.
Picking a priority
- Urgent is for an outage that's hurting you now: a server that won't boot, a site that's down for your customers. Please don't use it for questions; it moves urgent tickets from other people down.
- High fits a broken feature you rely on, or a problem that will become urgent soon (a disk nearly full, a renewal that won't go through).
- Normal is right for almost everything else.
- Low is for "how do I…" and requests that can wait, like a custom setup or a reverse DNS change for next week.
You can't change a ticket's priority yourself after opening it. If things get worse, say so in a reply: we see every reply, and we can move the ticket up.
While you wait
- Check rack4.io/status. If the problem is ours and we know about it, it's posted there, with updates as we have them.
- Add anything new to the same ticket rather than opening another one, files included: screenshots and logs can go on any reply. Each new ticket starts at the back of the queue.
- If it's a server that won't respond, the unreachable checklist has things to try, and the serial console works even when the network doesn't.
When we reply, we email you, and the panel's bell shows it. You can answer from the email itself; see Reply by email.
When a ticket waits on you
After we reply, the ticket waits on you. If we don't hear back, we email a reminder after 3 days, and close the ticket after 7 (at least a day after the reminder). When we reply but keep looking into something, the ticket stays waiting on us instead, and never closes by itself.
Reply within 14 days of a ticket closing and it opens again, with a few exceptions (an abuse report, a ticket we closed for good, or one already reopened 3 times); otherwise open a follow-up from its page. Reopen a closed ticket has the details.