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Improved support options for customers

Tagged as LightSpeed, MegaPack, Products, SimpleDB Management Tools, VS File Explorer, WPF Diagramming, WPF Elements, WPF Property Grid

Hand in hand with our recent volume discounts and LightSpeed 3.0 release we have started to put in place an improved support capability for customers who need priority support options or may occasionally want to escalate support beyond what we normally offer.

Tooting our own horn a little, we have had very positive feedback from many customers who have said our support is fantastic. We hope this addition helps us maintain end user happiness as we continue to grow and our support load scales up.

What is priority support?

Priority support is the option to ensure that your request is dealt with promptly, and is reviewed before and prioritised over normal forum posts. It is also useful for folks who wish to not use the forum which is quite open and may not be viable for talking about sensitive parts of a software system.

Can I use it for feature requests?

No, we still urge that feature requests be posted in the forums so that others may discuss them (and because we don’t think it’s fair to charge you for suggesting cool features!). Features are still only added to products at our discretion.

How much does priority support cost?

We have priced support at $199 USD per priority support issue OR at $499 for a 5 pack of support issues, a 50% saving. You will be able to see if you have support tickets in your store account page. We have been issuing 1 priority support ticket per customer to LightSpeed 3.0 customers and upgrading Enterprise Edition customers. For other products, we’re in the process of migrating Enterprise customers to have a priority ticket added to their account.

The pricing is designed to be very cost effective and is inexpensive compared to the support options offered for other software (for example, one commercial NHibernate support vendor quotes 600 Euro, approximately $870 USD, per incident for ad hoc support).

You can purchase Priority support tickets in our online store.

Do I need it? Should I put all my requests through priority support?

If you need a guaranteed response, or a quick response is crucial to you, or you don’t want to discuss your issue on the public forum, then you should put a request through priority support. The forum will still get monitored actively by Mindscape staff and questions will be answered, but there are no guarantees around response times (our response times have usually been pretty good, but never guaranteed!).

Priority support is for those times when you need additional help and you don’t want to rely on the forums. You are welcome to simply buy a support ticket as you need them for $199 USD however it may be wiser to simply purchase a 5 pack in order to save 50%.

If I’ve missed any questions you have then please post a comment – I’m happy to answer them :-)

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Posted by John-Daniel Trask on 15 December 2009

User feedback – what’s yours?

Tagged as LightSpeed, Products, SimpleDB Management Tools, VS File Explorer, WPF Diagramming, WPF Elements, WPF Property Grid

Omar, a recent new Mindscape customer and LightSpeed user has written a fantastic blog post about his impressions of Mindscape LightSpeed. We always appreciate when our users blog about their experiences with our products – it’s the best form of marketing that a small business can get when selling developer tools. If you write about LightSpeed do let us know, we all get a buzz out of seeing people enjoying our products.

A snippet from Omar’s LightSpeed Review reads:

LightSpeed has changed my mind on how good ORMs can be. The guys at Mindscape are so helpful and work with customers on personal basis and will always take the time to listen to your problems. The support is just great. While I am not saying that LightSpeed is the answer to every problem out there it is definitely a huge leap in the right direction. Keep doing what you do best Mindscape and keep the new functionalities and goodness flowing. If you got me to become an ORM user then I will go as far as saying “NHibernate, you loose”.

You can read the post in its entirety here.

We have always had some testimonials for LightSpeed on the site but have been slow to update that page or to post testimonials for other products (we do get them, we’re just quite busy! :-). So, in an attempt to remedy this situation and to make a bit more noise about the successes that our customers are having with our products we’re looking to publish case studies for users who wish to take part. This can be for any product that we have built – not just LightSpeed.

This is an opportunity to provide us with feedback on what we’re doing right and areas that we can improve. It’s also a good chance to publicize the products you’re building on Mindscape tools or to highlight your business to others looking at using Mindscape tools.

If you’re interested, get in touch by emailing jd@mindscape.co.nz and I’ll send you out a questionnaire that will act as the basis of a case study.

Thanks in advance!

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Posted by John-Daniel Trask on 10 March 2009

VS File Explorer Update

Tagged as General, Products, VS File Explorer

A quick message to those using the free Mindscape VS File Explorer, we have just released an updated version which you can download here: VSFileExplorer download page

There are no new features in this release however it does resolve an issue with the way that one of the components we used is licensed (it was not correctly being registered so you may have received the occasional warning about a 30 day trial).

If you have features or feedback that you would like to make about the VSFileExplorer please post in our VSFileExplorer forum: VSFileExplorer Forum

Happy coding!

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Posted by John-Daniel Trask on 6 November 2008