Website Support & Incident Response
Maintenance keeps most problems from happening. Support is what happens when one does anyway — a fault reported, triaged, and resolved against response times agreed in writing, not best efforts.
Some problems you cannot schedule. You respond to them.
Proactive maintenance prevents most issues before they ever reach your visitors. But no website is immune to the unplanned — a failed deployment, a third-party outage, a payment gateway that stops talking to your platform, a contact form that quietly stops sending. When that happens, the question is no longer whether it gets fixed. It is how quickly, and who is already on it.
Support is the reactive half of a Nine Stones retainer. Where maintenance is scheduled and preventive, support is what we do the moment something breaks — and it runs to commitments we have put in writing, not vague assurances buried in a contract.
How we handle an incident
Every issue is graded by severity the moment it is raised, and every severity carries a response and resolution target.
- Severity triage
- Each fault is assessed as soon as it lands. A site-down emergency is not a misaligned button, and the two are never treated the same.
- Response & resolution SLAs
- Defined acknowledgement and fix targets for every severity level, set out in your agreement and reported against — measurable commitments, not best efforts.
- A priority queue
- Retainer clients are worked ahead of ad-hoc requests. You are never waiting behind someone who pays by the hour.
- Escalation paths
- A clear route from first responder to senior partner, so a stubborn problem gains attention rather than going quiet.
- Incident reporting
- Once an issue is closed, you get a plain account of what happened, what we changed, and how we will stop it recurring.
Why support belongs on a retainer
Ad-hoc support is reactive in the worst sense. You notice a problem, find someone, explain your platform from scratch, wait for availability, and pay a premium for the urgency. A retainer changes the starting position. We already know your stack, your hosting, and your history — so the clock that matters, time to acknowledge and time to resolve, is already running in your favour.
The result is fewer surprises, faster recovery when something does go wrong, and the quiet confidence of knowing exactly who picks up when you need them.
The pieces, in order.
Human first, AI behind — how we use tooling
AI and automation are part of our toolkit, but they're never the starting point. Strategy, judgement, and accountability remain human.
The engagement ladder — scaling digital support
Three tiers — Fieldstone, Cornerstone, and Keystone — designed to meet you where you are and scale as your needs evolve.
Fanatical service — understanding our SLAs
SLAs should mean something. Ours are specific, measurable commitments — and we hold ourselves accountable to them, in public.
Retainer pricing — blended hours & the flex-bank
One blended rate, monthly hours, a flex-bank that rolls forward. Predictable, transparent, no disputed invoices.
Thirty minutes. No pitch deck.
We'll tell you honestly whether we can help. If we can't, we usually know someone who can.
What the thirty minutes covers: what you're trying to grow, what's worked so far and what hasn't, and an honest view on whether we're the right team to own it.