A good working relationship is built upon a foundation of trust, transparency and open communication. It is very important to us that you know what you can expect as a client of iArtisan, and as such, we want to be sure that our service and support offerings are well-defined.
Providing Web Solutions Since 2007
Using a combination of hands-on experience, a vast skill set, and a steadfast adherence to best practices, our goal is to offer practical and cost-effective services that help to serve the individual needs of our clients. Developing and maintaining an online presence requires many moving parts, and we pride ourselves on our ability to establish optimized systems – taking the guesswork out of the process and, making sure that our clients’ goals are met in the most efficient way possible. Because we have the ability to assist you with practically each and every part of the online marketing formula, it’s important to know what things we support, what type of support is included with your services, and which types of services carry an additional cost.
Development
When we begin a project, you can expect that the budget, timeframe, scope and deliverables will be clearly defined. If at any point during the development process you need to request additional features or functionality, that is totally fine, however, do understand that these changes may alter the budget and/or estimated delivery date. Web development is a very detailed process, and although a change in scope may appear insignificant, often times this is not the case.
Maintenance
Unless we’ve been put on retainer or hired to perform some manner of additional support, once a project has been delivered, the maintenance of the site is the client’s responsibility. iArtisan develops dynamic websites based off of the industry-leading WordPress CMS (content management system), and this type of modern data-driven website requires routine platform and script updates to maintain stability and security. Neglecting the site once it has been built increases the chances something will break over time, and more importantly, a site that’s running outdated scripts is vulnerable to compromises, i.e., hacking.
Unless you’ve appointed us the job of maintaining your WordPress installation, keeping your WP version, plugins and theme files up to date is on you. We have some very affordable options for keeping your site maintained and secure, so we highly suggest you look at one of our managed hosting plans so that you can relax knowing your site will be taken care of without you needing to do a thing.
Updates
If you require updates to your site’s design, functionality, and content, we will happily work with you on getting those things done. We can put together a proposal, stick you on a retainer if you require regular ongoing updates, or you can purchase a block of support time and use it over a period of weeks or months.
Support
As with maintenance and updates, technical support is available, but it is not something we provide as an ongoing service free-of-charge. We’re available to answer questions, offer instruction, troubleshoot problems, and even help rescue your hacked site (should you fall victim to that), but these types of additional services are only covered through paid support time or monthly retainer.
Web Hosting
We offer a web hosting service that’s a cut above the low-price hosting options available elsewhere. Your site is hosted in a more secure and lower population environment than what the other big brand companies advertise. Many of those hosting providers are focused primarily on their bottom line — offering web hosting at a low, low price so that they can attract more customers and cram as many accounts as possible on to each server. We don’t do this.
Our sites are hosted on a low population server, which means fewer accounts competing for resources – translating to increased stability and reliability. In addition, all of the sites hosted are businesses, like yours, so there is a greatly reduced risk of spammy or illicit activity. In the event someone is found to be engaging in spammy practices that violate our ToS, the matter is handled swiftly so as to not compromise the reputation or security of other sites on the server.
iArtisan hosting is fast, reliable and secure, however, we make no guarantees that your experience will be 100% trouble-free. In the event you do have an issue with your hosting service, we are here to offer support for anything related to the hosting service itself. If there is some technical issue with the server which is causing your site to become slow or unresponsive, you can bet we’ll be all over that until it’s resolved.
If your site should display errors due to a problem with the website itself, or if you get hacked, those are issues which are outside the normal scope of our hosting support. We can certainly help you get the problems resolved, but issues unrelated to the server are not covered under web hosting support.
If you’re using hosted email through your iArtisan cPanel account, or if we’ve configured Google Apps email for your hosted website, we will support you in the event of any service interruptions, but we do not support configuration or troubleshooting of any 3rd party apps related to your email service. In other words, we will make sure your email is working smoothly through the server, but our hosting support does not include helping you set up your email accounts in a 3rd party app such as Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Mac Mail, etc…