Standards of Service
Contents
- Payment
- Hours of Operation
- Support Standards
- IPS License Terms
- Multiple License Terms
- License Transfers
- License Keys
- Company Forums
Other Documents
We publish our Standards of Service as an easy to read, plain-English frequently asked questions on the how, why, and wherefore of our customer service, and what you can expect from us when you purchase our products or services.
Payment
We accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover credit cards and PayPal.
We review all orders to protect both you and us from fraudulent transactions. This means that there is sometimes a delay in processing your order (up to one business day) however during business hours expect a one hour activation time. Feel free to contact customer support for order status.
It is our policy to deny refunds for software once it is downloaded and/or installed for you by our technicians. Please use our demo systems or contact our sales department with any questions you may have about product or service performance before you purchase.
Payment terms are net 5.
You must contact us with any billing questions or discrepancies. Performing a chargeback or dispute with your card issuer will result in immediate and permanent account termination.
Hours of Operation
Our hours of operation are posted on the contact page at all times. While limited priority support is provided off hours, certain types of requests such as billing, customer service, and advanced support may require advanced personnel that are only available during business hours.
Support Standards
Standard support included with all licenses often yields an average response of less than 4 hours during normal business hours. Standard support does not provide for guaranteed response times (an SLA) and in some cases, it may take 48-72 hours for your issue to be addressed, depending on the nature of your request. If your needs demand higher priority support, please contact our sales team for additional support options.
IPS strongly recommends performing a complete backup of your community prior to undergoing any major changes, including upgrades. In the event that your desired operation is unsuccessful, rendering your community inaccessible, it is recommended that you restore your backup to get your community back online quickly, then contact us for further assistance.
To obtain support, IPS requires you to use the latest version in an active release series. This is to minimize diagnostic and support times that would require us to potentially address an issue that's already resolved in a later release. Keeping your Invision Community up-to-date is also in your best interest for security, performance and stability purposes.
You can always view your existing support requests to see the progress of your request or what department your ticket has been assigned to. After a request has existed for 72 hours, you may request that it be escalated for supervisory or management review if you feel your issue is not being resolved properly.
IPS cannot support modifications to the software. If a modification you have installed is contributing to issue that prompted you to contact us, our only suggested remedy will be to revert back to an unmodified state and work with the developer of the modification. IPS reserves the right to refuse ongoing support for communities utilizing what we may determine to be, at our sole discretion, an excessive amount of third party modifications that hinders our ability to effectively support and/or diagnose issues with your community.
In some circumstances, environment-level (server) issues may impact our software's ability to function properly. IPS cannot make adjustments to your hosting environment to bring it within acceptable standards. IPS does not provide server or system administration assistance of any kind.
Self-hosted licenses are considered self-managed. IPS reserves the right to refuse immediate and ongoing support in the event that your self-hosting environment is deemed to be unreliable or otherwise inappropriate for the purpose of executing the software.
Our staff will often need access to your community admin area or server file system to diagnose a support issue. If you cannot or will not provide such access, support will be limited or unavailable.
For standard included support, IPS technicians use readily available access methods such as FTP, password based SSH, and SCP to access servers when we may need to diagnose. Use of keys is not supported as part of our basic support offering. Please contact our sales team to discuss your specific needs.
To obtain technical support, your hosting environment must meet the minimum requirements as outlined on our purchase page. We strongly recommend LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) environments. Support for non-Apache based web servers may be limited. We do not recommend or provide support for Windows server environments.
Our technical support is designed to assist you with the built-in functionality of our software or to address problems running our software in a normal manner in a hosting environment that is the norm for the majority of web hosting providers. Special services (conversions, server transfers, database management, etc.), customizations (both code and design), and sever-level assistance are outside the scope of standard support.
License Terms
The standard license term gives you access to upgrades to the software on one active licensed URL for the first six months of your license. After six months, if you choose not to renew at the prices listed, your software will continue to operate however you will lose access to upgrades, downloads, technical support and hosted services such as spam mitigation.
Multiple License Usage
If you have multiple Suite licenses, you must generate and perform separately for each license, a download of your available products. You may not transfer or otherwise share products across IPS Suite licenses. You may not use ANY software from a download acquired via an active license to upgrade an instance that does not have a valid/active license. Doing so would violate the agreement and lead to license termination.
License Transfers
Non-legacy licenses that are currently and have been active for six months or more may be eligible to be transferred one time to a third party using the transfer tool within the client area. Please note that any transfer outside of this system (including providing access details to a third party) is not authorized, will not be honored by IPS and the license will be terminated. This service is subject to a fee and may only be transferred by the original license holder.
License Key Usage
One license key per license will be issued. It is your responsibility to safeguard this key and only allow its use on a site under your direct control and management. IPS will not reclaim, rekey or otherwise reissue licenses while an existing installation is present on any given URL; a new license would need to be purchased.
Company Community
Our company forums are provided as a convenient place for customers to interact. It is important to note that the community is not part of customer service only an added benefit and access may be removed. We may from time to time be forced to remove an account from access to the Company Community if someone is posting items which are disrupting other's access to the forums.