For a few months we have been hard at work reinventing our support model for Vaadin. The main driver behind this has been the wish to add more value to the support subscription, and to make the support model more scalable for both us and the users (you!). Here is what we are going to release early next year.
Vaadin Pro Account
In addition to the Apache licensed Vaadin Framework we offer free and commercial add-ons and services. Buying these piecemeal for every small need is cumbersome, so we're going to launch the Vaadin Pro Account which will make it super easy to quickly get the level of support you need.
Add-ons
The subscription includes a full license to use all commercial add-ons by Vaadin Ltd. This means that you don't need to worry about purchasing licenses when needed, just download and use any add-on by us in the Vaadin Directory, and the subscription ensures you are good to go.
Feature Voting
Vaadin Pro Account holders get to vote for the features planned for future releases, including features for the commercial add-ons by us. This way you will get to direct where Vaadin will be going.
Bug Fix Priority
We're going to introduce a possibiity to flag any reported bug as a priority issue along with the promise that we'll start working on the flagged ones ASAP. This makes sure that your project will not stall because of a bug in Vaadin.
Support
Ask the Vaadin team anything, and we'll come up with a solution to your need. The actual support work may be problem solving over a shared desktop (or phone or Skype), a programming task or whatever you need, and you only pay for the time spent. We will build a user friendly interface for initiating and managing support requests.
Security Support For Previous Versions
The subscription guarantees timely access to security bug fixes for previous Vaadin versions. This includes our commercial add-ons.
Knowledge Base
While our forum is a gold mine of information we'll also launch an official Vaadin knowledge base as an exclusive priviledge for the Vaadin Pro Account subscribers. The forum contains free-form discussions upon various topics whereas the knowledge base will contain edited articles and answers to specific questions.
Custom builds
Our nightly builds allow you to live in the bleeding edge, but the nightlies are just untested snapshots from our repository. The Vaadin Pro Account subscribers will get access to regression tested builds for each issue as soon as they become available.
Pricing And Availability
The subscription price is tied to the size of your team. While the actual prices and tiers are still being worked on, the price tiering will be affordable for both small and large organizations.
We are aiming to open beta access by February. If you would like to participate, submit your email address at vaadin.com/pro and we'll let you know when it's ready.
Stay tuned!