We diagnose first. The fix is a separate quote.
Sometimes your IT person is on holiday. Sometimes you’ve never had real IT. Sometimes the freelancer you usually call can’t help. We fill that gap, transparently.
We diagnose before we promise anything
We will not quote a fix for an issue we have not seen. The first engagement is paid investigation: triage call, hands-on look, written diagnosis. Anything else would be guessing with your money.
You choose speed and depth, then we quote
You choose how fast you need us (15 min to next business day) and how deep we should investigate. We quote the diagnostic from those two choices before we start.
The fix is a separate quote
After diagnosis you get a written scope for the repair. No obligation to proceed. You can hire us, hire someone else, or take the diagnosis to your own team.
Senior engineers only, no tier 1
Every responder has shipped production systems for at least seven years. The first human you talk to is the one with hands on the keyboard. No script-reading rep, no internal handoff, no triage queue.
Triage call
Your intake lands on a senior engineer’s screen before the call connects. We open the call, read back what we understand so you can correct fast, and confirm the symptoms match the category you picked.
Investigate
We work the issue hands-on for the block you chose. 30 min for quick triage and a recommendation. 60 min to diagnose plus an initial fix attempt. 2 hr or 4 hr if you want us to keep going on more complex problems.
Diagnose in writing
End of the engagement you get a written diagnosis: what we observed, what we believe is causing it, the confidence level on that conclusion, and what the fix involves. Plain language, not vendor jargon.
Fix, with a transparent quote
We send a written quote for the fix. You decide whether to proceed. If the repair turns out larger than that quote, we send a revised quote before continuing. No surprise invoices.
01 Why pay before you’ve fixed anything?
Because diagnosis is the work. A senior engineer’s focused attention on your problem for 60-120 minutes, with hands on the system, is what produces the answer to ‘what is actually wrong here.’ That answer has value whether or not we end up doing the fix. We charge for the diagnostic engagement so we can guarantee a senior engineer’s time, on your timeline. Once we have diagnosed, the fix is a separate decision: hire us, hire someone else, or do it in-house with the written diagnosis as your guide.
02 What if you can’t fix it?
If on the triage call we determine the issue is outside our competence (specific vendor product we don’t know, hardware-physical-presence required, regulated environment we are not credentialed for), we will say so directly and refund the diagnostic fee on the same call. We do not bluff our way through unfamiliar systems on a live incident. If we can investigate but ultimately cannot fix, you still get the written diagnosis at the end of the investigation block - that document is yours to take to whoever can fix it.
03 What if my IT person comes back mid-call?
Bring them on the call. We work alongside in-house IT and freelancers all the time. If your person returns and wants to take it from there, we hand off the written diagnosis and stop. You keep the diagnosis. We don’t bill for fix work we didn’t do.
04 Do you cover [my specific stack]?
Our depth is in AWS, GCP, Azure, Cloudflare, Vercel, Postgres, MySQL, Mongo, Redis, Stripe, Twilio, Resend / SendGrid, Auth0, Clerk, and the common application runtimes (Node, Python, Rust, Go, Java). If your stack is unfamiliar to us, we will tell you on the first call within the first 10 minutes and either bring in a specialist or refund the fee. We do not pretend to know systems we don’t.
05 What if it turns out to be a 5-minute fix?
Great. We do the 5-minute fix during the diagnostic engagement and you get the rest of the block as bonus time - usually spent on related hardening, documentation, or runbook updates. The diagnostic fee is non-refundable but we never leave the engagement with time on the clock unspent if there is useful work to do.
06 What if it needs 20 hours of fix work?
After diagnosis we send a written scope and a quote. You decide whether to proceed. If the repair is larger than that quote, we send a revised quote before continuing. For a large repair we also hand the written diagnosis to your in-house team or another vendor at no extra charge.
07 How do I reach you when something is down?
Use the contact page and say production is down. A person replies and quotes the diagnosis.