Support.

Cloud FSM platforms bundle support into the subscription you pay forever. Dino AI Hub is a one-time purchase with support included — and the support model is structurally different from what you're used to. There is no tier-1 ticket queue. There is no status page covering thousands of multi-tenant customers. There is a small team that knows your shop, your configuration, and your appliance by serial number. This page is the honest version of what that actually means: who you reach, when you reach them, what happens when hardware fails, how software updates ship, and what we do at 11pm on Saturday when your phones go down during a heat wave.

We are not going to tell you we have a 24/7 global support operation. We don't, and any vendor at our scale who claims one is overstating it. What we have is a small team that knows your shop personally, an appliance that runs locally on hardware you own (which means most issues don't require remote intervention to resolve), and a deliberate operational commitment to being reachable when something is actually wrong.

The trade-off matters. Cloud FSM gives you a 24/7 ticket queue staffed by people who don't know your business. We give you direct access to the people who configured your appliance and trained your staff. For some problems that's a meaningful upgrade; for others it isn't. We'd rather be honest about both.

01 — What "support" actually means when you own the appliance

In a cloud FSM model, support is mostly the vendor's responsibility because the software is running on the vendor's infrastructure. When something breaks on Housecall Pro's servers, only HCP can fix it. You wait.

In Dino AI Hub's model, the software is running locally on hardware you own, which changes the support relationship in three concrete ways:

Most issues are local, which means most issues can be resolved without waiting on a vendor.

Network configuration, hardware peripherals, integrations with your phone carrier or QuickBooks installation — these are problems your local environment owns, and we help you work through them rather than wait for them to bubble up a vendor's ticket queue.

The appliance keeps running even when we don't.

The operations layer runs locally. If our offices were closed for a week, your appliance would continue answering calls, dispatching techs, sending invoices, and processing payments. Cloud FSM customers don't have that property — a vendor-side outage means your operations stop. This is part of what you're buying.

Support is included in the purchase, not metered or tiered.

There are no "premium support" upgrades you have to buy. There's no "5 tickets per month included." You email or call when you need to. That said, support covers operating the appliance and the software on it — not unlimited free configuration changes, on-site visits, or rebuilding your pricebook from scratch every six months. Reasonable use looks like reasonable use.

02 — Who you actually reach

When you contact support, you reach the same team that handled your migration, configured your appliance, and trained your staff. The person who learned your shop's specific workflows is the same person who picks up when you call about them.

We do not run a tier-1 support queue. There is no script. There is no "I'll escalate this to engineering and get back to you in 3–5 business days." For most issues, the person who answers can resolve the issue directly. For genuinely novel problems, you get escalated to the developer who built that part of the platform — usually within hours, not weeks.

The trade-off: we are not a thousand-person support organization. If you call us at 2am on Christmas morning, you will likely reach voicemail with an emergency callback option rather than a live agent. The structural answer to "what about hyper-large-scale support" is that the appliance runs locally and most outages don't require us to resolve them in real time. Where they do — true emergencies — we have an on-call rotation.

03 — Response time commitments

Business hours: 7am to 7pm Mountain Time, Monday through Friday. After-hours and weekend coverage is on-call for genuine emergencies only.

We don't publish a status page showing aggregate uptime across thousands of customers because we don't operate that way. Your appliance's uptime is local to your office, and the things that can affect it (power outages, network problems, hardware failures) are local conditions you can usually see directly.

04 — How to reach us

Three channels, in order of speed for most use cases:

Direct phone line

Goes to the on-call team during business hours, to voicemail with emergency callback option outside business hours. The fastest path for anything urgent.

Email · [email protected]

Best for non-urgent questions, attachments (screenshots, logs, exported files), and follow-ups on prior conversations. Tracked through our internal ticketing system so nothing falls through.

In-app messaging from the appliance

A direct chat link inside your operations dashboard that opens a thread with our team. Best for configuration questions where context matters — you can show us exactly what you're looking at without having to describe it.

For emergencies — meaning the appliance is unresponsive, phones aren't ringing, or dispatch is broken in a way that's costing you money this hour — call the phone line. Email is for things that can wait until business hours.

05 — What's included, what isn't

Included with every purchase

• All support contact (phone, email, in-app) for operating the appliance and resolving issues.
• All software updates to the operations layer (call answering, dispatch, CRM, invoicing, customer portal, AI receptionist) — pushed to your appliance on a regular cadence.
• Configuration help for changes within your existing scope (adding a new tech, adjusting dispatch rules, updating customer-facing templates, modifying notification triggers).
• Help with first-line integration debugging for the integrations we ship support for (QuickBooks, Stripe, Meta/Instagram, Google Calendar, iMessage).
• Initial pricebook configuration during onboarding, plus reasonable updates as your services change.
• Documentation, video training library, and how-to content.

Not included; scoped separately

• On-site visits to your office. The appliance is designed for remote setup and remote support. Most issues are resolvable remotely. If on-site is genuinely needed, we scope it separately.
• Major reconfiguration projects — wholesale pricebook rebuilds, large-scale data import from new sources, customer migration projects after the initial onboarding. These are real work and we quote them.
• Custom development — building integrations to third-party systems we don't ship support for, custom report development, modifications to the underlying software. We do this for some customers; it's quoted separately.
• Third-party software support — we don't troubleshoot your QuickBooks Desktop installation, your accountant's setup, or your phone carrier's account issues. We help where it touches Dino AI Hub; the rest you handle with the relevant vendor.

06 — Hardware: warranty, failures, and replacement

The appliance is a Mac (M5 Pro 64GB or higher tier depending on your configuration). Macs are reliable but they're physical objects in the real world — they can fail, get knocked off a desk, lose power during a storm, or simply age out.

Hardware warranty. Every appliance ships with a 1-year hardware warranty covering manufacturing defects and component failures. Extended warranty plans are available at purchase and at renewal. Because the high-spec Macs the appliance is built on (M5 Pro 64GB and up) have 2–3+ week shipping windows from Apple, the extended warranty is the only path to fast replacement — without it, hardware failure means waiting for a new Mac to ship through Apple's standard supply chain. For trade businesses running mission-critical operations on the appliance, we strongly recommend extended coverage; without it, the realistic gap between failure and a working appliance back on your desk is several weeks rather than a few days.

What happens when the hardware fails depends on which coverage you have.

Hardware failure flow

1. Failure detected. The appliance becomes unresponsive — locally, or via our remote monitoring (with your consent).
2. Call us. The emergency line goes to on-call team during peak-call hours, not voicemail.
3. Remote assessment. Most issues are recoverable remotely — network problems, configuration drift, a stuck process. Usually under an hour.
4. Ship replacement. If the appliance is genuinely down, we ship from reserved inventory (extended warranty) or order a Mac through Apple (standard warranty).
5. Restore data. Data restores from the encrypted local backups the appliance has been making continuously. Sometimes the original drive is recoverable directly.
6. Return original. The original unit ships back to us for diagnostic so we understand what failed and what to change.

With extended warranty: we ship a replacement appliance immediately from our reserved inventory — typically next business day. Your data is restored from the encrypted backups the appliance has been making continuously. Your original unit gets returned to us for diagnostic, and sometimes the data on it is recoverable directly, which is faster than restoring from backup.

With standard warranty: the process is significantly slower because there is no spare-appliance pool reserved for standard-coverage customers, and replacement units have to be ordered fresh from Apple. The original unit is returned to us for diagnostic; depending on what's wrong, we either repair and return the original or order a replacement Mac, provision it, and ship it. Total time between failure and your shop being back on a working appliance is typically 3–5 weeks, dominated by the Mac supply chain. For shops that cannot tolerate a multi-week gap, the extended warranty is genuinely the only option, and we'd rather you understand that at purchase time than discover it after a failure.

During the gap, regardless of which coverage you have. While your replacement or repaired appliance is in transit, we can route your phone numbers temporarily to our cloud relay, where calls are answered by a fallback AI receptionist running our standard contractor configuration, with messages emailed and texted to your office. This is opt-in (it requires your explicit consent because calls during the fallback period are processed through our cloud infrastructure rather than locally), and it's typically the right call for the bridge period — a few days for extended-warranty customers, potentially several weeks for standard-warranty customers waiting on a fresh Mac from Apple. The fallback covers inbound calls and basic dispatch but not the full operational layer, so longer gaps still mean degraded operations even with the fallback active.

Power and network resilience. The appliance is designed to come back up cleanly after a power loss or network interruption. We recommend a basic UPS for the appliance (covered in the setup guide), but the operations data is safe across reboots regardless.

07 — How software updates work

Updates ship to your appliance on a regular cadence — typically every 2–3 weeks for minor improvements and bug fixes, with larger feature releases every 6–8 weeks.

• You choose when updates apply. By default, updates install during a low-activity window (2am to 4am local time) so they don't interrupt operations. You can change the window, defer specific updates, or apply them manually if you prefer.
• Major updates roll out gradually. Larger feature releases go to a small group of opt-in customers first, then to a wider rollout once we've confirmed there are no issues. You can opt in to early access or opt out of the gradual rollout if you want.
• Rollback is available. If an update causes an issue on your appliance, we can roll back to the prior version remotely. The appliance keeps the previous version installed for 30 days specifically for this reason.
• You don't pay for updates. All updates to the operations software are included in the appliance purchase for the life of the hardware. There are no "Dino AI Hub 2.0" upgrades you have to buy.

08 — Emergency handling for trade businesses

This section exists because the typical trade business has operational hours when its phone genuinely cannot go down — HVAC in July, plumbing during a freeze, electrical during a storm event.

If your appliance becomes unresponsive during a peak-call period:

1. Call our emergency line. This goes to on-call team during peak-call hours, not voicemail.
2. We assess whether it's recoverable remotely. Most issues are — network problems, configuration drift, a stuck process. Usually resolved in under an hour with us walking your office through the fix or accessing the appliance remotely with your consent.
3. If the appliance is genuinely down, we activate the cloud fallback for inbound calls (with your consent), ship a replacement appliance with priority overnight, and stay engaged until you're back to normal operations.
4. We do a post-incident review within a week so we both understand what happened and what we changed to prevent it.

We aim to make hardware failures during peak hours feel like minor interruptions rather than business-stopping events.

09 — Self-service resources

For things you'd rather figure out yourself without contacting support:

Documentation library

At docs.dinoaihost.com — every feature, integration, and workflow on the appliance. Searchable. Updated with every release.

Video training library

The common operational scenarios — adding a tech, updating the pricebook, configuring a new automation, training the AI receptionist on new call patterns, running reports.

In-app help

Every screen in the operations dashboard has contextual help available — explanations of what each setting does, links to relevant documentation, examples of how other shops use the feature.

The migration playbook

Walks through the platform-specific export checklists if you're still in the process of switching from another system.

The migration playbook walks through the platform-specific export checklists if you're still in the process of switching from another system.

10 — What happens if Dino AI Hub disappears

The trust anchor.

The honest question every serious buyer asks privately. Here is the answer.

• The appliance keeps running. It's hardware you own, with software installed locally. If our offices closed tomorrow, your appliance would continue answering calls, dispatching techs, sending invoices, and processing payments on whatever software version it was on. This is the core architectural commitment, and it's the reason the local-first model exists.
• Your data is yours. Customer records, job history, invoices, call recordings, equipment service records — all of it lives on your appliance, in formats we document publicly. Any competent developer or competing FSM vendor can ingest the data. You don't need us to access it; you don't need us to export it.
• Updates stop, but the system you have doesn't break. Without us shipping new updates, the appliance stays on its current version. That version continues to work. Over time, third-party integrations may drift (a QuickBooks API change, a Meta webhook deprecation) and require manual workarounds, but the core operations of the appliance continue to function.
• Hardware failures become your responsibility. If Dino AI Hub as a company didn't exist to ship replacements, hardware failures on the appliance would require you to source a replacement Mac and restore from backup. The data restoration process is documented; the technical steps are straightforward for a competent IT person.

We're not unique in this commitment, but we're unusual. Most software vendors structure their products so leaving them means a painful extraction process. We structured ours so the architectural commitment to your data ownership extends to the worst-case scenario where we no longer exist.

The same architectural commitment is detailed on the Security page and reinforced in the Migration page's "What happens if you change your mind" section. We don't expect to disappear. But the commitment matters even if it never gets tested.

11 — A few questions we get often

Can I talk to a real human?

Yes. The phone line goes to a real human during business hours and to voicemail with emergency callback option after hours. We don't run a chatbot front-line.

Do you support customers in time zones outside Mountain Time?

Yes. Our coverage window of 7am–7pm Mountain Time covers Pacific (6am–6pm), Central (8am–8pm), and Eastern (9am–9pm) business hours reasonably. For shops operating outside US time zones, we scope coverage individually.

Is there a customer community I can talk to?

Not yet. We're building toward it as the customer base grows, but at our current size customer-to-customer connection happens through us rather than through a forum.

What if I want premium / dedicated support?

The standard support model covers what most shops need. For operations that genuinely need dedicated assigned-team support, named-contact response commitments, or formal SLAs, we offer enhanced support arrangements at additional cost. Scoped during the discovery call.

Do I really need the extended hardware warranty?

For most trade businesses running mission-critical operations on the appliance, yes — and the reason is supply chain, not just convenience. The high-spec Macs the appliance is built on (M5 Pro 64GB and up) typically have 2–3+ week shipping windows from Apple when ordered fresh. Extended warranty is what unlocks immediate replacement from our reserved inventory — typically next business day. Without it, hardware failure means waiting for a new Mac to ship from Apple and then for us to provision it before your replacement arrives, which realistically means 3–5 weeks between failure and a working appliance back on your desk. For a shop where being down for a month during peak season would cost real money, the extended coverage isn't optional — it's the only path to fast replacement. For a low-volume operation where a multi-week gap is genuinely tolerable, the standard warranty is fine.

Do you support the AI receptionist specifically?

Yes — the AI receptionist's configuration is part of the appliance, and receptionist-specific support (tuning the prompt, updating call patterns, adjusting handoff rules, reviewing call analytics) is included with the standard support model.

What happens if I find a bug?

Report it through any channel. Confirmed bugs in the software get fixed in upcoming releases — minor bugs in the next 2–3 week release cycle, serious bugs in expedited patches. You'll get a follow-up when the fix ships.

Can my technicians get help directly, or does everything route through the office?

Either works. The field app has its own in-app help and direct-contact option, so techs who hit problems on a job site can reach us directly without going through the office. For most shops, the office handles most support questions, but the option is there.

The conversation we'd suggest

If support architecture matters to your decision — and for any shop running mission-critical operations, it should — we'd rather you ask the specific questions that matter for your operation. "What happens during summer peak if the appliance dies on a Friday afternoon?" is a better question than "do you have support?"

Bring those questions to the discovery call. We'll answer directly.