- Google Apps includes 24×7 phone support
- Service promises 99.9% uptime
- Key services covered by Google Apps SLA
Google Apps sometimes gets a bad rap for support because people make the mistake of comparing it with its consumer application Gmail. The paid-for Google Apps service does have several levels of support, underwritten by the Google Apps SLA, or service-level agreement.
Google Apps was created so that users can access their data at all times, 24 hours a day. In tech terms this is called a High Availability architecture.
Google backs up this architecture with a contract called a service-level agreement which promises to keep the program available 99.9 percent of the time. That translates to 10 minutes of downtime a week, or 44 minutes a month.
You can read more details in the Google Apps SLA.
The SLA only applies to paying Google Apps customers and on a number of key services. The supported apps are: Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, Drive, Google Groups, Sites, Talk and Vault.
Many of Google’s services are considered to be consumer services and aren’t part of any support agreement from Google. These include consumer versions of Google Maps, Google Analytics, Blogger, Picasa etc. Although there are premium versions of some of the services, on the whole, Google only provides support through online discussion forums or email for the consumer services.
In addition to the Google Apps SLA are the extended support services that are offered by Google. Google now offers 24×7 phone support to all Google Apps for Business customers. This is coupled with the ability to also create tickets with Google where they promise a response within 24 hours.
Another option for added support is to purchase licences through a Google Apps Partner which will often provide support on top of Google support. They have the ability to escalate issues internally through different channels so issues are resolved sooner.
Google also aims to be transparent with its customers. Products such as the Apps Status Dashboard and their help centre articles provide extra support when issues strike.
In a recent article a colleague wrote about the differences in availability between Google Apps and Office 365. Suffice to say that Google came out on top.
Image credit: Google
