37SOLUTIONS provides support during regular business hours (Monday–Friday, 11am–7pm ET). We operate as a small, high-skill team. Any request that requires us to stop scheduled work and respond immediately is handled under a separate billing structure — regardless of which client it's for.
This policy applies to all clients, whether your services are hosted with us or with a third-party provider.
Why Emergency Rates Exist
We don't maintain unallocated staff for last-minute break/fix situations. When an urgent request comes in, it requires us to:
- Stop scheduled work for other clients
- Reprioritize our workload immediately
- Context-switch into your environment on short notice
Unless you have a care plan with a standing retainer, after-hours requests fall on existing staff and are billed at emergency rates.
What Counts as an Emergency
Emergency billing is time-based only. Any work we perform outside business hours — Monday through Friday, 11am–7pm ET — is billed at emergency rates, regardless of how the request is labeled. There is no keyword trigger and no surcharge for urgent work during business hours.
Work performed outside those hours includes:
- DNS changes or failures requiring immediate intervention
- Email outages or delivery problems caused by third-party services (Gmail, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, etc.)
- Website outages caused by client-side actions (DNS changes, plugin installs, hosting panel changes)
- Domain or nameserver problems
- Any other work that cannot wait until the next business day
What Does NOT Count as an Emergency
If your website or email is hosted with 37SOLUTIONS and the problem is caused by:
- A platform outage at our hosting provider
- A hosting-level infrastructure failure
- A service interruption outside your control that does not involve your configuration
…then no emergency billing applies, regardless of timing or urgency.
We monitor hosted services continuously. In most cases, we'll know your site or service is down before you do and will begin resolving it without additional cost.
Client-Caused Issues That Trigger Emergency Rates
Emergency rates apply when the issue originates from client actions, including:
- Reclaiming nameservers at your registrar when DNS is managed at a third party
- Altering DNS records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX, A, CNAME, TXT) without coordinating with us first
- Installing or enabling untested plugins
- Making hosting panel changes that break the site
- Resetting or moving email accounts without notice
- Issues with third-party services outside our scope (Microsoft 365, GoDaddy, Google Workspace, WP Engine, Mailgun, AWS, etc.)
If the client caused the issue — intentionally or not — it is an interrupt-driven emergency, and emergency rates apply.
Billing
After-hours work is billed at emergency rates with a 1-hour minimum. Billing covers all time associated with the request: investigation, diagnostics, vendor communication, client communication, hold time, and verification.
Current rates are published at conciergewebhosting.com. If you are unsure what a request will cost, contact us before proceeding — we will give you a clear answer.
How to Avoid Emergency Charges
- Submit requests during business hours (Mon–Fri, 11am–7pm ET)
- Schedule content updates 2–5 business days in advance
- Group non-critical edits into a single normal-priority ticket
- Add a care plan if you need frequent or prioritized access — see conciergewebhosting.com
- Contact us before making any DNS or hosting changes
Examples
Work that triggers emergency billing (requested or performed outside business hours):
- Saturday night: “We made DNS changes at GoDaddy and now the site is offline.”
- Sunday morning: “I changed my MX records and email stopped working.”
- 10pm on a weeknight: “Our site is down and we need it restored before tomorrow.”
Work that does NOT trigger emergency billing:
- Any request submitted and resolved during business hours (Mon–Fri, 11am–7pm ET) — regardless of urgency or how it is labeled
- Website or email outage caused by our hosting provider (for services we host — no additional charge)
- Email delivery failure caused by our infrastructure
- Server hardware or network issue at the data center
- CDN or reverse-proxy outage on accounts we manage (e.g., Cloudflare)
Questions?
If you're unsure whether after-hours emergency billing applies to your situation, contact us before proceeding.