Is something in Kentico not working as you would expect? Did you actually read the documentation to check you're doing things right and there is still a problem? Did you really check the documentation? OK, it's about now that you should think of contacting the Kentico technical support team.
As a Kentico Gold Partner, Ridgeway really do put the CMS though its paces - especially with some of our larger implementations. Pushing the boundaries this much has resulted in us contacting Kentico technical support on a number of occasions.
Having worked with a number of CMS and e-Commerce platforms over the years, I've had various 'encounters' with technical support teams. From my very first encounter with Kentico, I have been impressed with the support that they offer.
If I were to pick three things that I like most about Kentico's support they would be this:
1. Fast response times
The first thing I have to say about each and every time that I have been in touch with Kentico support is how quickly they get back to you. I'm not talking about the automated email you get when you contact support, I mean a real response from a person. The vast majority of cases in my experience have had a response coming back within the same day. As Ilesh's blog about contacting Kentico support says, 91% of responses are received within 24 hours.
2. Deep product knowledge
There have only been a small number of occasions that I can recall where the support team have not been able to solve an issue outright. Each of these have involved cases where we have extended Kentico to provide custom features, and even in each of those cases, the support team have made reasonable attempts to assist.
In most cases, our support queries are resolved quickly. Either by explaining more detail about how features can be configured or by suggesting alternative approaches that may not have been considered.
Another example of their knowledge and diligence come to mind with an article I posted about using hidden input fields in Kentico. Not long after I'd posted it I received a message from Jan Hermann (via Bryan Soltis) informing me that there is indeed an out-of-the-box way of achieving the same goal (though there is no hidden field in the DOM). Jan walked me though his method and - at first - it didn't seem to work. It didn't take long for Jan to notice what I was doing wrong and set me on the right path.
3. Proactive problem solving
Typically, I've found that support teams tend to answer the immediate question only. If you're asking about something that is off piste or unachievable, then you simply get told "No".
This isn't what you get with Kentico; I get the feeling that Kentico don't like to say "No". A number of times, the responses that I have seen had been much more a case of "Well, no - you can't do that. But why did you want to do that? Maybe there is another approach that will achieve the same thing?"
What's my point?
The level of support I'm on about is included in the maintenance contract - 12 months of this are included in the license cost. There aren't that many CMS vendors who provide this level of 24/7 support in the base cost of a licencse. Working with this CMS in the knowledge that the Kentico support team have got your back make life so much more pleasant. It's worth keeping that maintenance contract up to date once your first 12 months elapse in order to keep this support in place. If your site is mission-critical, you can even take this a step further and organise premium support to agree guaranteed resolution times.
Don't just take my word for it of course. This video (including a slightly younger Mr. Soltis) is full of other people who are similarly impressed with Kentico support.
It is an older video for sure, but I'm of the opinion that the support now is even better than it was in 2015.