Support & SLA

Support Channels by Tier

Email

Address: support@motif.bio

Available to all customers. How soon we aim to reply depends on severity, in the table below.

Community Slack

The Motif Slack workspace. Join from the user menu in chat, or with this invite . Ask in the community channels; the Motif team is there.

Personal Slack

Max and Enterprise. Motif opens a dedicated Slack channel with your account. Email support@motif.bio if you are on Max or Enterprise and do not have one yet.

Response Time Targets

We aim to respond within the following timeframes. These are internal targets, not contractual guarantees.

Severity Definitions

Critical

• Motif is completely unavailable
• Data loss or security incident
• Authentication system failure

High

• Search functionality not working
• Extraction failing for all papers
• Export functionality broken
• Billing system error

Medium

• Intermittent errors or slowness
• Single feature not working
• Display or UI issues
• Non-blocking bugs

Low

• Feature requests
• How-to questions
• Enhancement suggestions
• Documentation inquiries

Business Hours

Standard Support Hours: Monday - Friday, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM Eastern Time (US)

• Excludes US federal holidays
• Critical issues may be addressed outside business hours on a best-effort basis

Availability

Target Availability

We strive to maintain high availability for our services. We do not currently offer a contractual uptime SLA.

Maintenance Windows

• Scheduled maintenance is communicated in advance when possible
• We aim to perform maintenance during low-usage periods
• Emergency maintenance may occur without advance notice

Status Updates

• Live status: status.motif.bio 
• Optional email subscriptions on the status page
• Incident updates also via email for subscribers

Escalation Path

If your issue is not being resolved satisfactorily:

Tier 1: Support Team

Initial contact for all issues. Most issues resolved at this level.

Tier 2: Engineering

Complex technical issues escalated to engineering team.

Tier 3: Executive (Enterprise Tier)

Enterprise tier customers can escalate unresolved critical issues to executive leadership.

How to Escalate

1. Email support@motif.bio with ESCALATION in the subject, and include the original subject. On Max or Enterprise you can also message your personal Slack channel.
2. Explain why escalation is needed

Enterprise Tier Custom SLAs

Enterprise tier customers can negotiate custom service level agreements including:

• Specific uptime commitments
• Guaranteed response times
• Penalty/credit provisions

Contact support@motif.bio to discuss custom SLA requirements.

Support Request Best Practices

To help us resolve your issue quickly:

Include in Your Request

1. Clear description of the issue
2. Steps to reproduce the problem
3. Expected vs actual behavior
4. Screenshots if applicable
5. Browser and device information
6. Urgency level (critical, high, medium, low)

Example Request

Subject: Literature search returns no papers — High

Description: I asked a research question in chat. Search in the processing log finished with 0 papers. The same kind of question worked yesterday.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Sign in at chat.motif.bio
2. In a new chat, type: “Which BRCA1 variants predict PARP inhibitor response in breast cancer?”
3. Send the message (arrow button, or Enter)

Expected: Search finds papers from PubMed, PMC, and Europe PMC, then extraction runs and a report is written Actual: Search completes with 0 papers. The report is empty.

Browser: Chrome 131, macOS Account: user@example.com

Feedback

For feedback on support quality: support@motif.bio

Contact Summary