Support Policies & Procedures

This article is an overview of Maxon Support policies and procedures, as well as definitions of standard software terms that might not be familiar to some users.

Support Response Times and SLAs

We aim to respond to technical support and customer service tickets within 24 hours barring weekends or holidays. 

Teams license holders can expect a same-business day response. 

Turnaround time for Community Support may vary as responses are not guaranteed.

We do our best to provide timely, accurate, and respectful support and reserve the right to deny support if you violate our Terms of Use. If we receive abuse or inappropriate messages, your support access may be terminated.

Scope of Support

Different license types have different support resources available to them. Use the table below to see an outline of which Maxon Support resources are available to which Maxon license types.

Note: Autograph support is subject to the license type(s) associated with the request. If the user has no other licenses on their account, it is considered a Standard license.

License Types

Standard license: A monthly or annual subscription allowing access to designated Maxon software.

Educational license: An annual subscription allowing access to designated Maxon software for non-commercial use.

Teams license: An annual subscription for creative teams, allowing access to designated Maxon software, along with additional administrative tools.

Trial license: A 14-day subscription allowing access to all of Maxon One.

Free license: Licenses that have no cost, such as those available through partners (e.g. Cinema4D lite), mobile app stores (ZBrush with free plan), or NFR (not for resale) licenses.

Legacy license: Perpetual (i.e. non-subscription) licenses for older versions of Maxon, Red Giant, C4D, ZBrush, or Redshift software.

Types of Support

Customer Service: Assistance with user accounts, purchases, or licensing in-product. 

Technical Support: Assistance with installing products and to ensure supported software works as documented. The Support team will file defects if the software is not behaving as expected.

Community Support: Creative support via Maxon-sponsored channels such as ZBrushCentral, Redshift forums, Reddit, and other channels moderated by Maxon employees.

Limited Technical Support: As legacy software is not considered compatible with the environments our latest software is designed for and our support team more aligned to assist with, troubleshooting older software and components becomes increasingly inaccessible over time, limiting legacy users to 3 technical support tickets per calendar year.

Bug Reporting, Fixing, and Feedback

Maxon Software versions released within the year (n-1) receive minor and major bug fixes, as well as stability improvements and feature updates.

Users can report bugs by filing a support ticket. 

If the bug is confirmed to be within Maxon's purview, it then gets passed from the Support team to the Engineering team, where it then gets slated for repair.

It is unfortunately not possible to forecast when a bug will be fixed, as there are often many elements affecting its timeline, including (but not limited to): severity, reproducibility, and third party components (e.g. drivers, frameworks, OS updates). 

This means the support ticket reporting a bug may be closed without immediate resolution, but it does not mean the bug itself has been closed and disregarded.

Users are notified of bug fixes by way of Release Notes, which can be subscribed to by clicking Follow under the product category of interest.

Feature requests can also be submitted through support ticket. Similar to bug reports, if a feature is confirmed to be within Maxon's purview and is actionable, it gets filed and passed onto Project Leads for consideration. 

Maxon software versions released over a year ago do not receive bug fixes or new features.

Support Terminology

Compatible environment refers to the software and hardware components installed on a machine using the Maxon software, and whether they are considered supported and tested for.

A software component affecting compatibility can include:

• The operating system (e.g. Mac, Windows, Linux)
• Operating system version (e.g. Mac Tahoe, Windows 11)
• The host application (e.g. Adobe Premiere, Davinci Resolve)
• Host application versions (e.g. Adobe After Effects 2024, FCP X)

A hardware component affecting compatibility is mostly in reference to a machine's GPU, but it can also involve peripheral hardware (e.g. monitors, tablets, etc.) or other untested, uncommon components. For Mac users this translates to not using a modified Mac system (i.e. "hackintosh"). 

Legacy software users need to ensure these components are within the requirements their legacy software was last compatible with (e.g. product versions from 5+ years ago would not be considered compatible with host application versions from today, nor would they likely be compatible with Apple Silicon GPUs).

There can also be no cracked or pirated files present.

Defect is considered to be any unintentional behavior or results caused by Maxon products. Support specialists report defects to the Engineering team, which then prioritize and work on from there. A workaround will be advised when found, but we cannot forecast when a fix will be released. More details can be found here. 

Legacy software includes applications and plugins that are no longer available for purchase, as well as Maxon software versions released over 2 years ago.

Supported software includes any Maxon product. We do not provide support for non-Maxon software, including host applications, third party plugins or network components.