Tracefox
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Engagement · 03 · Retainer

Senior backup. Without the headcount.

A way to keep us reachable after Foundational ends. Three tiers, all month-to-month, all explicit about what's in and what's not. We do not do open-ended staff augmentation.

Cadence
Monthly
Term
Month-to-month
Region
SGT business hours
Capacity
Limited
Retainer

Pulse

USD 6,000 / mo

Light-touch. Good for teams who completed Foundational and want quarterly tune-ups.

  • check Slack channel · 1-business-day SLA
  • check Quarterly cardinality + cost review
  • check 1 architecture decision review / mo
  • check Async incident retro support
Most picked
Retainer

Trace

USD 12,000 / mo

Standard retainer. Most clients pick this. Real-time advisory without staff aug.

  • check Slack channel · 4-hr SLA (business hours SGT)
  • check Quarterly cardinality + cost review
  • check Unlimited architecture decision reviews
  • check Live incident retro support
  • check First-call escalation (best effort)
  • check 1 paired P1 drill / quarter
Retainer

Probe

USD 24,000 / mo

For tier-zero systems. We share the on-call rotation and own a portion of the alerting.

  • check Slack channel · 1-hr SLA
  • check Monthly architecture office hours
  • check Co-owned alert library
  • check Joint on-call rotation (best-effort, named hours)
  • check Live incident bridge attendance
  • check Quarterly chaos drill
Boundaries

What a retainer is not.

  • block Not staff augmentation. We won't fill a vacant SRE seat.
  • block Not 24/7 on-call. We're SGT business hours unless you sign Probe with named coverage.
  • block Not feature delivery. We advise; your team builds.
  • block Not ticket-routing. Slack threads, not Jira.
Eligibility

Who we'll take on.

  • check_circle Past Foundational clients — automatic eligibility.
  • check_circle Teams that completed an equivalent observability rebuild within 12 months.
  • check_circle Pre-Foundational teams: only if we've completed a Diagnostic.
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Tell us about your system. We'll tell you whether retainer makes sense — or whether you actually need a Foundational first.

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