A Templater support package is a level of help from Dataclay that you can add to your software when you want more than the standard support every user receives. There are three levels. Standard comes with your software purchase at no additional charge. Premium takes troubleshooting further and reaches beyond our applications into the video, data, and other files you use. Ultimate includes everything in Premium and adds support for remote JSON feeds and event scripting.
That is the short version, and it is the full list of what our site says about the levels. We will go through what each one means in practice, how to tell which one fits the way you work, and what we do not specify, so you know what to ask us before you buy. We would rather you walk in with the right questions than assume a package covers something it does not.
The three levels, and where each one stops
Start with the one everyone has. Standard support is included when you buy Templater, and it does not cost extra. Our FAQ describes this as responsive support for all Templater users, free of charge. If you have installed the plugin and something in the plugin is not behaving as documented, standard support is where you begin. You do not need a package to ask a question about the product.
Premium is the first paid step, and the phrase that defines it is “goes beyond our applications.” In plain terms, standard support is about our software. Premium support is about your project as a whole. It includes the video, data, and other files you use in Dataclay Station. That difference is larger than it sounds. Many of the problems people hit with automated video have nothing to do with a bug in Templater. A font is missing on the render machine. A column in a spreadsheet has trailing spaces. A footage file moved when someone reorganized a drive. The plugin did what it was told, and what it was told was wrong. A support level that will look at your files is a support level that can find those problems.
Ultimate adds two specific areas, remote JSON feeds and event scripting, on top of everything Premium offers. Both are things you build yourself, which is why they sit in their own tier. A remote JSON feed means Templater pulls its data from a JSON source (the five tested data sources post shows where feeds fit) that lives somewhere other than a file on your machine. The feed belongs to you, or to a system you do not control, and its structure and availability are not something we ship. Event scripting means shell scripts or ExtendScripts that hook into the events Templater broadcasts. Those scripts are code you or your developers wrote. Supporting them means reading your code and your integrations, and that is a different level of work from answering a question about a button.
Here is the pattern worth noticing. The three levels step outward from our software, to your files, to your code and your live data connections. Each step moves the edge of what we will troubleshoot further from our own product and closer to your production environment. If you read the tiers that way, the choice mostly makes itself.
A hypothetical walk through one bad night makes the difference between levels easier to see. A studio runs a nightly batch of personalized videos. In the morning, forty of the outputs are wrong. Where did the problem start? There are only a handful of places it can live, and the level of support you need follows from which one it is.
If the cause is in the plugin, for example an edition limit that disables a function you expected, or a preferences reset needed after an upgrade, that is a product question. Our FAQ notes that after upgrading Templater it may be necessary to reset your After Effects preferences, and that an error saying Templater Bot can queue a maximum of 20 jobs at any given time can appear until you do. Standard support is built for that sort of thing.
If the cause is in a file, that is a different night. A footage clip was replaced with one in another format, or a font on one render machine is missing a glyph that a new name requires. The plugin was never wrong. A level of support that reaches into your video, data, and other files can look at the actual material instead of only the software.
If the cause is in something you built, such as a script that reshapes the data or a feed that returned an unexpected structure, that is a third kind of night, and it is where remote JSON feeds and event scripting enter. You cannot diagnose that from the product alone, because the product behaved exactly as instructed by code that Dataclay did not write.
The point of the exercise is that a support tier is a statement about which of those three places we are willing to look. It is also a decent way to test your own pipeline. If you cannot say where your last problem lived, you may not yet know which tier you are buying.
Which level fits which kind of team
This section is a judgment, not a rule from our site, so treat it as general practice and confirm details with us. We cannot see your pipeline from here, and the right answer depends on what failure costs you.
A solo motion designer who rigs a template and renders a batch on a single machine probably does well with standard support. The problems in that situation tend to be about the plugin, and the designer owns every file and can fix a data issue without a second opinion. The free trial is a fully featured version of Templater Bot, so you can learn a lot before you spend anything.
A small studio that produces videos for clients, with several artists and several data sets, is where Premium starts to make sense. The failures there are rarely clean. A deadline is close, a batch fails on row 140, and nobody is sure whether the template, the data, or the footage is at fault. Having someone who will look at all three is the value of a level that reaches into your files.
A team that has built something on top of Templater is the natural audience for Ultimate. Suppose you have a developer who wrote an event script that authenticates with a database and a feed that updates every hour. If it breaks at two in the morning, the cause may be in your code, the feed, or the interaction between them. Support that covers remote JSON feeds and event scripting is support for the parts you built.
Our FAQ gives a related hint. Clients who want the peace of mind that comes with more comprehensive support offerings should purchase one of the premium support packages, and the question it answers is about clients running mission-critical applications. So there is a way to phrase the decision. Ask what happens to your business if a render batch stops for a day. If the answer is “mildly annoying,” standard support is probably enough. If the answer is “we miss air,” or “we miss a campaign launch,” the more comprehensive packages are worth a conversation.
One more factor, and it is easy to underweight. Support is not only for emergencies. Teams building a pipeline for the first time get a great deal from asking questions early, before a design choice hardens. That is where our implementation and consulting services come in, and you can read about them in our learn section and on our professional services page. Support packages and those services are separate offerings, and it helps to know which door you are knocking on.
There are a few things a package will not do, and it is fair to say them out loud. A package does not make After Effects licensing someone else’s problem. Templater requires Adobe After Effects, and Adobe’s standard license agreement does not permit After Effects on a server, so cloud plans need a conversation with Adobe. A package does not add features that the product lacks. For example, Templater maps data to a single worksheet within a Google Sheet, not several tabs, and no support level changes that. And a package does not replace a tested template. Support helps you find a cause. It does not stand in for running a small batch and looking at the output before you run a large one.
We would add one practical note about data. Templater cannot read an Excel file directly, so teams export to a tab-delimited file first. A surprising number of problems begin in that export step, because a person saved the wrong sheet or changed a heading. If your support questions keep returning to the data, the best fix may be upstream, in a source such as QUE, and a conversation about that is worth having with us before the next incident.
What we do not say, and what to ask before you buy
Honesty about the limits of a page is part of this article. Our support packages page tells you what each level covers in general terms. It does not publish response time targets, support hours, the channels a request travels through, how many requests a package includes, or what a package costs. We are not going to invent any of those here. If any of them matter to your decision, and for a mission-critical setup they should, ask us before you commit, and ask in writing so that the answer is on record.
For prices, please see our own site and the professional services page, because the figures on our site are the ones that apply to you. All professional services engagements are quoted individually, which is the reason we do not print a number here.
Here is a list of questions that is worth bringing. The first is what exactly you want covered. Write down the files, the feeds, and the scripts that make up your pipeline, and match each against the level you are considering. The wording says Premium includes the video, data, and other files you use in Dataclay Station, so check that your particular kinds of files are among them. The second is who on your team will make requests and whether that matters to the arrangement. The third is what you expect when a problem is urgent, and how that is handled. The fourth is what is out of scope. A clear answer to the fourth question is often more useful than a long list of inclusions.
It also helps to understand the free resources around the packages, because they handle a large share of problems. We keep documentation, screencasts, a forum, FAQs, and a way to submit a support ticket on our support pages. Our FAQ itself answers many real troubleshooting questions. A few examples show the range. An error that reads “Failed at N/A” in the After Effects render queue means After Effects did not find one or more assets, footage, or font dependencies where it expected them, often because files were moved or deleted. An error about being unable to find a window constructor when using Bot’s command line interface appears when After Effects is not running in the foreground, and adding a -ui argument when launching Bot is the fix. And if the Render, Replicate, and Enable Bot buttons are disabled, it is almost always an edition question, because Render and Replicate belong to Pro and Enable Bot belongs to Bot.
None of those required a package. They required knowing where to look. A good habit, whichever level you choose, is to search the documentation and FAQs first, collect a clean description of the problem, and then ask. When you ask, include the Templater version, the After Effects version, the operating system, what you expected, what happened instead, and the log files. Templater logs its activity and the files are open to inspection, so a log excerpt saves a day of back-and-forth. It is general practice in any support relationship, and it makes every level of support work better.
It is also worth deciding who inside your company owns the relationship. If five people each email us a slightly different version of the same problem, nobody has the whole picture. One named person who collects the logs, the versions, and the example files tends to get a faster and clearer answer. That is general practice, and it costs nothing.
Finally, think about how a package fits with the way you license the software. A Standard License of Templater runs on one machine at a time. A Floating License can be shared across machines on a network connected to a licensing server, one system at a time. Support is a separate question from the license type, and from where your data lives, whether that is a spreadsheet or QUE, and you should not assume that choosing one answers the other. Our licensing guide walks through the license choices, and the support level is something you add on top of whichever you pick.
The bottom line is simple. Standard support is free with your purchase and covers your questions about our software. Premium reaches into the video, data, and other files you use. Ultimate adds remote JSON feeds and event scripting. Match the level to how much your production depends on parts you built yourself, and ask us in writing about anything the page does not say, such as response times or hours. If you would like to see a full run before deciding, how to make hundreds of personalized videos from data walks through one. The Templater page has the product details, and the free trial lets you learn what you need before you decide what to buy.
If you are weighing the levels right now, here are the questions people bring to us most often.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is any support included when I buy Templater?
Yes. Standard support is included with your software purchase at no additional charge. Our FAQ describes it as responsive support for all Templater users, free of charge. Premium and Ultimate are the paid packages for people who want more comprehensive help. You can ask a product question without buying a package, and the documentation, screencasts, forums, and FAQs on our support pages are available as well.
What does Premium support cover that standard does not?
Premium offers a more advanced level of troubleshooting and goes beyond our applications. It includes the video, data, and other files you use in Dataclay Station. Standard support is about our software. Premium looks at the files around it, such as footage, spreadsheets, and project files, where many production problems actually start. Ask us in writing how your specific file types are handled before you commit.
What is the difference between Premium and Ultimate?
Ultimate includes the features of Premium and adds support for remote JSON feeds and event scripting. A remote JSON feed is a data source Templater reads from somewhere other than a local file. Event scripting means shell scripts or ExtendScripts that hook into Templater’s processes. If your pipeline depends on either, Ultimate is the level that speaks to them. If it does not, Premium is likely the closest fit.
How much does a support package cost, and what are the response times?
Our support packages page describes what each level covers but does not publish prices or response time targets, so we will not state them here. All professional services engagements are quoted individually. If response time matters to your decision, ask Dataclay directly and get the answer in writing. You can reach us at support@dataclay.com or through a support ticket on our site.
Do I need a package if I only have a trial or Rig?
Probably not. The 30-day free trial is a fully featured version of Templater Bot, and you can try every feature before you spend anything. Rig is the edition for an artist who sets up a project, which usually means one person owning every file. Packages make more sense once other people, other machines, or other systems depend on your output.
Will a package fix a problem caused by my data or fonts?
That is the kind of problem Premium is meant to address, because it extends to the data and other files you use. Common examples from our FAQ include After Effects failing at N/A because assets, footage, or fonts are not where they were expected, and text that needs fonts containing the right glyphs. Check the files first, then ask. A clean description with the log files attached speeds up any support request.
Is a support package the same as custom development?
No. A support package helps you keep what you have running. Custom development is a set of professional services that includes implementation, consulting, event scripting, and feature enhancement engagements, each quoted individually. If you need someone to write a script or build an integration, that is a services engagement. If you need help diagnosing why your existing setup misbehaves, that is support.
