Support and SLA Comparison for Deep Linking Platforms

When your deep links break at 2 AM during a marketing campaign, support quality determines how fast you recover. SLAs determine whether the platform commits to reliability. This comparison evaluates support channels, response times, and uptime guarantees across deep linking platform categories.

For enterprise requirements, see enterprise deep linking platforms. For the platform selection checklist, see deep linking platform selection checklist.

Support Channels

Channel	Tolinku	Branch	AppsFlyer	Adjust	Kochava	Bitly
Email support	All tiers	All tiers	All tiers	Paid tiers	All tiers	Paid tiers
Chat support	Paid tiers	Enterprise	Growth+	Enterprise	Enterprise	No
Phone support	No	Enterprise	Enterprise	Enterprise	Enterprise	No
Dedicated CSM	Scale+	Enterprise	Enterprise	Enterprise	Enterprise	Enterprise
Community forum	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Knowledge base	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Status page	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Developer docs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Limited

Key observations:

• Enterprise MMP platforms offer the most support channels, but only at enterprise pricing.
• Phone support is exclusively an enterprise feature across all platforms.
• All platforms provide email support and knowledge bases.

Response Time SLAs

Response time SLAs vary by tier and severity. Most platforms only publish SLAs for paid tiers:

Critical Issues (Service Down)

Platform	Free Tier	Standard/Growth	Enterprise
Tolinku	Best effort	< 4 hours	< 1 hour
Branch	Best effort	N/A	< 1 hour
AppsFlyer	Best effort	< 4 hours	< 1 hour
Adjust	N/A	< 4 hours	< 1 hour
Bitly	Best effort	< 8 hours	< 2 hours

Non-Critical Issues

Platform	Free Tier	Standard/Growth	Enterprise
Tolinku	Best effort	< 24 hours	< 4 hours
Branch	Best effort	N/A	< 8 hours
AppsFlyer	Best effort	< 24 hours	< 8 hours
Adjust	N/A	< 24 hours	< 8 hours
Bitly	Best effort	< 48 hours	< 24 hours

"Best effort" means no guaranteed response time. Your issue might be answered in minutes or days.

Uptime SLAs

Platform	Published SLA	Historical Uptime (reported)
Tolinku	99.9%	N/A (newer platform)
Branch	99.95% (enterprise)	~99.9%
AppsFlyer	99.9%+	~99.95%
Adjust	99.9%+ (enterprise)	~99.9%
Kochava	99.9%	~99.9%
Bitly	99.9%	~99.95%

Most platforms achieve 99.9%+ uptime, which translates to less than 9 hours of downtime per year. Enterprise SLAs at 99.95% allow less than 4.5 hours per year.

What Happens During Outages

Status Page Transparency

When a platform has an outage, the status page is your primary information source:

• Good: Real-time updates, clear description of impact, estimated resolution time, post-mortem published within 48 hours.
• Acceptable: Updates every 30-60 minutes, general description of impact, resolution time updated as investigation progresses.
• Poor: Status page says "all systems operational" while users report issues. No updates during incidents. No post-mortem.

Check each platform's status page history before committing. Past incident handling predicts future behavior.

Failover and Redundancy

Ask each platform:

• CDN: Is link resolution served from a CDN with multiple edge locations?
• Database redundancy: Is data replicated across availability zones?
• DNS failover: If the primary server goes down, does DNS failover to a backup?
• Geographic redundancy: Are services deployed in multiple regions?

Deep link resolution should be served from a CDN. A link click should resolve without hitting a single origin server. If the platform's CDN goes down, that is a major infrastructure failure.

Support Quality Indicators

Beyond response time, evaluate the quality of support:

Technical Depth

Can the support team:

• Debug Universal Link / App Link configuration issues?
• Trace a specific link click through the resolution pipeline?
• Explain SDK behavior on specific OS versions?
• Provide code-level guidance for integration issues?

MMP platforms typically have the deepest technical support because their large teams include dedicated solutions engineers. Smaller platforms may have smaller teams but more focused expertise.

Documentation Quality as Support

Good documentation reduces support dependency:

• Troubleshooting guides: Common issues with step-by-step resolutions.
• FAQ: Answers to frequently asked questions without needing to contact support.
• Migration guides: How to switch from other platforms.
• API reference: Complete and accurate endpoint documentation.
• Code samples: Working examples for each platform and framework.

Cost of Support Tiers

Support quality is often gated behind higher pricing tiers:

Support Level	Typical Cost Impact
Community/self-serve	Included in free tiers
Email support	Included in basic paid tiers
Priority email + chat	+20-50% on base price
Dedicated CSM	+50-100% on base price or enterprise-only
Phone + dedicated team	Enterprise pricing only

For most teams, email support with a < 24-hour SLA is sufficient for non-critical issues. Critical issue SLAs matter more because downtime directly affects your users.

Testing Support Before Committing

Before signing a contract:

1. Submit a technical question through the platform's support channel. Measure response time and quality.
2. Check the status page history. Look for patterns in outage frequency and resolution time.
3. Read community forums or reviews. Other users' support experiences are informative.
4. Ask for references. Request to speak with existing customers about their support experience.
5. Review the post-mortems. Platforms that publish detailed post-mortems demonstrate operational maturity.

Tolinku Support

Tolinku provides email support on all tiers, with priority support and dedicated assistance on Growth and Scale plans. The documentation at tolinku.com/docs covers integration, configuration, and troubleshooting.

For enterprise evaluation criteria, see enterprise deep linking platforms. For the full comparison, see deep linking platform comparison.