---
title: Professional help
description: How dedicated, private help differs from community support — what an engagement looks like, when it is worth it, and where to go instead.
---

import { CardGrid, LinkCard, Aside } from '@astrojs/starlight/components';

The open community is the right place for most questions: public design discussion, help getting unstuck, and a second pair of eyes on a model. It is free, it is fast, and it stays open to everyone.

Sometimes a team needs something the community cannot give it — private domain context, a scheduled workshop, a written architecture review, or hands-on help moving a real slice into Cratis. That is what dedicated help is for. This page explains how it differs from community support and when it is worth the cost; [Work with us](/work-with-us/) covers what we actually help with and how to get in touch.

<CardGrid>
  <LinkCard title="Work with us" description="What we help teams with, how we work, and how to start a conversation." href="/work-with-us/" />
  <LinkCard title="Ask in the community first" description="Use Discord when the question can be discussed in the open, or when you are still exploring the problem." href="/community/" />
  <LinkCard title="Choose an adoption path" description="Work through the adoption guide before a paid engagement, so the starting point is already clear." href="/adopting-cratis/" />
</CardGrid>

## Community help compared with dedicated help

| | Community | Dedicated |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Paid, scoped per engagement |
| Response | Best-effort, when someone is available | Agreed up front |
| Context | Public — share only what you can share openly | Private, including code and domain detail |
| Shape | Questions and answers, design discussion | Workshops, reviews, pairing, focused development, training |
| Output | A thread, and often a documentation improvement | A deliverable: a model, a plan, a written review, or working code |
| Depth | One problem at a time | Your whole system, in context |

## When dedicated help is worth it

Reach for a paid engagement when the thing blocking you is not a missing answer:

- **The context cannot be public.** The domain, the schema, or the roadmap is confidential.
- **You need someone's calendar, not their goodwill.** A workshop on a date, or a review by a deadline, is a commitment the community cannot make.
- **The decision is expensive to reverse.** Consistency boundaries, tenancy, and storage choices are cheap to change now and costly later.
- **You need the whole team moved at once.** Training a team is a session, not a thread.
- **You want a durable artifact.** A written review or a modeled backlog outlives a Discord conversation.

If none of those apply, the community will probably serve you better — and faster.

## Where to go instead

| If you need... | Go to... |
|---|---|
| What we help with, and how to make contact | [Work with us](/work-with-us/) |
| An open question, design discussion, or setup help | [Community and help](/community/) |
| A grounded, cited answer from the documentation | [Prompter on Discord](/prompter/) |
| To report a suspected vulnerability | [Security](/security/) |
| To suggest an improvement or report confusing documentation | [Feedback and suggestions](/feedback/) |
| A reproducible bug or a feature request | The matching [GitHub issue tracker](/community/) |
| A route through the documentation for your role | [Learning paths](/learning-paths/) |

<Aside type="note" title="Commercial work is separate from community help">
Discord remains open and best-effort, and asking there never depends on being a customer. Professional engagements are private, time-boxed, and handled separately from the open-source support channels. Any engagement also depends on availability and on the relevant consultancy, employer, and conflict-of-interest arrangements.
</Aside>