Within one working day, and usually the same day. When you message me you are messaging the person who will do the work, not an inbox that feeds a sales process, so a useful reply comes back fast: often with questions, sometimes with an answer, occasionally with an honest no if the job is not a good fit. If something is genuinely urgent, say so in the first message and I will treat it that way. US clients get the same response times; the four hours of daily overlap with the East Coast means a morning message from New York normally has a reply before your lunch.
Every enquiry gets a reply within one working day, and most get one the same day. That is not a heroic claim, it is just what happens when the person reading the message is the person who will do the work. There is no triage queue, no account manager summarising you to a developer, and no developer summarising an answer back through an account manager.
If you are contacting a freelancer, something has usually already gone wrong: a developer has resigned, an upgrade has stalled, an agency has gone quiet. The first reply tells you what the whole engagement will feel like. A supplier who takes four days to answer an enquiry will take four days to answer everything, and when your site is down that is unbearable. Fast, direct communication is a deliberate part of how I work, not a sales-phase behaviour that fades after the contract is signed.
Usually questions. A good scoping question up front saves a wasted day later, so expect me to ask what version you are on, who built the site, what is hurting and what you have already tried. If I can answer immediately, I will. If the work is not something I am the right person for, I will say so straight away rather than sitting on it, because your deadline does not care about my pipeline.
The more concrete your first message, the more useful my first reply. Version numbers, hosting arrangements and a sentence on what success looks like all help. Send it through the contact page, and if you want to check who you are dealing with first, the about page covers thirty years of writing commercial software and fourteen of them on Umbraco.
Tell me what you're working on and I'll come back within one working day.
A specialist Umbraco developer offering freelance / contract services to a wide variety of clients across the UK
Maesgwyn, 3 Claremont rd,
Llandudno, North Wales, LL30 2UF