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Every NetSuite subscription comes with support from Oracle, but "support" covers three different things with different scopes: Basic Support, Premium Support and Advanced Customer Support (ACS). Which one you have decides what you can ask Oracle, how fast it answers, and who on your side is allowed to ask.
Direct answer: Basic Support is included with every NetSuite subscription and covers critical (Severity 1) issues 24x7 with a two-hour response goal. Premium Support is a paid upgrade that adds non-critical cases, 24x7 phone support, priority case handling and faster response goals. ACS is a separate paid subscription in which Oracle consultants give configuration guidance and optimization. None of the three covers your own scripts, workflows or integrations.
Everything below comes from Oracle's pages and contract documents, read on 21 October 2026, and linked at the end.
What each level includes
Oracle's support datasheet says it plainly: "NetSuite Support offers three levels of assistance: Basic, Premium, and Advanced Customer Support (ACS)." The contract that governs them is the Oracle NetSuite Hosting and Support Delivery Policies, effective 15 June 2026.
| Basic Support | Premium Support | Advanced Customer Support (ACS) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How you get it | Included in every NetSuite subscription | Paid upgrade | Separate paid subscription, under its own order |
| What you can report | Critical (Severity 1) issues only | Severity 1 to 4, including questions about basic functionality | Not a case queue: ongoing guidance, configuration help and optimization from Oracle consultants |
| Coverage hours | Normal business hours (8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at your headquarters' time zone), expanded to 24x7 for Severity 1 | 24x7 for Severity 1 and 2 | Scheduled hours per month or quarter, by tier |
| Channels | Online case via SuiteAnswers; phone for Severity 1 | Online case, 24x7 phone, priority case handling, live chat | A named delivery team |
| Authorized contacts | 2 | 4 | Per the ACS order |
| Weekend support and early release notification | No | Yes | — |
Oracle's page describes Basic Support as "help for critical concerns 24 hours a day, seven days a week", and Premium Support as "added assistance, including help for critical and non-critical issues, priority case queuing, weekend support, and early notification of upcoming releases". Everyone in your account is on the same level: the policies state a customer "may not purchase different levels of support for a portion of its Users".
ACS is marketed by Oracle as NetSuite Managed Services. Oracle's ACS page lists three tiers, ACS Monitor, ACS Optimize and ACS Architect, and its comparison infographic gives them 36 hours per quarter, 20 hours per month and 40 hours per month respectively, with a lead consultant and shared team at the low end and a delivery manager, functional consultants and a customer experience manager at the high end. Oracle's current ACS service descriptions also list an ACS Advise SKU. ACS pricing is not published.
Severity levels and response time goals, as Oracle states them
The Hosting and Support Delivery Policies define four severities. In short: Severity 1 means production use is stopped or so severely impacted that you cannot reasonably continue business operations; Severity 2 means one or more important functions are unavailable with no acceptable workaround; Severity 3 means important features are unavailable but a workaround exists, or you have a question about basic functionality; Severity 4 is minimal impact. Severity 3 and 4 cases are only available to Premium Support customers.
| Severity | Basic Support response goal | Premium Support response goal |
|---|---|---|
| Severity 1 (Critical) | 2 hours | 1 hour |
| Severity 2 (Significant) | Not applicable | 2 hours |
| Severity 3 (Less significant) | Not applicable | 8 hours |
| Severity 4 (Minimal) | Not applicable | 2 business days |
These are response goals, not resolution times: they are when Oracle aims to get back to you, not when the problem is fixed. The policies also note that customers who bought support before 1 December 2019 have older goals for Severity 2 and 3 (4 hours and 2 business days).
Defects get a separate rating once a case becomes one: a business-impact rating (B1 to B4) and a severity rating (S1 to S4). The target timeframes for fixes are published only inside SuiteAnswers, which requires a login.
How to contact NetSuite support
Oracle's help center gives one primary path for everyone: inside NetSuite, open the Support tab, click Go to SuiteAnswers, then Contact Support Online. You must be on your account's Authorized Contact list to submit a case. With Basic Support, "you can submit only critical problems that impact your business operations"; with Premium Support, the Create Support Case form lets you choose a severity, and for a critical case you check the 24x7 availability box.
Is there a phone number for NetSuite technical support? Not a public one. Oracle's help topic says: "Phone support is available 24/7. Call the number provided by your account manager." Phone support is for Severity 1 cases on Basic Support and Severity 1 and 2 on Premium Support, and only for people on the Authorized Contact list. The phone numbers on Oracle's public NetSuite contact page are for sales, billing and general inquiries; that page sends technical support requests to the SuiteAnswers virtual assistant and case form. If you do not have the number, your account manager or your account's administrator (who sees the Authorized Contact list) is the place to ask.
Two other things the help center makes clear: your NetSuite partner can log cases on your behalf only if you have Premium Support and have authorized the partner as a caller, and Oracle's support obligations exclude "adaptations, configurations or modifications" made by you or a third party, "including those that are made using SuiteScript or JavaScript".
ACS or an independent retainer: how to compare them
ACS and an independent support retainer are bought for the same reason, someone to keep the account working after go-live, so companies compare them at renewal time. They are not the same product.
| Advanced Customer Support (ACS) | Independent retainer | |
|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | Oracle consultants, assigned by Oracle, in a scheduled block of hours | A named team you chose, the same people month to month |
| What it covers | Product guidance, configuration help and optimization; development is scoped and priced separately | Administration, saved searches, workflows, SuiteScript, integrations and release testing, as one scope |
| Your own scripts and integrations | Outside Oracle's support obligations (see above) | The main reason you hire it |
| How it is bought | A separate order, tiered by hours (36 per quarter to 40 per month on Oracle's comparison), renewed alongside the subscription | Monthly, with a notice period; no license attached |
| Price | Not published by Oracle | Quoted in writing before you sign |
What customers say about ACS in public is consistent. In October 2026 a thread on r/Netsuite about renewal negotiations, with more than 40 comments, described ACS being pitched as part of the subscription renewal, customers who had tried to drop it for years and were moved to a smaller tier instead, one customer on their third ACS consultant of the year, and consultants rotating often enough that the customer knew the product better than the newest one. The most-upvoted replies, one of them from a commenter who said they had been an ACS consultant, said simply to avoid it. A commenter who said they had been a NetSuite rep added that renewal uplifts are now capped at 5%, which, if it holds for your contract, makes "add ACS and I can negotiate a better discount" a weaker pitch than it sounds. One reply recommended a partner on a managed services agreement instead, on the grounds that ACS is a license you get locked into. An older thread describes the same pattern: every request becoming a scoping exercise, with hours spent on presentations about the scope rather than on the change itself.
Those are forum reports, not a survey, and for some accounts an Oracle consultant with Oracle's own escalation paths is the right call. The practical comparison is this: take the ACS tier you are being quoted, count the hours, and ask what an independent team would do with the same budget, with your scripts and integrations inside the scope instead of outside it. If you are in a renewal conversation now, our NetSuite managed services page describes what a retainer covers and how it is priced, and the first reply comes within 24 hours.
When an independent retainer complements Oracle support
That last exclusion is where most of the work in a live NetSuite account lives. Oracle support answers for the platform: outages, product defects, questions about standard features. It does not fix a saved search that stopped matching the GL, a workflow that approves the wrong bills, a Celigo flow that fails on Tuesdays, or a user event script someone wrote in 2021. ACS gets closer, with Oracle consultants giving configuration guidance by the hour, but it is a scheduled block of guidance, not a team that owns your customizations.
When a logistics manager asked r/Netsuite in September 2026 who offers implementation with ongoing support, the top-voted answer was to hire an employee with NetSuite administration experience, and the next theme was that without one you spend your time retraining a rotating cast of consultants. Both are right. For companies that cannot hire that person, a retainer with the same named people every month is the closest thing to it.
An independent NetSuite support retainer covers that layer: administration, saved searches and reports, workflow and SuiteScript fixes, integration monitoring, and testing before each of NetSuite's two releases a year. The sensible setup for most mid-market accounts is all three at once: Basic or Premium Support from Oracle for the platform, someone on your side who sets priorities, and a retainer for everything built on top. If you are deciding whether to upgrade to Premium, the question is how often you need Severity 2 to 4 cases and 24x7 phone access; if you are deciding on ACS, compare its hours and team against what an independent team would do with the same budget, with the code in your account either way.
For what changes in each release, see our NetSuite 2026 release notes hub; for the signs an account needs help before something breaks, the NetSuite health check.
Sources
- NetSuite Support Services (Oracle)
- NetSuite Support datasheet (Oracle, 2025)
- Oracle NetSuite Hosting and Support Delivery Policies, effective 15 June 2026
- Advanced Customer Support and the ACS level comparison (Oracle)
- Oracle NetSuite ACS Service Descriptions, effective 15 September 2026
- NetSuite help center: Contacting Customer Support, Creating a support case, Contact Support by Phone, Defect ratings
- NetSuite Partner Support (Oracle)
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Mercedes Lerena
Co-founder & CEO
Co-founder and CEO of BrokenRubik, leading strategic vision and business operations for over a decade. Expert in building and scaling NetSuite consulting teams, with deep experience in enterprise software delivery and client relationship management.