Frequently Asked Questions

Cool Fire Inc is a senior technology firm that helps businesses build, improve, and maintain the websites and apps that keep them running. We handle everything from custom development and platform modernization to custom app builds, third-party integrations, AI-enabled features, and ongoing technical support. We have been in business since 2005.

We work across a range of industries including higher education, nonprofits, enterprise organizations, healthcare, SaaS companies, media, and growing businesses of all kinds. If you have a website or app that matters to your business and needs expert technical care, we are likely a good fit.

We are headquartered in Florida but fully remote and have been since we founded the company in 2005. Our team is distributed, and we work with clients across the United States and beyond.

The best first step is to contact us. You can send us a detailed message about your situation, or schedule a free 30-minute discovery call. We will ask about your platform, your team, and what is currently blocking you or what you need accomplished. From there, we will tell you honestly whether we are a good fit and what working together would look like. There is no pressure and no sales pitch.

We spend about 30 minutes learning about your platform, your situation, and what you need. We ask questions, you ask questions, and we give you a straight answer about whether we can help and how. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you that too. Most calls are followed up by an implementation plan, which we will schedule a call to review and allow you time to ask any questions or make any adjustments.

We keep contracts straightforward. Project work is scoped upfront with clear deliverables and a defined end date. Support retainers are typically annual agreements, and your retainer tier can be adjusted with 30 days notice as your needs change.

We work with organizations of many sizes, from growing small businesses to large enterprise and higher education institutions. The right fit is less about size and more about the complexity and importance of your platform. If your website or app is critical to your operations, we are built for that.

Project pricing depends on scope and complexity. We do not quote from a rate card without understanding what the work actually involves. Every project starts with a discovery conversation and, where needed, a discovery phase so you get a realistic estimate before committing. We do not guess and we do not surprise you at month three.

Yes. Our monthly retainers are quoted custom for each client.

Yes. When we take over a site or app we did not build, we charge a one-time onboarding fee to cover a full technical review of the codebase, hosting environment, integrations, and security posture. This ends with a written findings report. This protects both of us and means we know your platform before any work begins. Fees depend upon the complexity and requirements of the engagement.

Additional hours beyond your monthly plan are billed at an hourly rate. We will always let you know before going over your included hours so there are no surprises on your invoice.

You will work directly with senior engineers and management. The people who review your platform during onboarding are the same people who handle your ongoing support. There are no handoffs, no getting up to speed with someone new, and no junior developers handling your work.

We adapt to how your team works. Most clients use email, Slack, or a shared project management tool. We send monthly status reports for retainer clients and keep you informed whenever something needs your attention. We do not disappear between invoices.

After the discovery call, we conduct a technical onboarding review of your platform. This covers the codebase, hosting environment, integrations, workflows, processes, security posture, and any outstanding issues. You receive a written findings report at the end. Then your support retainer begins the following month with an engineer who already knows your system.

Yes, and we are comfortable doing so. Many of our engagements involve sensitive data, proprietary systems, or white-label relationships. Mutual NDAs are a standard part of how we work.

We support all currently active versions of Drupal including Drupal 10 and Drupal 11. We also perform upgrades from Drupal 7, 8, and 9, all of which have reached end of life and are no longer receiving security patches from the Drupal community.

Yes. Drupal 7 reached end of life in January 2025, which means it no longer receives security updates. Every month your platform stays on Drupal 7, the risk grows. We have run many Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 or 11 upgrade engagements and can give you a realistic scope and timeline. The first step is a discovery call.

Yes. We specialize in Drupal and custom application development, and we also work with WordPress sites. Whether you need help with your current WordPress platform or are considering a migration to Drupal, we can help. If you are not sure which direction makes sense, that is a conversation worth having too.

We offer three core AI engagements. Department Setup builds AI into your day-to-day operations using your own documents, brand, and workflows. Platform Optimization is technical work that helps AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews find, read, and cite your content. AI Assistant is a custom assistant trained on your brand, documents, and processes. We also build AI features directly into existing platforms, including AI-powered site search, chatbots trained on your actual content, automated content tagging, and content assistants for editors. Every engagement starts with a customized AI Readiness Audit so the work is built around how your business actually operates.

The AI Readiness Audit is a fixed-fee engagement where we assess both your operational workflows and your technical platform to determine what AI automation is feasible now and what needs to be addressed first. We review your day-to-day processes across Finance, Marketing, Sales, and Operations alongside your platform health, content architecture, and existing integrations. You receive a written findings report, a readiness scorecard, and a prioritized roadmap. It is the right starting point for most organizations that are not sure where to begin with AI.

Often, yes. AI that is built on a weak foundation does not deliver real value. Outdated infrastructure, inconsistent content structure, and missing API layers are the most common blockers. The AI Readiness Audit identifies exactly what needs to be addressed before AI work begins.

Retainers include security patches and updates, bug triage and resolution, uptime monitoring, and a defined block of senior engineering hours each month. Drupal retainers also include core and module updates via Composer, deployment support, and proactive platform health reporting. The exact scope depends on the requirements of your business.

Response times depend on your retainer tier. You can rely on a response within one business day, same-day or 4-business-hour response depending upon your contract. For Drupal security advisories, we apply critical patches within 72 hours of release regardless of tier.

Yes. You can adjust your retainer tier with 30 days notice. If your needs grow or shrink, your plan can grow or shrink with them.

We have uptime monitoring in place for all retainer clients. When something goes wrong, we know before you do and we start working on it. You will be notified promptly with a clear explanation of what happened and what we are doing about it.